She was the last face on my mind before I fell asleep. I could hear her laugh, see her smile, but I could also see the pain behind that smile.
In two weeks I will most likely never see her again. In two weeks, my team will be headed to Africa and I will probably never call Kampong Speu home again. After 3 months in Africa, we will be back to Asia to finish out the last two months of the race in Nepal and India. Then it's time to head home to begin the next season of this one-time journey we have through life.
My mind has been so focused on the “next season” that I've begun to forget the season of this journey I'm in right now. I've started wanting the change more than the journey. I want to get home and be changed, different, better. I don't want to spend my days teaching English, trying to speak over the children who won’t stop talking. I don’t want to spend my afternoons playing with kids during the hottest part of the day. I don't want to be on the World Race…sometimes.
But these are the experiences that are changing me. These are the things I have to take part in now for the necessary change to take place.
So recently, when I find myself daydreaming about what’s next for me after the race, I see her face, and the many faces of our other new friends this month. I see my class and the students I’ve been teaching for a couple weeks now. I’m able to see the smiles on their faces (even though they disrupt my class time and time again). I’m able to see the tragic story of the children next door and playing with them in the heat doesn’t seem to be that much of a bother anymore.
I remember that I have less than 2 weeks left with them and that begins to be the new mindset I want to adopt. When I get home I don't want to look back on the second half of this trip and see someone who was in such a hurry to get home that she didn't give everything she had to the journey.
I will never have this back again. This journey with these people working at these ministries and learning these lessons. This is it. And I'm letting it slip by because I've allowed my mind to be focused on what’s next. I’ve stopped living in the present moment. There will always be a next, but you’ll never have this current moment. So I’ve been homesick, but I’ll get “home” back. I’ll get my room back, my family back, my job back, my free time back, my time with friends back, and my stuff back.
But after I come home, I won’t get this race back.
