Love like a hurricane.

Even though I’ve said the word for my whole life, it is still hard to accept and understand what it really means.  The fleeting nature of this life has never before been so clear to me as it has been these past 10 months.  We have said countless hellos and goodbyes, we’ve met hundreds of people, learned who they are, learned what they love, learned how to love them, and then after a few short weeks we’ve had to say goodbye.  Each month is so much more than just time that flows past us, they represent relationships, blessings, healings, brokenness, and affections that we have to leave with a farewell and our prayers.

 

Here it is, month 10 and we’ve settled into Eastern Europe.  India seems so close behind us that I feel like I could turn around at any moment and see the streets I had grown to know and the children that I had come to love.  But these streets are unknown to us, the children do not know us by sight or by name.  We left behind another home, our ninth home, in exchange for a new home.  And eventually we will leave the last home we make on this race and trade it in for what is “normal”, what is “known” to us.  There is something about being in Europe, surrounded by white people and things that are familiar that is almost harder than all the other countries.  I didn’t expect to enter Eastern Europe and be this uncomfortable.  And it’s uncomfortable for comfortable reasons, if that makes any sense…

 

For instance, this is the first month since January that I have my own bed, and it’s harder for me to sleep than when I was on the floor last month with ants crawling all over me.  I can turn on any of the taps in the house and choose whether I want cold or hot water to wash my hands with…I can’t remember the last time we stayed somewhere that had hot water in the taps.  There’s a legit shower head in the shower, no squatting required, and it’s got crazy water pressure.  I’m so unused to water pressure like this that I got a little scared when I first turned the shower on.  We have electricity all the time – it hasn’t gone out yet and it doesn’t seem like it will happen any time soon.  Heck, something as simple as there being a trash bin with a real garbage bag in it makes me feel a little out of place.  There are moments almost every day where I have to take a few deep breaths and just be still, because I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet, I’m not sure I’m ready to get used to living this way, even though I’m not really sure what it is about “this way” that makes me so anxious.  I’m not sure I’m ready to live with hot water and electricity 24/7 – who am I?  Who is this person who gets panicked at the thought of home being like this, of it being better than this, and it being that way constantly?  I feel absolutely off my rocker for being made so uncomfortable by the normalcy of Romania.  Does it make me completely ridiculous to be more comfortable on a dirty street strewn with garbage than on a clean sidewalk?  Does it make me a total crackpot for blushing when a car stops at a crosswalk (what’s a crosswalk?!) to let me cross the street?  Maybe it does.

Here I’ve been thinking and talking about how great it’s going to be when things will be back to “normal”, and then I’m handed normal and suddenly I feel like a fish out of water, a ragamuffin among the affluent, a mute in a roomful of poets.  After all the months of living among people who speak a different language, now I feel like I don’t just speak a different language but I live a different one.  For the first time since I left home I look like I could fit in here, my skin doesn’t give me away right off the bat, but people can still tell that I’m not one of them.  And that makes me think that when I get home, even if I wear the right clothes and get a haircut, people are going to look at me and think, “She doesn’t belong here.”  People are going to notice.  I used to think I was okay with sticking out and being different, but something inside me quakes at the realization that I am going home to a place that has gone on without me and I will be different, noticeably different, and there is no going back to the way things were.

 

Wait, wasn’t that the point of all of this?

 

At the root of all of this uneasiness and disquiet within me is the truth that I am heartbroken that I have to say goodbye to this lifestyle and this community.  I thought I was ready, I even started working through the re-entry packet Ashley Musick gave us at our month 8 debrief, but as I sit and go over the past 9 months in my head, my heart sighs a knowing sigh that this has to end even though it isn’t easy to say goodbye.

 

I’ve always loved the change of seasons, but now I see and comprehend how our human lives are a direct representation of what nature goes through constantly.  Leaves change, fall, and are re-grown.  Branches are broken off in storms, and sometimes lighting comes so close it scars the bark and roots.  But the trees still grow, their blossoms bloom and their fruit ripens.  Love like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.  This Race has been full of beautiful and painful seasons, my leaves have gone through their necessary shedding of the old for a cloak of newness, God has broken the dead branches off of me in the storm of His love, and things have come so close to the root of who I am that have forever changed the appearance and function of my heart.  And when this season is over I will still be growing and changing, bearing new blossoms that turn into the first fruit of each new season of my life.

 

So far this Race has been the greatest thing I have ever done with my life.

But I refuse to let it be the greatest thing I ever do with my life.

 

He is jealous for me.

Love like a hurricane
I am a tree,
bending beneath the weight
of His wind and mercy.
Then all of a sudden
I am unaware of these afflictions
eclipsed by glory,
and I realize just how beautiful you are
and how great your affections are for me.