What happens when your perception of home dramatically changes?
This past year my home has been everything from dirty hostels, to beautiful air b&bs, shacks to compounds, a single room to an entire home. My backpack, a tent in the middle of the jungle, the people around me.
As the clock seems to triple in speed our seemingly endless journey is coming to a close sooner than I’m comfortable with. I am suddenly a sporadic whirlwind of emotions, breaking down in tears any time I try to explain what I’m feeling or express to my L squad how much they mean to me.
I try so hard to describe what’s in my heart and end up bursting out “I just love you so much” and then I push the emotions down again so I don’t have to deal with them.
Being completely honest, I feel a lot of anxiety going home. My perception of the world and everything in it has completely changed. I’m afraid I won’t have much in common with my closest friends.
The World Race is often compared to a pressure cooker. You grow exponentially in so many areas and you are stretched, broken, and rebuilt from the ground up. The people around you see your mess, see you as you are. There’s nothing more intimate than being loved when you are at your most vulnerable. There is a connection it creates, a bond that binds you together as you travel from country to country; experiencing sickness, spiritual battle, exhaustion, frustration and so much more together. You are pushed to your limits and when you feel like you can’t go any further for fear of falling off the ledge, you are pushed again..sent flying into the unknown. But you are not alone.
These people came alongside me and supported me through the most challenging, growing, rewarding, fulfilling, life-changing year of my life. How do you go from living every day, EVERY MINUTE with them beside you, to “bye, see ya maybe never…”?!
Honestly, it makes me sick to think about.
I said community would be the hardest part for me on the race because, you know “I’m an introvert and I don’t like people” and all that other fabricated foolishness.
I was right though, it WILL BE the hardest part for me, but not in the way I expected. I’ve grown to love cooking with partners, movie nights along the Amazon river, making popcorn at 1 in the morning for 20 hour bus rides, having all night prayer vigils, being woken up because everyone is laughing at your sleep talking, thinking you will just be praying for people and then SURPRISE, being asked to preach…like NOW, having people call you out on your lies and EVEN getting a knock on the bathroom door as soon as you step in (even though it’s been vacant for the past three hours.)
No that wasn’t the hard part.
The hardest part about community comes at the end…the goodbye.
I’m coming home, and I’m so excited. To flush toilet paper, to drink cranberry juice, to watch whatever I want whenever I want, to run ALONE, to wear shorts, to dry off with a big fluffy towel, to hang out with my friends and family, to share how God has dramatically changed my life for the better.
But I’m also grieving.
I know God will surround me with NEW community, NEW friends, NEW family, new HOME and I continue to trust Him in this process. After all He led me this far, He gave me these incredible people in the first place right?! I know that, but it doesn’t make the feeling of loss any less real.
I’m asking for your help in this process. I’m not the same person I was when I left, don’t expect me to be. Give me grace. Give me patience. Give me love.
Ready or not. I’m coming home.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret… I won’t be home for long. God and I are just getting started. 😉
