It really didn't make any sense. There was no reason for this flood of emotion, this overwhelming feeling of the need to cry, of wanting to cry. Sitting in a van of 8 people, listening to the pink speaker beside me blare worship music as my teammates quietly sang along seemed like background music, the type of white noise that allows you to think more clearly. The kind of static that drives everything out but the depth of your thoughts. I couldn't tell you what the songs were or what the message was that morning, I was too distracted by the faces on the other side of the slightly smudged window. Faces that were separated by a matter of mere glass and atmosphere, average faces that caused no reason to grab my attention on this early Wednesday morning, no reason other than my own thoughts matching their lifeless expression. It seems a lifetime ago that those thoughts screamed from my soul. Yet I could see them crying out from the faces of the crowded bus, I could see their eyes searching, their hearts desperately hoping and the bodies so paralyzed by lack of action.
Was it really only two months ago?
"I don't feel any different. At least, I don't think I should feel as different as I do. I'm back home, laying in the same bed, in the same room of the same house I've lived in for 15 years, after coming home from a busy night at the same Mexican restaurant I've worked at for the past 4 years. This is who I am isn't it? This is the life that I grew up knowing and yet I can't stop looking at a picture of 50 some odd strangers that make up my desktop of the same Mac I've had for 4 years and wonder if maybe something is different. If maybe this life that is so easy to get sucked back into is not the life that I believe to be normal. This is not real life. Real life is back at training camp; back with a family of strangers that all desperately crave and demand the type of community that I truly believe everyone is crying out for. Real life is where I can dance every day and pray without feeling that I wasn't good enough to talk to God. Real life is when a simple "How are you today?" starts with every confession of struggle and ends with a sense of truth, peace and of course: prayer. Real life is where the ones unable to sit still aren't just doing it out of a nervous habit but an excited can't-stop-moving-because-life-is-great one. "
That's the real life I experienced, and every day I found myself asking what I had been doing for the past 22 years. Every day I have to remind myself that the life that is so easy to get sucked into; the stagnant, stuck in neutral and painfully hurtful life that we accept as normal isn't worth the sacrifice. That the week of true life I was able to glimpse is only just the beginning. That in time, it will be all I know, all I expect, and all I demand.
But it's more than that.
Now I want it for everyone else. I saw those faces, those people, those souls wondering if there is something more. If there's something more than the formality, the hesitancy, the lack of love that we encounter on a daily basis. Why is that bus not overflowing with community? It was so easy to picture! A bus that doesn't carry silence but joy! A bus that carries a family of strangers who know everything about each other and pour out love in every action. Why can't the 8 am bus ride be the best part of the day?
There is so much more.
I pray to be broken from the easiness of accepting what I thought was normal and for strength to fight for the sense of community I desire to be found right where I am. I pray the same for you.
