Month six. Halfway through. I still remember clutching my memories for dear life as I felt weightless in the air within the plane taking off over the Pacific. I remember sitting in the backseat of a Filipino van wishing so hard that I could do "normal life" again. Now I'm sitting in a tiled kitchen, sipping Rooibos and wearing ten layers of clothing to stifle the cold nipping at my nose and fingertips. Fourteen hour travel days seem short, and jumping off of a Romanian train into four feet of snow within 60 seconds for fear the door might shut us in (it's happened before) doesn't seem to phase a group of thirteen. A gypsy woman walking through the front door and taking food off of our table is, yes, still bizarre, but not unheard of. Transitioning from three months in Africa to the coldest winter this place has seen in years is. . . well, not only bearable, but exactly what I must have signed up for. It's really kind of laughable that as a discontent 22-year-old, I set out to see if I could change the world, but I'm finding that the world is changing me.
I don't know if all this time you've been picturing me actively and successfully finding the cure for AIDS, performing signs and miracles right and left, or nobly mentoring orphans. . . most of the time, I still have no idea what the heck I'm doing. Most of the time the all-too-familiar internal monologue that replays itself like a bad radio single is "Why me?" I miss the kids. I've found that it's never me loving them, it's them loving me. It's effortless. These kids RAN to me. They didn't know who I was, but they RAN. It seems that the only English they were familiar with was "What's your name?" They wanted to know me. . .but it wasn't like they wanted to know my interests, where I came from, or what I could do for them before they decided that I was a good candidate. They waited until they were already in my arms to ask me my name. They clung to me when I left, and like I've been trained to do, they prepared themselves for transient people in their lives. How bittersweet.
Daddy has been bringing me through a tough season. Like a thick fog settling in around who I thought and believed that I was. I know that one day that the fog will lift, but for now, I'm still waiting, and trying to believe that when I take another step, there will still be ground ahead of me.
