I haven’t really blogged much this month, because blogs are usually better when you have a story to go with them. While I’ve been enjoying the heck out of Vietnam (this is my favorite month of the Race), and been busy visiting elderly homes, hanging out with college students, and teaching life skills seminars, I don’t have any life-altering stories. I don’t have a story about a student that I had a special connection with. I don’t have a story about an orphan that stole my heart. I don’t have a story about a grandmother who I connected with and bonded with for hours.
All that is not to say that this month hasn’t been amazing, and that I haven’t made connections with people. Just nothing that inspires me to blog about it.
Which is why I’m writing about what I do have: anxieties.
The K Squad goes home in six weeks. I have no idea what happens when I get home. Anyone on the squad can tell you that I hate change (the irony that I’m on the most transitory trip of my life is not lost on me). Anyone who’s been on a team with me knows how much I hate the unknown. And when I go back home, I’m facing both. It reminds me of my college graduation (appropriate, given the time of year). I was an equally emotional wreck when that happened.
The thing with the Race is, although we don’t know where we’re sleeping always, and we don’t necessarily know where we’re going all the time, and we don’t know what we’ll be doing when we get there, someone always does. Whether it’s someone at AIM headquarters, or our squad leaders, or our logistics people, someone always knows where we’re going. Two exceptions come to mind: one, Vinkovci, Croatia, and two, our spontaneous accidental trip to eastern Turkey, and I was a walking anxiety attack with both.
I know in my head that God is planning the next steps. I know that he’s not going to leave me out to dry. But it’s helped that the past nine months or so, I’ve been surrounded by a family of friends who are all experiencing the same thing. When we land, we’ll still be experiencing the weirdness of the unknown. But we won’t all be together when it happens. I’ll be in Pittsburgh, broke as a joke, trying like anything to find a community that I can relate to and that can relate to me.
Maybe I’m making this into a bigger ordeal than it will be. It’s possible. But the fact remains that there are certain things I will need when I get back home. I will need to resume repaying my student loans. I will need to figure out where to channel my passions. I will need to figure out what the heck my passions are. There’s a lot of nervousness in me.
I know that God has a plan. I know that he’s going to let me in on it. I just wish he’d hurry up and do it.
