In the not-too-distant past, I was chatting with a friend about someone I’d lost touch with. Our disconnect didn’t make sense—she’d guided me at a time when I didn’t know what to do with my life, and we ultimately worked in the same field. And the same company. I thought we’d be best work-friends forever, but all out conversations had turned awkward and stilted.

“Maybe she was only supposed to guide you there,” my friend said. “Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be there forever.”

The answer made sense, though I didn’t like it. Why would God bring me someone so instrumental, only to have her leave just as quickly? I denied it, for a while. We were civil enough, but her mentorship-like role was never the same. We lost touch completely when I moved to a different company.

“People come into your life for a reason,” they say. This part of the saying is easy. We’re giddy to think about new friends, and new experiences, and we love looking back to see how neatly they’d tied into our lives at that moment. But no one likes to talk about those same people leaving. That’s where trusting God becomes a little more difficult.

No one wants to think about the “leaving.” When you move away, or lose touch; when you have an argument, or simply travel different paths. I still remember writing letters to my childhood best friend after she moved, until the letters stopped. Or bumping into my friend who’d joined the Navy, staring at each other with nothing more to say. It’s harder to digest, but these disconnects are also part of God’s plan.

Things are supposed to change. People change and grow, altering paths and leaving things behind. Jesus’s disciples left everything to follow him—they didn’t even pack food, trusting that He would provide. But eventually, even Jesus left. After his death, I imagine the disciples mourned together in fear. Their entire lives had been upturned. A life without Jesus seemed impossible; he should’ve been there forever.

But he’s not really gone, is he? Even after he departed a second time, those same disciples were left with the Spirit.

These people we encounter aren’t really gone, either. We may lose touch, and it hurts. Surely the disciples felt Jesus’s absence the first time they preached without him. But they still went out. I pray I remember that, when nostalgic over old friendships, or flipping through photos. But these past friendships aren’t the only thing to have changed. They swept into our lives for a reason, just as we’ve swept into theirs. Once, I had a day-long friendship with someone I’d met on a church trip. It was so influential that I still remember her decades later. But our friendship was only on that one trip. I don’t understand why it wasn’t meant to extend past that, but I do know that that trip was part of His plan, too. For both of us.

There are things we’re not meant to understand, but I’m doing my best to trust Him. I may not understand the “reason” people come into—and leave—my life, but I do know that it’s for the better. Somehow.