I didn’t want to go.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t connect with people. My mind wasn’t entirely set on the idea of being somewhere for 3 months to serve and work non-stop. “Please pray for me. I just…don’t feel excited to go.” That’s what I told my friends days before I left. “I don’t know anyone.”
Now, I’m home. I’m back from a place that I was hesitant to go to. And the crazy thing is that I can say everything that I mentioned before camp, but now I say it in regards to coming home. When I got home, I felt like a stranger in my own home. I wasn’t excited to be back. It was hard to connect. Don’t get me wrong, my parents and siblings love me so much, but readjusting has been so difficult. Imagine getting used to a bed and the certain musty smell of a room. You wake up every morning at 6:30, brush your teeth, pick the right camp shirt for the day, get life-guarding gear together, and walk out the door to go to devotion.
Everyday. For 3 months straight.
I think that is part of the reason that being home feels so foreign. I have been trained so thoroughly to maintain a fixed schedule and follow a particular way of living.
In all of this instability and difficulty of readjusting, I find such peace in Solomon’s words, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiasties 3:1-8).”
I know it’s time to be home, but I don’t want to be. I know it’s time to start another school year and get back to studying, but I don’t want to. God asks us to do things we don’t want to. Yet, in the midst of our unwillingness, Christ relates and sympathizes with our discomfort in change, our pain in saying goodbye, and our struggle to move forward.
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