Sometimes I have mini-personality crises, where I just don't understand myself and it confuses me a little. When I watched "Sense and Sensibility" in college, I was perplexed for a while about whether I was more like Elinor or Marianne. Romantic or pragmatic? Idealistic or realistic? This post is . . . the result of my idealism getting a stiff dose of reality thrown in with it.

For this trip, I came up with a lot of great ideas about the things I hoped to experience and learn, and I thought (still think) they were great things. The caveat, however, is that many of them are lessons which are learned through pain. Which I generally tend to HATE.

One of the things I was excited about learning was how to love and let go. My preferred relationship format is like this: I take my time getting to know a person and building a relationship with them, and then we stay friends forever. Which is nice, and y'know, sometimes you just don't have that luxury.

When I worked at summer camp two years ago, I had a hard time with the girls in my cabin, because each week, I felt like I had just learned to love them when they would up and leave and I knew I'd never see them again. What was worse was that, while I was still struggling with saying goodbye to those girls, a whole new group of girls for me to love would turn up at my doorstep, and I would think, "This isn't possible. The girls I love are gone, and I don't know or care about these girls." And then by the end of the week the story would be the same - the cycle just kept going.

While this was going on, the person who had the greatest impact on me, who invested in me more than anybody else, was a missionary kid who was working as the photographer. She was fun and gracious and she was willing to share herself with people, and it meant a lot to me. In my mind, I made a connection between her behavior and her upbringing, I expect because she said something about it, although I don't remember specifically.

Missionaries have so many goodbyes. When you give up one life to create a new life, you can lose your sense of home. You are rarely coming and often leaving. You have to love people you'll probably never see again.

And here's the truth: it really stinks.

It stinks that one of the people I've spent the most time with since coming here is leaving in three weeks. It stinks how many people I've met and left already who I will never see again. It stinks that I miss people back home so much. It stinks that I'm going to have a load of hard goodbyes every six months, culminating in one huge goodbye in two years. Most of those goodbyes would not be hard for me now, but it's very clear to me that by the time they take place, they will be incredibly difficult.

So here's the crux of the matter: Is it worth it? Is the reward worth the sacrifice? Is it worth it to learn to love people, knowing the hardship that it brings? (The goodbyes are only one section of the hardship, by the way.)

I choose to believe that it is. It doesn't always feel like it - sometimes it feels like the best and safest thing to do would just be to insulate yourself and avoid the vulnerability and pain. But that's not life - that is staleness and suffocation.

It has to be worth it - it has to be worth it.