I have less than a month left here in Southeast Asia. Time hasn't necessarily flown by, but here it is coming to a rapid ending nonetheless. I cannot help but reflect on the past 2 years of my life at this point in the game when it's so close to departure time.
Here's the bottom line: I've fallen in love with this country and the people in it.
All of my students, soccer girls, like-minded friends, market ladies, and people who used to be unfamiliar strangers. They have all become fierce friends and family to me here. My heart will be split into a million pieces in just a few weeks when I have to go back to America. If I'm honest with you all, I'll tell you something. I have no idea how to function in America anymore. Whenever I think about it, I just can't wrap my mind around it. It may seem completely retarded to you that I'm anything besides ecstatic about coming home, but to me? It's not surprising at all that coming home is laced with 1,000 different emotions and concerns.
Yes, I'm going to swim in a sea of Taco Bell quesadillas and drown myself in a waterfall of Code Red Mountain Dew. Yes, I'm also going to feel like an alien in my own culture and country. I could make a list more than a mile long of comparisons, pros, cons, fears, happy things… All I have left to do is trust and cling to the one who never leaves me.
So in this post, I'm going to try not to worry. I'm going to try to trust with reckless abandon instead. Someone holds my hands and heart. I may feel strange and alone, but I am not. I may not know the future whatsoever, but he does. I may feel completely unraveled and undone, but he will hold me together. If anything, being here has helped me to learn about trusting him with everything, even the smallest of things. Because he sees the depths of my soul, and he knows exactly what's coming next. Ask me about my plans, and I will tell you that I have a trillion ideas- no plans. I'm planning on waiting until I hear clearly what on this earth he wants me to do with the rest of my life (better yet what he wants me to do in this next stretch of the journey since he seems to like to reveal bits and pieces at a time.) People may not like that answer, but it's OK with me. When things are well with your soul, the rest seems to fall in line in its own timing. Thankfully, I have peace and hope to cling to.
Life has no pause button, no rewind, no fast forward. You cannot speed it up or slow it down. But by all means, you must live it. I have breath in my lungs for another day, so I know that I'm meant to live this life whatever may come. And, I am not, nor will I ever be alone. Today, my heart is holding on to that fact and trying to know it, believe it, and feel it deeply although I am afraid.
