Packing My Bags (and Leaving Pack Your Bags)

   It feels like I just set foot on campus -- but now I am leaving. Pack Your Bags has been an incredible adventure. I have been to so many places, made so many friends, and bought so many cases of bottled water. I have lived with Maddie this whole school year and have taken all kinds of classes. I don't want to say goodbye. I have spent so much time right here in Ellendale as well as overseas...
   
    And now I find myself slowly packing. It feels weird to have hardly any homework and be spending my time quietly boxing up my belongings. This place has been my temporary home, and now the season leaves as quickly as it came.

    There's something sad about it. I don't want to leave the friends I feel like I just made. I don't want to lose the input and advice of professors I have come to look up to. But at the same time, there's something exciting about it. Pack Your Bags was not my only adventure -- it was the kickoff. God is holding my hand and leading me forward just as much as he has been the whole time, and that fact is not dependent on a specific program or school. I cannot wait to see what is ahead.
    I was sorting through my things and thinking about all of this when a song started playing that felt like the perfect background music to the current scene playing out in my life. Somehow the way this song sounds is exactly what it feels like to be packing my bags and leaving. I'm not overwhelmingly sad and not overwhelmingly excited, but I acknowledge both of those feelings inside of me.

 This is not the end.

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