I’m not typically a person who gets very homesick. I traveled internationally 7 times before even coming on the World Race. I was never in a big hurry to get home. I love my family dearly, but in truth, I always expected that I wasn’t really missing out on too much when I was away. I could travel and explore and experience all the amazing things I wanted, and when I eventually went home I would find the same family with the same home and the same life. Nothing big changed. Even when I was away at college in another state, going home for holiday breaks, I always went home to the same family gatherings complete with a set menu I could guess based on which holiday it was, to the same friends I could call up and have reunions with, to the same traditions, same schedules, same expectations.
This time it will be different.
I’ve been away almost 9 months now, soon it will be 11. 11 months is a long time for circumstances to change. This week we received the final flight information about when S-squad will be returning home to the States. Putting an exact date and time on the end of this Race and the beginning of re-entry into my previous environment makes going home very real. While I know that I still have much more to experience on this journey, I am realizing I also have to start preparing for what is to come. Unlike when I finished my adventures around the world over the last couple of years, I know this time I will find a life different than the one I knew before at home.
Two of my close friends are getting married while I’m away. We’ll no longer be able to have girls’ nights and sleepover reunions (yes…25 year-olds still have occasional sleepovers). They will have different last names. Having husbands will make them like whole new people, and every time I go to visit them I will also be visiting their spouses.
I have missed the entire pregnancy of my sister’s second baby. I will go home to a new nephew-a new life! Everyone knows a baby changes everything…
And now, instead of greeting my grandmother every Sunday at church with a big hug, I will have to take flowers to her graveside. My grandma passed away one week ago. It has been, by far, the most difficult part of being away from home. I will not be able to tell my grandma my stories of this journey and all the amazing ways I saw the Lord at work. I will not have grandma’s potato salad or brownies at our family Fourth of July celebration this summer, though no doubt my aunt will prepare them just as deliciously. I will not hear grandma playing the organ at church on Sundays. I won’t see her Christmas morning as my family opens presents from under our tree and listens to carols and sips on hot chocolate. There will be a hole when I go home this time.
Part of burying grandma was the funeral service that I wasn’t able to attend because I’m across the world in Nepal. But the bigger part will be feeling her absence where I once always knew her to be. It means I have to recognize that my life will look different when I go home. In spite of this, I know I can trust in the Lord’s timing, in His ultimate plans, and in His love. 1st Corinthians 13 tells us:
“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
God’s love never fails. It never gives up. It never runs out. (Are you singing the song yet?) Ultimately, He is good. God deserves my praise and trust even in this difficult situation where I find myself a thousand miles from the place I want to be right now. He is Sovereign, and that means that even when I don’t understand why we had to lose grandma now, I don’t need to demand an explanation from Him. His plan is perfect. In fact, it’s so perfect that I have confidence that my grandma is now praising the Lord in heaven, reunited with my grandpa for the first time in 14 years, and enjoying the inheritance offered to her as a daughter of the Almighty God. So although I am sad, and although I know I will have to adjust to a life without my grandma when I go home, I have found joy.
My life is changing. Whatever that means for my future, I know God is present in it and will carry me through it all.
Sending love to all of my family back at home. You are experiencing the changes in your life already even today with grandma’s absence, but our Heavenly Father is with you and you can trust Him.
Teresa
