I’m speechless.  Or whatever it’s called when you can’t think of a single word to write to describe the emotions that are running around in your heart and mind.

Tonight Janay leaves for Cambodia.  And unlike any prior trips she’s taken overseas, this time she’s not coming back any time soon.

As I’ve written before, she is heading over to work with Daughters of Cambodia to help get women and girls out of the sex trade industry and help them learn a new trade to support themselves and to find new life and hope.

And here’s where my overwhelming emotions collide.  Because I can’t imagine her doing anything else but following her heart.  The heart that at age three answered the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  with “a missionary!”  So there is an incredible joy in sending her off to do what I know God has created her to do.  A thrill with knowing that she will be impacting a part of the world that I have never even seen.

Of course, the other end of the spectrum of polar emotions is my sadness in sending her to a place unfamiliar to me.  A beautiful place with beautiful people that desperately need her presence, but a place that hosts such darkness that I can’t begin to understand.  Who can possibly want to send their child to such a place, right?

But it’s the dark that needs light.  And she carries within her, the light of a God who is passionately in love with the people of Cambodia.  She takes with her His message of hope and new life and restoration.

And truth be told, I send each of my children off on that same mission every day.  Their particular parts of the world, each with it’s own shade of darkness, are impacted by the lives each of them live, By the love they share, by the encouragement they give, by the light they shine.  My prayer for each of them is that each of their sphere of influence will never be the same because people see Jesus in them.  Because if someone sees Jesus, they WILL be changed in some way.

So I will wipe these tears off my face and head downstairs to spend these last precious hours with my girl.  And as I drop her and Mark off at the airport (he is going with her!) the tears will start all over again.  Tears of unspeakable joy mixed with the pain of sending off a piece of my heart to a faraway land.

Love you to the moon and back, sissy.  I send you safe in the arms of Him who somehow loves you more than I do.  Look out Cambodia…help is on the way…:-)

xoxoxoxo

mama