Soooooo…I’m back in Canada. Really, that’s the easiest
way to start this I think. It’s been 11 days, 16 hours, and 29 minutes now
since crossing the US/Canada border. Basically with everyone else’s schedules
and how much juggling was going on to try and help Leia, it made more sense for
me to come and help out. So, 8 hours after getting into the country, I was
sitting in my old high school taking notes for Leia’s social studies 11 class
and reading subtitles to her from a PowerPoint presentation. I probably should’ve
felt a lot weirder than I did about that, but there’s something in keeping busy
that doesn’t allow you to think too hard on such things. I’m still living out
of my backpack, wearing the same clothes I’ve worn all year, and I’m sleeping
in my nephew’s bed, surrounded by stuffed animals. It works really well, cause it
makes me feel like I’m staying in a space that’s not my own, which I’m far more
comfortable with now anyway. I feel more at home when there’s no home
to call my own. Those thoughts and feeling quite alone here are the two most pervading
emotions I have about being back.
People would tell me the feeling alone part is a phase, that
it will pass, that it’s normal, and they’d be right if they were talking about
culture shock, nostalgia for everything I’ve done this year, or just missing
my
family (my team, my squad). But I’ve been through that before, after other
trips, after moving back from Spain,
and this isn’t the same thing (though I feel all that too). I was shown a way
of living this year where everything I’ve ever known and believed in (and lots
of things I didn’t know were true but are) all fit together and made sense. I
found where I belonged, where I was fully alive, and where I know more people
need to be – not everyone, per se, but a lot. And now I feel I’m on my own to try and cultivate that wherever I
am, and just don’t feel that I’m ready for it. I’d just gotten the hang of
living it when surrounded by people that got it too – how do I live it in what
feels like a vacuum? I have awesome friends here, I have people that love God
with their whole being, but living it out THAT closely with one another is a
foreign concept to us here, and the only way I know how to do it is to model it. But I can’t model living with others if it’s just me! It took months of living it to get what I did get,
and that wasn’t all of it, so how do I even explain it so someone can try it out? I think Sarah Lapp put it best in an email after she went home to
help with her mom:
“… It’s difficult to explain that we really live out
the church, the living, growing, body of christ. We don’t turn it
off. We fall asleep to the body snoring and we wake up to it
praying. We couldn’t escape it even if we wanted to. When one part
is not working the other parts notice.”
I miss that. I want it. I need it. It’s what Jesus modeled,
it’s what the early church did, and guess what? In today’s world where the
Bride of Christ looks more like a harem I think it’s time for us to get a
little closer and a little more personal with what’s supposed to be our family
in Christ. Start living it together instead of remaining conveniently distanced
from each other, because when
we stay this distant from others we don’t really have a right to tell them what’s
wrong with their life or help them change and, even worse, we give up the privilege
of having them there to tell us when we suck and walk through it with us too.
Weekly meetings, bible studies, sermons on Sundays, those
are all starting points. Living it every day with fellow believers though, that’s
my goal. Abolishing the independent nature I’ve grown up with is my dream. And
seeing God’s whole family, worldwide, being the church once again is my ideal, and that ideal is becoming a reality all over the place.
It’s time for
it to happen here too. I just don’t know how to start.
