Sometimes my skin just starts itching to be back in the familiar. I want to be able to throw my clothes into a washing machine instead of spending three hours bent over a bucket in the hot sun. I want to be able to go to the refrigerator and stare at the overabundance of choices. I want to be able to go out for coffee with my friends and pick up my phone to text someone when something funny happens. I want to sit around the dinner table with my family, to be home for weddings, birthdays, and celebrations.
But there is the other side of me. The side that gets thrilled when I get pulled into a giant dance circle in front of an African church. The side that loves sitting around with my team when the power goes out and we’re worshipping by candlelight. The side that loves when a Maasi warrior appear out of the bush in front of me, when I get to spend Christmas on an island in Nicaragua with orphans, when I have to wade across waist deep water to go to town for internet, when children come running up for hugs and laughs, when I get to ride around Saigon on the back of my friend’s scooter, and when I can make an old, poor Cambodian woman who lives in the city dump laugh by trying to imitate her traditional dancing.
As the serious countdown to returning home begins, my team and I have been reminding each other of all that we have, all we’ve experienced, and how rich we are in things we’ve seen and done and come to learn. In these last weeks, we are “juicing life,” to quote one of my dear friends at home. We’ve started to appreciate the beauty around us, not just in the scenery, but in the people and ministry and opportunities we have in front of us every day. Suddenly, walking for a mile to catch a dala dala to get to town to walk to that internet café to email our families doesn’t seem absurd or burdensome. It becomes an adventure all over again because we know that at home we just open our laptops and jump on Facebook whenever we want.
We’ve talked a lot recently about staying present even while looking forward to going home and seeing loved ones again. We ask each other at the end of the day what one (or more) beautiful moment captured our hearts. Sometimes, it’s just that “the sky was so blue today!” after an especially frustrating day of ministry when we are told that we we’re going to hell for wearing pants or when grown men are grabbing us, yelling at us, and following us in the market. Or when we’ve gone to four different stores looking for purified bottled water and still can’t find any and then we have to violently fight our way into a matatu in order to go back home.
But then there are the other days when we get to spend time at an orphanage and play with children, when we get to see miracles of faith and tell people about the love of Jesus, when we get to haul dirt and mix cement for the new church floor, and when we get to sit and talk with single mothers and broken men and speak encouragement and life into them.
Yes, I’m still looking forward to going home, seeing my family and friends, and finally feel like I’m actually clean again, but now it’s a bittersweet feeling of knowing all that I’ll be leaving behind.
