He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.
Jose Rizal
I think I´m in denial. I´m pretending this is just another debrief, just another teaching time, and soon we´ll be moving on to our next country. In actuality, our next country is the United States and I will be saying good-bye to my World Race family, the only constant thing I´ve had over the last year.
I was sitting in worship the other night and as I started to sing I could feel the emotions welling up and I started to cry. Nothing wrong with that, except that I decided I didn´t feel like having an emotional breakdown yet so I stepped outside to compose myself. I ended up sitting outside, listening from a safe distance, hoping that no one would come and ask what was wrong. When they did come ask me (because they always do) I willingly admitted that I was avoiding intimacy to avoid the pain. I told them I wasn´t ready to have a breakdown so I shut myself down. Of course they told me what I already knew, that it´s not healthy and it´s okay to feel the way I do but even still, I haven´t gotten emotional about leaving since then.
Jimmy McCarty (former World Racer and now AIM staff member) was walking us through the re-entry process. Part of the exercise is to go through blogs and journals from the year to help you remember stories and emotions. I was reading my blogs from before the Race and I ran across this one- the last insightful blog I wrote before I left: The wall dividing Heart and Mind.
It´s amazing how the emotions I was dealing with and the way I coped with them before the Race are the same as now. Unfortunately, just because I write insightful blogs doesn´t mean I´ve learned my lesson. It was really interesting how the Lord used my former self to minister to my present self.
I´ll be in the States in 3 days. I better start working on breaking down these walls…
