All seasons end

There are seasons in life, seasons of growth and change, seasons for rest, seasons for running harder than you every have before. Every season is different, with different shades and colours and sounds. The past six years have been one giant season full of a million microcosm. I leave this place knowing I am no longer the same person, no longer the girl who came. My opinions are stronger, my sense of self is deepened and my understanding of the world widened. I am no longer the same.Six years ago I boarded a plane after a night of vomiting and too many tears; fear and anxiety crippling me about a move I wanted to do, across a continent I didn’t really know. That girl has grown, and changed and lost some of her anxiety and fear.Now full of anticipation, expectancy and a little bit of confusion, I will board a plane in a month, no doubt with just as many tears and go back to the home on my passport.To explain or process six years in this place will no doubt take just as long, to fully see or understand the amount I have been impacted or things I have seen I have no idea where to begin.But for now there is a bitter sweetness in my mind at all times: this is the last time for this, or when shall I see this person again. There is beauty in a season ending, a finality of a chapter closed, a peace in the time to move on. For this is a place where a diverse family has grown and for this season I became part of it. For this season I was one with it. It will never stop being a part of me, never stop being something that shapes me, for this beauty village in this beautiful place will always be a home....It is two months since the above was written; the plane has been boarded - the ride home poetically similar to the first one. I've rested, moved and started a job, almost found a home and am wearing suit trousers and heels to work on an almost daily basis. I'm amazing at how life just moves forward. It has felt like each day has tumbled into another with no time to think. Tonight feels like one where I could sit and type out every process and every thought. But I am leaving it at this...The God I know and trust is larger and more faithful that I can every understand. His ways are wilder and better and beyond all my wildest dreams. This next season has started and all I wonder is what God has planned because I could not have fathomed all that happened in the last one.R./ 

tan lines and dirty soles

it's summer, the sandal tan lines on my feet prove it, as do the polaroids taken in hammocks and balconies, in lakes and at late night tire swing conversations.and the time of farewells for this blonde beauty as she travels back to the place called paradise and the place that sent her here in the beginning.it's the season of no shoes, and late night conversations, and new friends, and swimming in lakes that aren't that clean, and all the fresh vegetables and fruit you can find.a little update/ i try to promise there will be morer/