Dan just left to take my mom to the airport for her return flight to Mississippi. She came out and spent a week with us, and it was wonderful. But that makes today the day that I dread every time we visit family or they visit us. I have waved goodbye at the airport and from the driveway dozens of times over the last six years, and from doing that I have learned that I will feel better tomorrow, and a little better the day after that. But today, I know, is going to feel like leaving home all over again, and all my doubts about what we're doing here will loom as large as ever. Why do we live here? Seriously. Albuquerque. It's so far away from our families and the people who have known us all our lives. Why are we raising our child a jillion miles away from so many people who love her and would give anything to see her every day? How is Kate going to know our families when we can't see them more than a few times a year? Why can't the world be smaller? And when is this going to get easier?

The answers to those questions are as familiar as the back of my hand. We're here because God has provided work and a home for us here. After all, if God hadn't brought us both to New Mexico, we might never have gotten married, and we would miss out on all the blessings of our life together, including Kate, and I can't imagine my life in that case. Yes, this is far away, but we aren't alone by any means. We're blessed with wonderful friends and a church family who love us and love Kate and would do anything for us, and in the moments when I think wild thoughts of packing it all up and leaving here, I know that if that ever happens, I'll be heartbroken to leave those people behind. Kate is going to know our families the same way thousands of kids who don't live next door to their extended families do ... airplanes and telephones and webcams and all the things that really do make the world smaller than it would be if we had moved here in the days before mass transit and easy communication.

But that last question, the when is it going to get easier one, is a setup. I know now that the days when we leave or say goodbye yet again are never going to be easy. So today, just today, I'm going to feel a little sad. And I guess that's OK.