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It was unplanned to say the least. For 5 days I had been dealing with an increasingly painful tooth ache, until I just had to get it looked at by our island dentist. She was confounded and unable to find an explanation, but suggested that I go to our home dentist since the pain was so great.
It was the unbearable tooth-aching and the wearing rigors of team season that forced my credit card to purchase tickets back to Dallas. The immediate optimism of heading home was unexpected but contagious – Emily was quite excited.
Less than 12 hours after we arrived I was in the dentist chair, and 3 hours and 1 root canal later I was feeling relief. The rest of our trip was pure vacation through reconnecting with our church.
We both couldn’t wait to see our small group, and Emily quickly announced our arrival and helped set up a reunion. As we drove to our friend’s house to meet with everyone, I turned to Emily and told her that, “in some ways it feels like we’ve been gone for years, and in others it feels like we were here yesterday.”
Emily was most looking forward to Haley’s (Natalie and Robert’s little girl) birthday party. Long ago we planned on reuniting with our sending church in August, but then plans changed. Thankfully, however, we did make it back this August and just in time for the birthday celebration.
This trip had more than it’s share of coincidental moments, such as being back for a FBC’s farewell for one of my old co-workers, the perfect timing for seeing old friends, design projects for web, print, and stage, and many others.
It has been over a year since we were back in Frisco and Dallas, and when we arrived back our spiritual, physical, and emotional “gas tanks” were empty, but we left back for Eleuthera with them full and overflowing.
In many ways it was hard to get on the plane this morning and head back. After such a heartwarming reunion we feel like we’ve left part of ourselves back in Texas. But we know that the ministry in the Caribbean is our calling, and in this transitory life which will one day end, we can look forward to an eternity with those loved ones whom we’ve had to leave behind. We love and miss you all more than we can write.