it's over. sort of.

Today was the near-dreaded official last normal sunday of the year at Living Hope. The one I blogged about back in October and January. I knew this was coming and so I mentally prepared myself this morning telling myself things like, "this is not your last sunday so it's not a big deal", "you've already written letters to people and gotten tears out then", and "It's ok I sit upstairs anyway so it will be less intense and emotional". When the time came to take your little prayer request card up to the altar at first I didn't do anything because I didn't know what we were supposed to do upstairs. So I just contently started singing the first song and then people started going up to the front of the room so I was like, dang it. I filled out the card and walked to the front.

The tears were falling before I was even kneeling.

I started to pray and then a second song started which was when people could come pray over you and my hope group leaders/second parents came and each prayed with me and it was useless trying to wipe away the tears. Then the Moss', two of the most sincere people I have ever met and were on the spring break trip, each came and prayed. Then Barbara who I teach sunday school with came and was already crying so much she couldn't even talk which was fine with me because her long bear hug said more than enough and provoked at least as many tears as any prayer would have. Then Lynn, her husband came and prayed for me and I could feel his tears hitting my hands and then the time was up so I just spent the last few minutes trying to wipe away all the mascara off my face. The only thing that could have made me possibly cry more was if Jean, another lady in my hope group had been sitting upstairs, just being around her is such a blessing and I will miss her terribly, it will be a wound to my heart that will take a long time to heal.

It really hit me last week how grateful I am to have such amazing people in my life that I am so broken about leaving. That fills me with joy when I think about how blessed I am. I really feel sorry for college students who are not only not involved in their churches but have no relationships with people other than college students. I wish I could tell everyone who is not how much they are missing, but unfortunately I think it is one of those things that can only seem beneficial once you're involved and sadly too many college students only see benefits in terms of labels and facebook friends.

Anyway, I started crying again the second I left the parking lot and started crying again as I typed this post. I wonder how I will make it through my real last sunday at lh.

Now I'm off to go run for 20 minutes straight. Maybe I'll update about that later, it might have the same tearful result.