Looking Back: One Year Ago Today–Preparing to Leave

I’ve wanted to blog about our journey to Congo and back for some time now.  Sadly, it’s a whole year later. 

I’m finding myself very nostalgic as I think back to this time last year.  I figured if I ever am going to post about our trip, it would be fun just to relive it here and now just as it happened a year ago.

Perhaps this will just be for me; perhaps some of you will enjoy reading along.  Regardless, even if it’s just for me, I’m looking forward to reliving the journey, and I hope and pray that Blake and Lauren will find it a blessing to know what our journey to them was like. 

As a disclaimer, I did journal throughout the journey, though I’m finding that my “journal” is really more of just a bulleted list of happenings and thoughts of the day.  In order to post some coherent thoughts, I will be rewriting it as I go.  I hope this extra work required can actually happen and doesn’t stop me from posting anything at all…because you know how I am with my blogging these days.  (I’m just sayin’!)

Hmm…maybe I better hope someone reads along after all.  You all can hold me accountable!

Well, without further ado, one year ago today…

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Tonight we said goodbye to the kiddos. It was by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. We were packed and ready and spent some time here just hanging out the five of us. We read books, wrestled, prayed together, and enjoyed lots of snuggling.  After dinner, we took them over to the neighbors (where they were spending the first week of who knows how many) to get all settled in. We hung out over there for a little while and took some pictures of our family together.

In the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if these were my last moments with my kiddos. This is a big journey we’re going on, and there were no guarantees! I hated thinking like that, but just couldn’t help it. We tucked them in for bed, and left in tears. It was so very hard to come back home and sleep in our own bed. If we weren’t going to be able to be with Josh, Sarah, and Megan, I felt like we should just be on our way already. We didn’t sleep much. We were hoping to get to bed early. Ha! : ) There was still lots of last minute packing, organizing, etc.  I think it was sometime after midnight when we finally crashed.  Tomorrow would be the start of a life-changing journey.