Turning the Page

Yesterday was our last day of work at our first careers. Jeff was asked how it felt, "I'm 90% happy and excited and 80% sad and nostalgic". For a couple that doesn't consider themselves overly emotional, these last few days have been filled with emotion more than 100% of the time.  Just as every coin has two sides, great positives have powerful negatives. We have been blessed to work with amazing people. People that love us and care for us and bring out the best in us. Saying "See you later" to these kinds of people is hard.

Jane has been having a particularly hard time saying goodbye to her daycare crews. Those from the past have been physically removed from our home for some time but the connection remains and is just plan painful to put on hold. The bus bunch that was in her daycare and are still coming before school left her in a crying puddle of goo as they left for school the last time, talk about melancholy! The current group that she feels she is quitting in the middle of and already missing and already lamenting the fact that she won't be a part of their growing up, is a special kind of sadness. Jeff loses his kids every year and, although saying goodbye to them was more emotional than usual, all in all it was pretty normal. Saying goodbye to people that you have worked with for decades, in one case 3 decades, really made a hole. No longer being a part of the Lakeshore Middle School team makes him so thankful for those people and yet empty. Saying goodbye to his Christian brothers from both Lakeshore and Grand Haven High School... it's best just not to think about it.

So yeah, turning this page is really hard to do. It's that whole coin thing, such rich blessed careers leads to a painful moving on. Then we think about the why we are doing this and our courage begins to rise. We have seen multiple amazing answers to prayer to get this far. It doesn't lessen the loss to be moving on to something that we are wholeheartedly committed to do, but it does help your brain wrap itself around this overflowing emotional turmoil that dominates your thoughts. Turning a heavy, beautiful, wonderful, relationship filled page to an adventurous, unknown, God inspired page is pretty blessed, don't you think?