Where is the "good" in goodbye?

As I sat in church this morning, surrounded by my family and people I have grown to love these past two and a half years, I thought to myself; “How can there be anything good about saying goodbye?”

I looked at individuals….Jon Sausser playing the guitar, Rachel Green singing, Cheri Parks playing the piano and catching a glimpse of Esther Byler out of the corner of my eye signing and again I thought to myself how can I rejoice in leaving.

I am not ready.

I am not ready to say goodbye.

I am not ready to leave our youth.

I am not ready to make new friends.

I am not ready to cry.

Thankfully the Lord can do a lot with very little time. I trust that the Lord is going to prepare me to say goodbye to our teens this coming week. I know there is going to be tears as we sit around the campfire, but I also know there will be laughs while we remember the last few years we had together.

I realized today, that saying goodbye is a very selfless thing to do, but holding on is selfish.

I have the temptation to want to hold onto my girls. 

I want to hold onto Lauren.

I want to hold onto Aggie.

I want to hold onto Katie.

I want to hold onto Alex.

I want to hold onto Maddy.

I want to hold onto Ashtine.

I want to hold onto Teddi.

I want to hold onto Stephanie.

I love my girls, but they are not mine. They belong to the Lord. I cannot hold onto them for myself, but what I can do is hold them up in prayer.

So as I get ready to spend a week with them…

I pray that the Lord will help me to hand them over,

and to say GOODBYE.