There’s a girl in my house, walking around my room, wearing my clothes. It was her house, they were her clothes. She knows that’s supposed to be the truth anyway, supposed to be reality. Her eyes wander around, looking at all the things that once belonged to another girl. So many things, so much clutter.
She looks in the closet, at all the shoes and clothes and things. After living out of a backpack for a year, one might think it looks like a lot of clothes and shoes. It does… But a backpack looks like a lot to so many more people. It’s sobering…it’s confusing. In the closet, some of the shoes would be called “worn out,” loved since high school, but worn out looks different now. Worn out are the shirts with too many holes and tears to count, sported by little boys with big dreams as they chase their makeshift footballs. Worn out are the dresses, rips closed by tying the sides of each hole together, clothing little girls as they follow the strange munu* as they walk in the village to buy chapati.** Worn out are the weathered faces of hardworking men and women in the fields beside one of the deepest lakes in the world. Worn out, also, are the faces of affluent businessmen and women taking their children to work as they glide through the streets on their motos. Worn out has more meanings now, more faces.
She looks in the mirror, liking her makeupless face but wondering if or how she’ll wear it again. For today, makeup is too new, too foreign…she needs normal. Instead of using her new phone, a blessing from insurance, she uses one she bought in Rwanda. This one has all the pictures from the past two months, this one brings a piece of normalcy. She lays in a bed, her bed apparently. She’s surrounded by cozy, fuzzy blankets and fluffy pillows with air-conditioning AND a ceiling fan both moving cool air around despite the heat outside. She can’t help but wonder at the opulence of it all. She can’t help but question what to do with the luxury of it all. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s a piece that once fit perfectly but doesn’t quite anymore.
That other girl, the one who once fit, is gone. She never sat and sang and cared in the mountains of Honduras. She never writhed and cried and sweat under growth pains in the heat of Cambodia. She never realized her past and began to face and share it in the beauty of Albania. She never saw and held and loved in the villages of Uganda. She had fewer piercings, no tattoos, and no idea the amazing things God could do and say and work in just eleven months. She never knew there could be so much more, so much better.
Her eyes again wander around the room, the room that once belonged to the other girl. They see all that needs to be done, all the clutter and unused clothes and things that just don’t belong anymore. There’s a lot of work to do. Her eyes light on a vase of flowers next to a note and she smiles. She wonders how the life that once was hers will be recreated and reborn, even as she was. She wonders when and how she will begin with God to make a new place in this room, this house, this life, a place in which she fits, if only for a season. Maybe she never will truly fit. Life isn’t meant to be comfortable despite what the fuzzy blankets and fluffy pillows seem to say. She doesn’t want to fall back into that old life either. It was so good, but she doesn’t belong there anymore. There’s something new, something good, something even better that’s coming. It just might take a little while to see it. So, for now, there’s a girl in my house, walking around my room, wearing my clothes.
*munu (or “muzungu,” depending on the region you’re in) = white person
**chapati = an unleavened, fried, flat bread (somewhat similar to nan or tortillas)
