Answers

As I go through photos of the weeks before I left home, through the emails that have been sent and received, through the memories and important moments that stand out in my mind, I realize the brevity of what has occurred over the past 11 months. I see pictures of myself, before I was bald, before I was a missionary, before I was a ‘world changer’ – and I get nostalgic. I see pictures of myself and think, “She looks like a nice girl.” Then I look in the mirror and I see a person that is unrecognizable when put next to the girl in the pictures, but it’s more than just my short mop of hair, acne, and worn clothes that distinguish me from those photographs. Something internal has happened, some sort of alteration, like the shifting of tectonic plates that causes an earthquake. The changes that have transpired vary from minute to enormous, but it would seem that even the slightest adjustment has grand effects on not only who am I in my spirit, but who I am as I walk and live and breathe.

I am a new creation, a different person who dreams bigger and loves fiercer than I did when I left home. My mind has changed, and even though I feel at times that I have lost my academic smarts, I know that I have gained greater knowledge than any university could give me – and I’m still freaked out about going home. There are things going on at home that I don’t want to face, relationships that have changed and will change more, things that I know I need to say to certain people that are going to be hard to say. There’s all this junk there that has to be cleaned up somehow. I become this overwhelmed, tumbling ball of stress when I think about it. I’m not sure I’m up to fixing it all, I’m not sure I have the right words to say, I’m not sure I have the solutions. Going home should be a bittersweet thing, not something that plagues me with doubt, anxiety, and fear.

 

Here’s the thing about going home – I am not the answer.

There, I said it.

I am not enough.

Regardless of all of the things I’ve seen, heard, smelled, dreamt, learned, and experienced I will be completely and utterly ineffective when I go back home if I forget one simple thing:

It is not I who live, but He who lives in me.

Life is kind of hard sometimes, and I kind of suck at dealing with it most of the time. But God’s has patience deeper than I can swim, He’s has kindness greater than what my mind can compute, and He’s has love in surplus.

See, I’ve been looking at going home as an opportunity for me to stir things up in my family and community. And it is that opportunity, but I’ve been looking at it from the perspective of me being capable to do it with what I’ve learned, instead of embracing the understanding of what it means to be truly and fully crucified with Christ. Through His death He has given me new life, He has made me an heir to His power, but most importantly His love covers all of my mistakes, even the big mistake of thinking that I’m big and strong enough to do this by myself. I have known that I couldn’t do any of this Race without Him, so why did I think that I could somehow re-enter into life back home without being at His side? I am not the answer to the troubles on the home front because these aren’t challenges God has thrown at me, they are challenges He is going to face with me. The fact that everything isn’t peachy keen doesn’t mean that He’s stopped loving me, or that He isn’t honoring me for my obedience to Him, it means that there are multiple opportunities back home for God to demonstrate His goodness and power.

 

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity,
or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger;
or threatened with death?
(As the Scriptures say, ‘For your sake we are killed every day;
we are being slaughtered like sheep.’)
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours
through Christ, who loved us.