In a few weeks, I'll have lived here for ten months.
Ten months of sweet tea, ten months of pecans and peaches, ten months of laughs and some tears, ten months of "escapes" to Barnes and Noble or Starbucks, ten months of intimate daily Mass downstairs, ten months of car duty and recess duty in the extreme humidity to the freezing cold, ten months of thirteen Hispanic teens and Confirmation class in Spanglish, ten months of a 100 third through eighth graders and Spanish class in English, and Church history and Hebrew Scriptures.
But now, Confirmation is in a little over three weeks, eighth grade graduation the week after and ending with the last day of school on May 25th. Things are ending.
As is my time here.
On June 16, a little over a year since I found out I had been accepted as a prepostulant, I'll be driving west in my old Ford Taurus, with the back seat and trunk full of boxes. I'll be driving southwest, to be exact. To Harlingen, Texas. (Man, I hope my car makes it...)
I am very excited, yes. But as the news spreads across Macon (and Facebook), I don't know how to feel. It's the same feeling I got when I announced I was leaving Bolivia. It's a strange joy, it's knowledge that God is pulling me in the next direction, but it's also sadness, as if everything ended way too soon. There have been rough times here in Macon, times I thought "can I really do this?", but yet this confusing feeling of joy and sadness invades me.
The same Someone who brought me here is now pulling me somewhere else. And sometimes I want to whine to Him - "But God, can't You see that I've finally found my niche here? Now I know everyone by name, now I feel comfortable being myself around everyone here! I've even found workable rhythms and patterns for my classes at school!" (And sometimes I think to myself "Darn it, Amanda....why did it take you so long to find your niche?!") I have about a dozen promises from different people to meet for coffee, lunch, etc before I move to Texas - half of those people I never imagined I would be good friends with, half of those people I barely knew months ago.
God does listen to my whining but He's also written a new chapter for me in Texas. I'll be living with three Sisters I've never met before, working at a community center called Proyecto Juan Diego, a stone's throw away from the Mexican border.
I was telling a friend here that I think I'll really bloom in Texas.
They said "but oh, I think you already are...."
And maybe they're right. Maybe I did my own kind of blooming here in Macon. That could be why I feel like a different person than I arrived here in August. And that could be why this feeling lingers, that could be why it won't be too easy to leave this small city in middle Georgia.
Join the club Amanda! It doesn't always get easier, but God will give you the grace you need to be open to this new experience. Call me biased, but the Sisters in Harlingen are great!
ReplyDeleteLove & Prayers,
Sr. Meg