Oh, Africa. I love you so much.
So much laughter. So many tears. So much hope, joy and beauty.
I’ve done a horrible job of blogging over the course of the four months I’ve been on this beautiful continent. There’s something about the combination of pain and hurt, the lessons the Lord is teaching me, and the fact that I’m going home soon that makes it seemingly impossible to form words around what is going on in my heart and mind.
This year, I’ve experienced brokenness in a way I never have before, and these four months have especially rocked me. The illness, the abuse, the malnutrition, the witchcraft, the neglect, the list goes on and on. After 11 months of witnessing despair and hurt literally all over the world, I still have no idea how to process it. How do I take it all in?
In one week, I board a flight home. In one week, I’ll be back in the arms of my family and friends. I’ll be able to sleep in a bed. My bed! I’ll be able to hold my niece, sing songs with her and be silly. I’ll be able to stay up late with my mom, laughing and swapping stories of the past year. I'll be able to hang out with my best friend as much as I want, making up for all the lost time. I can’t wait.
But I’m also terrified to go home. In one week, I will be bombarded with questions. Questions that I'm sure very few people will want to wait to hear the answers to as I struggle to put words around what I'm truly thinking and feeling.
Questions like: How was your year? What was your favorite country? What did you learn? In what ways did you see the Lord show up? All of these are perfectly good and normal questions to ask. I want to give people neat and tidy responses to these. I want to be able to answer these questions in a manner that is congruent to normal human interaction. But, honestly, I don't know if I can.
When I'm asked these questions, a million things start swirling in my mind.
How can I describe what it looked like, felt like, and smelled like to trudge through the mud and rubbish of the Kenyan slum everyday?
How can I describe the look of pain that I've seen every single day in the eyes of the children I meet who are ill, abused, or neglected?
How can I describe the way it feels to hold the sweet, precious 18 month old babies at a day care, knowing that one of them was recently raped?
How can I describe the way it feels to teach in a classroom full of children, the majority of which probably either have or are related to some one who has HIV or AIDS?
How can I describe the gut wrenching feeling of seeing a prostitute flirt with a guy, not because she is attracted to him and wants to, but because she has to?
How can I put into words the heartache of seeing children so malnourished they literally are small enough to be half their age?
How can I describe the joy amongst all this pain, the hope of new life amongst all the death?
How can i conjure into words the gamut of emotions and thoughts I have?
I have no idea.
So, when I come home and you ask "how was your trip?" I'm going to need a ton of grace. If you want a quick response, void of much detail, I might accidentally start to verbally process to you. Please give me grace. And, if you actually want to listen to the mess of stories, facts and feelings I've got stored up, and I reply with "it was good," please give me grace, as well. Unfortunately, after this year I have more questions than answers. Lord knows I'm probably going to need a lot of grace over the next few weeks (months, and years? :)) Good thing we serve a God whose grace is abundant and never-ending.
Even though I don't have the answers to the questions that are fast approaching me, the Lord has given me some clarity on one question, and I'd love to share it with you. After the race, I'm planning on finishing up my degree at Ohio State. The long term vision is to become a Christian counselor. I'm so excited for the Lord to make His plans for me more and more clear as I pray and seek His voice.
See you in a week, Ohio!
