Endings: The Future (Part 1)

It happened.  Over our break for Holy Week, I cried my first real, big, ugly tears over leaving.  There were hints of it before: when I told my principal that I wasn't coming back, when my assistant asked me if I was sad about moving home, when I described my decision to my friends.  But this time was different.  There were sobs and chokes and boogers and convulsive gasps.  And wine.  There was a bit of wine.  Since that moment, I've had a hard time stopping.

Leaving will be hard, and I've realized that from the start, but I hadn't really anticipated the things that would make it difficult.  I knew it would be hard to leave my students and friends, the culture, my work, and the memories, but I had never considered how much more would affect me.  Granted, I originally thought I'd be leaving after 6 months, not 4 1/2 years.

I moved here 2 weeks after graduating college.  I learned how to work full time, buy groceries, pay rent and bills, budget my spending, find the things that I need, and get around here.  I became independent here.  I became an adult here.  I've faced and weathered some of the most challenging moments in my life here, and I learned how to seek help here.  I have a system of support here.  And, while common sense dictates that, if I did it once here while in an unideal setting, I can do it again there where I'm closer to family, long-time friends, and hot running water.  Still, that looming change scares the hell out of me, especially considering how difficult it was the last time I moved home what I had expected would be permanently.

Forgiving myself is an incredibly hard thing for me to do.  I could probably tell you about at least  one thing I still feel guilty about or ashamed of from every year since I was in preschool.  When I moved here, though, my humor carried me through many of my flubs.  They, frequently, were just so absurd that all I could do was laugh.  I don't know how easy laughing away my mistakes will be when I get back, though.  I'm not a new college graduate anymore, nor am I transitioning into a foreign culture; I'm an experienced professional moving home.  The issue is that "home" just doesn't mean the same thing anymore.  It's no longer the lifestyle which I know how to live or where I feel most comfortable.  It means re-learning everything -- probably even a new career.  I'll be stepping into a completely different life, and I am afraid -- not only of how I will handle myself, but also of other people's expectations of me.

Knowing how to end this post is hard.  Previously, I've tried to end my posts with humor or a word of hope.  I don't want to seem hopeless, because that's not how I feel.  But I am scared shitless, and implying anything else is just dishonest.  And maybe getting it out without pretense will finally let me breathe.

Unpleasant Endings

I've joked numerous times about the decreasing duration of my relationships, starting with my first boyfriend in Jr. High and dwindling with each subsequent guy I've been with.  I just broke that trend, my friends, although I'm not particularly happy about it.  With Valentine's Day approaching, I felt it was appropriate to blog about it.

Things just ended today, but this parasitic relationship lasted for upwards of a month.  Since things began, we'd been with each other constantly.  We ate, drank, worked, relaxed, and slept together.  The whole time, he just leached off of me.  I honestly had no idea it was even happening until the very end.  Now I can look back and recognize how much it was affecting me; my weight had even been plummeting.

I'm just so disgusted.  How did I not realize this was happening?  I was so blindsided by it all.  Might it happen again in the future?  How can I prevent it if I'm not even aware of what's been going on until it's too late?

But it's all over now.  It ended suddenly and unpleasantly, but I'm so happy to be rid of him.  I can only pray that I never again have the experience of hosting and then pooping an 8 inch roundworm.

TIH

Missionary?

Strong in faith.  Wise.  Outgoing.  Brave.  Selfless.  Pious.  Devout.  Resilient.  When I think about the word "missionary" these are the kinds of descriptions that enter my mind.  I picture one of those people brimming with energy and enthusiasm for sharing their faith; someone who is great with people and can easily rally support and participation from others; someone who knows the right thing to say or do in almost any tough situation; someone who always knows the right words to pray or the right Bible verse to share; someone with a thick skin but a tender spirit.  I've spent most of the last two years working as a missionary in some capacity, but honestly, many of these are some of the last phrases I would use to describe myself.  I'm very socially uncertain, and I tend to be not very good with anyone who isn't under age 6.  I'm painfully shy in new settings.  I frequently say the wrong thing if I've even managed to muster any words at all.  I blush and sweat when I'm brought to attention in front of people.  I usually have to learn lessons the hard way, but I'm slow to forgive myself for my choices.  I swear... a lot.  I really like beer.  And mojitos. And pretty much anything mixed with Bailey's.

On top of all of those things, I spent a large portion of the past two years seriously doubting that there really even is a God. I was annoyed that it seemed like the only way you can believe is if you're consistently trying to convince yourself that it's real, but at the same time hurt by the fact that I so badly wanted the confident faith that brought me to Honduras three years ago but couldn't seem to get it back.  I did my personal devotions (though, perhaps, sporadically), went to church, and attended Bible studies.  I went to a missions conference with high hopes that being around people with similar goals would give me some sort of spiritual high that I could ride back to my previous faith.  Instead, I got some handouts about cultural adjustment and the somewhat annoying advice to "Remember your first mission trip whenever you question God's purpose for you," as though that should speak more loudly than everything that I had failed at since that point.  I made so many prayers pleading that, if this God really exists, He would give me some sort of reassurance that I'm not just talking to myself.  And for months I heard nothing except my own voice bouncing back to me off the cement walls, and I became increasingly convinced that there was nothing there to hear me.

In my last blog post, I talked about how this school year holds a lot of potential for growth.  In the time that I've gotten to spend alone, I really have seen the actualization of that.  While I've definitely had waves of loneliness and bitterness, I have had time to just be quiet and listen.  As irritating as I'd found that advice to be, my thoughts were continually brought back to when I first became interested in mission work.  When I was 15 years old, I went to a conference with my youth group.  Compassion International was there to give a presentation about their child sponsorship program, and a good friend and I decided to sponsor a child together.  That didn't feel like enough, though.  Once I had gotten a glimpse of the level of need that exists, I wanted to do more.  I went home and said that I was interested in being a missionary, but I quickly buried that plan away in some back corner of my brain when my family didn't support it.  A year later, I went on a two-week science trip to Costa Rica with a school group, and I became fascinated with Latin American culture.  I remember being just as excited about driving through the towns and looking at all of the people and houses as I was about the activities to which we were actually traveling.  At some point after that trip there was a Compassion International child sponsorship drive at my church, and my Mom began sponsoring a little boy from El Salvador.  A bunch of people from my church also sponsored children from El Salvador, so they arranged to go there on a group sponsor tour.  Because my mom doesn't like flying, she asked if I wanted to go in her place -- an offer which I happily accepted.  I headed down to El Salvador for one of the most wonderful weeks of my life, and I felt so restless when I got home.  I suddenly felt out of place.  I dreamed about the people and places I'd seen, and my heart ached to go back.  Several months later, a representative from the school system I now work for came to my college to recruit teachers for the upcoming school year.  One of my friends heard about it and, while I was still a couple of years away from graduating, suggested that I look into it.  That representative came back two years later, and because I'd messed up my previous school year quite a bit and would be graduating a semester late, mid-school year, it worked out for me to come to Honduras to teach a six month English immersion class at one of the schools.  Six months turned into a year and a half of falling in love with this place before I decided I should go home and try to settle down there.  That time of "settling down," though, spurred the most restless period of sadness, self-doubt, and existential angst that I have ever experienced.  Right when I was feeling the most lost, the unexpected opportunity opened up for me to move back to Honduras for a short-term homeschooling position.  I then re-connected with my previous school and made plans to return for the next school year, where I am now.

I'm not back to the unwaveringly confident, fresh Concordia graduate that I was three years ago when I wrote my first blog post, trying to sound not too naïve by saying that I knew there would be thousands of lessons ahead that I couldn't anticipate.  Nor is that where I want or am meant to be.  Had I never dealt with the doubt, I never would have seen the specific examples of how God has literally used the last ten years of my life to groom me for where I am now, nor would I have really claimed my faith as my own.  Had I not attempted to operate in my current position at a point where I was so aware of my shortcomings, I never would have fully understood how much He can do through a person who not only falls pitifully far from perfect, but who even lands miles outside of the standard image of a missionary.  When I look at my students and reflect on how much they've grown in their past seven months with me, the love I have for them, and the words I've found in my most frustrating moments, I can see with confidence that these things came from something much bigger than myself.  And while I still struggle with doubts in my faith and in myself, I'm learning to accept that perhaps my weaknesses are exactly what have made me suited for this calling.

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor. 12:9-10