Well, I had planned on never blogging again but since everyone else is doing it and more than one person has told me I should keep writing, I have fallen victim to peer pressure. So here you go, my assimilation blog:
Hot showers, a toilet I can sit on, a big bed with a new mattress that I don’t have to share with two other people, and discovering pretty clothes I forgot I owned, well, you can imagine how hard it’s been to come back to that.
But in all seriousness, it has been a little rough.
I have been having separation anxiety and I’m getting a little restless about this next season of my life. As it has been pointed out to me, I’m the kind of person who wants to know everything all the time, so the fact that I’m just sitting around waiting for phone calls and emails to be returned about where I could potentially end up is kind of killing me. But at least with all my free time I’ve been learning Spanish in anticipation of my future south of the border coffee shop.
One of the questions I get asked the most is, “What’s the hardest thing about coming home?” It’s not the rush hour traffic that lasts for 12 hours or the fact that I freeze in air conditioned rooms, it might sound bizarre but I think the hardest thing about coming home is how easy it has been to come home. I think I held this expectation, maybe delusion even, that after spending a year doing ministry abroad, I would come back and be able to stand apart from the stereotypical advertised American lifestyle. For example, in my head, I pictured myself not falling into consumerism (again), not worrying about money and being able to trust that God will provide for me, being able to easily choose to have a quiet time over sleeping in, you know, the kind of stuff I couldn’t even do while I was still on the Race. But it has been so easy to fall right back into the same old bad habits I had before the Race. My mind is consumed with gas prices, what’s on TV today, and how my eBay auction is doing. And maybe the worst part of it all is that I didn’t even notice a switch, I didn’t realize that my mind had been consumed by all of the wrong things again until just today while I was lying spread-eagle on my carpetted floor writhing about how I needed to hear from God, in between the thoughts about the Netflix movie that just came in the mail and when my future husband is going to come along.
So anyways, there is my “life at home” blog. It has it’s ups and it’s downs, and it’s going to take some time to figure everything out, but it’ll all fall into place one of these days.
(me and my brother at the Jersey shore)
Oh, “What’s next?” you ask. Well, long term, I still don’t know, but for now, I’m gearing up to roadtrip to California with Tricia and Amy for a couple weeks and then I’m heading down to Atlanta, GA for a month to hang out with Global Frontier Missions. I’m pretty excited.
