In approximately 74 days I will be home for the first time in 11 months.
America, wow, honestly it seems like some far off land. 74 days seems so short compared to the 9 months I’ve already been gone, but it still feels like a lifetime away.
I feel like before the race even started I was being prepared for my arrival back home. Mainly about the amount of grace I would need to extend to my family, my friends, and myself for my pre-race life because my mindset about the world would be so different.
But if I’m being honest, as the race went on I thought that I would have no problem moving back into the American lifestyle. Some shame only slightly hit me month 6 in Cambodia after seeing our little orphans eat mainly rice for every meal and sleep on the floor. But this was also the month that almost every person on our squad experienced homesickness. I was actually excited for what America had to offer and what my “old” life entailed. Chick-Fil-A whenever I wanted, a grocery store with any item I “needed”, my closet full of clothes, hot running water and flushing toilets with a seat, and all the other comforts I thought home could offer. So many parts of America seemed attractive that some people here have never even dreamed of being in existence.
Then I was having a conversation with someone back home and they mentioned wanting an Apple Watch.
And I broke.
I cried…no, I sobbed, for probably an hour about all of the hard things I’ve seen and experienced on the race and how it was all just so unfair. I realized that I was lying to myself about how these things have affected me because honestly sometimes it was just too painful to bare. It was overwhelming the amount of emotions I had built up without even realizing it. (Makes sense why I haven’t written a blog in months). I mean it took something as simple as someone just stating they wanted an Apple watch to break open the floodgates.
It was like I experienced the Lord’s heartbreak for every person I had met on the race in one single moment. It was incredibly painful and the most unifying experience of aligning my heart with the Father’s. My heart opened so much more to the brokenness of this world and I gained more understanding of just how much love he has for his children.
Before the race I thought I had an understanding of the Lord’s heartbreak for this world. I heard the stories, saw the videos, and read plenty of articles on what happens outside of my comfortable American dream life. But I was content in the safety of where I was with the sufferings of the world being at just enough distance away that I thought I understood it, but not close enough for it to truly transform my heart. But with every face I met and with every other heart mine connected to, my heart began to transform. There was now a heart to that little face in the video I saw, a story that I heard from their own mouth, and a heartbreak I got to experience alongside them.
So to be honest with you, I am incredibly afraid to come home. Yes, I can’t wait to see all my family and friends, but the adjustment back to America will be so hard. I am so afraid to leave this place I am in and these people, and all the strange things that have become so normal. My heart is so heavy from the experiences I have gained and will continue to have these 11 months. Visions of people living in trash dumps, kids receiving their only meal for the day, and the purest worship to the Lord I have ever experienced now flood the back of my mind and heart. I see the world with a different lens which is in more alignment with the Lord’s and less of this world. My heart breaks in different ways than it used to and has experienced some of the most joyful moments of my life. And I sure cry and laugh a whole lot more.
They say we needed to be ready to have grace for people back home, but I think I am going to need it from you all even more. From the simplest of things like feeling the need to take my shoes off before entering any building out of habit from Asia and always carrying around a roll of toilet paper, to a random moment of crying from the memory of little Joy’s face at that orphanage in Cambodia. A piece of my heart has been left in 11 different countries and sometimes it will ache, and rejoice, like its still there in that moment.
But even more than that I need to continue to learn how to have grace for myself. The first person I attack is myself, I am seriously my own world’s biggest critic. My mom experienced the amount of shame I felt from spending 200baht (less than $6) on my meal during her trip to Thailand to do ministry with me. Slightly ridiculous I know.
But I still have two and a half-ish months left of this crazy thing, which will fly by so fast and feel like forever all at the same time (the World Race is a time warp). And I know the Lord isn’t done using the race to mold and completely transform my heart to be more like his. Maybe by then I’ll be ready to come home, or maybe I’ll be even more afraid.
But right now, its month 9 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and thats what I’m feeling.
