I should be sleeping...

It is 12:40am. I should be asleep right now, but the anxiousness in my heart keeps me awake. Tomorrow I am leaving for the Ivory Coast. The purpose of this blog is for friends and family to keep up to date with what is going on with me during my time there. But tonight I felt the need to voice my thoughts out into the blogging world. I have a hundred different emotions surging through me right now. I am scared but excited, anxious but at peace and nervous but confident. I am a walking contradiction right now it seems. I am scared about being lonely, about traveling by myself to a place that is completely unfamiliar. I am scared that what I witness there will be too much that I wont have the words to know what to say or the emotions to know how to express. I am scared about being uncomfortable but at the same time excited about being uncomfortable, for it is in our discomfort, I believe, that we learn the greatest lessons. All of these feelings I realize could be me just being over dramatic. It wouldnt be the first time. But I cant help but think that this trip will be a life changing one. Maybe it wont, maybe it will. I dont know. I do know that I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to go. I have no idea what I will end up doing or seeing, or who I will meet. I do know that for whatever reason, God in all his sovereignty has allowed me to go there at this time. His purposes are not clear. But I am going... I guess for now that is enough for me to know, to understand. That he has a purpose I do know for sure. I pray only that I will be his vessel in whatever way he chooses to use me. Tomorrow.. I will embark fears and hopes all tangled up inside me with the prayer that when I return I will not be the same but changed... Changed, I pray, into more of the image of the Jesus Christ. Because, in my heart of hearts, that is what I truly desire.