I’ve been home from the race for almost 2 months. Most days, I truly am okay. But in a split second, I remember something and my heart begins to ache again. It happens so suddenly and without warning. I remember the way my squad sang a song together in a foreign country, and now I’m singing that same song in America while driving to the grocery store. I try not to be sad about it. I remember a conversation I had with someone in a rural village in Africa who opened up about her deepest struggles – and none of those struggles had anything to do with the dirt floors and scrappy metal walls that she called home. I remember the way the sun set over rice fields in India on the way to preach, as my team sat silently in the tuk-tuk because that was our time to mentally prepare ourselves for what’s to come. I feel heartbroken when I think about the way people bowed down and kissed our feet, treating us like we were something to be praised. I will never forget that feeling. I remember the time I danced barefoot in the hot African dirt with hundreds of kids, and not a single person on the internet can tell me that’s not the right thing to do. I remember crying on the bathroom floor in Botswana because I was so sick, and all I wanted was a freezing cold shower and 10 bottles of water. But, our village ran out of that precious water for 2 weeks, and we needed to save what little we had left. I have thousands of moments stuck in my head that need to be released.
One second I’m fine, and then I’m suddenly not. It reminds me of when I worked in the ER and random things would trigger memories of a patient dying in front of me. I would grieve it for a little while, and then move on. I guess life just feels weird because I experienced a really hard and beautiful year on this earth and now I’m home and I have to remind myself that all of it was, and is, and always will be true. They’re memories that were alive and real and a gift from God to remind me of how good He is, how perfectly He has created me, and how much work we still have left to do with humanity. It’s funny that I have to remind myself of that. Not funny in a humorous way, but funny as in, “these moments are so sacred that they seem too good to be true, and they actually happened to ME.” Some moments were so bad, I can’t believe it actually was true. But they were moments I never want to forget, because they gave me a new perspective on the earth and everything living on it. Every single second of the race changed me in some way, and it’s hard for me to process that.
Everything here is normal but so foreign at the same time. What even is “normal”? What kind of box do I put that in? Where is the line drawn? After calling 11+ nations home, everything seems to feel “normal” overseas, and foreign here in America. What’s really crazy and uncomfortable to you, is actually my happy place. So, how do you move on? I wake up in the morning knowing my Nepalese friends on the other side of the world are going to sleep. I eat hot meals and have access to grocery stores, knowing that the people I met in squatter camps haven’t had that luxury for years. I sit freely in church, or I don’t even get out of bed to go because I tell myself I need more sleep, while people that I lived with in India worship the Father knowing they could be killed for it at any moment. I turn on lights in my house, with the thought in the back of my mind of families I met in villages in Romania who have no electricity.
But the days keep passing and life goes on.. and as much as that hurts, that’s also the way it should be. Time never ceases, which is more of a reason to fight for your self-growth and the God who allows it. Use every memory as fuel to your fire.. to bring Kingdom here on earth, and to make earth look a little more like heaven.
