Feels so good to be back!! I arrived home on August 1st greeted by my cheering family holding balloons, posters, and placing a patriotic lei on me as I walked up! Haha! It felt so good to be back with them! We went out to eat Mexican for dinner (of course) and I went home and crashed in my bed that I never realized was SO COMFORTABLE!!
The first few days were so fun seeing more family and talking about my trip and seeing how God was working here while I was gone! So great! But then, after a couple days, a strange wave of emotions, feelings, and actions took over that I wasn’t expecting. I thought I would come home and want to call and hang out with friends and family, eat myself silly with all the food I’ve been missing for a year, and wear all my clothes I left behind in my closet. To my surprise I emotionally wasn’t ready to see a lot of people. I actually would have minor anxiety when I went into public places of fear that I’d run into someone I knew. I lost my appetite or the food made me sick because I wasn’t used to processed food. And I still wore some of my traveling clothes around the house! These reactions were so weird to me and I had no idea why I felt this way! I also felt like an outsider. I have not “fit in” anywhere in the past eleven months and when I finally get to my culture I felt like I was a bystander…a foreigner in another new country. These feelings were not because I missed my race friends or wanted to be back overseas. I was happy to be home and excited about my new season coming up in my life. Still can’t explain it to this day…
A week went by and I was pretty much a roller coaster of feeling happy, then sad, then really tired, and then feeling full of life! I think it was just the shock of how different of a person I saw myself as, but seeing how everything here seemed to be the exact same as I left it. The shock of materialism was also nauseating, especially spending my first night in America in NYC!
I’m not the same person that left a year ago. I’ve seen and experienced too many things to just casually slide back into “normal life”. I couldn’t seem to find the balance between the old Steph and the new one, between my race lifestyle and the American lifestyle… I didn’t even get a new cell phone until yesterday!! But life goes on, God is faithful in helping me cope, and I am slowly finding the balance of these two extremes.
I was able to process a lot by getting away last week, going to the beach for a few days, and just spending that uninterrupted time with God that I used to have. It was just the refreshment I needed and He showed me that He is still just as close to me here in distractive America as He was this past year.
He still continues to provide for my needs too:
**Cool God Story**
I went and visited a friend out of town this past weekend and while I was there, my sweet friends (married couple) surprised me with a car!!! A 2002 Nissan Pathfinder SUV! I love it! My friend has owned it for years and she said that in May, God woke her up in the middle of the night and told her to give me her car. She said her heart was pounding and she had never heard God speak to her so clearly before. So in May, three months before I came home, God laid this need on their hearts to provide for me before they even knew it was a need of mine! Ah!!
So yes, coming home has been a big adjustment, but I have such an incredible support system here in my family, friends, and church. Ah, I truly am blessed and enjoying living back home temporarily and seeing God more present in my life everyday. Tomorrow I leave for a few days for our final World Race debrief in Gainesville, GA (headquarters of Adventure in Missions). From there, I’ll be in Tennessee for a few more days to start preparing to move and begin the next chapter of my life in just a few weeks! Stay tuned for more updates on that! =)
