Three of the saddest things I heard in response to my leaving my job at a residential treatment facility for kids, to work in an African orphanage are as follows:

"I don't understand.  Why are you going all the way over there to work with those kids.  This is an orphanage too!"  (The treatment center is not an orphanage.  This was spoken by a boy I was particularly close to, who has no contact with his biological or foster parents.  So he is, indeed, an orphan.)

"This is kinda how I felt when my dad died."  (Spoken to another counselor, after I had said my final goodbyes and walked out the door.)

"I feel like I am losing someone in my family... Is it normal to be happy and sad at the same time?  Because I'm happy she's leaving and is going to help other kids, but I'm sad because I am losing her."  (Spoken to another counselor after I'd left.)

Something I recently read on a greeting card fits the mood quite well:  "She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short."

And I do feel privileged and amazed at God's ability to use my raggedness to touch these kids' hearts for the past year.  I also feel scared, because I have no more contact with them, and no idea where they will end up from here.  Having no more control is a very scary thing, yet it drives us to pray.

Rain, come and wash my fears away.

What if the goal in life isn't to "get it right," nor to identify yourself as being the one who "gets it right," but to become more like, and to bow before the feet of the One who is Right.  It is a very humbling experience to be told you are wrong.  It makes me want to give up.  But I guess I can't.  Not tonight (times infinity).

My place of employment is a fantasticaly irritating pit of grace. I walk around like a character from some Lewis masterpiece, befuddled because I’d assumed I’d have justice for my cosmic breakfast instead of dessert.

I gobble up grace for me, and leave the crumbs.  Then I glare at them as they crawl about, eating from the floor.