“Welcome Home.” Was the greeting I received from the Immigration Officer as he stamped my passport allowing me to re-enter into America. I walked through immigration and crossed the finish line. The race is over. Grabbed my bag, said goodbye to my squad, and boarded another plane to the other side of the country.
In 11 months I have lived 11 different lives. Sometimes it’s hard to keep them all straight. I was an English teacher in one life, an evangelist in another, and a caretaker for orphans in multiple lives. Each life was beautiful, but they were not always easy.
I think about all the people I encountered, and I wonder if I’ll ever know what impact, if any, my life had on theirs. And I wonder, if they wonder the same? I wonder if those street kids in Cambodia who were rented by the Mafia to beg from tourists ever wondered if my seeing them, in their dirty clothes and bare feet, had any effect on me at all. I wonder if they ever wondered if I could help them, or rescue them…because I wonder if there’s anything I can do all the time. I wonder if that crazy nanny in Africa who took care of those 5 babies ever thinks about that one girl –she probably doesn’t remember my name, who came and spent rainy afternoons holding and feeding the orphan babies. Because I think about those babies a lot. I wonder if my high school class in Ukraine still remembers anything I taught them, inside and outside the classroom. I miss them and remember everything they taught me.
“Welcome Home.” Was what the sign read above my kitchen table as I walked in the door. Everything looked like it did when I left almost a year ago. I felt like a weathered ship pulling into the harbor after a long journey. I made it home.
My last two months of the race were probably the hardest months of my life. I had never been so sick, I had never felt the way I felt before, and I had never spent so many days in bed. But I also had never had to trust Jesus so much before, I never had to depend on him the way I had to all those weeks, and I had never understood how beautiful and messy brokenness was until he led me into it.
My mind is constantly contrasting the world I live in now with the world I lived in for the past year. I don’t really know what’s normal anymore, because being here in America with hot showers, good food, and a clean bed and room, kind of feels like I’m on vacation –or living in what we would call on the world race a “luxury month”.
I set out 11 months ago with the idea that me and Jesus were going to change the world. But now I think Jesus and the world changed me. I’m ruined for anything ordinary. There is this sense of responsibility that I feel now that I have seen all these things. The world is a big place, and there are a lot of people who need Jesus.
My last month on the race I began asking the Lord “What now?” and began praying about the possibility of returning to Israel –the place where I had felt my heart beat for the first time. “And what about Jordan?” I asked. “Or Ukraine?” A few weeks later I got my answer. At an all night prayer meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a Ugandan pastor who didn’t know me from Adam, came up to me and said simply, “The Lord is sending you on a special assignment. The Nations are waiting.”
And so I go.
The Faces I'll Never Forget
