I have a room and a queen size bed with 6 pillows all to myself. I have a bathroom, with a shower that will consistently produce warm water, not too hot or too cold, but always the temperature I set it to. I have a closet with more than enough shoes and clothes than I would ever need. I have a home and I am with my family and friends that have loved me so well. I have so many things that I have been craving and looking forward to for months now, yet I feel out of place.
All of these things and so much more are here. They are the things that have helped me define home for 23 years of my life, but as I sit here in the home I grew up in I feel that my sense of home has changed. While I am home here in Canada and absolutely loving being here, I am missing all the other places I have called home this year and the people that became my family.
I miss the places and all the people I experienced with this year dearly and my mind is in all kinds of places when I try to describe to you what being home feels like. It is a hard question to answer because to be honest it is amazing, wonderful, and the one thing I have been longing for, but it is also a season of change and trying to figure out how to mesh what I learned in this last year with normal day-to-day life. I want to keep the habits I learned, the intimacy I had with the Lord, build up a close-knit community, the relationships I had before and the ones I made this year.
While I am home with the friends and family that have known me for so long, I have had to leave the 50 people that walked with me every step of the way. That community I had a love/hate relationship is the thing I miss the most. I miss waking up beside my closest friends. I miss the adventures, the vulnerability and I miss the hard things, because it made me a better person. It challenged me in ways I never thought it would.
I miss the 11 countries I called home and the people in them. From our 12 kids in India, the pastors and kids and Vietnam, the street children of Albania, our host family in Bulgaria and the children at the orphanages, the Horse Farm in South Africa and all the places in between. My heart has been spread out around the world and the hardest part is knowing that there is a high chance that I will never cross paths with these people again. They have all impacted my life in some way and for that I am forever grateful.
So here I am home and while it has been hard, it has also been amazing. I miss so much from this year, but its not the end. My life will go on and I have to figure out how to mesh the two worlds together. I know I can’t dwell on the past 11 months, but there are days I miss it and I wish I could just go back to living with s-squad in some crazy little place with no wifi and a 5 min walk to the bathroom experiencing life together.
So how do I answer such a complicated question.
Home is nice, but it is also different. The people here have also lived 11 months without me. I have missed births, baby announcements, engagements, weddings, birthdays, holidays, graduations and so much more. How do you explain a whole year to one simple question, you cannot and so the usual answer was my past year was great and being home is good, because overall it was, but there was so much more that happened in those 11 months, things I can’t even explain. I encountered God like I never have before, I have seen his hand at work in so many places, I have fallen deeper in love with my heavenly father, I have laughed cried and seen some really hard things and being home.
That is a different thing.
Sometimes I feel out of place. To be honest I have lost a lot of my spiritual discipline. My time with the Lord hasn’t been as long or as frequent as it used to be. I have learned how easy it is to fall right back into life before the race. I am still trying to figure it out. I am back with the people I love and for that I am grateful, but it is not easy. I have been doing well, I have only had one break down and I can’t even explain why that happened. I see things through a different lens now. I want people to have the same kind of relationship that I have come to know with God. I want them to experience him so deeply that they can’t help but have a deep, deep love with him, but I have no idea how to explain the things I have experienced or how to mesh my two worlds together. I am thankful that the Lord has grace and he has helped me walk through this season of home and the things that have changed since I was last here. My heart breaks for some things and I can’t believe that the Lord has only put me here for a short season, because the thought of leaving again sort of breaks my heart, but I know there is a plan in it all.
Home has been good, hard and really short. I can’t believe I leave in less than a week to reunite with my S-squad family and begin training for this next season. If you would have asked me a month ago or even a week and a half ago about how I felt about leaving, I would have said I didn’t want to go, but my heart has been open. Open to loving on another squad and now I find myself getting excited to enter into another season and to enter into World Race community again. While the World Race isn’t easy, it is so rewarding and I can’t wait to watch a whole new squad experience it.
Much love,
Quinn
So, Thank you for your prayers, for your financial help, words of encouragement and reading all about my journey. It has been a wild adventure, but I sure am glad to be home and to have experienced it all! Life definitely isn’t easy and I am definitely not perfect, but I am grateful for a Father that has a far better understanding than I do!
I am home and enjoying every bit of it. I can’t think of any other words or ways to say it, but thank you so much for following my journey. Your support has done so much and being home and being able to share with you all in person has been amazing. I wish I could have the time to meet with you all, but for now all I can say is Thank You. We have made it around the world together and impacted so many lives. We have grown the kingdom together!
I am still in need of financial support. I ask that you would pray with me for God to provide. He has called me here and I know that he will provide. If you feel like God is tugging on your heart you can donate through this page.
– If you are American go ahead and click on the donate tab at the top right hand corner of this page, all donations are tax deductible.
-If you are Canadian and would like a tax receipt, please send an e-transfer to [email protected] with a follow-up email stating my name (Quinn Diaz), your name and your address. Need help refer to this blog of mine.
I am also in need of prayer. Prayer is the most important support. I believe in the power of prayer.
I send out support emails every month. If you would like to receive an email, comment with your email and I will include you in them.
You can also subscribe to my blog to get email updates whenever I post a blog!
