I've just spent the last week hosting two dear friends from college: one my roommate my senior year and the other her sister. As they drove off a few minutes ago, I realized how different goodbyes are now than usual. Fact: I'm leaving the country. I am so grateful for how relatively easy visits have been for the last two years. It's so much harder knowing how very difficult and expensive any future visits will be. In reality, most of the people that I know and love I will not likely see for many years.

These are the moments when I have to steel myself for what I am choosing to do. These are the days when I imagine the other life I could make for myself: the comfortable one. I could teach or go to grad school somewhere near where so many of my other friends have settled, like DC. I could be in an urban setting, able to attend a place of worship that I really understand and get. I could have lots of young, like-minded individuals around me, as well as the ones who consistently challenge me. I could go hiking with others, without worrying about land mines. I could have the life of a young, single 20-something.

Sometimes, though, we have to act in a big way on the things we care most about. I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering why I did nothing. I am willing to give that life up for the simple reason that I get to choose it. I suppose I believe there is a beauty to be found in joining someone else in the middle of their suffering and taking on challenges that are not our own. In the end, I do not believe I am missing out, but I am aware of the experiences that are part of most young people's collective memory that I will never fully understand. I am okay with that.

Here is are a few words I have spent a lot of time dwelling on lately:

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

-Isaiah 58