This is going to sound silly and it isn't gonna make sense.
Today I made a paper chain for my remaining days in India. I realized that I can't live in a fantasy world of staying here forever (despite how much I would love to). I have a plane ticket home. So I made this paper chain and it's hanging on my wall. Sub-50.
I have to remind myself every single day that I actually live in India. I have to walk down the street and literally, verbally tell myself that I'm living here. I no longer feel like a Badeshi (foreigner). I know where things are, how the metro system works, I know enough language to get around and know what I'm talking about, I've know what street food I can eat and not get sick. It feels like home. I have relationships with so many people. People I don't even know by name. The guards outside the complex that smile every morning, the 10 year old boys who work on motorbikes next door, the slum kids that I love so much. I love all these people and I see the face of God through them. I feel like I'm about to be ripped away from everything I love. I feel as though I've just started here.
That being said, of course there are things I miss about home (to reassure my grandmother reading this), I've just forgotten what they are.
All that to say, I'm afraid to go home. I'm afraid to have a kitchen that's bigger than two houses in the slum, I'm afraid to have my own bathroom let alone a toilet, I'm afraid to go into a grocery store and see aisle after aisle of food, I'm afraid to go to Target and be surrounded with millions of dollars worth of stuff. I'm afraid of so many things. I'm afraid of the emotions that will come with all those experiences. I'm afraid of forgetting all that has been changed in me. I'm afraid of never seeing people that I love again. I'm afraid of all the privilege that will once again be lavished so greatly upon me and that I will once again become complacent.
My only goal is to show true Love to every person that I encounter here in my time left and to continue that when I return "home". Whether that's making eye contact with someone, acknowledging someone's existence and humanity, rubbing a street baby's back, washing the dishes for my roommates, talking to the groups of boys begging on the street and reassuring them that they are worthy of a conversation and so much more. The desire of my heart is to help the "unworthy" and those "without a voice" to feel worthy and to be heard. It's not that they don't have a voice, it's that we're all just to busy talking to hear their whispers that have been silenced for so long.
"We are the flesh and blood of Jesus alive in the world. His hands, feet, ears." Shane Claiborne
Today I made a paper chain for my remaining days in India. I realized that I can't live in a fantasy world of staying here forever (despite how much I would love to). I have a plane ticket home. So I made this paper chain and it's hanging on my wall. Sub-50.
I have to remind myself every single day that I actually live in India. I have to walk down the street and literally, verbally tell myself that I'm living here. I no longer feel like a Badeshi (foreigner). I know where things are, how the metro system works, I know enough language to get around and know what I'm talking about, I've know what street food I can eat and not get sick. It feels like home. I have relationships with so many people. People I don't even know by name. The guards outside the complex that smile every morning, the 10 year old boys who work on motorbikes next door, the slum kids that I love so much. I love all these people and I see the face of God through them. I feel like I'm about to be ripped away from everything I love. I feel as though I've just started here.
That being said, of course there are things I miss about home (to reassure my grandmother reading this), I've just forgotten what they are.
All that to say, I'm afraid to go home. I'm afraid to have a kitchen that's bigger than two houses in the slum, I'm afraid to have my own bathroom let alone a toilet, I'm afraid to go into a grocery store and see aisle after aisle of food, I'm afraid to go to Target and be surrounded with millions of dollars worth of stuff. I'm afraid of so many things. I'm afraid of the emotions that will come with all those experiences. I'm afraid of forgetting all that has been changed in me. I'm afraid of never seeing people that I love again. I'm afraid of all the privilege that will once again be lavished so greatly upon me and that I will once again become complacent.
My only goal is to show true Love to every person that I encounter here in my time left and to continue that when I return "home". Whether that's making eye contact with someone, acknowledging someone's existence and humanity, rubbing a street baby's back, washing the dishes for my roommates, talking to the groups of boys begging on the street and reassuring them that they are worthy of a conversation and so much more. The desire of my heart is to help the "unworthy" and those "without a voice" to feel worthy and to be heard. It's not that they don't have a voice, it's that we're all just to busy talking to hear their whispers that have been silenced for so long.
"We are the flesh and blood of Jesus alive in the world. His hands, feet, ears." Shane Claiborne
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