It’s month 10 and I honestly don’t know when my definitions of “normal” and “comfortable” actually changed. As I write this, I’m sitting wrapped in a blanket, wearing my Nashville Predators sweatshirt, staring at the most fiery sunset I’ve ever seen while picking out an ant infestation that has found its way into my $2.00 bag of peanuts (they will not defeat me) all in the capital city of Zambia.
I share my room (and sometimes my bed) with cockroaches that are the size of your thumb and spiders that I swear may actually have super speed powers. . I washed my clothes for the first time in 3+ weeks in a bucket of freezing water by hand, and I hung them to dry on a line of barbed wire. I shower in a bucket with water heated by fire, and today I spent 3+ hours praying over strangers I’ve never even seen.
Hermione Granger once said, “A fear of a name only increases the fear of the thing itself.” It’s common to associate a “fear” with something as tangible as a giant roach or spider. It’s even common to associate the emotion with the things we can’t physically see or touch. Things like time. The future. The past.
But what happens when you fear something safe. Something that has never harmed you. I never thought I would see the day that I would fear going home. Home. When did the name that I fear appear as the word “home.”
Its not that I fear the physical things. Believe me the day I sit on my porch with a glass of sweet tea, my dogs, a bowl of lucky charms, and the ability to get in my car on my own time and drive to Taco Bell where a beefy five layer burrito sits awaiting to be devoured cannot come soon enough. The days where I can sit with my friends and family for extended time are a dream finally to come true in just over 5 weeks.
So what’s to be feared?
In the past year, I have missed engagements, weddings, baby announcements, high school and college graduations, job changes, grad school acceptances and who even knows what else. . In the past year life at home has kept going.
In the past year, my life has also kept going.
I learned to surf in Costa Rica, attended an AA program in Nicaragua, and watched Honduras play Mexico on a movie theatre screen in the murder capital of the world in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. I helped throw a Christmas party for nearly 700 children in the Philippines, I attended an illegal, underground worship service in Vietnam, and I was bit by a monkey in Cambodia. I taught creative writing in Malaysia, was thrown into a pool by a man dressed as a pirate in Thailand (what up Songkran), and shared my testimony with 600 students in Zimbabwe.
I have held the titles of teammate, treasurer, construction worker, surfer, Sunday school teacher, babysitter, counselor, writer, artist, teacher, evangelist, criminal, Santa Claus, waitress, preacher, coach, team leader, tourist, student, humanitarian, missionary and whatever else there is.
Now comes the part where I have to accept that those I left at home have held different titles too. Titles like mother and bride and fiancé and student and graduate and employee.
My fear comes in when I start to think that because we hold different titles, we no longer relate.
The fear is facing the very true fact that the people who I’ve always told everything too, will honestly, hard as they try, not know the honest to God truths about my life the past year. And that scares the hell out of me.
It scares me to think that my parents and best friends won’t be able to experience fully what I have.
But here’s the good part.
In the past year I have learned to speak boldly that which the Spirit tells me.
So to those at home, reading this and wondering where that leaves them. Ask me.
Ask me about my titles. Ask me my favorite moments in individual countries. Ask me about the things that weren’t exactly favorites. Ask me the about the time a man asked me to purchase a boy in Thailand. Ask me why Vietnam was tough. Ask me about my family in Honduras. Ask me about speaking in Zimbabwe. Ask me to tell you the non-media skewed version of Africa. Ask me to tell you about Emmi and her incredible ministry. Ask me about our first travel day in Zambia. Ask me how I lost my passport in Tacloban. Ask me.
Ask me all of these things.
But give me grace.
Give it when I say you would only understand if you’d been there yourself. Give it when I freak over the prices. Give it when I think back to the kids I left in Honduras, Cambodia, and Thailand and the only reaction that seems fitting is tears. Give it when I just don’t feel like telling you today. Give it to me when I butcher the “authentic ___________ dish” that I will insist on making you at least once. Give it when I react to the things we value in America. AND PLEASE. Go with me on the searches for shawarma and street tacos.
And know in all of this that I’ll be trying my hardest to extend it back to you.
We’ve grown separately. But it doesn’t mean we have to fear the growth itself.
I may or may not be counting the days down until I’m home again, and maybe one of my teammates has Taco Bell as her phone screensaver. . The end is so near but only the end of this stage of life. So in the meantime, be praying for the next stage. Pray for patience for us all. Pray for open and honest conversations still to be had hear in Zambia as well as next month in Malawi. Pray for us to continue to be vessels here where we are. And pray for our return home.
Give us time, and give us grace.
Believe me, we can’t wait to see you all.
