Dear Friends,
The time is here. It's almost time for my departure. For two whole years. Which when you look at it as a percentage of my total time on earth seems minuscule. But at the same time, it seems enormous. And life-changing. It feels like I'm getting on that airplane to a distant world, a people I don't know and leaving behind everything I know and love forever (maybe my imagination has a tendency to flare towards the dramatic). And there's a few things I want you to know, both for my sake and yours, as I step on that plane and spend my first few months in the field.
First I love you all dearly and wish I could be with you. My heart really yearns here to be in two places at once. I want desperately to be where God has called me to be, but at the same time my heart longs to be with you. Over the next two years, I will miss a lot. I will miss the good: weddings, births, random late-night shenanigans that will bond you my friends closer. I will miss the growth of you as people and of the growth of things I love. Like the campus ministry organization which stood a full 20 people strong on a good day when I started 5 years ago, and this year will take on almost that many on leadership to accommodate our rapid growth. (Might I say Gappers, I'm so so so stoked to hear about the things you are doing on campus while I'm away! Please, please tell me!! I desire so greatly to celebrate with you still!) I'll miss the not-so-good things that I wish I could walk through with you: the break-ups, the terrible family news, the stressful days. And my heart is already leaping out of my chest wanting so desperately to be there for you. So for the good and the bad friends, I'm sorry I'll miss it. Keep me up to date and I'll work on loving you as well as I can from a far. And know that it hurts me just as much as it hurts you that I can't be there for it all.
Secondly, as I leave you I'll need you as much or more than ever. I'll need all the encouragement and prayers from you that I can possibly get. As I transition, some days my missing of all of you will get the best of me. Learning a new culture will be both exciting and exhausting. I was told that while adjusting some days it will be enough to just learn how to successfully navigate through the store and buy a gallon of milk before getting exhausted from trying to navigate all the change and that's okay. On top of that, this is my first ever "big girl job". The first time I'll have a classroom all as my own, which is also both exciting and terrifying because of all the potential that it holds both good and bad. On top of all this, the term "missionary" still toys with me at times revealing areas deep within where I feel inadequate and unworthy. So that means that I'll need a lot of encouragement to start. Encourage me that I'm right where I'm supposed to be, that you're still there and still love me (which is harder to remember when people aren't right there with you), and that God is still good and in control. Don't underestimate how much this might mean to me throughout this journey.
And on the note of adjusting to a new culture, know that our lives are going to start being shaped in very different ways. We all experienced this slightly after high school graduation, but when a friend moves away, your experiences start to become different. This will often cause a drift as you share less common ground. I fear this happening with many of friendships back home but on a more drastic scale because of the magnitude of difference between our experiences. What I'm going to try to do to beat this is listen actively and with empathy for each of you as you share with me what life is becoming. I urge you to listen in the same way with me. I've already felt isolated at times as I tried to express what was going on: my fears, my celebrations, my expectations and experiences preparing for this and all I received in return was blank stares or "Oh, that's nice/sucky/(insert emotion)." It's going to be a lot more effort, but please try to listen in a way to understand me. I really do want to share this part of my life with you too.
Also give me some extra grace. Trying to live fully in a new world while loving the old from far away will be really difficult. I will not likely reach out as much as you may think I should. It's not that I want to totally leave this life behind, but I want to be able to be fully there in my new life too. It's going to be really tricky to balance the two things so give me a lot of extra grace and patience as I try to figure out how that works.
Finally I'm excited to be sharing with you in advancing God's kingdom in a new way. I'm excited that over 8,000 miles away, you will be partaking in the same mission as me. That we still work together in advancing the cause of Christ. That we can still learn and grow together and from each other. That while everything in life is changing, we can remain bonded through the Lord and His purpose in each of our lives. Keep pursuing God hard and doing His kingdom work in the place I'm now physically leaving behind and know I will be continuing to pray for you.
I love you my dear friends more than you might ever realize.
Love,
Kacie
