Yesterday we spent most of the day in Istanbul Turkey. I decided to stay back in the airport. While I was in line to get food I realized I wasn't in Africa any more. I could no longer speak in the limited Swahili that I knew and I didn't have any idea how to convert to USD. Standing in line I realized how much I missed Africa and just wanted to go back. I have fallen in love with the countries I visited, the cultures, and the people. It was hard leaving and I didn't realize till that moment how much I had loved the last three months. Even when we landed in Kiev, Ukraine I looked out and saw that it reminded me to much of America and wanted to go back to Africa. Talking to my squad mate and hearing how excited she was for Europe and getting a different perspective helped me to change my perspective and get excited about the next two months.
My minor freak out was the beginning of a day of being sick and freaking out about home. I was exhausted emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It was a good day but a very hard day as well. As I was checking Facebook, reading emails, and catching up on what is happening in my friends lives I realize that things are not the same anymore, that I really have changed in the last year. I started freaking out thinking about my friends and how those relationships will change. Some of the friendships I was wondering if they would even still exist when I get back. I love my friends and some of them have been wronged by the church and have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to religion. Will they see me as just another "Christian" or will they see me for who I am? I have had conversations in the last month that have made me realize that people aren't always going to expect me to be different; that they aren't going to always get it when I try and explain something to them. The fact that my race is nearing it's end is starting to sink in finally. I really am almost done, I really am about to go home and life is going be so different. This has become my life, my new normal, and it just feels so natural and I don't want to leave it. There are some days where I want to be home or at least not traveling to some new place every few weeks. I want to be stationary for more than a month. There are some days I just miss my bed, my favorite t shirt, or being able to look nice. Yes I do miss some parts of home but most days I love my life and know that I am going to miss it when I land in New York the end of July.
Even through the freak outs, the missing home, missing Africa, and the apprehension of going home I know that God is with me. I have a team that is really my family, my brothers and sisters, that love me and are here to help me through this. I have my Papa in heaven that has comforted me through a year of ups and downs, holidays away from family, my sisters car wreck, my grand mother having breast cancer, and my sister finding out she has Thyroid Cancer a few weeks later. He has been with me through some of the hardest things I could go through being thousands of miles from family and I know that he will be with me through this as well. I know that everything will work out exactly how it's suppose to, how he planned it to. I know that even in the storms he is with me and will command the wind to be calm in his timing. I have learned to trust him in everything both the big things and the small. I have started the culture shock of going back to America and I'm not in Africa any more, I will be back one day soon I'm sure but for now I just have to follow the road that God has placed me on. Maybe it will even be made out of yellow bricks, who knows.
