Five years have come and gone so fast, I remember the first day like it were yesterday.
I'm lying here contemplating everything that has happened in the past two weeks, and feel almost numb to the fact that my whole world has changed. I like to be in control, I always have a plan, a direction, but not now. I don't know if it's just the shock of it all, or if I'm actually resting in the knowledge that God has my life under control.
I'm excited to go home, to be near my family for the first time in ten years. I'm excited to be within physical reach of the people I so dearly treasure. I can't, however, help but feel as though this is a layover, that this change of life which has been set into motion, that it doesn't end with my simply changing my address to Kansas City.
I'm staying at my friends house in these last days, it's weird that when I wake up tomorrow, that it'll be the start of my last day here. I'm going to get up and drive to my office, I'll see the ocean, later I'll leave and head east towards the airport, I'll see the mountains and the white snow resting on their peaks. Tomorrow I'll pickup a big truck that will carry boxes of stuff that "make" my home, and then I'll eat one last dinner, have one last sleep, and then I'll wake up and this place will become a memory of my life journey. I don't know if I'll be back, I could very well come back, but it would be part of a new story, because this one ends when I go to sleep tomorrow.
People refer to a place where they "grew up", but I think that further explanation should be used. You can do a lot of growing in five years, a lot of life can happen inside each of those 12 month cycles, each of those 365 days. I'll always be the girl from Missouri, but I think that God taught me how to be a woman during my time in California. I'll be forever grateful for the trials, experiences, joys, and friendships that I had here, they'll forever be a part of what makes me who I am.
There's no more time for good byes, no more time for one last cup of coffee, there's people that I'll probably never see again. I'm lying here in bed, and it's all those little things that there's not any time left for, people there's no time to see, things I didn't do, that are filling my thoughts. I must come back, if even just to finish the things that I'll leave unfinished tomorrow, I must come back.
