To Be Torn

I am learning a lesson. A lesson of heart ties and longing. And it is preparing me, I think, for the future. For a couple months from now - or is it just one? Where has the time gone?

Being a camp counsellor this summer on an island that is 3 long ferry rides from home is teaching me - slowly, painfully - that once I cross over into the great unknown that, right now, is named Quebec, I will always be looking back in some sense - longing for those friendships and moments and familiarities. But not always to home. Because when I am home, I will feel that same longing and wishing and wondering about my new home. I will always long for the other. Not that my heart will divide in two, but instead, a new heart will grow for that place and those people, and no matter where I go, something or someone will inevitably be missing.

This is what I am learning on the little island where I'm spending half my summer. It is a scary lesson. It frightens me because I can feel it already. Even after only spending two weeks there. Two weeks at camp, verses a lifetime at home; and yet my heart is already torn, filled with longing for the other when the other's not around.

How will my heart hold if it is strained this way for the rest of my life? How can anyone stand the longing?

{And yet, I can't wait! Every day I grow more and more restless to get started on this new time in my life! I only hope I am ready - as ready as I can be.}

S