I’m currently sitting/sweating at the train station back in Bucharest, Romania, where we launched from a little over a month ago. It’s strange being back here with a feeling of familiarity & being excited to see things like “normal letters” rather than the Greek-like letters used in Bulgaria…even though I still can’t understand what it says. Today’s ventures around the city (rather than hanging out at the train station & waiting for 10 hours) included taking the Metro to the mall where we walked around for who knows how long, took full advantage of tester perfumes after the not-so-pleasant-smelling train ride, & smartly stored our extra lunch napkins to use as tp on the upcoming train ride. Good times. Anyways, we took a 13-hour train ride from Bulgaria to here & will be taking another train later on today for about that same amount of time to Oradea, Romania. There we will spend this next month with another team at an orphanage!
It’s weird to think that month 1 is done. On one hand I feel like I’ve been in Bulgaria for years, & I’m not sure how I feel about the prospect of going through this process 10 more times. On the other hand, it’s crazy to think that part of this journey is done, & it definitely wasn’t fun to say goodbye to some of the people we left.
We were blessed with the opportunity to visit the Black Sea this past weekend, which also happened to fall on my birthday. After spending all day Saturday at the beach, we went to the place we were staying for the night & had supper. Afterwards, everyone at the table sang “Happy Birthday” to me, and I just had a moment where I thought to myself, “Where am I, & who are these people?!” I just spent my birthday on the beach at the Black Sea in Bulgaria, with 5 random Americans I knew nothing about until like a month ago along with some Bulgarians. That’s crazy. Never in my life would I have planned that. And it was so amazing.
I guess that’s just one more sign that God’s got this whole thing under control. I’ve been reading through the book of Exodus lately, and thinking about the Israelites leaving Egypt & all that jazz. And they really just didn’t get it most of the time. God did some ridiculously awesome stuff when leading them out of Egypt & through the desert. Yet they always found something to complain about, even to the point of idealizing their lives in slavery in Egypt over the Promised Land God was leading them to. Sometimes I kinda feel like I'm in that same boat.
It reminds me of one of my favorite Sara Groves songs, "Painting Pictures of Egypt," which says:
The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy to discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
Caught between the promise
And the things I know
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future feels so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I've learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned
I still find myself thinking about what ifs & could’ve beens in regards to what I’d be doing right now if I wasn’t on this race…and when I’m really honest about it, I know it just wouldn’t be all I’ve got it cracked up to be in my mind. But still I catch myself making up some idealized version of what could be rather than enjoying where I am. And it’s times like this past weekend when I just take it all in & realize that God really is in control…and nothing I could come up with on my own can compare to that. Good things are ahead! Month 2, here we go!
