just like that, it’s time

Written 7 August 2014

Take it as it exists before you.

Take the sun as it rises before you, not some other view.

Take the coffee as it sits before you, not some newly fresh, attempting to be perfected pot.

Take the child as it laughs before you, not some dream of where their life could be instead.

Take the suffering as it cries before you, not some endless questioning of why it won’t go away.

Take the day as it unfolds before you, not some imagined possibility.

Take the lessons as they challenge before you, not some profound revelation you think you should have.

Take it all as it exists before you.

Soon it will all be gone, so take it as it exists before you.

—

Written 16 August 2014

Tomorrow I will begin my 30-hour journey to return to the United States from this two-month adventure in Kenya that feels like it just began. But really when I think about it, it’s an adventure that began five years ago.

Four years ago yesterday, I arrived in Kenya for the start of my four-month high school adventure in this wonderful, living place. On this blog can be found writing from each August 15 since that day I stepped onto Kenyan soil into a journey that would cause ruptures in my soul, remove the ground from my feet, and change my whole heart.

On this anniversary, I began the day in gratitude, thinking of what this place has given me over the past five years and excited for my last full day of living and giving love and joy in the hospital. And then the day changed and by the end of it, I had attempted to converse in Swahili as mothers in the wards told me their worries and I sat with their children, I had pinned down a child as a feeding tube was placed through her nose and into her stomach, and I had gone to the morgue to view the body of a two year old who was living at the pediatric center and who brought smiles to so many of us before his unexpected death early in the morning of August 15.

On this anniversary, I ended the day in gratitude. I started this week with this quote from Ann Voskamp on my mind: “joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don’t numb themselves to really living.” These words perfectly reflect what this last week has been, what this last day was, and really what this whole summer unfolded to mean for me. In many ways, it encapsulates all of my experiences in Kenya since I first came as an unaware 16 year old and since that first August 15, 2010 when it truly all began.

It was not an easy anniversary or last day or last week. No part of these two months was easy. And leaving tomorrow will be even less easy.

But I’m not leaving in a fight, filling my headspace full of dread and wishing it wasn’t over. I’m leaving in gratitude. Gratitude for it all, for the challenging and the painful and the joyous and the humbling; gratitude for it all, as it was all fully lived.

—

Written today, August 17

And just like that, it’s time to say goodbye.