So leaving PA has been weird. It was an emotional whirlwind going from PA (which quickly felt like home) to the house I grew up in (which has always been home) and meeting my new squad at training camp (who are about to become my new home.) My coach and honorary dad number 2 once told me, “how lucky is it that you have two homes?” And he’s absolutely right. I have a nasty habit of leaving a little piece of my heart everywhere I go, but that does leave me in this very strange tension of not quite feeling really at home anywhere. Of course being with my family again is wonderful, but that in itself has tension in it because I know it’s only for a short window before I leave. Plus I’m not the person I was when I last called this state and these four walls my home. Yet I’m not an entirely different human, either.
I feel like my favorite superhero, Bucky Barnes. (No, this is NOT up for debate.) For those who forgot/aren’t as obsessed with the story as I am, Bucky was Captain America’s best friend growing up. Long story short he was captured, tortured, brainwashed, and turned into a weapon for HYDRA, who is trying to dominate the world. Captain America finds him and believes the real Bucky is still inside him no matter what terrible things he’s been forced to do.
The tension here is that Bucky is no longer the innocent young kid from Brooklyn, and neither is Steve. They’ve seen things, been through things – horrible things – but Bucky is no longer an assassin either. He is something in between.
Now for those who follow the story, Bucky goes on to take up the mantle of Captain America, thereby completing his arc and making him, in my opinion, the greatest, most dynamic character in the Marvel universe. Right now I feel like Bucky… Not innocent and naïve, no longer rebellious, but not yet stepped into my own. That’s what the race will be. And right now I’m something in between.
As I wrote in my last blog (which if you missed you can catch up on HERE) God has taught me unbelievable things during my 11 month season in PA. My roots have deepened. I’ve learned so much more about who God is and who I am to Him and how to live out of my identity as “daughter” instead of striving to find my place and changing who I am to blend in with my surroundings. I’m a more authentic version of me. Of course this thing is a journey, of course you never really arrive, but I’m believing the race is going to be this season again dialed up about 100 notches. Living with 55 other people, crazy travel days across the planet, living in uncomfortable situations, having my heart broken by poverty and injustice, loving little orphans to death and leaving – knowing when I do they will be just as alone as they were before I got there – and intensely, desperately clinging to Jesus to get through it. There I will come more into my own then I ever have, and probably faster than I ever will again.
But at the same time there are lessons in this strange in-between place. I’m not who I was, but also not who I will be. I’m struggling between clinging to the familiar, even though it doesn’t quite feel like home, and running towards the uncomfortable, which definitely doesn’t feel like home, but it might offer a little more belonging then where I am now.
That brings me to the intersection of my life and my next fandom – the Star Wars universe. Obviously I was at the midnight premiere of The Force Awakens, but there was a line in the movie that arrested me and almost made me cry in the theater. There’s a brief interaction between Maz Kanata (who played hugely influential role in getting the three scared main characters to push past their fears and step into the hard thing that they knew was right) and Rey (the beautifully bold yet terrified protagonist) and she says, “the belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.”
That’s where I find myself now and for these 25 more days. Alternatively this could have been called “when Jesus interrupted my Star Wars movie,” “How my fandom’s are a perfect description of my season of life,” or “When being a nerd leads you closer to God.” (Which it totally can, by the way. #nerdforever) But here I am in this beautiful juxtaposition between past and future, A better version of me and yet not nearly the person I know I’m about to become. It’s a journey, one day at a time, but part of me revels in moments where I can apply my nerd life to my daily life. And this is a beautiful example of that.
