I arrived at Will Rogers International Airport to 20 smiling faces I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Faces who got merely a glimpse of what I had been through over those 11 months. Faces I hadn’t seen since before… everything.
My mom ran up to me with tears streaming down her face. She threw her arms around my neck.
“Are you happy to see me?” I asked with a quiet laugh.
I felt the need to perform. To entertain. To affirm everyone in my appreciation of their presence at my arrival.
“Thank you so much for coming! Hi! So good to see you! Thank you so much…”
I didn’t know what to feel. I wasn’t excited, but I wasn’t sad. I just was.
I tried not to have expectations. I had heard all kinds of World Race re-entry experiences of nobody understanding them or knowing what to ask or how to be. I figured that would be the case for myself as well.
Family members asked a few questions about things I had seen or eaten or things like that. In the car, few questions were asked. I talked about traffic in India after someone cut off our suburban. When we got home, we ate dinner. I shared a few pictures. And then we watched a lot of videos of our pets.
I had a long and intimate conversation with my sister that night. I felt connected. I felt alive. I felt inspiring. I felt like I really had changed.
More conversations followed over the next few weeks. I was encouraged. I was surprised. I cocked my head in wonder at things about which I saw others get irritated.
Okay, plans didn’t work out the way we had scheduled. It’s okay. We’ll just do this instead.
Okay, I might have to wait an hour instead of five minutes. It’s okay. I’ll just find something to do in the meantime.
I wasn’t trying to go all when I was a kid, I walked to school barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways on anyone. But as I observed, I thought about things that were worse than not getting an omelet for breakfast or an immediate ride home. Things like Mozambican women having to mash up corn all day to make porridge for every meal or our squad having to wait eight hours for a big enough bus to Swaziland. And really, still, those things didn’t matter all that much.
But, as I lounged on the living room couch or drank coffee in a Panera Bread booth or watched Skyfall in a comfortable, cushioned seat… as I had honest conversations with people who no more understood my experience than I fully understood theirs…
I noticed things that did matter.
Things like settling for mediocre relationships, spiritual walks, and purposes in life.
being entertained by stories about abandonment, revenge, and abuse.
looking for value in people
food
appearance
drugs
money
performance…
Things like 20 elementary-aged kids being shot and killed.
Things like your co-workers who, having been caught up in a cycle of less-than-perfect decisions, are now scraping to get by.
Things like shutting God out based on false delusions of who He actually is.
Things that wreck us.
I sit across the table from these stories and yearn. I yearn for their storytellers to take a step back and examine the direction of their lives.
Is this choice, this thing you can’t seem to live without, this thing that has you transfixed… Is it taking you somewhere you want to end up, or not?
When you look at the big picture, is this really working for you?
There are things that matter.
And there are things that don’t.
And then there are things that should matter.
But something weird has happened over the course of the last 79 days. Something I feared but didn’t really expect. Because I had been wrecked. Figured out how to live with open hands, not fists clenched around my ideals and ideas of pretend American dreams.
I’ve slowly found myself migrating to the other side of the table.
I’ve become discouraged, defeated, heart riddled with anxiety and mind bogged down by all that I do not know.
I’ve forgotten what it’s like to breathe. To embrace each moment infused with the beauty and glory of the God who gave it to me. As I lie on the floor and cry out to God in the midst of the confusion and unknown, I ask Him questions like, ‘What do you want me to do? Are you really telling me to do ______ a year from now?’ Which is funny, because God usually gives us the next step, not the next five.
I’ve curled up on the sofa of a shrink’s office and recounted the woes of my past and present. I’ve sat in a car with my best friend and tried to predict my future. I’ve lain in bed and cried with my face buried in a pillow.
And when I look at the big picture, I realize that this isn’t really working for me, either.
And then I realize that, through it all, God’s been saying the same thing over
and over
and over.
Trust Me.
Cling to Me.
Walk in the Light.
You don’t know the next step. But I do.
Stop obsessing over everything else. Fix your eyes on Me.
And this makes sense, because I’ve done it before. When I’ve stopped focusing on all the crap that is rigged for failure anyway and started seeking Him, things just kind of fall into place. Not always right away. Not usually in the way I expect or desire. But they do. Eventually, they do.
The things that don’t matter fade away. The things that do, the things that should matter, those come into focus. Because all those things are Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment