My name is Morgan and for the last 11 months I have been traveling. I’ve lived in a new country every month, a new city every few weeks, and this is now my new normal. The only things that has been consistent during this time has been my backpack, my family of 24 (I-Squad), and of course, the Lord.
For the past 11 months, that has been home for me. In a week, my time traveling with come to an end, I will repack my backpack one last time. I will fly back to the place I have lived my entire life, a place I love very much, my actual home. You’d think that I’d be excited, but honestly right now I feel like I have amnesia, because home doesn’t feel like home.
Right now it feels like the most unnatural thing in the world to go right back to where I started.
I feel like I need to explain. Don’t hear this and think that I feel like I could travel this way forever- because I can’t. Its so easy to get burnt out on this much constant change. Home has been a place I have thought of and even longed for throughout my time abroad. Home is comfortable and familiar and easy, but I haven’t been comfortable, experienced anything familiar, or done anything easy in a year.
Everything feels foreign now.
Going home feels like going out to lunch with an ex-boyfriend: a little awkward and uncomfortable, because something/someone, that was so familiar to you has now become unfamiliar and you’re stuck in a limbo of knowing so much about a person/place, while at the same time so much has changed, so how much do you really know?
I don’t want to be someone who over exaggerates what I’m feeling- I mean you’re probably thinking that a year isn’t that long to be away and I should just calm down. But the thing is I feel like I’ve been away for a lifetime. I feel like a different person than the one who left Jacksonville on August 3rd, 2018.
I feel a little overwhelmed by the expectation of what returning home means. I know there will be questions, I know that people, to some extent, will want me to fit right back into the life I was living before I left. I don’t know what going home will look like for me. I don’t know how I fit into the life that I left, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to. Maybe I’m only feeling like this right now and as soon as I get home it won’t feel weird anymore, I just don’t know.
I don’t know a lot of things.
What I do know is that part of why this transition will be so hard is because I am mourning this year of my life ending. I know that this isn’t the end of these season of traveling and serving the Lord, but it is the end of living and doing live with my family of 24, its the end of the freedom of being away, and getting a fresh start every month with new people who have no idea who I am, and its the end of this specific journey, which I have loved so much.
I say all of this to be honest, which is something that I have always tried to be through my blogs. I say all of this while also being so incredibly excited to go home. I can’t wait to see my sister, my family, my friends, my cats, I can’t wait to drive again, to wear my own clothes, eat familiar food, or sleep in a comfortable bed. I can’t wait to hear sermons in English, and go to the beach to watch the sunrise.
I still love Jacksonville. It will always be my home, it just doesn’t feel like it right now.
I know that this is going to be a good thing, but sometimes good things are still hard, so I leave you with this:I need grace.
Grace for when I am overwhelmed, grace for when I am sad, grace for when I am missing my World Race family, grace for when spending $5 on a meal feels like the same as spending $100 and I just can’t do it. Grace for when I’m forgetful, grace I don’t know the answer to your question, grace for where my opinions have changed, grace for my new 9pm bedtime, grace for when I make an inside joke that no one will understand, grace for the times when I need to rest and decompress, grace for when I talk about that one time that I did that thing in that one country, grace for my new habits and card game addiction.
Just grace, and a lot of it.
And in return, I’m going to be working on grace too. Grace for when someone doesn’t understand, grace for when someone asks me one of those super general questions that I just can’t answer, grace for when I freak out and do anything in the list above.
And when your grace and my grace isn’t enough, I fall back on the promises of God:
“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about weaknesses, so that Christ’s power my rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 9:10)
This is going to be a time of a lot of mess ups and weaknesses, but through and in those things, this is also going to be a time of resting in the power and presence of the Lord, and trusting Him plan for my life.
I love you guys, I really do. I am blessed. I can’t wait to see you all so soon.
If you want to read more about what reentry has looked like for other Racers, here are some great blogs to read written by my teammates:
Much Love,
Morgan
As always, I invite you to make my journey, your journey. Here are four simple ways:
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