“Lex just left and I feel so alone…”

I messaged my mother and my sister these words a few minutes after Lex left to catch her bus at six o’clock this morning. I won’t lie – after she left me in the small house I’ll be calling home for the next year, I went back to a bed that probably belongs to one of my roommates and I cried. I cried because I finally realized the depth of the situation I am in: I have never been out of America before, and here I am, at 18 years old, in a foreign country, unable to speak the language enough to hold a decent conversation or convey my needs (I honestly struggle speaking English sometimes), and I’m all alone. And from the moment Lex woke me up to say goodbye, to the moment she walked out the door and drove off with Beto to catch her bus, I found that the weight of loneliness suddenly became too heavy to ignore.

So I cried, and even though there was no one to see my tears, I kept silent, and tried my best to keep a straight face. And when I finally left my bed, I did what I taught myself to do years ago and hid my grief behind a smile. But my mother and my sister both responded to my text in the same way – God is going to take care of you. Lex (to no surprise of mine) said the same thing when I told her how I was dealing with her absence. She told me to just allow Him to use my loneliness to draw me closer to Him.

So I did.

He brought to my remembrance the way I had depended on my brother for nearly my entire life. I refused to do anything new if he wasn’t going to do it with me. I couldn’t even be bothered to attend Redefined on Friday nights until he convinced me to go. I saw the world as this gigantic place filled with places that were just as big – but Parrish always made those places a little smaller and easier to process and digest. For someone who is easily overwhelmed by the physical world, someone who could do that was a real necessity. It wasn’t healthy for me emotionally or spiritually, I know, but God worked with it, as He does.

I followed Parrish to Redefined, and I grew closer to God, and as my dependence on Him grew, my dependence on my brother dissipated, which made it easier to handle his falling away (I’m still believing for a resurrection of his faith, though!). And his falling away has made me draw closer to Him still, and by the time my brother lost interest, I was too plugged in to want to follow his lead. I can go on about the magnificence of God’s planning and whatnot, but I really just want to draw this parallel – If I could make it without my brother, I can make it without Lex. In fact, I can make it apart from anyone, because God has been teaching me how to depend on Him more than I’ll ever depend on anyone else. He has called me to Tepic for so many reasons, all of which I’m so excited to discover, but I know that this is the one I needed to understand and rely on first. I’ll make friends here, I’m sure, but I need to take care not to cling to the security I will find in them.

I miss and am praying for you all, and though I still get a lump in my throat when I think of home, I’m no longer heartbroken. Lex just left, but I know I’m not alone. I’ll see you guys in 177 days or less!