Fading on my palm in blue, ballpoint pen is this.

“God is Good. God is Faithful.”

God’s character is more infinite than the sea- but today I just don’t care.

Today that’s all I need to know.

“God is Good. God is Faithful.”

My room is a mess, looking like someone ransacked it- looking for anything valuable and leaving the rejected ‘leftovers’ behind.

The room downstairs by the door is piled high.

Books, clothes, shoes, and pots and pans that my mother keeps adding- trying desperately to set her little girl up for success as she takes her first REAL big steps away from home.

You’d think that this would have gotten easier for me… over the years.

I’ve been away from home more times than I can even remember. Moving away, packing my things, and then wandering back home again.

I’ve left for two weeks, and two months, and four months and then eleven, left for college and for camp and to study abroad and to travel… but for some reason this time feels different.

This time it feels real.

This time, instead of packing up for an adventure, I am packing up for a new life.

It’s a life where I have to buy things like brooms and mops and dish towels. I had to buy mugs and plates and spoons and things to clean my shower. This is my home now.

I can’t drive home for a quick visit, I can’t come to get something I’ve forgotten and I am not living under anyone else’s roof, in anyone else’s home. I’m not a visitor. I’m not a tourist.

I’m moving. I’m making a new life, a real life.

And I’m heartbroken.

When we’re lucky, there are things in life that we’re certain we should do.

They’re things that have God’s blessing and provision and divine timing all over it, and we know without a shadow of a doubt that we’re supposed to step forward, in that direction.

This is one of those times.

I never, EVER thought I would be moving to Gainesville, GA, but here I am, Georgia bound.

I don’t know what I thought I would be doing when I got home from the World Race, but when I was offered a job, THIS job, at Adventures in Missions, I just knew that it wasn’t something to pass up.

I know without a doubt in my mind that this is where I’m supposed to go- that this is where God wants me- but it doesn’t make it any easier.

It doesn’t make it any easier to pick up and move- again- after having just gotten home.

It doesn’t make it any easier to walk away from the best community I’ve ever known.

It doesn’t make it easy to hug my best friends, my little sister and my parents for the last time for a while.

This is a lot of things- blessed, right, good and beautiful- but it’s certainly not easy.

Tomorrow I will be getting in my car, and driving away from my house, my home, my life, for the last time for a long time. And the thought of that makes me suck in a deep breath- hoping that if I fill my lungs with enough air, that I wont feel the deep pain in my chest.

This is an adventure- a new one. And it’s so good.

But it is so scary, so tender and so sad.

And in this moment- I don’t need to know much of anything.

I just need to know that God is Good, and that God is Faithful.

And He is.