18 September 2021 is the day I said goodbye to Sydney, Australia for good. It's also the day I took the longest flight of my life to the other side of the world to begin living in London, UK. Not that this is comparable in any way to what the Israelites faced after they were led out of Egypt but I'm specifically thinking of how they had to wander in the desert for enough time first to finally reach the promised land. Being here now, after all this time, feels like that. Again, my desert was barely a desert. On the contrary, it was a beautiful oasis and a phase of my life I will never ever forget. Every memory that crosses my mind of my life in Sydney, no matter how small, sets a melancholic tune in my heart. I've seen some of the simplest days there of just waking up, getting through the day to only go back to bed and I've seen some of the most dramatic days there too of being ecstatic with joy and broken with sorrow. I can not thank God enough for taking me to the most random place I could have ever imagined myself going to and helping me sustain and thrive in every moment of living there.
Forty days since I arrived in London today and I'm sitting in a very comfortable house in Canning Town looking out at the city I've dreamt of living in since I cant even recall how long ago. It feels like home already and I hope I get the privilege of settling here some day. Every thing has changed since I was last here in 2016- the people, the company I work for, the way we were living back then to how I'm living now...every single thing. The names of streets and tube stations are all the same but thats probably it. I'm still in love with this place as much as I was back in 2016. From my last entry in this blog, Im also reminded that I am now on what we can perhaps call the other side of the pandemic although it would be foolish to think this decidedly. But its been 1.5 years since when it first began, millions of lives were lost to the disease over this time (and those lives that were saved but changed forever), every single person in the world was forced to stay at home for weeks and months, people have now finally received their vaccination and things are just minutely a little more normal than how they've been the past few months.
A lot will probably change in the coming weeks and months as I actually start to live in this city but for now, just in this moment, I feel blessed and overwhelmed with the goodness of God. I'm here and I cant wait to see how life will unravel.
