It’s been two weeks since I posted a blog. In my normal life, this is nothing new, but in my World Race life this feels like a failure. A failure to update my supporters what their money is paying for, and to give a voice to all of the things bouncing inside my head that are supposed to end up neatly on a page.
Here is the truth, though: this thing I’m doing is hard. Albania was an emotional roller coaster of a month and at the end, all I wanted to do was go home. I’ve never missed home so tangibly- waking up, I can almost smell the fresh-cut grass of our lawn in the summer, see the brilliant sunsets west of IH-35, taste the minty Braum’s ice cream I ate sitting on splintery wooden benches with my mom at 9:00 on a weeknight. I am homesick.
And after the wonderfully scheduled month in Albania, Kosovo has felt like a hard stop. We spend long days trying to fill hours folding clothes in a second-hand store, or teaching English two days a week, or going to daily prayer meetings. I read book after book, and make tea to pass the time. The fire always needs tending. Kosovo is cold, did I mention that? So many of my minutes are devoted to trying to feel my toes again.
In other words, I have nothing to say.
It’s hard to understand, this slow rhythm of days that feels nothing like ministry. It’s hard to feel needed, when the rest of my squad is in Greece working with refugees, when the ministry we were told was waiting failed to materialize.
But as I prayed about the way my days seemed to drip by like honey off a teaspoon, I remembered a moment from almost three years ago. I was a freshman in college, on a retreat with my campus ministry in the Texas hill country.
The sun warmed my bare shoulders as my toes clung to the cool, wet rock at the top of the cliff. I looked out for a moment at the lake that went on for miles, then took a deep breath, smiled, and jumped. The fall took so long that for a second I was almost bored- the adrenaline wore off for a fraction of a second and I was aware of the air whipping through my damp hair and how deeply green the lake was. Then I hit the water and sank deep. Came up sputtering for air and exhilarated.
It was only a second. But the moment of falling without fear or anticipation, of being fully present in the fall without feeling it- that’s what I remembered as I prayed for something more here in Kosovo.
This is what it feels like to jump off a cliff. At the beginning, it is a blood rush to the head and limbs tingly with adrenaline. But in the middle of the fall, when there is still far to go before you hit the water, it is silence.
It’s cold wind whipping my hair as I try hard to be right here, right now.
It’s having nothing to say, seeing the cool, green lake below and trusting that when I get there words will rush in like a flood.
Right here, in Kosovo, at Christmas, when I would so much rather be home, I’m right in the middle of jumping off a cliff. I’m trusting that even though I’ve left the rock supporting me, what I hit at the bottom will make me gasp with wonder.
