Warning:
This blog post my be a bit too melancholy for some readers. If you get super feely you may want to pick a different blog to read. You have been warned…
Not going to lie christmas eve sucked (If only I could express on paper just how much I emphasized that word). Don’t get me wrong I love the christmas season. I love baking cookies, making sweets, decorating, putting up lights, skiing, getting cold, fishtailing on ice, watching the snow, warming your fingers around cup of hot chocolate, watching the christmas parade, watching the corny christmas movies, going to christmas-eve…
Sorry I had to stop myself. The truth of the matter is these last couple of weeks I have been getting hit with some pretty bad homesickness. Homesickness on the race is so strange too. There are a lot of problems that come up on the race. Some things take a couple days to figure out, others a solid hour of prayer could solve it, and even some that take months to figure out. Homesickness has a very simple solution. the only problem is that my solution is currently 5,000 miles away in Menasha, Wisconsin.
The truth of the matter is that there is no solution for homesickness. No matter how many times you tell yourself not to think about it, that hole in your stomach remains. I remember back to the bus ride I had to my ministry host for my month in Ukraine. I sat in front of my squad mate Emma Colon. We started talking about her and how she was starting to feel homesick. I remember trying to tell her to just enjoy the time that she was in. If she was always in the now she would think that she was missing out on anything. I thought I had the cure to homesickness. Then I came to Chile.
Thankfully during my time in Chile I got to live with Emma and her team (Humbly United) and when it came time for me to feel every mile that was in between me and my home I was able to go to Emma and ask for some advice on how to survive this incurable disease. The sad part was that it was just that incurable. the only thing that I could do to keep it from getting overwhelming was to let it in. Feel every part of the loneliness, let it consume you, cry if you need to, then think of why you miss it. Think of why you miss home. The truth hit me in a simple answer like it always does and that’s that I love my home. I love my family, my house, my community, my friends, my church, my traditions, my home. I had moments in Chile were we would be singing to christmas music and I would just sit and watch everyone have a good time and like a bad thought all of these things that I love so much would creep into my consensus putting my good mood in a choke hold.
Depressing, right? Well hang in there it gets worse.
Christmas Eve was the pinnacle of my homesickness. The day before I had plans to go to a late night mass. A tradition of my family back home and something that I put a lot of importance into in the week leading up to it. I told our Abuela (the lady who we had been working for) that I had plans to go to mass Christmas Eve at 9:00pm and that we should try eat around 8 so I still had plenty of time to eat and get to mass. She said ok and asked if she could invite her family to eat with us. We said of course (obviously).
The day of christmas Eve I was feeling very homesick and was waiting desperately for the time to pass and for mass to come. Unfortunately 8:00 rolled around and dinner was still not ready and Abuela’s family still wasn’t there. I started to panic. I had put so much worth into this one tradition of home and it was slipping through my fingers.
Please don’t perceive this as me blaming our Abuela. At this time I was feeling quite emotional and everything I was feeling was multiplied by ten. I love our Abuela and I know she didn’t intend for things to go sideways but they did.
I was feeling so mad when I sat down for dinner at 9:00 that I could hardly eat even though it was delicious and as soon as conversation started to dwindle I took off. I packed my day pack with my sleeping bag, bible, journal, jacket, and earplugs and headed for solitude.
I needed to be alone and one of the only places I knew i could go in our compound without having to talk to people was the roof of the church. I sat up there for a long time. I said a lot of very angry prayers and just laid on my back staring at the stars thinking if i was looking at the same sky that was over my house back home.
In that moment I let me feel every bit of my homesickness. It hit me so bad you wouldn’t believe it. I went so far as to imagine myself standing on the road in front of my house watching through the big front windows of my house as my family celebrated the traditional Christmas Eve party.
Yeah, it was bad. But it worked long enough for me to get through all of the rest of the night and all of Christmas Day.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one that had a bad Christmas Eve though. Enough of us had bad christmas eves that we all just decided to lock ourselves in the chapel of the church and just watch movies all day. This was because all we really wanted to do was pretend it was cold outside and maybe feel like we were at home. It was during this day of movies that I got the title for the blog.
In the movie Home Alone, there is a scene where Kevin is walking down the road alone and it’s snowing. All of a sudden he stops and looks at a house he is passing by. He sees a family celebrating Christmas Eve, and passing food around the table. Almost unconsciously I turn to Emma who had been sitting next to me and I said, “I had that moment last night.” She gave me this sad laugh and says “That’s so sad.”
I think I meant to say it as a joke, but quickly realized how truthful that statement was.
This was not a happy story and it doesn’t even have a good ending. It just felt like a story I needed to tell. I do want to reassure all of you that I don’t have any desire to leave the race, I just miss home and I’m starting to grieve the thing that I have given up for this year.
