I’m proud to be from the south. I love Georgia. I love my family and our traditions. My life before the race wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t horrible either. I’m coming back home in just nineteen days. I blinked and the race was over. It was the best year of my life. But here’s the thing. Home isn’t just one place for me anymore.
Home for me is now scattered across the world. Home is in Mozambique at Beacon of Hope with Ms. Angie and the boys. Home for me is in the little church my team and I slept in while we were in India. Home for me is Palacaguina, Nicaragua with Brenton and his family. Home is with my squad. So yes, while I am coming home, I’m also leaving a lot of places that have become home for me.
A lot of people have asked me how I feel about coming home. It’s hard to explain it. I’m excited to see my family. I can’t wait to tackle hug my family and best friend. I’m excited for hot showers. But I’m sad too. I’m sad to leave the people that quickly became my family. I’m scared to bring the new Taylor home. I’m afraid that my anxiety and insomnia is going to hit me hard. I’m basically feeling every emotion possible.
Please don’t get offended if I don’t want to talk right away. Please love me even when I’m crying for my world race family. Please understand that it doesn’t mean that I love you less or that I didn’t miss you. Please understand that what has happened this year is hard to explain and while I will do my best, you may just not understand what I’m going through.
Please understand that some days I might just need to be alone. On the flip side of that, I haven’t been alone for a single second in a year so Ellie, Jordan, and Kels sometimes I might sneak into your bed, sorry. Please don’t freak out if I randomly start crying. I’m still learning how to feel emotions in a healthy way and sometimes I might just burst. But when I’m quiet, know that you didn’t do anything wrong.
For the love of all that is good in this world, please don’t ask me how my year was. That is SO hard to answer. I can’t cover this year in one word. So ask me questions, but take it slow and ask me things knowing you’ll probably get a really long answer. So if you don’t really want to know, don’t ask. I wont be offended if you don’t.
I know some people don’t really want to know what happened this year. That’s fine. But I will eventually be ready to have long conversations about the race. I’m going to want to talk your ear off about my favorite boys in Mozambique, about Swaziland’s critical needs, about walking the red light district in Thailand, about teaching in Nicaragua and how badly I want to go back.
I know all of this sounds confusing. Honestly, I don’t know that there is a right way to do this. But maybe that gives you an idea of the mess going on in my head. All I ask is that you meet me with grace when I get home. I’m coming out of a year of constant community, of poverty, of brokenness, of family, of being led by the Holy Spirit, of 2 am travel days and of unity. For the past year, the only thing that has been constant is God and my squad. For the past year, that is all I have known. That is all I have been able to lean into.
Now we are all walking into a new season. We won’t be just a bed away from our squad mates and our teammates anymore. We won’t be having team dinners and movie nights. We won’t be having bible studies and worship nights together anymore. We won’t be walking around villages and praying for people. We won’t be together anymore. That is a hard reality for us. For me, some of the people that I consider my best friends are on this squad. Knowing I won’t see them everyday or at the end of each month on travel days is something I am having an extremely hard time processing.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m going to be grieving. I’m going to be grieving the world race lifestyle that I quickly fell in love with. I’m going to be grieving my squad and not seeing them everyday. I’m going to be grieving the people we left in each country that changed my life forever. Coming home is a part of the race that we all knew was coming, but now that it is here, it’s scary.
That doesn’t mean that we love home or our friends and family any less. It just means that while we are coming home to people and places that we love, we also had to leave people and places we loved and we need time to grieve that. So when we are crying, just hug us. When we are quiet, just sit beside us. When we are happy, laugh with us. And when we want to go on a road trip across the country to see our squad mates, encourage it!
