One of my last nights in Nashville, Lyndsay and her roomies threw me a HAPPY BIRTH-BYE PARTY! [The classic combo of birthday + goodbye party.] It was such a sweet night. Many of our friends came together and we laughed and chatted and sweat to death because GOOD GRACIOUS JULY IS HOT. And behind my back, as I spoke with friends and posed for pictures and gave goodbye hugs, my friends all wrote encouraging notes.

My love language for suresies is words of affirmation, so letters and emails and anything people write down makes my soul jump in fifty different directions.

So I can’t read those letters.

If you’ve been here for longer than five minutes, you know how I feel about my people in Nashville. There aren’t good words. It’s love, at the core, but it is more as well. I don’t know… for a girl who talks too much and is never short on things to say, I don’t know how to explain it. Sorry.

And I’m super scared that the words from the friends that I love will break my heart.

I’m happy here. I really love Edinburgh. And my friends here. And the ministry I’m a part of here. [I especially love the cool weather. Obviously.] And so so many other things. I mean it. I love Edinburgh. It feels like home.

So I let the envelopes sit in my bedside table because I don’t want to lose the love I have for right now. For right here. For this city and these people. I feel like opening those will send a flood of emotion into my life that will wash away the normal that I’m enjoying in Edinburgh. I hover pretty close to the homesick line a lot of the time and I fear those sweet words would send me straight over.

I know what you are thinking- that the letters will be encouraging and kind and will spur me on to do greater things. They will be good and perfect and make things better, not worse. And you are probably right.

But a promise I made to myself is that I will be honest in this journey. I’ve never been a “missionary” before, I’m not sure that I am one now, but I do know that this is a unique and new experience for me.

And being honest today means that I am not sure how to handle things that make me miss home. I can’t pretend like Nashville doesn’t exist- I don’t want to- but I’m not sure I want to remember my reality there either.

I want to read them all and yet I can’t read them yet.

So for today the letters shall remain tucked away in my bedside table, waiting for a time when I am brave enough to face the love that I left behind.

. . . . .

Your thoughts, ideas, questions, and general observations are welcome. 🙂