I am home.
I have been home for about two months now.
Many times I would start to right a post about being home, but I could never find the right words to type out. But on a Saturday night at 9:50pm, I think I finally have the words.
Being home hasn’t been easy. In some ways coming home has felt like a rug has just been snatched up from under me. It feels like everything that felt normal before, doesn’t.
Before I left for home, Adventures in Missions prepared us with the possible scenarios about what it would be like when we came home. They said you might be able to jump right back into life, you might take some time to process, you might break down crying in Walmart. I didn’t know which of the options I would be, but I certainly didn’t expect to be the one crying in Walmart; I was. Before I left, I didn’t have a home church, two different churches were supporting me in my missions trip, both of them wonderful, but neither my home church. Now coming home, I have had to find a church and build a new community all over again. Boy, it’s been hard.
I saw, poverty, evangelizing as a natural everyday thing, literally going to the middle of the Himalayas to preach the Gospel and living with an entire tribe that converted to believing in God as their true Savior (still don’t understand how when I tell Christians here about this they don’t rejoice or fully understand that GOD SAVED AN ENTIRE TRIBE IN INDIA). The church in America is not the same as what I saw in other countries. And that’s not entirely bad, we simply don’t have poverty like we do in other countries and most people here confess that they know Jesus, so church here looks a little different. In church we have growth track to get involved in church, there are lights, projectors, full band, life groups, video announcements and time limits for a church service. At the end of church, I feel exhausted. Exhausted finding where I fit in, who I can connect with, where I should build community, trying to develop relationships, finding where I should “serve in church.” I wake up most Sunday mornings and think, “should I go again?”. Then I go, come home and then lay on the floor. It’s a cycle.
I’m struggling with church, community & western culture.
When people ask what I am doing now, two months off the field, I say I’m looking for a job. The next question they ask is if I have any hobbies, I either reply with a shrug or say I garden, but little do they know my garden is currently in a bunch of pots on my front porch and about 70% of them are dying. When I tell people I am still looking for a job, I feel like I’m letting them down. I feel like I’m even letting strangers down when they ask me. I have tried and am trying. I know once I get a job I will be planted for awhile. I just can’t bear to have a job that doesn’t serve any purpose. Right now I am looking to work with adults with special needs. I believe that my brother, who has special needs, is a gift. While it may not always seem like that, I know that he is. He has taught me how to care for people with special needs & I think it would be such a waste if I didn’t use my experience when I clearly have the ability to. I want to use it as my next mission field for the time being. I think that there is such a lack of people sharing the Gospel with those who have special needs, but that is a blog post for another time.
I’m struggling with next steps.
I don’t want you to think I am a bum. I’m not, I swear. Because honestly I don’t think I could let down another friend, acquaintance or stranger with the answer, “I don’t know”, to their question of, “what are you doing now?” I simply don’t know. I know that God is in charge of my every hour and every second of everyday. I know that my heart is burdened for people, for missions, and for the western church. I lay awake at night and think about these things. I don’t know that next step to take besides getting a job. So I am doing that & I am trusting God in the process and taking next steps as they come; and showing up to interviews.
I’m struggling with what others think of me.
My heart is set on missions, as if that’s a category to chose from for my heart to be set on, like shouldn’t every Christian’s heart be set on missions? Missions meaning telling others about Christ, both locally and/or globally. Missions seems like a choice in church, “You can serve with the kids, the media team, worship or missions”, and even then some churches don’t have missions. If you’re a Christian, your life is a mission for Christ. I digress. I don’t know in the long run what missions in my life will look like. It might be here, it might be another country, it might be both. God has a way of working things out in ways I could have never imagined. He has laid a certain country on my heart, I’m praying on it, but have no idea what it will look like. It seems like every day in some weird and unexpected way I hear about the country. I don’t understand, but it’s too obvious for me to ignore it.
I am struggling with understanding.
In all the struggles, I know God is in the center. I am glad that I am struggling, I even rejoice in it. God changed my life by living overseas as a missionary. I am grateful for what He did in other countries and what He is still doing there. I am grateful that I get to take what I learned and saw and bring it back here and share the testimonies of what God did. I have seen that God is good in all things. That He is worthy of praise in suffering. That He is to be glorified in all things. I have seen that He is worth living and dying for. I will do that, because He is worth it.
