After eleven months of traveling around the world, never spending more than a month in one place, I have been home in America for a week now. I’ve done a lot of processing, a lot of thinking, a lot of celebrating, a lot of trying to regain a sense of normalcy. I’m sleeping in my own bed, wearing my old clothes, driving my car, doing all the things that this former version of myself used to do. But, though I can’t quite put my finger on what, it just feels off.
I’ve gone to the park every morning since being home and run. This was something I missed severely in the last year. I can’t even tell you how free and wonderful it feels to decide I want to run; to be able to get in my car, drive myself to the park, and just run. For however long I want, wherever I want, listening to whatever music I want. It’s pure freedom, in every sense of the word. I’m not an athletic person by any means, but I do like to push and prove to myself that I can do hard things. That I can surprise myself, and accomplish something that seemed really challenging and requires a bit of physical and mental strength. Before I left for the Race, I would dig deep during runs and tell myself “if you can’t finish this, how are you going to do the World Race?” “if you can’t beat yesterday’s time, how will you travel the world for a year?” Without consciously deciding to, this morning while running and finishing my last half mile when everything in me wanted to just quit, I found myself thinking, “you can do this, you just did the World Race!” I did something incredibly hard this year that required so much more physical, mental, and emotional strength than I can even describe. There were more than a few times that I wanted to quit, to pack my bags and go home because God was asking too much of me and I was just done. But, by His strength and grace, I didn’t. I dug deep and I finished the Race. This morning, I finished my run off of that same knowledge.
So many wonderful friends and family members have reached out to me in the last week, welcomed me home, asked intentional questions about my year, and made me feel so supported as I’m navigating this transition home. It isn’t easy. I have about a million different emotions in a single day, and answering even just a simple “how are you?” feels impossible most of the time. During a church service the other night, I saw a father walking and holding hands with his toddler son and I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion thinking about the fact that something so simple and normal in America is a sight I almost never saw in the last year. I thought about orphaned children in Ethiopia who have no one to care for them, no parents or family, let alone a father who loves and chooses them. I’ve been overwhelmed with the state of our government, and the hate and division in our country right now. I’ve felt such a heaviness in my spirit, coming home to arguably the biggest mission field of all and our western culture that values success, wealth, and image above all.
The last few days especially, I’ve felt like I’m trying to fit myself back into a life that just isn’t for me anymore. I’m home, living my life and doing things that a year ago I never thought twice about. Now, I don’t quite feel like I belong here in America anymore. But, I also know that home in the States is where the Lord has called me for the foreseeable future. So how do you navigate when you feel like you don’t belong? How do you integrate eleven months worth of countercultural lessons into your life that changed dramatically, but your environment and community you’re returning to didn’t?
I used to read about the Israelites in the Old Testament and shake my head a lot. We all do. They just couldn’t get anything right. God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the promised land, but, we all know the stories, it didn’t take long for them to mess everything up time and time again. In this time of reentry, however, I’m understanding a lot more of the Israelites’ perspectives. They knew the Lord was their Savior and celebrated their freedom from slavery, but after leaving Egypt, they roamed for years and years without a home. They didn’t belong anywhere. It’s easier to understand why they then fell back into spiritual slavery and were consumed with the sin and evil of this world. When you’re chasing a sense of belonging, it opens up your heart and mind to the very first and most available thing that’s going to fill it.
The Lord recently reminded me in a not-so-subtle way that the same God who met me every morning at sunrise in Uganda is the same one meeting me here in my mess at home in America. He’s the same, even when I change, push Him away, hide my heart and grow frustrated. He’s the same. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere, because I’m not meant to. For the first time, my citizenship has finally dropped from head knowledge and sunk deep down into heart knowledge.
“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let all of us who are mature think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. In any case, we should live up to whatever truth we have attained. Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us. For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame. They are focused on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.” Philippians 3:12-21
No matter where I lay my head to rest in this life, I won’t belong. My physical location will never change the sweet, sweet fact that my citizenship is in heaven! I don’t belong in America, in Belize, in Honduras, in El Salvador, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Albania, in Serbia, in Romania, in Ethiopia, in Rwanda, or in Uganda, because I was never meant to. We were always meant to dwell with God the Father, our Creator. I don’t have a country, an earthly citizenship, or a nationality that defines me.
But I do have a heaven, a home, and a Father.
Essential tracks for the reentering missionary:
Strahan– Already Home
Josh Garrels– Home At Last
The Greatest Showman Soundtrack– From Now On
Michael Kiwanuka– I’m Getting Ready
United Pursuit– Never Going Back
