580

Just five days ago, I put out a call, wondering if there was anyone out there who could feel connected enough with strangers a world away to want to pray for someone they would never meet.

Five days. 580 names.

And the thing is, at this point, I'm not even doubting whether or not I'll get twenty more e-mails. I've been sitting here, witness to an absolute outpouring of faith from around the world, and I don't see any reason it'll stop before every single pink sheet has a little black dot in the corner. My faith has been strengthened because I have been on the receiving end of yours. What a sweet way to end this outreach.

We leave for Ghana on Thursday and from there on to the rest of the world. By the time we land back at home, a couple of weeks before Christmas, we'll have traveled almost one and a half times the circumference of the Earth.

I'll be blogging when I can, but I'm not sure how regularly that will be, because I'm taking the four months as something of a fast from the noise and media that usually surround my life. I won't be bringing a computer or an iPod. No books or magazines. Just my Bible, my journal, and my camera.

Before I go, I will have sent out those last twenty names, and when I write the last e-mail I think it'll feel something like closure.

It's hard to think about this season ending, honestly. I know we're planning to come back, but we're holding those plans loosely. I have no idea what this next year is going to hold or where I'll be at the end of it. I know I'm going to see so much, but something in me already misses the place I haven't left yet.

I think this leaving will be hard. Not knowing when I'll be back under the West African sky feels like losing a piece of myself, a piece I've come to hold so dearly over the last two and a half years.

I hope it doesn't slip away when I'm far from here.