How are you feeling? How is being home? How are you doing?
In hopes of letting you into my transition home here are partial excerpts from my journal covering my thoughts on all of these questions from the beginning of the season that I am now in. And oh yeah if you see me it’s still okay to ask me these questions…
A P R I L 12.
“…I am starting to really feel the tiredness of the race and it being a tiredness that only going home can fix. So I pray that I am able to just rest in you, in your hands, as I finish out these next three weeks… It is just going to be so weird being home. So much time has passed with everyone back home. They haven’t been part of my physical life for nine months and now it feels like I am going home to a life that isn’t mine with friends and family that are not truly mine anymore… I am not the same person and I know my life won’t be the same but I am nervous for the way I think I won’t like my life that is waiting for me because of the life you have given me here among this community. I am nervous for how fake this will all feel… I didn’t feel thousands of miles away ever. I felt at home just in a different part…”
A P R I L 13.
“I only have one week of ministry left and only about 11 days here at my ministry site. My heart is already grieving. I know it’s time to go home but it does not feel like the time. Its not that I am desperate to stay over seas, or do intense ministry where I am always giving myself until there’s nothing else to give, I am grieving because I am going to miss this community. This community is what you designed us all for, I am just no longer in the dark about what it looks like to live within. This community is your church. I know church and community like this is hard to find and I am being asked to leave it in a matter of two weeks…”
A P R I L 17.
“…and what scares me is that home is no longer what I long for. I will miss the people and these places. I know I am headed into the rest of my life but home is now the unfamiliar. Home is now the thing I need to have courage to face. And home is now the new country ahead with unknown culture and people and things. Even the people who I “know” are not actually known by me or know me. And what a concept that once all I knew is exactly what I don’t know anymore. Odd.”
A P R I L 21.
“…I know going home will be full of offers that you have for me Lord that I could not have where I am now. You’re sending me home to a land of opportunity, to a land of newness – one that holds my entire life or the next steps of it. And I don’t think my heart dislikes the ideas of home as much as I dislike how unfamiliar it is now but then again why should it feel comfortable? So strange how leaving for the race and ending it can feel exactly the same…”
M A Y 01.
“Today is the last travel day of the Race and I am on my way to Dubai, then it’s NYC aka New York aka America; if you can’t tell its baffling my mind. This has to be a dream right? Just another travel day not actually going home. But it is the end. I have no words just a prayer that this next season will be more than I could ever expect and that I will see your opportunities to walk into…”
M A Y 02.
“…I don’t know what time it is, and I don’t really feel anything. I am just here on a flight. I am not sad or excited or happy or angry just existing waiting for a destination…Even though now I am not on the race I am surrounded by my family and the church… Coming home has been harder than it was leaving for me. How are you supposed to wrap your mind around the fact that things have changed but mostly you have changed. If you are a missing puzzle piece and your spot was left for you when you left the states how are you supposed to go back to that place knowing you will no longer fit in the space that was left for you. I have no clue… I think one day I will just wake up and feel like everything has gone back to whatever my perception of normal is… I know you’re calling me to my home right now but I can’t seem to fully feel that call home because my soul and heart are scattered over the world in remote and not so remote areas, with your people, and so many other things…”
M A Y 03.
“Today is my first day waking up in America for nine months. I am in NYC. I grabbed coffee, headed to central park, walked in and there was a huge hill in front of me. Not the most pleasant thing but at the top thousands of dogs and their owners and I can’t help but think that’s what finding community in this “new world” will feel like. Uncomfortable but doable and then all of a sudden abundance of more than I could have imagined. But America is weird. Even if it’s a place I’ve been before it feels unfamiliar…”
On the WR I was a master popcorn maker, the Queen of Popcorn, they called me. Being home I wanted to share my newest skillz, so I did. But this time, for the first time might I add, the top flew off. Popcorn started popping everywhere! Everything that was meant to be eaten was on the floor by my feet. As I started to clean up I just thought, this is me. I am and have been popcorn during this whole transition period. I sizzle and sizzle until POP my emotions and understanding is flipped upside down and I am stuck having to figure out what to do next. The familiar faces I am not used to seeing are too familiar, the rooms and buildings I walk into have too much past and history within my own life, the food, the customs, the accents, the smells, they all make up 18 years of memories. And they sizzle and sizzle until POP it is just too much of things I am not used to. And this is how the past couple days of being home have been for me. But I also realize the sizzling stage is where everyone else in my life will find themselves in relation to this new season with me. The sizzle phase is full of patience and anticipation. Waiting to listen, to see, to speak with me. So, I limit the people and things I do knowing the POP is around the corner. I take it little by little allowing myself time to experience only so many POPs in one day. And I just want to say all of you in the sizzle phase with me, thank you for your patience because it is needed. Thank you for your grace and support as I allow you all one by one back into the POPing part of my life. I am learning to give myself grace as I use the quiet times before the POPs to process, to be, to think, and just to take in this town that feels so different yet so familiar. But I also realize I am in the sizzle section of your life as well. Not only do you not know how all I have changed I do not know how all you have changed. So, thank you ahead of time for the patience and grace it will take for me to re-learn who you are as I try to also get back into the POPing part of your life.
Much Love, Essie
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P.S. let me know if you would be interested in meeting up! If I don’t know you want to meet up, I won’t be able to set aside time for just you! Also, if anyone has questions but does not have time to meet up, comment them below or get ahold of me and I will add them to a future blog of specific race questions that I will answer!
