“He was thinking once again of his comfortable chair before the fire in his favorite sitting-room in his hobbit-hole, and of the kettle singing. Not for the last time!” – The Hobbit
When I was rereading The Hobbit on the Race this quote (and several others that are quite similar) stuck with me.
I have been away from home for over 200 days. I miss lots of things, from family and friends, to hot showers, to my own bed, to my Chuck Taylor’s, to just understanding what people are saying around me. I think back to making blanket forts and watching movies with my roommate my senior year of college. I think of making tea and (not instant) coffee and enjoying a good book during a summer afternoon thunderstorm in Florida. I even miss school and homework. Frankly, I miss the comforts and familiarity of home (aka, I get homesick) and each time I miss it, it will not be for the last time.
And that’s okay.
That’s right, it’s okay to miss home on the Race, but I can’t let it rob me from being present. Being present and attentive to what God is teaching me is one of the most important things on the Race. But sometimes you just get hit with homesickness from out of nowhere. Sometimes you just ponder about what you would be doing at home right now, sometimes you just realize that when you get back what you miss will be different, either because home has changed or because you have. When you are trying your hardest to stay present these things can lead to frustration and make you stuff your feelings back down. Not good. Sometimes you have to get over it and realize you’re missing comforts for comfort’s sake and are using nostalgia to compare to your uncomfortable life on the Race. However, sometimes it means you have to grieve.
Grieving on the Race is hard. First of all, grieving is a tough process and often times you have to remember that it’s actually permissible to grieve at all. Now let’s mix that into a life of constant change and living in extreme community. Second, your grieving process will affect the people around you. You have your team by your side 24/7. They will notice and feed off of your emotions no matter how well you think you hide them (not promoting hiding your feelings, but people tend to anyways). Third, because of the aforementioned reasons you will feel pressure to simply ‘get over it’ and rush the grieving process. Either because you are uncomfortable or because your teammates are trying (genuinely) to help you, but it still adds pressure. They don’t want to see you struggle, they want to see you thrive. Having compassion and walking with someone through any form of grief is tricky, messy, and a whole different level of uncomfortable.
But grieving is important. And it is important to do correctly. Grieving is okay, and it will look different each time. Have patience with yourself, and allow it to help you experience the present. Like when that orphan may remind you of a little one back home…don’t let that make you bitter and miss home but rejoice that you got to experience a taste of home overseas! Being present includes the good and the tough, and grieving changes back home will allow you to embrace what is around you more fully. Use this to seek Jesus. He sent the Holy Spirit as our Comforter (and many other things), and this is another way to grow closer to God and become more like Christ.
Our lives are constant changes and continual processes of grieving and entering into new stages of life and new seasons. Learning to do this well means learning how to be present.
“Already he was a very different hobbit from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago.” (Or in my case, leaving for launch without a passport)
