Today marks two weeks back at home. Two weeks since I last lugged my pack around, two weeks since I said my final goodbyes, two weeks since I felt the familiar pull of a plane as it races down the runway. In so many ways it still feels surreal. I woke up the other day in my bed in my mother’s house and wondered if I had merely dreamed the past eleven months. Did I really rock a tired baby girl to sleep in Haiti, play at the beach in India, run through rice patties in Cambodia or befriend refugees in Uganda? Could it be possible that this has really been my life? Could I possibly have actually ventured to these distant places or, more baffling, feel at home there?
The goodness of the Lord leaves me in complete awe. When I reflect back on the couple of years leading up to the Race or even as far back as high school when I first heard of the Race, I can hardly believe the journey that He took me on to get to this point. The heartbreaks, disappointments, unexpected twists, blessings, relationships and growth that I experienced. All leading up to this point, this journey. Yet this is only the beginning. Years from now I will reflect on the Race and it will be another stepping stone that led me to wherever the Lord plans on taking me next. What a beautiful stepping stone it was! What a sweet season of adventure, whimsy, growth and self-discovery!
Now that I am home I am working on slowly digesting all that this year held. Slowly peeling back all of the layers and dissecting the intricate, often seemingly mundane events that transpired. The things that happened in a whisper. The big things need to be processed and matter equally as much, but I want to focus on taking a step back a process all of the littles things that were easy to over look. The gentleness in the way a friend I made in the Dominican spoke to me. The impossibly perfect blue of the sky in Thailand. The way our ministry host’s daughter would smile at us in Rwanda. The way it felt to sink into a mattress after a month spent sleeping on my sleeping pad. The quiet reminders of the Lord’s love and faithfulness. I fear if I do not focus on these little details now they will slip from my memory and be forgotten. There is not one second of this journey that wish to forget.
People frequently ask me how re-entry is going and honestly I wish I knew. The reality of it all has yet to fully hit me. I know that I stare at my faucet when I go to brush my teeth and have to remind myself that I can use that water. I know that I miss my squad, miss living life in a constant community full of believers. I know that I long for a pipping hot fresh cup of chai in India. I know that I miss airport terminals, I NEVER thought I would say that. I know that I feel strange when I walk into a room and people do not stop and stare at me. In that same breath, I know that I am grateful for sweet reunions, for people who are a safe place to land. I am grateful for friends who you can laugh and cry with while sitting on a couch catching up for hours. I am very grateful for free drinking water nearly everywhere I go, hot showers and the numerous pillows piled up on my bed at home. I am grateful for this time to enjoy my hometown. I am grateful for the ability to be home for the holidays and celebrate Jesus’s birth with those who are dear to me.
I have found myself returning to my precious river town to find it the same in so many ways and yet different. I feel that way too. That I have come back the same, but different. I have grown and been stretched in ways I would have never dreamed of. I have a deeper, more intimate relationship with Christ that ever before. I have more security in who I am and my identity is more deeply rooted in Him. Yet, I am still in many ways the same girl that left eleven months ago. I am still mildly addicted to coffee, have the same appreciation for quality breakfast food, still love cows and still firmly believe that my sisters make the cutest babies. To feel the same and completely different is hard to explain. To find myself attempting to figure out where I belong in a place that used to be all I know is a unique situation. I am honestly very unsure how to navigate this season. Home has been weird for a hundred years and wonderful for just as many. Home. Even that word feels different as I roll it around on my tongue now.
There are three things I know with absolute certainty: I am blessed to have had the opportunity to go on the Race, I am blessed to be home with my people and I am blessed to serve the loving God that I do.
I love you all and I am insanely grateful to those of you who have supported me on this journey.
All my love,
Bekah
