GOODBYE

Well guys, this is it.

After tonight I don't think I will be posting anymore. Unless I think of something crucial about this trip that you might like to know. But I'm trying to reach conclusions right now.

Here it is 12:39 am, my last night in Paris which actually means Pontault-Combault. Goodbye my Portuguese suburb. I'll miss your blaring rap and your pride of the motherland. Tomorrow morning I will leave you and the rest of France at 7:00. I will eat my peach yogurt in the car and I will drag my luggage through terminal 1 and I will fly away, and time will repeat itself.

Every time I leave somewhere I also see the final scenes of the other places I've left, and every time I say goodbye I cry again on the shoulders of friends I have left before.

Again and again.

I can't talk about leaving Paris without talking about leaving in general.

Transition is my catalyst for growth; it's the thing I dread and yet, oddly enough, depend upon for familiarity. I have wanted to belong somewhere and to the people there, and I have-- many times-- and I have lost them. The pattern fits me like a glove, but one that I never asked for. I used to resent that, but I think finally it has been a long time and it's my life and it's okay that way. It's a gift I didn't expect.

God allows everything in order that we can find him somehow. All things for the good of those who love him. And ultimate goodness is only in God. In all the transience of my life and all the people I have known, the isolation after leaving them and the apathy towards relationships after that, I have learned that God is still good.

I have learned that the only reason I hurt is because I'm losing love, it's because I need people and that is not a bad thing. God only wants us to love each other. It is how he loves us and how we love him also, and it is how we can see him even through this fractured world. There is beauty here in the way that we live. If we are willing.

I didn't have to come here for three months and then leave again. I have thought about that a lot this past week or so. I've thought that I could have avoided the whole thing for the sake of stability. But that's just me trying to lie to myself. The truth is, I have found stability here that affects all of my life. I have committed here even though I knew it was temporary, and it has been worth it, and this is the most relieving choice I've ever made in regard to transition. I've been working toward it for a while, I think.

Jesus once went through a lot of transition knowing full well that it wouldn't last and that everyone would fail him and that he would even have to die, and it was the greatest gesture of love possible. And I think the point in being a Christian is to follow his example as closely as possible, in order to know him as well as we can and to see him in everything.

How then, could these months not have been worth while? Who am I to hold back in the future?

So I'm sitting here on my bed, my last late night in the basement. There are a few bags sitting next to a scale on the floor. I have two unfinished goodbye cards on my desk. The walls are bare except for leftover glue-tack spots. This is such a familiar situation.

Tomorrow will be hard. I will cry probably, and I will watch Paris going by the windows and I will see a village, a road, a runway receding from view. Hug Katie and miss all the friends I've ever made. It will be an overload, but it will also be peaceful.

I never meant to get incredibly personal on this blog, but I think that to close with a good explanation of my time here it was necessary. And shoot-- I won't be blogging again. Goodbye readers.

Goodbye Paris. Thank you for everything.