traveling to san francisco

This is mostly from my journal written on Thursday, August 30...so when I'm talking about "today", that is the day I'm speaking of.

So today I have left for San Francisco for my mentoring semester. Cliff took me to DFW this morning and I am off.

The past two days have been a bit difficult. It seems that I am beginning to realize how much people and places mean to me…and Truett and the people there mean a lot to me right now in my life, and probably always will. Last night was Celina’s going away party. She’s going to Chicago to live in a neo-monastic community called Reba House. Most of my friends were at this get-together and were telling me goodbye as well.

After I left the party I went to tell my goodbyes to Ryan and Kristen. I will see Ryan in a few weeks, but I will miss both of them greatly. The two of them have been so intertwined into my story even before Waco, and now all through my story in Waco…I will miss them greatly.

This leaving seems strange. I am leaving Truett for a time and it is totally different than other times that I’ve left. First, it is not for a summer. It seems that leaving for the summer is okay, and in some ways expected. This semester is also not being spent with Truett friends. When I went to India earlier this summer it was with Truett friends, so much of our conversations were about either the India trip or about Truett…we shared a common story on more than one level. The aspect of this that might be the greatest aspect to get used to is the fact that I am here for three months. I mean, I visited here for about four days…but now...I’m here for three months. I’m still getting in my mind that I will live in San Francisco for that time. It is strange to get into my mind that on this journey to San Francisco, unlike India, I will have no traveling companions…no one who may be feeling the same thing as myself and wanting to talk and unpack those feelings and thoughts.

This year seems to have gone by so quick. I have told many people that since the end of the spring semester I feel like someone has pushed me down a hill toward next May. After school ended in May there has been: India, trip to San Francisco, the return of Nicki into my life, school/work, trip to Savannah to see Nicki, preparation for mentoring, Truett’s orientation, etc. All of this and I’m not really sure that I have had time to process it all completely.

Currently I’m in LAX airport…sitting in the same terminal that the India group sat in before we left to return to Dallas…it was our last stop before home about two months ago. I had a sad lament about the trip standing in one of the places we spent time. I went to the same Chili’s Too that Baxter, Chris, Jesse, Stroope and I went to enjoy our first meal back in America. I even went to the same Starbuck’s I went to get my first Starbuck’s coffee for the first time in about a month. I had a sad remembrance standing at the circle of chairs we all collapsed into after an exhausting fright from Delhi to Hong Kong to LA. I could picture in my head where all of us were sitting. I could see where Baxter, Chris, Jessie and I were playing cards on the floor. I could remember seeing Stroope sitting calling his wife…Meagan and Celina sitting next to each other nearly resting on each other, keeping the other from falling asleep. I could picture Karen putting marks on people’s memory cards and placing them in a zip lock bag while Katie called home and Sarah Ro tried not to fall asleep reading Time magazine with Curt reading up on the World Cup. It made me think of how I’m still unpacking that trip, and how I love each of the people who participated on that journey…our lives are forever intertwined.

Celina and I prepared a CD for the India trip and, if I do say so myself (and Celina concurs), it’s good. The first song on the “India CD” is one of my favorites, a song by Andrew Peterson: Canaan Bound. I’m not really sure why that song strikes me so, but it haunts me at times. I wrote in one of my missions papers about how I’ve been enamored by the Abraham story for quite awhile now…probably for two years or so. It’s an amazing story. Two people who are doing pretty well in life get this memo from God saying how he wants them to up and move to some other place. He tells Abram that he’ll make a great nation and have land and children and all kinds of stuff. The crazy thing to me is that Abram does it…he and the fam just get up one morning and leave. The thing that really gets me about the story is that most of the promises that God told to Abram never get to be seen by Abram…he dies before many of them are fulfilled. So Abram and Sarai one day just get up and walk into the unknown, a perceived darkness…just because God called them. That’s just strange…yet it is how I feel many times…like I walking into a perceived darkness, or like I’m stepping into a story that I don’t know the ending, and I may not…so I hope I enjoy this chapter in San Francisco.