So I guess I should write a wrap up sort of thing to end off the trip. But before I go any further I must be honest, this blog is entirely being written for me. I know quite selfish of me, but I can’t expect all you busy people to stop your browsing to what? Read a missionary blog for a somewhat ex missionary. I think I needed some sort of closure or to finally tell someone how I felt because I feel as if I have no one here. However, if you are reading, and I haven’t scared you away yet, feel free to look in on the ever ramblings or my mind, the things I have pondered and prayed about for the last 2 months I have been home. This by no means will be a Caitlinn Curry blog, for those of you that don’t know her, she is by far the best writer I have ever encountered, and I highly encourage you to look at her latest post. But I can assure you this will be a Bekah blog, filled with mistakes, typos, and untamed honesty.
Home. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The place I have been looking forward to for so long, to be with my friends and family after so long. Home, at the end of the trip, seemed like it was going to be the 2nd best part of my life, besides the trip. All my hopes were in it, I thought it was going to renew my spirits and make me push harder to build my relationship with God. HA, its funny what fantasies our mind creates for us when we let our expectations take over reality. You may be wondering, what is so tragic about home, you should be so thankful for all the things you haven’t had for the last 9 months and now automatically have access to. That is just it isn’t it though. In Africa every morning I’d wake up around 5, go read my Bible and bask in the glory of God’s creation while looking out over lake Malawi, go carry around 50 pounds of water from the well, maybe cook some breakfast, prune some trees, dig some holes- everything was simple, everything was necessary- nothing for excess. Well maybe SOME of it was not necessary (Only Immersion 2 members will really understand that) I miss the lack of excess; I miss everything about that life. I wish I could explain in words, how much I miss Nicaragua. How my heart aches for it and its children. How my daydreams, which before the trip used to be taken up by that months new guy interest, are solely focused on Nicaragua and how I miss the people there. When I hear people speaking Spanish my ears perk up, I have even followed around a Spanish family around a Goodwill, just to try to practice my Spanish. Sometimes, when I am stressed about something or other and people are talking all around me and I don’t want to hear anything but my thoughts, I pretend everyone is speaking Spanish to fast for me to understand, that way I don’t feel bad about not being involved. I know I am weird, but I am so much weirder then that.
If only you knew, how weird my feelings are about my friends from home. I want to enjoy spending time with them, I really do, but other then a select few; I almost convince my self they are judging me. Or they think I am just trying to be a typical Christian after a missions trip who thinks she’s changed but will really go back to her old self after the whole trips kinda faded from her memory. But that is the last thing I want. I can’t go back to who I was before the trip. I was so useless without God, I was being every stereotype of someone who had nothing to live for. The parties, the smoking, stealing, and just so many worthless stupid things I did without reason. I WILL NOT go back to those things. I don’t have anything against people that do those things, its just for me, all of those thing were in my life to make me feel something, give me a rush so life felt exciting. But now, there seems to be only be one rush- helping people in need, for once in my life during this trip I have felt useful. Do you know how hard it is for a kid from a family of 14 to feel useful?? It’s hard, and I finally got to feel that for once on the trip.
Well right about now you all, whoever y’all are, are probably wondering what is going to be the point of all this. I don’t really know. Maybe it’s to kinda question you people who are living for themselves and ask you , how do you possibly live like that? How can you go on to your job to make money to buy a new outfit, or spend a crazy amount of money on things like make up, videogames, electronics, when I just saw multiple families struggling to feed their kids, children whose only home is underneath a bridge, wives whose husbands are all dead from overworking themselves in sugar cane fields. How did I live like that before the trip? How can I keep living in America and feel right about getting a college education when so many other people in the world deserve it so much more then I do. I know, these all are typical reentry questions, and I am not trying to make anyone feel bad, people just can’t possibly understand until they have lived in an undeveloped country for a long period of time. You can’t understand the value of water until you’ve carried your own drinking water half a mile after pumping it yourself. You can’t understand the normalcy of death until you see it all the time, I went to a funeral in every single country that I have been too, I sat in a room with a dead person for over 2 hours as if my friends dead uncle was another couch of piece of furniture.
I think what all these questions are coming to is this- how am I going to be normal again? The truly sad part is, I already know the answer-
Never.
The next question is when will I be truly happy again? I think there is only one answer to that as well-
when I’m home again, and not PA, but my real home- Nicaragua
But the hardest question of all is one I don’t know the answer to-
When will God let me go back?
I can only pray it’s sooner then I think.
One thing I can think of to help me through all of this is the Serenity prayer-
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Cliché I know, but in all realness, that is exactly what I need. I need to learn how to be happy while in America and how to serve people here. I need to learn how to honor my parents and regain their trust before I can expect them to back me up on my crazy dreams of a Nicaraguan orphanage.
I know this was crazy and all over the place, but these are the things that have been on my mind. If you have any thoughts or advice please share it with me, I’D love to hear it. Pray that I won’t miss the girls from my team so much. They all became my best friends and sisters and I miss them all daily. Pray that I have patience for God’s plan for me, and pray that I can start to view America as my home too.
I guess this is goodbye blog, I have neglected you and I am sorry, well not really. But hopefully this last entry makes up for all the “should have been written” ones. Until next time, everyone.
Thanks for reading.
