Goodbye

There are few things in life that are worse than goodbye. The tears that don't seem to stop flowing, the heart that never stops breaking. My first goodbye, my grandparents, uncles, aunts,  cousins, best friends...and I thought that was as bad as it could get. My second goodbye, my sister. Yeah,  it got way worse!! My third goodbye, the worst of all of these...the forever goodbye of death. Death of little babies that you love...death of people you let into your heart...death of an aunt, grandpa, grandma. Those are hard goodbyes. You never feel like you got to say goodbye.  One day they are there...the next they aren't. My fourth goodbye...and perhaps the hardest of all as a missionary kid, the dreaded goodbye to your parents. Dropped off and left to fly on your own...your safety net thousands of miles away. You learn who you depend on...you learn if your faith is in the one true God or the God of your parents. You learn if your trust is in something you can see or Someone you cannot.
You think these goodbyes will end, but you will soon learn goodbyes never stop. And you learn your heart is guarded and loving with everything is a choice you have to consciously make. You learn that friendship means more to you than most people, because you know the feeling of loss and you've felt it too much!
Your heart can become hard,  you can choose to be angry and feel sorry for yourself or you can choose to find joy in every situation. I will forever remember baby Reuben as a perfect little baby that always came to me when he saw me and how when he died, I saw true joy in such a sad circumstance when his grandma, instead of being angry that her first grandson died when he should not have, chose to sing Just a Closer Walk With Thee at his funeral as a testimony of her faith in a God that never fails. I will forever remember my grandpa calling me shorty and how he loved his whole family with a fierce love. I will forever remember that because of my first goodbye to my parents, I learned to trust God and decided to put all my faith in Him.
The goodbyes are always sad, but the lessons you learn from them are irreplaceable.