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I have quit the World Race. Do not give any support. tWe can't get the money back if you give. I will send out an explanation later. So sorry.
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My life has led me here. To typing this blog– because I love words and I love writing– but also to the situation that brings me to write on this website. I am accustomed to saying hello and goodbye because of my upbringing on the mission field in London, hello to people and to places, and then goodbye as I watch the underside of their feet as they walk away, or a bird's eye view of buildings and parks as they graze past my little window on the plane. It is common for me to percieve the earth as a quilt from a plane.
And here I am now, and I am going to view my life as though flying over it on a plane, and here are the peices that make up my life so far, each fabric square. Through the writing I have done in the past four years, I am going to display how my life has brought me to The World Race, I am going to give you eagle eyes.
On July 10th 2008 I wrote on my personal blog: I believe that having said so many goodbye’s throughout life in London has prepared me for the big one. The one right now, leaving London.
November 2nd 2008: I found a really good friend here at Elon, but she is transferring! Its sad because at the beginning of my university journey I couldn’t really digest the fact that these people I’m with right now are going to be with me for four years. Not one year, or one summer, or one week; I wont have to say goodbye to these people like I have said goodbye to people my whole life- it is a really refreshing thought.
April 20th 2009: When I go back to England in a month I’m going to be going home. But where do I go after that? You know I dont know what to say when people ask me where I’m from anymore. At the beginning of Elon, I would confidently say England. But now I feel like it’s easier just to say North Carolina… I would love to still be viewed as an international student, but now that I’ve spent 10 years in America, and only 9 in England, I feel like I technically should be American now.
May 27th 2009: Next year at this time I’m going to be wishing I was here [London]. After all, it’s what I’ve done for the past 7 summers. Every day that I come home from hours with the community kids and my church family, I just smile. It brings me such insane joy. It’s my chicken soup; it’s good for my soul. Of course it’s not just the kids and the family, it’s God.
December 9th 2009: …I am certainly needy of the Hounslow multicultural children. I miss them. I miss being in a colorful room with different languages, I miss the uncomfortability of it, just like standing on the tube in London.
December 31st 2009: I’m going to Prague next summer for 2 months as an intern with World Harvest Mission!
March 18th 2009, about Prague: I am very scared. As an introvert I feel like I am not the type of person to be going out on the mission field but that I can use my talents in some other less terrifying way. But then I remember all of the messed up petrified people who God chose to use in the Bible and I feel better. And if I run away from this I might be swallowed by a whale. Metaphorically of course, well, I hope only metaphorically.
June 24th 2010, about Prague: Those who know the gospel are few and far between, and even those do not share it, because, as someone told us, they feel they are not good enough. Prague walks with grace and glides around with grace but it is oblivious to real grace. Also, I do not feel love. There is a coldness to the city, especially when away from the tourists, that cannot go unseen. However, I have seen that God is working here, and that the World Harvest team are merely joining him in his work, and that love and grace are working their way in through the cracks in the cobble stones.
August 10th 2010, in London: As soon as I found my British friends at the airport it was like something clicked in my head and all British intonations came back; even the very first word that came out of my mouth startled me. I didn’t think it would switch on that fast (as I typed the word “fast” just then, I said it in a British accent in my head). But, to make my head even more confused, when I was ordering dinner I spoke to the waitress half expecting her to not understand English. When she understood us perfectly, I thought: oh, that’s nice, it’s one of those restaurants with waiters that can speak good English. But then I remembered that people speak English here. Still, when she took the plates away, I wanted to say “Dekuju!” (thank you in Czech). I said good-bye in Czech anyway as we left, knowing she wouldn’t understand.
August 15th 2010: Yesterday I was sitting at my empty gate at Heathrow airport, in front of a ground to ceiling window with a view of all the airplanes, and I got to thinking. I got to thinking about where I was going. My ticket said Philadelphia on it– I didn’t really want to go there. However, I didn’t really want to stay where I was either. I wasn’t passionate at all towards leaving or going, I was just… there, in my own unidentifiable haze of displacement, and I didn’t like it. I was like a little girl trapped in an elevator who is praying for it to start moving, in either direction, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s moving. I don’t know where I want to go.
October 20th 2010: …and eventually I see that the best way to defeat the wave, the battle, is to give up control of the win and surrender it to the hands of my creator who knows me better because he made me. In all of that churning fear I got a taste of the beauty that comes with trusting that you’ll be okay, trusting the one that is moving you, and not worrying about the upcoming waves. There is so much peace in letting go.
In other news, I miss Prague. I miss the feeling of fullness that it gave me. I miss living around people who try to be moved completely by the spirit, by the waves. I miss the stories and the lights and the wind and the summer evenings and all the walking and the children and the world defeaning fellowship. But it's wonderful that every day I figure out more reasons why God put me there this summer, why I needed it, and that I can learn- little by little- to take the feeling Prague gave me out of that one city and into my life wherever I may be.
February 13th 2011: I don’t particularly like one country over the other [England and America]. The time to process that last summer brought me helped me to figure out that they have become neutral lands. They’ve evened themselves out. And while this is good, because I don’t feel contempt towards America anymore, the big spaces between houses and the busy busy lives and the american flags and the southern drawl, I don’t feel like I really belong to either of them. I realize I’m a floater, not really grounded on the surface of anywhere, and not with somewhere I always float home to. It’s freeing, flying like that, but it inhibits my capacity to take up root and care about where I’ve landed; it represses my heart.
But at this point, I need to go back to August 5th 2009 where I had the following revelation: Being an MK or a TCK (third culture kid) as some like to call it, has made the loss of or the creation of ‘home’ an everyday worry or anxiety. As you know, it is something that frequently comes up in my blog. The displacement of my home has essentially been the central theme. Naturally, I’ve been contemplating home quite a bit recently, during this time of transition, which has made me come across and clarify the following truth:
My search for home is hopeless, and will be endlessly dissappointing, because I was not created for the world. No where on the map, whether North Carolina or London, will give me the completion, contentment and community that we long to find at our ‘home’. Only heaven can supply that. We were not meant to find a home in the world. If we feel we have, it is actually the world finding a home in us, not us finding a home in the world. At first I thought this revelation was rather depressing, but now I feel more uplifted than anything: one day we will be filled.
Finally, on July 31st 2011 I wrote: I feel like I should write about the city of Memphis since I have been here so long now—longer even than the amount of time that I was in Prague last summer. It is not like Prague, of course, in all that Prague was, but Prague did lead me to my summer here, so in my protective hands these two summers are held preciously together connected with golden thread, my creator’s divine stitching. I’m reading a book right now that challenges us to love things in our lives, to love our stories, even the sad parts, because of how particular parts of our stories led to new things. I love my parent’s hearts for their willingness to serve that propelled them towards London. I love West London’s harsh and sometimes scary city life for giving me courage I never had. I love London in general for thrusting me towards Prague. I love the sad homelessness of my life for giving me not only the ability, but the strong desire to move. I love Prague for so many things, but also for handing me this summer in Memphis. I love Memphis for the youth, for the sun, for the appreciation for America it has given me, and most of all, for the emotional wreckage that God has used to
reveal my hunger for missions (a desire for just getting out and loving on a foreign field), which scares my introvert self so much I almost want to deny it in the hope that that might make it less true.
And now, after all that, I am here. Perhaps one day in the future I will quote myself from today, December 14th 2011, saying that I want to point other people to the home that we have in heaven, and to tell them that we are all homeless without Christ who longs for us to find him.
