As the clock winds down on my great adventure I am faced with the seemingly grim reality that I have to go back to the world. Even as I write this I recognize the irony of what I am saying. I have spent the last 10 months circumnavigating the globe, trotting from country to country, continent to continent, and partaking in the various cultures I have found there but that’s not the world to me that’s the kingdom. I have spent almost every waking moment with men and women (its weird for me to talk about us like grown ups) who are sold out (or trying to be) to whatever this is we are doing. Its easy when you aren’t alone, its easy when you have a cheer section and companions to go after what sounds to any normal person to be impossible.
It hit me hard the other day as I was mulling over what exactly I should do after the race. I imagined that I would like to work in a little bakery or something early and unrelational and then it hit me like a ton of bricks to the chest, I won’t have community. I WON”T HAVE COMMUNITY! When I go home I won’t be constantly surrounded by my cheering companions, I won’t even have anyone around who vaguely understands what I have been living for the last year. Even when I saw my family on the layover we had through LAX on the way to Central America from Asia, I was never without my community, Lil and Jer were with me. I have spent a year learning to and then trying to live in transparency, accountability and a constant search for God, these are not the things I will go home to.
I doubt there is one person among us who is leaving the race unchanged. We all left lives behind that probably haven’t changed too much in our absence, but we have. Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends and knowing the local language. I worry though that the race will be something I lament as I navigate the unquestionably harder paths of the “real world”, that I will long for its comparative richness and simplicity as I trudge through the clutter that awaits me.
Wow, this got real depressing real fast. I know that regardless of how easy or difficult homecoming will be I am glad that I did the race and that with God’s continued grace I will finish it. It has been nothing that I ever could have comprehended without doing it. I have made friends I want to keep for at least the rest of my life. I have learned a lot about who I am and who the Lord has called me to be. I have learned that the dreams we are given can be lived out if we are willing to walk by faith and not by sight. I have learned that what God wants for me is infinitely better than what I could ever even imagine wanting for myself. Best of all though I have learned that I am not alone in this, in wanting more than the world says I should have, in wanting Kingdom and restoration and God’s love poured out on His people, we might not live anywhere near each other but we are out there and now we know it.
