Greetings from the deep end!!!
I finished packing up my desk at the ACE program yesterday afternoon. Stupid bittersweet days. I'm really really happy to be moving on to the next adventure in my life. But what I am coming to realize, especially over the last week or so is that I am really leaving one life behind and beginning a new one. So, as we humans do when a life ends, I find myself mourning the loss of what once was and to a degree, still is for the moment but will cease to be in the next 16 days.

I've noticed the people around me that I have worked with for the last 3 to 6 years are starting to plan the future, without me. Plans and situations that I once would have been a big part of I now find myself on the outside of looking on. If I weren't leaving I would feel jealous that I wasn't being included, but my logical mind (I do have a logical mind, in some situations) tells me that life here in Sheridan must go on without me. As I write and my thoughts get organized I realize that moving isn't here one day, gone the next, but rather a process that will be finalized 16 days from now. For me, things in Sheridan are coming to a close. Relationships are ending, projects are being finalized and I am sad. I feel as if I am watching my life slowly end.

The up side to all of this is that I will be reborn into my new life in 17 days. God has a plan and purpose for that new life. For each relationship lost or severed by hundreds of miles one will be made new to take it's place. For each project that I won't be able to work with and watch grow and change and become more and more useful there will be a new project to be birthed and swaddled. In the end, this change is what is best for me and my family. As I said, I look forward to the bright future ahead of me, but I mourn for what will be left and lost.