Leavin' on a Jet Plane

My last look of Malawi
Chilkea International Airport

My heart broke. Tears didn't fall in excess like I had expected. The wheels lifted off, my head tilted and stretched to get the last glimpse of the country that stole my heart. My heart broke. It broke as I saw the last page of my story in Malawi fall shut. My heart was crushed when I realized that moment was the goodbye to all the new faces I met and grew to love, goodbye to the children that raised my blood pressure, goodbye to now familiar sights, sounds, smells, and actions, goodbye to a piece of my heart that I will never reclaim. I entered Malawi as a somewhat non-confident, naive, searching, broken teenage girl. That girl disappeared at some point over the last ten months. I can't put an actual date to it but it just seemed to happen. As I stepped onto the plane that once brought me to Malawi I realized that she was forever gone. In her place was a confident, strong, brave woman of God. This year has forever shaped and changed me into who I am and who I will become in the future. I have learned how to fall and pick myself up, how to trust that there will be light at the end of the darkest tunnels and how to roll with anything thrown my way in life. Africa was the greatest possible thing that could of happened to me!