As I write this, I am sitting in Charlotte Douglas International Airport, waiting for my delayed flight to board to Kansas City for the hopefully epic Christian conference known as OneThing.
I shove, as gracefully as possible, the last bite of my wildly overpriced burrito into my mouth and try not to let bits of beans and rice go everywhere…there is a cute, 20-something-year-old business man sitting right across from me, after all.
Airport smells…Starbucks, duty-free shop perfume, Cinnabon…are wafting around me, and hoards of Christmas travelers rush from airport security to their terminals.
It is hard to believe that almost a year ago, I was sitting in this same airport about to embark on one of the biggest adventures of my life. I stare around and remember the emotions running through me before I left. Excitement, terror, disbelief, nervousness. And I am glad that it is over; unbelievably grateful that it happened and unquestionably thrilled that I went, but so relieved that it is over.
Since being home, the one question I have gotten more than any other has been “How is home?” Not how are you, how was your trip, or what did God do. The focus, now, is life now.
I love home…North Carolina, my family, the culture I grew up in, America, my life. But it is different now.
Being back in America hasn’t been exactly as I had hoped, to be honest. They kept telling us that coming home was going to be hard, but I have been blindsided by exactly what has been hard.
I see a lot of ways I have changed, but find that I can’t for the life of me figure out how to incorporate these changes into every day life. So much of the growth you experience on the World Race is related to being surrounded by people 24/7 and being expected to love and honor them through everything. In America, we are a bunch of one-man teams, it seems, and I don’t understand how to “be” the person I have “become” when I am alone most of the time. It makes me fear that much of the growth never happened at all, and was merely circumstantial behavior.
Food and clothes were thought, in our minds, to represent a land of endless, exciting opportunities for us all when we finally arrived back home. Having my full kitchen and numerous grocery stores, as well as my full wardrobe, was supposed to be a fun, colorful, flavorful, engaging adventure every day. After a year of mundane food and grungy clothes, I expected these basic daily necessities to thrill me with the same enthusiasm that a 6 year old girl devours her pink cupcakes in her beautiful birthday-girl dress.
But I have found, to be honest, that I don’t really give a rip about either of these things. I went to Target for the first time in a year and was so apathetic about food that all I bought was a can of beans and a bag of rice, which I had imagined I would never eat again in my life after the Race. If you had told me in Tanzania (the land of rice and beans twice a day, every day) that this is what my first Target trip would look like, I would have gawked.
VS 
And I just don’t really care what I eat anymore, which is a huge change from the “foodie” that I was and had been for my entire life before I left for the Race. Looking “pretty” in nice clothes fails to engage me either, and I can’t fathom the amount of money and energy that everyone seems to put into outfits that nobody even notices.
Driving my own car around was expected to be exciting and freeing, but I have found that it just annoys me that American culture is set up so that everyone has their own car.
After a year of public transportation it just seem to make a whole lot more sense to get around together, and I fight frustration when I am sitting in 5 o’clock traffic surrounded by hundreds of vehicles, most of which are holding one person.
I have found myself shocked by some of the things that people focus on, say, or get upset about. The concept of honoring and respecting someone, even when they are not around, seems to be another language to a lot of people. There seems to be a huge focus on the negative things in life rather than the positive, and I bite my tongue regularly for fearing of saying something that will either be received poorly by the offender or delivered from an unloving place by me.
Ministry in America seems to often involve finding an organization, going through a criminal background check, signing a waiver, and selecting a weekly time slot…that is, if our budget, agenda, energy, and mood allow for it. On the Race, if I wanted to hang out with street kids, homeless people, prostitutes, orphans, or any others of “the least of these”, all I had to do was walk out my front door and let the Spirit lead.
As a single, young American woman, it appears the closest I can come to doing this is to go park myself under the nearest bridge with some homeless folks and hope I don’t get picked up by the local law enforcement, all while drawing the attention of everyone I know for what an “unsafe idea!” that would be. Suffice it to say, I am having a hard time finding the mental energy required to initiate a mere weekly hour of “ministry”.
My spirit feels jumpy, unsettled, and incapable of finding God in the way that I did on the Race. With wifi, cell phones, vehicles, social events, and “next step” chores all around me, I have been exceedingly awful at spending time with Jesus. No matter how hard I try, I feel distant and impersonal with God, which makes me anxious and unsure of my every move. This is, obviously, the root of my current crabby, self-centered state.
Perhaps the most unsettling of all is the overwhelming feeling of failure I have had since arriving home. I have failed at growing closer to or even maintaining my relationship with the Lord; I have failed at being selfless and choosing not to focus on my own desires; I have failed at figuring out how to verbalize anything about the Race or help show others what I have learned; I have failed at having any idea how to fit back into this puzzle when my piece’s shape has changed so much; and I have less of an idea of what I think my life will look like now than ever before.
All of the lessons I learned on the World Race seem to be slipping through my fingers like water in a cupped hand. I am quicker to snap at people, quicker to get my feelings hurt, quicker to doubt my faith, and quicker to be anxious and unsettled than I have been in years.
When it comes to my own life, I hate moping around more than anything; it is the opposite of the person I am and the life I intend to lead.
And it sucks. And I am ready for it to be over. I am a work-hard, play-hard kind of person, and I positively hate dragging myself with a “woe is me” attitude from one mundane task to the next. I am done with it; I am done with wallowing in my self-annoyance, I am done caring what people think to the point of not being who I have become, and I am done not loving people the way I am capable of.
I have endless lists of lessons that I learned on the World Race, and I truly am grateful that materialistic things no longer fulfill me…but I am ready to be able to enjoy them again.
Sorry for the bare-naked honesty, but in the interest of being “real”, I figured it was best to not keep putting up a front. But I say all of this in full confidence that this, too, is part of the refinement that the World Race is teaching walking me through, and I intend to learn from it.
I am the girl that keeps a bottle of champagne in the fridge just in case a celebratory occasion arises…and sometimes the celebratory occasion is the opening of the bottle of champagne. This is the spirit that God has given me, and I intend to be that person now more than ever before.
For the next 14 days I will be surrounded by people who are elbows-deep in loving the Lord and being committed to the same things I am. I am going to absorb it, live it, and go home ready to take life by the horns again. I have big plans for 2013.
Jesus is my reason to be alive, and He has a plan for me. No amount of failure or effort on my part can change that. I just need to let God be God.
Here’s to checking back in after the New Year with a renewed mind and spirit for the life I am going to live. Now I am going to board this plane, hope my connecting flight doesn’t leave me in Chicago, and begin a new season.
Thoughts on me continuing to blog post-WR? I had thought about starting a new blog but am debating it hardcore, would love some input!
*photos courtesy of some lovely Pinterest artists*
