It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.

I hear the drums echoing tonight in my headphones as I sit on a plane meant to carry three times as many passengers as it is now holding. I’m surrounded by the energetic buzz of conversations about semesters of studying abroad in Tanzania and hikes up Kilimanjaro. At times it feels so surreal.

YAGM Rwanda ready for take off in Chicago. 

The plane touches down at Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania and slowly empties until it’s one or two others and us. Us. The four other YAGM I’m traveling with and myself. To me, our group together represents a few last shreds of familiarity. My four friends on the plane are the only knowns. Everything else is unknown. Everything we see will be seeing things we never have. Everything we do will be doing things we never have.

One of my first firsts, eating sub-Saharan food at Orientation in Chicago! This is Ethiopian! (So not what I'll be eating for the next year exactly)

 Of course I’m excited (I mean, worried that my host community won’t love my nose ring or blue hair, but still more or less excited), but I also can’t help but feel this sense of loss. This feeling has become a close companion for me over the last few weeks and months-I left a lot to be sitting on this plane. I feel like I’ve been in a constant state of ‘goodbye’ for awhile, from last hugs with friends this summer, to somehow letting go of my family, to waving goodbye to my new YAGM friends on the curb just this morning. Sitting in this seat right now is the culmination of what felt like tiny, sometimes almost unwilling steps forward. It is the result of dragging myself, time after time, away from love and security and walking in the direction of God-knows-what. I’ll just tell you right now, it took a lot.

    

Just a few of the sweet friends I left after YAGM orientation.

But sitting in this seat I remember something my dad told me the morning I left:

“If you’re going to do anything important, you gotta get out the door.”

My family: all full of their own types of wisdom.

I think it’s an important lesson. He didn’t say “If you’re going to do anything important, you have to be 100% certain all the time” or “You have to be okay and never cry in front of strangers at the airport” (whoops). You just gotta get on the plane. You gotta get out the door.

As the plane takes off again, I realize there are so many doors I have yet to walk through. I’ll walk off this plane in Rwanda. I’ll walk into the door of the compound I’ll be staying in with my fellow volunteers for orientation. After that, “Us” will become “me”. I’ll be called to walk through the door of my placement site all on my own, and I will again be called to drag myself away from the people I love to do something important: meet more people I’ll love.

My first African sunset: a view from the plane

I know I’m not alone in this. We all have doors to walk through. Maybe yours isn’t a boarding door onto a plane that takes you halfway across the world, but that’s not the point. The point is that to do important things, to meet more people we love, to be changed and shaped by the world around us, we have to step out in faith. We have to move forward. We have to drag ourselves away from what’s easy and known.

So go. The World is just waiting there for someone who is bold enough to try new things, to hear the stories of others, to speak love and justice in their offices, communities, and homes.  She’s just waiting there for someone who is willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of learning, who will lay their assumptions aside for the sake of another, someone who will be humble enough to listen to Her.

Hurry, She’s waiting there for you. 

p.s. Because you might already have it stuck in your head: 

"Africa" by Toto

p.p.s. Since I'm publishing this a day late, here's one of my first doors, the guest house in Kigali where my YAGM Rwanda friends and I will be starting this adventure. Here goes nothing!