This is another blog I wrote a couple months ago, but never got around to finishing or posting. Like I said… now or never.
It makes me cringe a little to admit this, but I sometimes refer to my life in the States as “real life.” This, of course, implies that what I’m doing now is somehow something other than reality. And that’s just (mostly) not true.
A lot of structure has been built into my life even if it looks chaotic from the outside. Someone else has decided when we get to a country and when we leave. Our lodging is booked for us. Our ministry contacts are usually already made. We have “team time” and “feedback” to use as tools for communication within our teams. Even our community has been put together for us.
This structure has given us all a place to meet as we’ve come together from some very different backgrounds. But when I get home everything will snap back into something more familiar, something I have an easier time framing as “real life.” I’ll have freedom to wear what I want, drive, talk to whomever I wish, whenever I wish, walk around at any time of day or night, be alone, walk into a church without anyone bringing me to the front so I can tell everyone why I’m there; I’ll have my annonominity back.
But the danger in seeing my life right now as some sort of crazy dream is that people forget dreams. The danger is that I would leave everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve become in the dust just before I come home.
But for now, I’ve adapted to living this way. It’s getting comfortable. In fact, sometimes the thing that feels like a dream is my life in Phoenix.
Then a couple weeks ago I started thinking about the Agatha Christie book I picked up just before we left South Africa. Because at some point a few years ago I started bringing one with me whenever I travel. They’re the perfect travel books. It’s just a thing I do. Like watching the birds by the canal with a cappuccino in a ceramic mug or naming the turkey before we eat it and then spending the whole next day making broth out of it.
But here’s the thing: that’s still me. None of it has been a dream. And if I can accept the fact that I didn’t stop being that person when I decided to live out of a bag and travel the world to play with kids and build soccer fields and tell people about my relationship with God, then that means I’m totally capable of bringing the person I’ve become home with me when I leave this crazy lifestyle behind. That means when I get home I can still be the person who actually enjoys holding babies and starts the day being excited to spend time with God.
And if both of those people are me then look out.
For now I’m collecting the pieces of the person I’m going to be when I fly out of the Philippines and trying to put all of me into every moment because I want to remember.
