Knowing how quickly time would vanish before my eyes, I clung to every moment as if it would be the last.
Then August came. Like a tape on replay~~just as I watched Hannah, I watched Rebeka pack up her life in two small suitcases (with much more success now that she had all the traveling tips and shortcuts) and boarded a plane to Paparoa, New Zealand, slowed only by layovers in Dallas, Texas, and Sydney, Australia.
For three months, she will be in DTS as a student for YWAM (Youth With a Mission) before embarking on an outreach somewhere in the Pacific for another three months.
Her violin greets me each morning from the wall in the parlor...looking as useless as I feel. The kitchen offers more hope~~her face greets me from behind a laminated piece of paper on which her warped face is printed in black and white ink!
Come February, she will return home a new creature to us. In just six months, we will become acquainted with the freshness of a young lady who, though has been an "adult" for more than a year now, will have grown physically, spiritually, mentally and academically without our daily presence.
Until then, she is on an exciting adventure, with nothing to hold her back, to go and to be all that she is meant to become...and I long to hear all that God reveals to and teaches her. I long to hear her thoughts and ideas.
Most of all, I long to hear her voice and see her beautiful face!
In the meantime, I will be faced with the reality of her absence every time I pass by her clean room, face her empty chair at the dinner table...and walk by the violin on the wall..
Once again, I find myself reflecting just like I did with Hannah~~on the past years of infancy, toddlerhood, elementary and middle school, through these last years of high school, my cup runneth over with joy of having been privileged to watch her grow and blossom!
