This past week, homesickness has plagued me like I never expected it to. The closer July 31st gets, the farther away it feels.
I crave home. I crave the comfort of my own room. I crave the smell of real coffee waking me up in the morning.
I crave a night of sitting on a couch, ignoring the papers that need to be written, eating a cookie log with my best friend while she records Dance Moms (because watching it once just isn’t enough).
I crave being able to go to a restaurant and read the menu. I crave being able to open a closet door instead of unzipping a packing cube.
I crave the feeling of walking up and down the aisles of libraries and secondhand bookstores (browsing the Amazon Kindle store just isn’t the same).
And you know what?
I’m tired.
I’m tired of waking up every morning and realizing these five faces are the same five faces I have seen for months and will see for two more months.
I’m tired of carrying AIM phones and AIM credit cards. (And maybe responsibility too. Can’t I just be an irresponsible 20-something again for a hot minute?)
I’m tired of feedback. I’m tired of team time.
I’m tired of weird cravings for a night spent by myself or frozen blueberries.
Nine months is a long time. To be away from home, to be packing up every 30 days while ripping your heart out and moving countries, to be eating strange foods, to be attempting to learn phrases in so many different languages – it’s a long, long time.
You can have a baby in nine months.
You can make it to Mars in nine months.
You can grow four and a half inches of hair in nine months. Unless of course, you’re on the World Race and your hair is constantly falling out (I’m not bitter or anything).
In nine months, you can also step foot in eleven countries (fourteen if you count our layovers in Japan, Turkey and Kenya when we didn’t leave the airport). You can miraculously gain all the qualifications to be an English teacher, a preacher, a coach, a painter, a brick layer, a cement-mixer, a gardener, a farmer, a worship leader, and more.
It’s exhausting. And honestly, your good motives behind coming on the Race aren’t going to be enough to push through. They may carry you for a while, but those good motives aren’t sufficient for the amount of fatigue you feel after nine months of carrying the world in your heart (and your life in a backpack).
The good news is this – there’s something a bit better than good motives that carries us through the homesickness, the cravings, the bad days, the discouragement, and the endless torture of packing:
Jesus Himself.
Jesus’s faithfulness wakes me up in the mornings and pushes me forward in the heat of the afternoon.
He is faithful when I am faithless.
He endures when I give up.
He is more committed to my (and your) continuity than I am, because He is more committed to His fame and His glory than I could ever be.
He is more than able to endure and persevere.
And because He is, I am.
Nine months may be a long time, but there’s two more long months ahead.
Two more months of living out of packing cubes.
Two more months of foreign places, foreign foods, foreign smiles and foreign SIM cards in old school AIM phones.
Two more months of 24/7 community.
It’s exhausting to think about, but day by day He carries me.
He’s done it for the past 22 years of my life, and He’ll do it right on into eternity. I’d say that’s worth it.
