Surprise, it’s me! In one week! My temporary-teammate Haley wrote an awesome blog about how her family and friends can help her transition home and I borrowed her ideas and made them my own to give y’all an idea of how to welcome me back well!
We did the thing! Eleven countries in eleven months. With your incredible support, constant prayers, and a pretty awesome God, we made it! In seven days, I will be flying into Richmond, beginning a new season of life full of unknowns, and saying goodbye to this adventure the Lord has brought me through.
This year has changed me; I am not the same person I was 11 months ago. I’m excited to come home and see all the people and do all the things, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous. Home has changed, too, and I’ll need time to adjust and transition. As I prepare for this transition, I want to share with you how you can be an integral part of this next season of my life!
Give me grace as I rest, grieve, and adjust.
In one week, I will be alone for the first time in eleven months. As many of you know, I am a high-extrovert personality and I love to be around people. On the Race, we spend about 98% of our day with our 4-6 teammates, waking and eating and working and sleeping all together all the time. I’ve loved it! If I ever wanted solitude or silence, I had to search hard for it. But when I come home, I’ll have my own room and will live in that room for more than 3 weeks at a time. WOW! Additionally, every single day of the Race is full of ministry, meals as a team, team meetings, more ministry, and sometimes some adventure. At home, I won’t have all those things to fill my schedule. I don’t know what rest I’ll need but I know I need it… I’m not even sure if I know how to rest haha! Please give me grace as I try to figure it out. It might take a while for me to discern what I want or need, but I’ll be sure to tell you when I find out!
With this new solitude and quiet schedule comes grief. There’s grief in losing the adventurous day to day lifestyle of ministry and meetings and team time, grief in not experiencing new cultures and moving from place to place every few weeks, and grief in losing the family the Lord gave me this past year in my sweet C-squad. I’ve loved this lifestyle of ministry every day, bringing lift to our hosts, digging into intentional community, the mutual understanding that we all need personal time to be alone with Jesus, changing scenery once a month, experiencing new things/cultures/foods/beds/toilets/etc. This community and this lifestyle will never exist for me again in this same way, and that is a loss I need to grieve.
With that loss and with gaining home back, I will need time to adjust. Like I said, I’m different from who I used to be, and I’m sure home is different, too! I don’t know what adjusting will look like for me. I’ve heard it can be as simple as slipping right back in and as awkward as crying in front of the peanut butter section of the grocery store, overwhelmed by all the choices. So give me grace as I figure out what it looks like for me to rest, process, and readjust to what is now a new culture and new normal for me at home! It may take days, it may take months. Regardless, it will be good.
Ask me questions!
I want to share anything and everything about this past year! I didn’t post a lot of pictures and I certainly didn’t tell all the stories, so please ask me all about it! Specific questions are so much easier for me to answer than, “how was your trip?” I know that question is well-meant, but it’s so difficult to answer when my trip has been good and hard and beautiful and challenging and so many things all wrapped up in one! A great way to love me well is to ask specific questions. Especially if you were to ask me specific questions about a blog I wrote or a picture you saw me post! That’s so intentional and I would feel so loved! Yay! Here are some sample questions to ask:
What has the Lord taught you about yourself?
What has the Lord taught you about Himself?
Which month was the most difficult for you spiritually?
What were some of your favorite ministries?
What did you learn from living in an intentional community?
How many times did you rip your pants? (you’re gonna wanna ask this one for sure)
Tell me about the friends you made! / Who are some people who made the journey special?
Tell me more about _____ (blog post, picture, story, etc)!
What did you like/dislike about _____ (country name)?
Where would you go back to visit?
Did you read any good books?
Tell me about your year!
I missed multiple weddings, engagements, babies, graduations, moves, sicknesses, changes, you name it! I’m not the only one that had an exciting year and I want to hear about what I missed in your life! Don’t think that your story of the past 11 months isn’t worth telling because you think I did something “more exciting” or “cooler” – that’s a lie! The Lord was just as good and faithful in your life as He has been in mine, and I want to hear all about it! Show me pictures of that thing you did that one time, or the vacation you went on, or that time it snowed, or the event I missed that I would have loved. I haven’t been on Facebook or Instagram very much this year, so I promise I missed everything and want to hear you tell me it all. Your life and your story really matter to me, so share it!
Don’t ask me what’s next.
I will tell you the answer right here to save the trouble: I don’t know! But I know whatever it is will be good because it’s from the Lord! Initially I will be living at home and speaking at churches who have supported me and going to all the doctors’ appointments, but those are the only plans I have so far!
Hold me accountable!
I’m coming home having learned so many new things about God and myself and His Kingdom. I have new convictions, I know new things, and I have new gifts the Lord has given me. I worry that being back at home in my “old” space will cause me to slip back into my old lifestyle and convictions and ways of thinking and I’ll lose all the growth the Lord has given me this year. Aaahhh! I will feel so loved by friends and a community who embrace and respect the growth I’ve walked through and hold me accountable to continue to walk in it. Asking me questions about what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown will hold me accountable to remember those things, too (:
If you want to hear about my trip or catch up, please reach out!
There are a lot of people I haven’t seen in the past year – that’s a lot of people to reach out to! If I don’t reach out to you, don’t take it personally. Know that I want to see everybody! Please reach out to me – it will mean so much to me! Even if we’ve never met and you’ve just been reading my blogs, I want to hear from you, too! I love long coffee dates and meaningful conversation, which means catching up with ll of you will be an absolute delight. YAY! I can’t wait!
Finally, I want to say thank you. Thank you for loving me, for following me, for supporting me, for praying for me, and for being excited for my return. Thank you for your donations, for reading my blogs, for commenting on them, for sending me sweet messages when you thought of me, for praying for me when I came to mind. Y’all rock and I love you! I am so excited to come home and share this incredible journey with the people who made it possible – that’s you guys! See you in ONE WEEK!!
xoxo,
Jess / Joos / Joos-Box / JT / Joos on the Loose / yours truly, Jessica
