S E N T

Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a plane at 10 am to fly to Guatemala. No, Maddox isn't coming along but that's only because he's now two and plane tickets are outrageous.

My plane was always, always to move to Africa. I've tried about three hundred times.  I've come thisclose to submitting my application to teach English in some remote village because you don't need things like Praxis tests and related college degrees in Africa. And one time a friend asked if I wanted to run a daycare (not offering me a job, just generally asking) and I was like, "Heck no." She's like, "You're right. You're supposed to run an orphanage." And that pretty much stopped me cold in my tracks because out of all my current dreams, which I have sort of directed back to stateside because grandparents get a little cranky when you even dream about moving to the other side of the world, I had never thought about running an orphanage. But I was like, "Yes. Add that to my list. I'll do it."

But that is not my point.

My point is that for almost four-years I have been stateside. I have sat in my comfortable little house with clean running water and flushable toilet paper and my neighbors give me bags of radishes and don't try to kill me or steal my animals. My house has heating (semi third world because we don't have a/c, JUST KIDDING) and I spend money frivolously on things like candles and potato chips and home decor. And it's too much. I'm all about living in a third world country where there are probably bed bugs and no salad and hardly any English and my showers are cut down to exactly 30-seconds. I'm okay with all of that. So. When I get a little too comfortable. When I'm spending money because I have it and I suddenly have the mindset that if I don't purchase that rug, those shoes, dye my hair right this very instant, it's been too long. I need to get out. Realign. Adjust. I will come home. Give away half my possessions. Beg Evan to move me there probably. Tell everyone about it until I have no friends. And it will be good.

So. I will leave my baby with our parents for ten days. I will have my phone to look at all of his pictures and to watch all of his videos a hundred thousand times, but I still stuck a favorite 4x6 picture of him into my bible for safe keeping. I will miss him like crazy and facetime him every night. But I will have Evan there to miss him with me and we will find some babies who don't have mamas to fiercely miss them with ever fiber of their being. I can't wait to love on some people and to hug some babies and to build a fence because I know everything there is to know about fence building and to brush up on my Spanish.

I bought this necklace to support a friend who went to Haiti. She stamped it with "SENT" so that I would wear it and remember her calling to G O. I bought it and a few weeks later said yes to this trip. (It was a big deal, guys. Maddox was not even 18-months and my mama heart could barely handle it.) I'm sent, too, and I'm so grateful that I am.