Here I am, sitting on the back counter of our kitchen. My legs are swinging and I’m wearing my favorite yellow sweater. I haven’t brushed my hair in a week and I NEED to do laundry.
I’m a little bit overwhelmed.
I mean, I only have twenty-something days with the people I have spent the past 9 months with.
There’s been a LOT of hard days. A lot of me looking myself in the mirror, thinking what the freaking heck am I doing. Sometimes my faith felt smaller than it had ever been. Sometimes being sick in a foreign country without running water or a real bed or my mom made me weep myself to sleep. (Materialistic, I know. But HARD.) I’ve seen immense brokenness. Women being sex trafficked. Children covered in dirt begging for food, or money, or anything to survive. Real life human beings selling their bodies to live. Depression and pain and tears, man. I’ve missed my friends at home. I’ve missed Chickfila and air conditioning and the freedom to drive.
But there’s been a whole massive amount of goodness. A massive amount of dance parties using water jugs as instruments in Guatemala. Shouting praises of Jesus publicly on the streets of a closed country. And coming home to encouraging notes left in my pillow. Paragliding over villages of Nepal. And seeing people I love choose Christ repeatedly. And seeing my PreK students grin so BIG because they understood how to trace the letter J for the first time. Goodness is praying for the woman who doesn’t have legs and seeing her face light up. It’s going to a church that makes you feel like you’re back at home and hearing the Drake and Josh theme song on a chicken bus ride to they city.
And people pulling me aside to tell me about the Jesus they see in me.
To me, that’s something worth continuing for.
So as I sit here, on the kitchen counter, shouting praises while swinging my legs and wearing my favorite yellow sweater,
I am grateful.
And thankful.
And immensely reminded of Christ’s love for me.
