Leaving Lithuania: Heart Wide Open

How to act? What should I feel? Once again a semester is moving on and I have to leave people whom I have come to love.
But there is a different feeling in my heart today—leaving here hurts. It is like a piece of my heart is being ripped out: a piece goes to California, another to Latvia, some for the Midwest and yet a part stays here in Lithuania.
A bond holds all of these people to me—but what is it—why is it SO hard today? It must be, no I know it is becaue together we have endured, pushed through and overcome this challenge, this journey. In a cold, sometimes dark country that few people know (or care) about, I have found a home, and it is dear to me. My home is in the people whom I have experienced it all with. I was so afraid to open my heart for fear it would break—and break it did. But yet in the breaking comes a stronger healing and re-growth: so that as I go away, I leave a different person, changed forever by the popele I call home.

"as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing...as having nothing, yet possessing everything..we have spoken freely to you...our heart is wide open.” 2 cor. 6:10,11