Today marks the one-month mark of my time left here in
Ghana. I am finding myself thinking about going home more and more, especially
since we have been on break for 3 weeks and I have been left with quite a lot
of free time. The afternoons are HOT and the kids are loud, leading me to spend
some quiet afternoons locked up in my room with a book or an unbeatable game of
Mahjong (Emily spent a lot of time laughing at me yesterday as I was tried for
game after game to win… all to no avail). Today, I am spending the morning
fixing my flash drive so that I can load pictures on it to take back, as this
computer is staying here (thanks, Dad, for being willing to leave it here!).
Right now, it’s hard for me to work up the energy to go and play on the
playground with the kids… Again…
We often tease John about his “waffle brain,” thinking in a
very compartmentalized way and focusing on only one thing at a time, as
compared to our silly and nonsensical girl spaghetti brains that produce a
great deal of laughter as our “brain doesn’t connect to our language,” as
Autumn would say. Right now, I feel like my brain is a big huge plate of
delicious spaghetti, packed full of joy and love and excitement that is
happening around me, right now… But the only thing I can stare at is the big
honkin’ meatball on top… My plane ride back to the States. My long layover in
Frankfurt. Entering into Denver. Getting to the airport in Spokane at 11:30pm.
Jumping into a week of wedding festivities for Tricia and Jesse. Going “home.” This meatball looks really good…
But I’m not sure I like meatballs! I’ve never been sure I
liked meatballs, actually. And when meatballs including leaving City of Refuge
and my family here, I’m really not so sure that I like them. I know I like
spaghetti, and spaghetti is around me right now… My life at CORM is the
spaghetti… Let’s feast!
But meatballs mean
eating Olive Garden… Talking walks with friends… Living with Kendra… Teaching
kids with autism, my ultimate passion in life… Hugs from my closest friends…
Adventures in the Tri-Cities… Drinking lattes (Alyssa, I can’t wait to do this
with you!)…
What about Uno with the kids in the summer hut? Games in the
sand with rubber bands? Making Joel flip in circles? Morning greetings from
Gamali, Benard, Aaron, and Bismark? Laughing so hard with Emily and Autumn that
Em squirts hot chocolate out her nose? Hugs from kids at school?
I want to be present while I am here. I want to bask in
those moments.
But that meatball just
looks so dang good…
When I first came back to Ghana in January, I struggled a
lot for about a month. I wanted to be places I wasn’t, I wanted to be
celebrating occasions with people instead of from afar, I wanted to live in
community… In a different community than the one I am in. This week, a dear
friend was sharing about some of her homesickness struggles and said “Home sometimes always seems somewhere where we are not!”
When I put stars on a map for all the places that my close friends are
occupying in this world, my heart is spread out over cities… Over states… Over
continents… All of which hold a little piece of “home” in the hearts of my
friends. If home is where the heart is, then my home is all over the world… And
that’s pretty special, if I’m willing to come to terms with the fact that I’m
always both at “home” and missing “home.” Easier said than done.
I really want to eat my spaghetti. I really want to focus on
what’s here, right now, in the day that the Lord has made… The people that I am
around right now… But I’m afraid once the spaghetti is finished, I am just
going to be wanting to go back for seconds… And thirds… And that feels painful,
when I know that for now, the pot is empty. God planned it that way… But that
doesn’t change the fact that for now, spaghetti time is finished.
And that meatball just
looks so dang good… “Maybe I’ll just stop there,” I find myself saying.
No. That’s not the kind of life I want to live.
Lord, help me to look
past the meatball. Help me to feast on my plate of spaghetti, even though at
some point, the plate has to end… Help me to see that you always make more
spaghetti, and at some point, there may even be garlic bread to go along with
it. Help me to treasure this new home you have made for me in Ghana, and the
home you are preparing for me in Kennewick next year… Help me to see that you
are our portion… You are our daily bread… You are the spaghetti and the
meatball. Let’s feast!
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