2.5 days...

I leave on Monday night for big adventures. For the first eighteen days I will be in this awesome place studying who knows what. And after that I'll be galavanting all over Italy with Britney... and you never know what all we will get into.

This week has been weird. I have been home getting everything together for the trip. My mom and I have been to every mall in the Atlanta area gathering things, which makes me wish I loved shopping. But I hate it. So it has been slightly overwhelming. 

But, I don't think it is the shopping or packing that has been so weird. It is kind of crazy being here because my home has become a reminder of last summer. And don't get me wrong, last summer had some great memories. I was able to be near my parents when I needed them most. My sister lived in the room next door for a couple weeks and it hadn't been that way for five years. I was able to attend the church I grew up in. I took a theology class. I went to Boston and Nova Scotia. I bought my first camera. But last summer was long and lonely too. When I smelled the shampoo in my bathroom a couple days ago it took me straight back to the week after surgery when mom had to tape plastic wrap over my scar so it wouldn't get wet. It is always crazy to me how smells can bring back the most vivid memories. 

There is so much I could write about all of that. About the people at my church I had never met who stopped me in the hall and told me they had prayed for me everyday since I got sick. About the conversation with my parents the day after I turned twenty-one and how angry I was for the week or two afterwards. About the nurses who I still miss sometimes and the bridge at Emory that I thought I would only ever enter when I was worried about my mom's health. But the point of writing any of this is to say - its changing. I'm leaving. And I know I am supposed to because I am not running from anything. This strikes me because if you asked last summer I'd have said that was why I was going. But I don't have anything to escape. That makes it harder to leave but better. I am not running from my disease. I think turning down wine at every meal in Italy will be enough of a reminder that I'm not like the other kids. :) I am not running from any sort of unhappiness or discontent at school or at home. So bring it on L'abri. I don't know what I'll study since there are so many things I am interested in and so many things I don't know. But whatever it is, it will be what I am supposed to learn.

So yeah, that's it: what is supposed to happen, happens. I was supposed to be home last summer when the only place I wanted to be was far, far away. But He flipped everything upside down instead. Now I year later, I am supposed to be gone when a part of me wants to stay and rest and explore the non-UGA places in Athens with Rae. But I have learned that when things seem hard, and when I ache because I am going to miss my friends, it is a good thing. Because they are a gift. Loving them is a gift. Missing them is too.

I'm ready to go.