leaving

When I left New Jersey to come to Monrovia, I thought this year was going to feel like forever. I remember the months stretching out in front of me, seemingly endless days and weeks and hours to be lived through before I would see my family again. But now, with less than forty days before I land in Toronto, I'm wondering how it's all slipped through my fingers. I feel like such a cliche, but I can't help wondering where the time went.

It's almost not real. I remember how it felt every single June when I was growing up. The spring rains would taper off as the weather got warmer, and everyone started looking forward to packing up and closing school for the summer. It's been the same way around here. The lake-sized potholes in the roads are starting to dry out as the rains become less frequent, and the sun is getting so strong that it's hard to venture out between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon without roasting to a delicate shade of pink almost immediately. (The latter, however, is not such a bad thing; I'm thinking that coming home in the middle of winter without a tan is not going to be the best way to convince people that I actually just spent a year in Africa.)

The thing that's just bizarre is that we are actually packing up and getting ready to go. Nurses are leaving left and right; three of my four roommates will be flying home next weekend, and the fourth leaves me the weekend after that. And after ten months of pouring our souls into these people, we're just going to untie from the dock and sail out of the harbor; I'll most likely never see most them again. They are people I have spent countless hours nursing back to health, and so many of them are people I consider friends.

I don't know. I'm just not sure what I should be thinking or feeling right now. Part of me is content in a job well done, looking back over so many successful surgeries. Another part is frustrated at the overwhelming need that still remains, the countless time we had to say no. The rest of me just wants to plant my roots right here and wave at the ship as it pulls away from the dock.

How am I going to do this again next year? It's a whole new country full of stories I've never heard, spoken in a language I have yet to learn. I'm afraid that I'll have been drained too dry here in Liberia, that I won't have anything left for Benin.

Pour out your soul, He reminds me. Don't ask where it's coming from or whether it will be enough. Just pour it out. That's all I want from you.

Deep breath. I can do this. I can find the courage to leave. And I have a feeling that it's that same strength that will bring me back.