Written 5 September 2012
One year ago today, I left. I left my home, my family and friends, my native country… I left all of the familiar trappings of my daily life and exchanged them for an unknown.
As I prepared for that inevitable moment on September 5th, 2011, I felt like an adult in training. I was a girl with a dream, a hope, that God really was as big and good and faithful and beautiful as I had been told. And while I may have looked calm and composed and excited to the people around me, inside I was terrified. Sometimes I feel like if I hadn’t have been made a team leader at training camp, I would have found a way to back out. It felt like I was taking a running leap off of a cliff into some potentially fatal chasm of only God knew what — but that’s just it. God did know what I was getting into, and He loved that little girl dream in my heart that forced me to look up at Him shyly, hopefully, and ask, “Is it real? Are the stories real? Are You true?”
It took me eleven months to begin to grasp just how real and good and true He really is… and then one day, it was over. After nearly a year of traveling and feedbacking and investing in local ministries, I left again — only this time, I was going back to that American, everyday kind of life that I had left behind initially. In some ways, it was just as bittersweet as leaving home had been so many months earlier; once again, I was trading a family, a new normal, a familiar way of doing things for something unknown… Sure, it was going to be “home” and in English and my mom and dad and brothers and sister would be with me, but it was still another unknown, another chasm of only God knew what. And ready or not, I was taking a running leap.
The last six weeks have been so many things. At first, the weirdest part of coming home was how normal I felt…I mean, I cried when my big brother picked me up from the airport and again when I crawled into my own bed for the first time and again when I sprawled out on the plush grass of my front lawn, but it was overwhelmingly good. Being reunited with my family and friends has been sweet. Sometimes conversations come easily; other times, I feel inarticulate as I stutter through an answer to simple questions, but overall, it has been a sweet, sweet time. The simple pleasures of daily life at home — spending time with my parents, meeting a friend for a drink, driving myself around — have a kind of flavor that I’ve never noticed before. I really, really love being back in America and back with the people and things that I missed so much last year.
But on the other hand, there are moments and days where I feel listless and sad for no apparent reason. Reentry has been really hard and frustrating in some ways that are difficult to articulate. I don’t want to be anywhere else, but I also don’t know how to fit what I learned on the World Race into my daily rhythm here yet.
That’s fine, though. I think that’s fine. What it comes down to is the simple fact that the World Race is the hardest, most awful and wonderful and beautiful thing I have ever done… but it’s not the traveling or the ministry or the crazy experiences that made it so great. The eleven months was just a starting point, a diving board into becoming who God created me to be. If done well, I think that the “World Race” as a concept is supposed to melt into the background of life, quickly fading as the coolest thing ever and instead highlighting a way of living that will align the rest of my life. It has been the most influential experience of my life, in that I now know how to access God in deeper, more incredible ways than ever before. And that is what I’m going to take away from it all — not just the memories or the lifelong friends or the demolished clothes or the skin disease I think I got from my quick-dry towel. No. Over the last year, I was invited into a way of knowing God and following Him that would have been nearly impossible to figure out in my comfort zone. But now that I have learned it, my new challenge is to figure out what to do with that old comfort zone of mine; I don’t really want it anymore, because I have a new picture of what my world and life can look like at the hands of this big, real, true God I serve.
This I know: our God does not disappoint. He is bigger and better than your wildest thoughts and maybe, just maybe, if you let Him show you, He’ll prove it. So that is my song for this next season, however long it lasts, and I am so, so grateful that I was handed this opportunity to live and learn like I did last year. I’m beyond thankful for all of the love, support, and encouragement from you, my readers and supporters — truly, I will never be able to effectively thank you.
So I’m signing off on this blog for now. Thank you for following these adventures… I hope that Jesus used them to encourage you and maybe to show you a world that is a little bit bigger than we previously knew. Once I’m settled in my new apartment and have figured out the ins and outs of my new job [both of which I have, by the way], my goal is to start a new blog, which I’ll link here. Writing is one of my very favorite forms of worship and I’m excited to continue this adventure with Jesus and my blog and hopefully you.
Thank you again… stay tuned for the next chapter, coming soon!
