homesick

I just miss home.

There is nothing wrong. It's just been a long time since I've been "at home." I know this will feel like home one day. I know all the covid restrictions are probably delaying that even more so. 

But I'm homesick. I miss the good and meaningful work. I miss the sweet and salty friendships. I miss the weathered cheeks kissing my own, one, two times, always, holding my hand long after the American in me would have pulled away.  I miss the sunshine through the trees in the cool early morning. I miss bare feet and the birds, I miss the students raising worship in the chapel every single evening. I miss the sounds, I miss the food, I miss having Gertha and Granny and Julie and so many in my life, in my home, every day.  I miss being in chapel three times a week, worshipping, praying, focusing, growing, learning, community.  I miss walking to church, oftentimes carrying my chair. I miss worshipping with gladness and with familiar faces. I miss the girls' hilarious stories from school, I miss standing in my doorway and quickly scanning the horizon to locate one, two, three...four kiddos, playing soccer with the students and sorting beans with the ladies and jumping on the trampoline with wild friends. I miss Wednesday prayer meeting with the other missionaries, stopping for a few minutes, every week, to search His Word and to lift one another up. I miss devotions with my students and I miss struggling through "the English" with them, always with so much laughter. I miss the constant, continual, count-on-it community. 

I miss Christmas Eve beach gatherings and the simple-quieter of a simpler, quieter country, even when it was smoldering, even when it was smoldering.  

I keep trying to count my blessings, and I do. I am rich and grateful, and He has pointed out many people to love, and we work to do it well.  All my life, He has been faithful...and even when it feels finished, I know He is not. I avoid the pictures and the memories and the missing all I possibly can, they undo me. 

But it's all in there deep, and when Nora says, "I think about Sam and Joel every day, and it makes me feel so sad in my heart," when Sofie haphazardly says, "until we move back to Haiti, one day" I find myself thinking of home always. It's in there deep.

Love you, beautiful praying people, all struggling with all our many heavy hearts, from far-away children to painful loss, to fearful circumstances to so many unknowns, from cancer here and covid there, I am grateful to be among you, and to be inspired by your faith.

Go love someone crazy this New Year, as you have loved crazy us.