Bittersweet goodbyes...

It still hasn’t come.

 

And by that I mean, the aforementioned intense, stomach-dropping moment of feeling the finality.

 

It’s late, late Wednesday night now, a day after we left our home in Lopit, and it still hasn’t come.

 

It simply doesn’t seem real.

 

The goodbyes were hard, but not for the reasons you might imagine. I’m not sure I told you this before, but for the last few months, often times when we’d talk about leaving, our friends and neighbors (and, honestly, just random people) would say, “When you leave, give me all your stuff.”

 

Talk about a punch in the stomach.

 

“When you leave, leave all your things for us. You can buy everything new in America.”          

 

In our culture, that’s just not OK. It’s downright rude.

 

And it’ll ignite a flaming ball of fury inside you if you’re not careful.

 

Worse, a distinct feeling of failure—a feeling that you’ve wasted the last two years of your life trying to invest in these people, because in the end, all they want is your stuff.

 

They don’t want you; they want your things.

 

Ouch.

Right?

OUCH.

 

Rip my heart out and pounce on the dang thing, because that’s what it feels like.

 

But, you’ve got to make allowances for culture. I can’t expect them to act in a way that’s predictable or expected in the West. I can’t expect to understand or catch the nuances in their behavior that might betray some sort of feeling about our departure. I can’t expect them to get too concerned about some white foreigners leaving when their husbands and children and other family members will just up and leave one day and not come back for dozens of years at a time. And I certainly can’t expect them to understand the sacrifices we’ve made or the weight of the Message we came to share, since God chose not to really open their eyes to it just yet.

 

In short, the same cultural beast that we’ve been battling and trying to come to terms with for two years is the same cultural beast we battled and tried to come to terms with in leaving at the end of those two years.

 

It was very hard. Very, very hard.

 

But, God never said it would be easy. Never said we’d see fruit ,or even get hugs and tears at our departure.

 

I did get one hug, and that was from Miss Ellen. She’s really the only Lopit who knows what a hug is, I suppose, because she’s grown up with us showering her in our own way of showing affection. The Lopit don’t hug. But that morning, when we went up to say our final goodbye and I was holding her, she wrapped her teensy little arms around my shoulders tight and put her head on my chest, just like she has so many other days. And, naturally, that’s when I nearly fell apart.

 

Little Grasshopper seemed to get what was happening. I think I can safely say that of all the Lopit people—all the women we’ve befriend and kids we’ve loved on—our Francis might actually really miss us and think of us when we’re gone. Ellen and Franco are too young, but I think the ‘Hopper will miss the days we spent together. I think he genuinely enjoyed being around us, or at least I pray he did. So I’ll take that with me when I go, and hope that the Lord blesses the seed we’ve planted.

 

It’s a painful thing, to mean less to people than they mean to you. But that’s part of missions. Part of living and ministering in a world that doesn’t see, doesn’t hear. A acutely painful part, yes.

 

The goodbyes have been said, but that feeling hasn’t come. I’m sure it will, soon, maybe when I least expect it. But I’m sure the Lord will carry me through that, just as He’s carried me this far.