It’s daunting to think about leaving. I depart for Kampala in the morning, where I’ll spend my last days with a Rwandan family and some missionary friends. The next time I write will be from my laptop in Los Angeles—a loaded thought, to say the least. By this time next week, I’ll have been in a car (driving on the right-side), eaten without a derivative of corn, potatoes and bananas, bathed, bathed in hot water, savored a tall-soy-chai, shopped at a grocery store, sat on a couch, sat on a beach, seen wealth, indulged in wealth, worn make-up, been somewhere alone, put clothes in a laundry machine, used a cell phone, conversed in clear English, felt safe, healthy and clean, strolled by moonlight and slept in a bed…all of which stand in rich contrast my last two months.

Some obvious questions mark this map then: How will it feel? How will I feel? Am I ready for it? Do I want it? Do I need it? Will I feel guilty? Will I make others feel guilty, etc.? The questions of the coming weeks are somewhat predictable, but the answers, I presume, will remain far more unscripted. I never could’ve imagined what was in store for my summer. I gave God a canvas of will and a few lines that seemed of His lead, but from there, I was His.

At the end of my senior year of college, I asked for a one-way ticket to Africa. I wanted to, “hike through the tribes and love on people.” Simple goal, but sounds outrageous to me now. Thank God a little book idea fell into action—I would’ve been killed before stepping off the plane. Endless reasons able me to look back now and realize a naïve passion drove me, whose realities were untimely and unwise. Knowing now what I didn’t know my senior year, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t in the right place. And the same goes for now. This spring was necessary, in order that I best face this summer. And this summer was required, that I best face the details of this fall. My spring highlighted play, laughter and crying, whereas my summer passed themes of service, rest and newfound faith. God only knows what the coming season will bring.

There are many, many things I will miss about my life in Africa. I’ll miss the monotony of doing laundry by hand. I’ll miss sunset walks by the Nile. I’ll miss the babies. I’ll miss the plainness and predictability of schedule. I’ll miss the community of the volunteer home. I’ll miss the Mamas. I’ll miss silence of cell phones, email and media. I’ll miss the simplicity of living. I’ll miss a lot of the food. I’ll miss the amounts of solitude and rest. I’ll miss meals and minglings with my housemates…and so much more. But I am ready to go. I am ready for a new season and hope potentials of guilt will be soothed by a deeper Guidance, surpassing my understandings and reminding me that I am in the right place. I am in the will of my Father. Shades of this season will surely join me in the next, but a new day is dawning and I feel ready to meet it.

Many parts of here have become familiar, and yet many parts of there remain so, too. Just over a year ago I wrote the following piece, which strikes me as quite similar to how I feel today:

It’s the familiar that grips me today; it’s the familiar that makes me feel at home. What is familiar to me is comforting. It’s comfortable and conforms my humanity to a state of being. Whether it’s being with those whom I know, or being with that which knows me, familiarity holds me in peace. But if such is the case, what lies in the unfamiliar? What stirs in the uncomfortable and unconformed place staring at my headlights?

Come tomorrow, I will approach a new Destiny of sorts, Manifest by the western coast of the United States of America. I will leave the familiar, to lean on but the natural laws of the unfamiliar—change leads to progress, progress leverages growth, etc. From experience, I know that such a move will elicit challenge. But I also know that spending time with that challenge will elicit familiarity again. Maybe different looking, and maybe different feeling, but still in the brand of familiar.

Shifting to a lens less carnal, I’ve been forced to question the unfamiliars of God. Do dictations of familiarity rest in the spiritual realm, too? If so, what aspects of God are unfamiliar to me today? What spaces of His Being have lacked my explore? For lest I humanize a being unchanged, I must trust a path uncharted. But what then, will hold me in lasting peace?

Maybe it is He? Maybe it is One who transcends the road and the transforms the comfort? Maybe it is He who is my Familiar—here, in the “familiar” and there, in the “unfamiliar.”

It’s the Familiar that grips me today; it’s the Familiar that makes me feel at home.