This is it. I am currently on my final flight home. At the end of these next 3 hours my family and puppies will be waiting for me. I’ve dreamt of what this would feel like the day I signed up for the race, but I had no idea how many emotions would be coursing through my veins. I miss so dearly the best friends I’ve spent the past nine months of my life with. The people who have been by my side enduring some of the hardest things I’ll ever endure. At the same time I can’t wait to throw my arms around the necks of the people who I’ve spent the past 19 years of my life with. I’m watching the night sky pass by my airplane window and I’m wondering if I dreamt up everything. Was the world race a thing? Did I really live 3 months in Asia? The sting of saying goodbye reassures me that I did in fact finish the journey. And the passing landscape reminds me that I’m going home. To my own bed. To a warm shower. To a piano. To my loved ones. I guess the hard thing is I feel like I have 5 homes now, so returning ‘home’ is a bit confusing. Home is a room above Pastor Ekachai’s church in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Home is a million rice fields in Cambodia with 36 of the most precious orphans you’d ever meet. Home is a comfy, pink house on the corner in Strandfontein, South Africa filled with the love of Ma & Pa and their family. Home is a blue-ish green house on a hill called Casa De Gozo where my dearest momma Kaye lives with open arms to anyone who comes her way. But home is also a two story house in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I’ve spent the last 19 years with the best siblings and parents anyone could hope to ask for. I wish with all my heart that I could put into the words the situations, relationships, circumstances, jokes, houses, churches, and team times I’ve experienced. But I realize that I’ll never be able to – and even if I could it’d probably take about nine months for you to read. I’ve learned the easy way and the hard way. I’ve grown in the spirit, as well as the body (lol). I’ve cried until my eyes were swollen shut and laughed until I peed my pants and been scared for my life and been so overcome with joy I thought my smile would last until I died. So when you ask me about my trip, please don’t be offended when I look at you with a silly look on my face. I’m sorting through nine months worth of craziness and trying to fit it into words knowing you still won’t understand the breadth of it all. I’m sitting here trying to sift through the things I want to say. I want to say thank you for everyone who has supported me prayerfully, emotionally, and financially. I could not have done it without each of you. The Lord will bless you tremendously for being a good and faithful servant. I want to thank each of my teammates for pouring everything you’ve got into me. Thank you for dealing with me for 2, 3, or 4 months and taking the time to show me I’m worth pouring into. Thank you Gap D for being the weirdest, most God loving squad out there.
I’m having an internal battle between wanting these plane wheels to touch ground and for them to bring me back to the beginning of it all. The second they touch I have to face the reality that my family is waiting for me through that doorway and that the race is over. But I suppose that’s the way life goes, one thing ends and God leads you into the next. You get to intertwine each sweet lesson you’ve learned during the last 9 months into the conversations you’ll have with family, friends, and strangers. People will stare at you like your crazy as you’re trying to explain the time you got destroyed by a rope swing, or the time you traveled with a parakeet who was more experienced with bus rides than you were, or the time you got electrocuted by a toaster, all the while realizing you had to be there in order to get a good hard laugh from it. But just because no one will quite comprehend every moment of your experience doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. You never know which story God will choose for you to share, nor do you know the way He uses your voice to break down Jericho’s walls.
So instead of trying to fit 9 months worth of incredible, life changing moments and memories and people into one blog, I’m inviting you to a coffee date or a phone call or an email. Please feel free to contact me if you want to sit down and catch up. My new email is [email protected]. And again, thank you to each and every one of you who made my journey possible and all glory to God.
