This blog is well overdue. I stepped foot back in the states a few months ago, marking the end of my World Race journey, yet have been extremely hesitant to actually turn the page and start the next chapter. Y’all I’m going to be honest, this transition is H A R D.
The truth is, I’m “home” but I’m homesick. After 9 long months, I’m back in the land that I was born and raised in, but some days it feels the most foreign to me. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about and actively miss my people. My teammates, my students, my coffee shop friends. My family I have built that consists of people from every part of the globe—different tribes and tongues. And oh how I miss my family.
I miss nightly laying on the ground for hours as the stars appeared one by one with my teens in Ethiopia. It was there, laying on the cold concrete with old couch cushions beneath our heads where trust was built and intimacy formed. I watched walls slowly crumble as they let us into the inner parts of their hearts. The places that held their greatest fears and buried hurts. We, in turn, shared similar struggles of abandonment and hardship. Things we had walked through and were in the midst of, pointing to Jesus as the healer of our wounds and companion in the midst of the pain.
I miss laughing until my stomach hurt with Yolanda in the kitchen of our house in Honduras as I pretended to help her make pastelitos and flour tortillas. Our friendship shouldn’t have worked. I was an 18 year old who was bad at cooking and spoke very broken Spanish. She was a single mother of 4, cooking for a house of 25+ gringos and spoke no English. Yet every free moment I had was spent in that kitchen. “Helping.” She could have done everything I did 10x faster and a heck of a lot prettier, but she waited patiently as I awkwardly fumbled along. We talked about our families and my plans for the future. We laughed and laughed. Somehow communication just worked and it was a beautiful thing. By the end she counted me as her fifth child. She trusted me to take her only daughter out for ice cream and hammocking dates. To serve as the big sister she never had. We did girly things like painting our nails and putting strips of sparkly color in our hair.
I miss my team. 7 incredibly strong, independent women of God. Team Da Vine. These 7 ladies saw me at my best and worst and CHOSE to love me anyways. I am still in awe of them. They are true reflections of Jesus. I miss our random dance parties and eating our weekly guacamole. I miss the freedom and intimacy that we shared 24/7. The raw, hard conversations. I miss being pushed to grow by these lovely ladies. Being comfortable as my whole, messy, human self in the presence of these lovely ladies. Community in its truest form created the most sacred of spaces and one of my favorite places I call home.
I miss the simplicity of life. The focus on the importance of relationships. Hospitality and generosity as a cultural norm instead of success and materialism.
I grew a lot in my time on the Race. I began to fully recognize my worth in Christ and walk confidently into my title as a Daughter of the King. I chose to love those who are hard to love with everything I had in me and quickly learned that I fall in love with God’s children easily. I fall hard. It makes leaving devastating. But I also learned that choosing to love with everything I have in me is worth the heartbreak of leaving. Every. Single. Time.
A lie I have believed since coming back to the good ol’ US of A is that starting the next chapter of my life means moving on from radical living and loving unconditionally and shoving myself back into the mold of “go to college to get a good job to make a lot of money to live comfortably and be able to raise some kids who will grow up and do the same.” I have been believing that when I turn the page it means I am forgettng the relationships I have built and fought to maintain.
Starting the next chapter of my life REALLY means taking this lifestyle of living radically for Jesus and using it to break FREE of that mold. This simple (yet mind-blowing) fact has been struggling to click in my brain: the lessons I have learned and the experiences I have lived through in this last year of my life were not for nothing. They are to be applied and expounded upon in this next chapter and the chapters to come. And the family I have claimed from every inch of the globe does not stay behind in the last chapter. Side by side or miles apart, family is FAMILY and they will forever be a part of mine, in this chapter and the chapters to come
Today I am beginning the next chapter. I am moving down to Newport News, Virginia to begin studying at Christopher Newport University. Just like all change, it is scary. The unknown is terrifying. But I will continue to love with everything I have in me, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
I want to give a HUGE thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has followed me on my journey and supported me in prayer. If you want to hear more about my journey, the lessons I’ve learned, some of the incredible people I have met, and/or what I have planned next, I would LOVE to talk. Feel free to email me at [email protected] 🙂
