Bare with me. This blog post is very long, but it was very important that I write it out.
I’ve been home for 27 days. 30 days ago I received the news I was going to be leaving our ministry site in Thailand and coming back to my home in Smyrna, Georgia. 30 days ago a metaphorical cage began building around me – a cage of emotions. Upon hearing the news we were going home I immediately felt sad, but not the “Friends isnt on Netflix anymore” kind of sad. Not the “a friend doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore” kind of sad. No. This was an intense sadness. This was the kind of sadness that falls under the same category as loss. Grief which is defined as “deep sorrow”. This word is most often used to describe emotions about death and how we feel losing someone that we love, but can also be used to describe loss in general. Upon hearing the news that we would be leaving the mission field to come home, grief began laying the foundation for my cage of emotions.
“Morgan don’t you think that’s a little selfish? That you’re feeling GRIEF when there are people in this world who actually ARE losing loved ones in general and even due to this virus?” No I don’t believe it’s selfish. Do I need to recognize I’m not the only human feeling grief? Absolutely. Do I need to be sensitive to the root cause of my grief in comparison to the root cause of others grief? Absolutely.. but does it make me selfish? No. This grief is real and no one can argue that it isn’t because they aren’t living my life. I am the only one living this life. The closest people to living this life with me are my squad mates. “But Morgan… it was just a missions trip. It was basically like traveling the world. Oh poor you that you had to come home early…” – I’m not going to listen to that either and the reason why? Because anyone that might say that to me definitely doesn’t or didn’t know my heart behind going overseas and didn’t understand the gravity and weight of leaving my home for a year to abandon life as I knew it to be. I spent 7 months preparing for this Jesus journey. I’m pretty sure that that is the longest I have ever prepared for a single event in my entire life completely out of my own decision (along with Jesus of course). 7 months of praying and asking Jesus to close this door if it wasn’t what He wanted for me. 7 months of talking about it with family and friends. 7 months of thinking about it. 7 months of fundraising. 7 months of occasional tears. 7 months of packing and repacking and packing and repacking. 7 months of “am I crazy? Am I actually doing this for a whole year?” 7 months preparing to leave all my family and all of my friends. 7 months of excitement for this opportunity to love others and experience cultures and grow in DEEP community with my squad. Those 7 months included 10 days full of learning how to share the Gospel with people and learning how the Good News is good news to people in other cultures. 10 days of bonding with my squad and growing deeper with them. 10 days of worship like I’ve NEVER experienced before and leaning more and more on Jesus. Those 7 months were crazy and hard and critical and important and fun and exciting and sad. All the emotions. But I’m getting ahead of myself..
…those were just the months between applying for the race and physically leaving the country…
Its January 2020. The month I leave. The month my life completely changes. Everything I started to do I thought of in terms of the race. At Passion 2020 I remember worshipping alongside my friends and thanking God for them and crying, tears streaming down my face, all at the same time because in the next week and a half I would be venturing into a year of life going so long without being able to see them or possibly even talk to them regularly. I began to hug my family more often and for longer. I began to savor my favorite foods. I began to become more emotional. At my send off party, just 2 days before leaving for Launch, I remember holding my people a little longer. Talking a little slower. Taking mental pictures of everything and worshipping with everyone a little bigger. Maybe I put too much hope into the race? Maybe I put too much excitement into the race.. but maybe.. just maybe.. I was just excited for all that was going to happen during the next year of my life..
..because I gave Him my yes. He asked me to do something I would normally think was INSANE, something I would never have chosen for myself just because. It was too big a deal for that! I’ve spent a lot of my life living out of fear. “I could never do that..” etc etc. so this was no different right? WRONG. It was completely different because Jesus so clearly laid the path for me. He so clearly laid it on my heart. He so clearly kept every door to the race O P E N.
Now it’s Launch and I, yet again, spend several days with my squad. Intentionally worshipping. Learning all that we can about the next year of my life. Walking through more training. We cry as a squad and laugh as a squad. We show one another all the notes our friends and families have taken so much time to sit and write out for each one of us. All the photos we have of those we love back home. We introduce our families to one another as they join us for the final day of Parent Launch and then comes the kicker.. the goodbyes. ((As I type this I begin to wonder if my emotional cage was being built even before receiving the news of being sent home from the race..))
I was dreading it. All day. Dreading seeing their faces. Dreading the tears. Dreading the last hug. Dreading the last time I would see their smiles in person.. the moment my family and I had been thinking about for 7 months was finally here – the day I had to hug them goodbye. Was I moving away forever? No. Would I see them in 11 months? Yes. Was it more like see you soon than goodbye? Yes. But did that make any of it less hard? Absolutely not. Maybe for some, but not for me. Saying goodbye to my friends and family was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Hugging my mom, dad, brother and sister in law goodbye? Knowing I wouldn’t feel their embrace (as dramatic as that might sound.. I don’t care) for almost a year? I couldn’t imagine it. I’d never done that before. Ever. The longest I’d ever been far away from home in my 26 years of life was for 2 weeks on mission in Australia. That was it. So I cried my eyes out. Said my goodbyes and as I walked away from them I didn’t look back. 48 hours later I found myself on a plane to Indonesia.
Month 1 of the race was a blur for me full of newness and pain and sadness and excitement. It was one of the strangest months of my life and I can vividly remember waking up the first 2 mornings in Indonesia both bewildered at where I was and then immediately crying as I realized I wasn’t home. Not only was I not at home, I was in a strange place where I didn’t recognize anything and hardly anyone spoke my language. I remember that first morning waking up in my tent, outside on a slab of concrete in 90 something degree weather and wondering what I had done. What had I agreed to? That first month was a month of learning. Learning how to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. How to not just get out of my comfort zone but JUMP out of my comfort zone. It was learning how to mourn the loss of the life I left behind and how to feel, but not dwell on the aching I felt for hugs from my mom, jokes from my dad, laughs from my brother or girl talk with my sister. It was learning how to drink enough water, remembering that people did NOT speak English and therefore did NOT understand “how much is the rice and chicken with veggies?”, trying to remember to throw my toilet paper in the trash and not flush it down the toilet, figuring out if my stomach ache was from eating Pringle’s and Oreos for breakfast or if it was from something more serious based off my surroundings. It was a month of falling in love with total strangers. Growing as a team of 7 girls and learning what made each one of us tick. Learning a language I never thought I would learn. Being shown kindness and love by people id never met who knew nothing about me. It was a month of not only disciplining myself to get in my Bible every day but discerning HOW to get into my Bible ever day. It was talking about hard things and finding the root cause of some of my emotions. Month one was a blur and as fast as it began, it ended even faster and some of us cried as we left our new sense of normal and our new loved ones.
We processed our emotions and had so much unpacking over the next 5 days at our first full debrief as a squad. We slept in. We ate full meals. We laughed. We worshipped. We dove deeper into time with our 5-6 person teams. We dove deeper into asking and answering questions about Jesus and who He is and how He is. We dove deeper into learning about cultural lenses and Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism. We dove deeper. Next thing I knew we were walking up the stairs to our next ministry site in Penang Malaysia.
Malaysia was a dream. It was a month of even more growth than I thought could possibly happen. It was a month of routine and feeling more “at home” on the race. It was a month of making more personal connections with people on my team and a month of diving deeper into Jesus’ heart than I thought possible. It was a month of learning not to care what people thought about me and worshipping how and where I wanted to. It was a month of learning the discernment and voice of Holy Spirit and trusting His voice more and more. It was a month of realizing that sitting in the presence of Jesus and just sitting with Him for 7 hours could actually feel like 7 minutes. It was a month learning that even an extrovert like me could actually need their space and learning how to find places of space in a room of zero space. It was a month of raising up new team leaders and saying goodbye to alumni team leaders. It was a month of realizing that I don’t have to do some major, life altering thing to serve someone or share Jesus with them. That even showing kindness to someone through handing them some coffee and a piece of bread or helping women hang and iron clothes was absolutely serving them and absolutely serving the Lord.
We processed our emotions on a smaller scale this time for 2 days instead of 5, but none the less we processed our emotions as a team and as a squad. We sat with one another. Shared moments from our past month. Ate meals together. Laughed together cried and missed friends and family together. We dreamed about future months together – what they would hold and what they would produce within our lives. We had gotten into a bit of a rhythm with one another and I was ALL. ABOUT. IT.
Next thing we knew it was time to load up again and head to Thailand. Wow. Month 3. The land of “elephant pants” and “the best Asian food” I had heard. We traveled for about 24 hours before splitting up into teams and some of us arriving in the afternoon of March 12th in Chiang Mai. We were met with delicious Thai food and the sweetest host and we spent the evening getting settled. The next day we had a hilarious morning with 2 of our other hosts during a 3 hour orientation on Thai culture and what to expect during our month in Thailand. How to greet Thai people, how to be respectful, what to do and not to do and how to make the Good News good news to people of Thai culture. We spent the evening in Chiang Mai exploring the Night Market, laughing, buying our own elephant pants and learning more about our home for the next month as the next morning we were headed to our ministry sites. We spent the night watching a movie together and having popcorn and then praying and interceding over teams we had heard, via email from our leadership team, would be headed home early from their race. They were teams that had left back in October of 2019 and were being brought home due to some countries closing their borders due to the Corona virus. We were heartbroken for them and we prayed for their transition home and for peace.
Now..let me pause for a sec:
“Gosh Morgan.. you’ve written a book so far and haven’t mentioned the virus once” correct. Because to us, on the race, it wasn’t on our radar. We knew and had seen via social media and talking to family that the virus was growing, but because of our immediate surroundings at the time, it wasn’t something on our mind.
Saturday morning, March 14th, exactly one month ago today, my team of 6 finished packing up and headed the 3-4 hours north, into the mountains, to Fang Thailand (Wiang Fang to be precise). We met our new host for the month and along the way up, we stopped and he introduced us to a pastor friend of his and his wife and we ended up having the sweetest hour or 2 with them, laying hands and praying over members of their church and having coffee and bananas. We got to Fang and arrived at our home for the month. It was a place full of potential. Potential for growth as a team and creating a new team dynamic, for planting seeds both physically and metaphorically, for a month of new habits and getting to meet so many new people. We were so excited as this would be our first month as a team of 6, with a new team lead and on a farm in the cool mountains of Thailand. We unpacked, went to the grocery store and purchased personal and team items for the month, we ate a meal together, we worshipped with the staff at the farm and then we headed to bed. The next morning we all woke up and prepared ourselves for church. We did our hair and got on our nicer clothes and planned out who would be leading worship and who would give the message out of the 6 of us.
“We’re going back to the US because of the virus.”
“After staff devotions, breakfast and church we will take a bus back down the mountain to Chiang Mai and then AIM would like for us to try and fly out of Thailand as soon as possible. They’re working on our flights as we speak.”
“New plan. Now we’re not going to church we have 15 minutes to pack up and get in the truck. Our host is taking us to the bus station where we will get on a 3 hour bus to Chiang Mai and AIM is going to try and get us on flights home as a squad by tonight.”
The plans are in place. The blueprints have been finalized. The foundation is being laid. My cage of emotions is now a work in progress. Moment by moment from the time my TL, Samantha, read that email to us in me and my teammate Megan’s room as I sat in my church dress, my cage of emotions was being built. Tear by tear. Confusion to anger. Heartbreak to frustration.
- My first emotion was pure heartbreak. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. I ran out of the room and fell to my knees and cried harder than I had in the longest time. I hit the ground with my first. I silently pleaded with Jesus that this wasn’t real because He had ASKED ME to take this journey. He had laid specific countries on my heart that I hadn’t been to yet.
- My next emotion was denial. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. I wasn’t ready yet. I hadn’t learned enough yet. I hadn’t seen enough yet. I hadn’t gotten to know my team or squad deep enough yet. This couldn’t be the end. This can’t be happening this way. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
- Next was anger. Why would you do this Jesus? Why would you ask for my yes to leave my home and family and friends and comfort only to send me right back home after such a short time? Why did I even do this? What was the point? You couldn’t have had this virus happen last year? Or before we left the country? Why did you even lay Nepal so heavy on my heart if I’m not even going there now? Why would you do this?
- Confusion. If I’m feeling these emotions about having to the leave the race… did I do it for Him or for myself? If I know Jesus’ plan is PERFECT and His timing is PERFECT and He knows what He’s doing and He knows the desires of my heart and I’m still heartbroken to leave this journey.. then did I come for my own gain or for His Kingdom and glorification?
- Back to heartbreak. If I am sad that I’m leaving and that DOES mean that I came on this race for my own gain… then what kind of Christian am I? How could I live that way? How could I do that?
And on and on the cycle goes. More bars added to the cage of emotions quickly being built around me.
72 hours later we were stateside and within an hour of landing in Washington DC my squad started splitting up. Some had to catch flights home that night. One had to catch a flight back to Australia alone before any of us. I spent every day of the past 2 months with them and within a matter of an hour we had been split up, not knowing when we would see one another again. For some that might not have mattered much. For some we had only been close for a few months and that was ok because they had large communities waiting for them back home. However for me? My community back home is rather small. No fault but my own for not being more involved back home, but that was a big deal for me with the race – building community – and now that community was suddenly, and without hardly any warning or preparation, dispersed with no promise of reuniting again. Especially not in the same way. More and more bars were being added to my cage of emotions.
18 hours after landing in DC, I was walking through my front door in Smyrna, GA. The sign in our kitchen still read “Go shine your light Morgan. We will miss you!” from my send off party. Everything was exactly the same and yet everything was drastically different. I couldn’t hug my family. I couldn’t get my own food from the kitchen. I couldn’t walk outside or take a drive without anyone’s help – the virus took my independence from me those first 2 weeks back at home. I was in self quarantine in my room and we agreed I wouldn’t touch anything expect what was in my room and bathroom. My emotional cage was nearly finished and it was feeling small and strong. Days passed and no one from my team or squad really spoke as we tried to process what the HECK had just happened. I tried to create my own routine in my room – waking up and opening blinds, making my bed, reading my Bible and trying to keep the door on my emotional cage from locking me in.
I’d like to say at this part of this INCREDIBLY LONG NOVEL of a blog post that something awesome happened and I broke the cage door off it’s hinges and began to disassemble the emotional cage that surrounded me bar by bar or something like that, but unfortunately that part of the story hasn’t happened.. yet. Day to day I just keep trying to keep the door on my emotional cage from locking me in. Today I woke up from a dream I had that we were all back on the race together. Me and my whole squad together again living life on The World Race. I blinked a few times and recognizing where I was, realized it was all a dream. I noticed the sun blasting through my blinds. I opened them and let my room flood with sunlight and then made my bed and cleaned up my room. I sat on my bed looking at the bluest sky E V E R and thought to myself “why can’t you just feel happy today Morgan? If the sky is that blue and Jesus is still so good and He sees you and has a plan for you, then why can’t you just feel HAPPY?” and that was when I came up with the title for this blog because as I realized all the beautiful goodness around me, I also realized a cloud surrounding me – that I was feeling caged in by my emotions surrounding the race. Does that sound dramatic and hopeless and sad? Probably. Are my feelings surrounding the race bigger or more important than people struggling all around the world with this virus, losing their jobs or losing their loved ones? ABSOLUTELY NOT and I hope that in absolutely no way is that somehow communicated to someone who reads this. This is about me and my emotions and what I am sorting through and walking through currently in my own life while trying to also be sensitive to those around the world. Is this where my story ends or will end? No it’s not. I know this isn’t the end of my Jesus journey. Of course its not, but I also know that disassembling this emotional cage full of confusion and anger and heartbreak and sadness and frustration surrounding me is going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort.
Jesus is still good.
He is still in control.
He sees me.
This is not the end of the world and
He still has the best plan for me.
BUT
What happened feels traumatic.
This is HEAVY.
This is hard.
This is heartbreaking and
These emotions are very real.
If youve read this far, THANK YOU for reading this enormous blog post.
