Saying goodbye.

Saying goodbye. 

I spent my whole life living in Texas until my 33^rd year.  I had traveled around the world a bit but Texas had always been home.  I always knew I would leave one day I just didn't know when or where I would go.  It was a bitterly cold day in February when I left everything in Texas to move to another country. 

After being laid off in 2011 my husband went back to school to get his MBA.  Upon graduating from the program he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime in his native country of Colombia.  I don’t think we ever thought that we would actually live in Colombia, nor did we think that such an opportunity would present itself there.  However, the opportunity was just too good to pass up for my husband’s career and for our family. 

Once a formal offer was made and things were set in motion the whole process was quite surreal.  I had so many questions, many of which I had to just guess the answers to because I had zero experience with relocating to a foreign country.  What would we do with our house?  All of our stuff?  How would we move our things from the U.S. to Colombia?  What would we do with our dogs?  I began packing up our home box by box.  My husband went to Colombia ahead of us to get started on his new job so I was home packing with a two year old and a newborn baby in tow.  I had so many emotions.  I was so excited, and nervous and terrified all at the same time.  I remember that I kept thinking, “Are we really leaving?  Is this really happening?” 

Moving day grew closer and closer and then it finally came.  The day before we were to take a flight with our two children and two dogs to Colombia our friends from church came to help us move just about everything we owned into a storage unit.  It is outrageously expensive to ship your things overseas so we determined that we could take 4 suitcases and two large boxes with us to Colombia.  That’s it; our whole lives were in those suitcases.  We took only the necessities which consisted of clothes, a few household items and toys for the kids. 

That night after we had moved everything out of our house we had only a mattress left in the house to sleep on that night.  The house was so empty.  We had only lived in the house for four years but it already had so many memories in it.  We brought both of our children home from the hospital as newborns to that house.  There was so much laughter echoing from the now empty walls of that house. 

The weather was terrible the next day; I thought they might cancel our flight.  There were a series of mix-ups and delays at the airport but after several hours we finally boarded our flight for Bogota, Colombia.  I didn't know when I would see Texas again.  I felt like I was leaving a piece of myself there.  We were moving on to bigger things and new adventures but Texas would always be my real home no matter where I roamed.  I don’t know if I will ever live there again, but a big piece of my heart will always remain there.