It's 4 years on, but my exchange experience remains as clear as day in my head. It all feels like a really strange dream at times, but I can literally recall everything. I remember seeing the mountains in Grenoble every single day, and how beautiful they looked when autumn came and the peaks turned snow-capped. I remember Christmas service at St Marc, and sitting among people of all nationalities, in awe and wonder at how beautiful it was to be worshipping with God's people in French and English. I remember the magnificence of a 16th century Milan church, and how bright and vivid the murals still looked after 400 years.
I also remember how, towards the end, I was pining for home and the comforts of home. And my complete sense of loss, when it was finally time to go, and how hard it was to say goodbye when I realised I might never come back. I remember, after pining for it for so long, when I finally got home, just how much I missed Europe and the friends I made there. I remember how I struggled, simply because no one understood what I had gone through.
But even more than that, I remember every single lesson God taught me in my time there. It was prayed over me that God would teach me very specific lessons when I was there, and he was absolutely right. I learnt that you can be a million miles from home, but God will still be right there beside you. I learnt what it was to fend for myself, in every sense of the word, and just how much I need Him. I learnt that nothing ever happens outside of the context of God. I learnt exactly what the most important things to me were, and to never let them go.
So in the end, I took the memories, the good and the bad, and I moved on. I learnt to be satisfied with the memories.
So its long over now. But I remember. And, cliched as it sounds, I may have left Grenoble, but Grenoble has never left my heart. =)
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