I'm going home today, and it's a different kind of feeling. I feel happy, yes, very happy. I feel tired, so tired and ready to go home. And I feel different from when I left, different from when I first came here, different from who I was before. For some reason feeling older always makes me feel more tired, more worn.

And I feel guilty, guilty for wanting to blame someone else for my tiredness and my hurt. I know no person is to blame, we are all hurt and fallen and so we hurt each other. Very few people in life are out to hurt me; most of them are just trying to avoid hurt themselves, and living out of the hurt they've already experienced. And yet, we want to blame them and want to be angry with them for our hurt.

And, too, I feel relief for leaving a difficult situation. Is this wrong too? I almost feel bad for being glad to leave a place of hurt, frustration, and unpleasantness; but is it wrong to feel this natural relief, especially as I am leaving it for the wonderful, loving family and home I left behind? Is it wrong to rejoice in a turn of circumstances which so visibly results in my happiness? There is a part of me that is sad to leave my post, my place of service-a small part, granted, but it's there-but overall I am too happy to be sad, too excited for regrets.

I am not sad I came, nor regret that I am leaving. I see how God was using this to help me see that I am not healed and I need Him more. I see that I am still bleeding inside from the religion that scarred me as a child, and I still need more help, more God, to thoroughly heal this wound. The scars will always be there, but the bleeding and infection need to stop.

And God has used this to show me the danger of complacency, of thinking my beliefs are right and there's no need to change. God has shown me the hurt and pain caused by thinking I am right and trying to apply my rules, my beliefs, my ideas, my "grid of right and wrong" to other people. They bleed, I bleed, and we're all dying together. Sometimes we have to hurt to learn how not to hurt others. I'm not saying God deliberately put me here to hurt me, but I think He knew there was a pretty good chance that the people here would wrong me and hurt me and He knew how to use that to make me even more whole than I was before.

And in the end, it is good to be going home. The lessons I learned were - are - important, but after the lessons are begun it is not good to stay in an environment that would continue to hurt, continue to wound and impede growth and learning. Home is the best place for learning, because it is hard to learn in an environment where love, tolerance, and acceptance are hard to find. So I am happy, oh! so happy to be going home!