On June 1st at 11:00 pm I arrived at the Lancaster train station. After nine months, 265 days, I was finally home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is hard to put into words all the feelings I felt on June 1st, and the days before and after it. The best word I can think of is bittersweet. I’m happy to be home, but I miss being able to walk into the next room and play cards with my best friends. Heck, I miss being in the same time zone as them. I miss the friends I made in Guatemala, Asia, and Swaziland. And I miss feeling like life was an adventure.
But I also know that its all about perspective. The past nine months were all about bring God’s glory, and I know that the next 90 years will be too. Glory to Glory, baby! That’s all that really matters. To any racer, alumni, or human struggling with re-entry, when days were hard on the race, I would always remind myself of two things: you are currently living someone else’s dream (don’t let that be in vain), and you are exactly where the Lord wants you to be. I’ve found that these two facts always bring me back into the right perspective. That this life I live is not for me, but for God and those I am called to love. I’ve found a lot of comfort in them since being home, too.
I’ve also been learning a lot in my few days back in America, here’s a journal entry from this morning.
“Since being home, I’ve realized I must continue down the path of self-discovery. But I think that may also just be a life thing too. At least if we continue to push ourselves to grow. I’m not the same Emily I was in high school, the summer of 2018, or even on the world race. I’m a new creation, each and everyday, regardless of where I am or who I’m with.”
Ending the world race means having a loss of identity, at least to some degree. I’m no longer an eight-teen year-old missionary living in the middle Chiang Mai, eating street dumplings every night with my best friends. I’m not a world racer, I’m not living a ‘cool’ life anymore, and I’m not immersed in an unfamiliar culture. And that’s kinda weird. I think a lot of re-entry is figuring out who you are now. How you are going to live in American society differently, how you are going to look at yourself and others differently, and how your relationship with Christ is going to look in this next phase of life.
Life is weird, but I’m thankful for all the ways I’ll get to grow now, that I couldn’t have on the world race. I’m thankful for all the people I’ll get to meet that don’t know Jesus, and all the people I will get to love better because I have a deeper understanding of who he is.
Oh! And by the way, my after-race plans are to work as a camp counselor this summer and then attend James Madison University in the fall with a major in Health Sciences!
Thanks for reading! Love y’all!
– Em
