One thing the Race did for me was to help me value honesty, and I’ve always appreciated the reactions I’ve received when I write honestly. That being said, this is honest, though not very pretty. I’ve had a hard day… maybe a hard year. Regardless of why, I can’t keep myself from meandering down the old roads that not so long ago were new; completely uncharted, terrifying, wild and exciting.
Regardless that I know I’m in a time of waiting, of doing the grunt work before dreams can be realized, of tent-making, of valleys, my heart languishes for times when I was in the unfolding, the reaping, the journey, and the zenith. Of
days I would awake and not know where in the world I was, not due to a particularly heavy dose of sleep meds or alcohol, but because I had caught a red-eye, cross-continental flight the night before. I miss the days when I didn’t have to worry about what I had done in the past, or what would come, because the significance of planting my foot on the ground of some middle-of-nowhere village that I’d never have otherwise heard of was the antithesis of coincidental, spurring me to fully be, right there, right then.
The ironies of that time are so blatant to me now. Maybe I did live more fully in those moments than in others, but even during those times I was always looking to the future, always wondering what was next. In Bulgaria, I was constantly looking towards Israel, and in Israel, I would look forward to Turkey. And in the lonely months, simultaneously looking forward to the next jump, I’d curl up and wish I was freezing to death in an abandoned building in the wilderness of… Yup, Bulgaria.
Even though my life around me now is very different, familiar people and somewhat familiar places surrounding me, I still find my inherent humanity to be the same as on the Race. Hoping for the future, pining for the past, so eclipsed by both that the present easily slips away.
If I could go back, I think a huge part of me would have lived the Race forever. Each month, a new locale, each day, a new ministry, each moment, a new side of God. Maybe all my hair really would have fallen out (Seriously, I made it back to America in such a state that my hairdresser sent me to the doctor to find out what was wrong), maybe all my clothes would be more moth-eaten than the two-foot tear in my best skirt, and maybe I would cry every time my internet connection wouldn’t be strong enough to sustain a skype connection home. And I know it’s silly to believe that someone could do this for a lifetime, but sometimes, I still wish…
I still wish it was as easy to live intentionally in a money-obsessed culture, that I had at least one believer here in this town that could truly relate to what I believe without thinking I’m too idealistic (or delusional), that it wasn’t so hard to go to church and wonder if, despite the crosses and hymns and seminary degrees in abundance, the people really even know the nature of Jesus at all. I wish I could find one person that might empathize with what it means to break down in tears at the kitchen faucet, burdened with all the lives that this wasteful, exorbitant, never-ending stream of tap could save if it were only streaming in drought-consumed Somalia in that very moment.
I wrote a long time ago that I hoped the World Race would ruin me. And it did. I just wanted it to ruin me while I was on the field, which, to my plans, would have been every day for the rest of my life. But I can’t turn it off here. Here, where friends or boredom or necessity beckons the next purchase, and where Jesus steps in front of me, holding children who have faces and scars and dresses I vividly remember, and dares me to make the next needless purchase while He has entrusted their lives and stories to my care. Will I defy a gift as precious as their need by turning my mind off, by running up a tab at Starbucks, flitting off mindlessly on a Friday night to catch a double-feature of two movies I could really care less about?
That Jesus-guy ruined my old life. Which is good, since there wasn’t much in it to brag about or miss. But the in-between, the meanwhile, is the hardest place yet. Just like the refugees I met the world over, I feel displaced, odd, wandering in a haze I can’t see through, trying to understand how I got here.
I keep telling myself to trust God, that He has me in this in-between, and that this meanwhile belongs to Him. But even writing this out sounds strange and doesn’t convince me of much. In the screaming openness of Tanzania, praying with the broken to receive Jesus, that time felt like it belonged to Him. But this? Crazy, mixed-up sleep patterns from working a night shift, a schedule that rarely allows for other interaction with the few believers I know here, general loneliness, skepticism about nearly all things “Christian”, the daily reality of looking in the mirror and knowing that, even a year ago, I would have wanted to shake me for this mediocrity that permeates from all areas of my so-called life… These things make me want to question God, asking, “Why did you trust me to go if the coming back would look like this? Why did you let me dream so big and reach so far, only to be stuck here? I once thought I was trustworthy enough to be entrusted with situations like this, but now I realize my error.”
On days like this, on years like this, I just want to cry out, “Take me back, Jesus. Just take me back.”
I know my weakness always feels like this, but I wish the “my strength” that God was talking about would just hurry up and show up.
I know that this, too, shall pass. Whether this is my disposition, my attitude, my neediness, my situation, my location, or my PMS, I know it will. And even though I find little comfort in much, I find much comfort in this little: That one day, whether it be tomorrow, next week, or next month, (I won’t interject ‘next year’ at this point because I’m far too brittle right now for this thinking), one moment soon, though it seems far, I’ll look behind me and see that, like a thunderstorm on an open plain, it is all behind me; that my guessing and my frustration has subsided to acceptance and peace, to knowing that God was using me all along, even though I couldn’t see it at all during the maelstrom.
One day, I’ll be me again. The me that I was in Africa, on the Race, when I’m before God with a grateful, effervescent heart. I won’t focus on what I am now, I’ll only focus on that.
