A Simple Card
A few months ago we went through a big move. We left a church ministry and began support raising for preparing to go back overseas. Each move that we have forces me to pack up my entire house. Each time I pack I always come across that box labeled “Treasure box, and special items”. As I skimmed through it this time I came across a large ziplock bag full of cards. When Jeff and I were preparing to leave for Thailand 3 years ago our church family threw us a going away party. At the party they showered us with cards and prayers.
About 7 months after being on the mission field we attended a missionary retreat. One evening after the worship service of the retreat we came in our room and found our bed covered with letters and cards. The cards we received were from our family members, friends, old professors from college, prayer supporters, and financial supporters to our ministry . We were speechless and overwhelmed with the prayers, love, and encouragement that poured off of these cards for us. We were amazed at the support that we had and thankful for these people in our lives.
When I found these cards that I had stored from these two important events in our lives I opened them up and read just a few. Tears streamed down my face and again I was still overwhelmed with the love, support, and prayers that our family and friends had sent to us while we were living overseas. Our work could not have been done without that type of support, and it still cannot be done without that kind of support.
Here we are moving on to our next chapter in life, as we prepare to move back overseas, and I stand amazed at the relationships we have gained along our journey. Each place that we have been we have gained to love and know more and more people that our dear to our hearts. Again we leave a place, but we are not just leaving a home, and a job behind but leaving relationships behind. This has to be the hardest part of it all. The friendships that we have treasured along the way have outweighed the pain of physically leaving them. There is an old yet famous quote often said, “Better have loved and lost than never have loved at all”. This rings true to me, yet only apart of the quote have I found true with each path I take. I have loved but not each relationship was lost the dynamic and the distance only changed.
So though we move forward and we leave our family and friends physically behind we take our “treasure boxes, and memories with us” painfully, yet joyfully doing so. We look forward to continue to be apart of the story that God has for our lives .We wait in anticipation for more relationships to build, love, and invest in yet still holding dearly to the ones we have left behind.