Coming Home.

I am writing this post at 6:30 in the morning...jet lag doing it's finest work. At least 6:30 is a little more justifiable than say 3 or 4 am. As you do when you wake up at odd hours, you start thinking. Your mind wanders. It's amazing the places your mind goes when you are trying to sleep. Example number one...

I've been home for a couple of days now. It is so nice to be with family and where everything is familiar. But as anyone who has done much air travel knows, it can be a really strange feeling, coming home. In the course of 24 hours I left one familiar place for another. My mind never can quite grasp the fact that in the morning I was in one country and now, almost magically, I'm in another. It's amazing and really weird all at the same time. I don't think it could get any weirder unless we were beamed from one place to another Star Trek style. If you think about it were not that far off. The main difference is the time air travel takes. I mean you sit in a tube of sorts, not really being able to see much of what you are flying over, then before you know it you're on the ground again. Maybe this isn't as cool to others as it is to me and maybe it's just the 6:30 in the morning, everything is amazing, jet lag talking. Either way...it's pretty cool what we, as humans, are able to do. I feel very very privileged to be confused by the fact that I was in one country the morning and then 9 hours later I've crossed an ocean and am in another. 

Recently, one of my seminary professors posted an articled entitled, "Why Missionaries Can Never Go Home Again." When he posted the article while I was still in England and I read the article fully understanding the feelings discussed. The idea of home for a missionary can often be a confusing one. The author of the article, Karl Dahlfred, states that, "Missionaries are forever caught between two worlds.  They can no longer completely identify with the people whom they left behind in the home country. But they can never truly identify with the people in their host country." This resonated with me. 

As my time in England was winding up I wondered, "How will I adjust to being home?" Once I got home, though, it was like riding a bike. It's hasn't been as hard to find my groove again as I anticipated. There are, however, a few things that have made me feel like I'm now in between two worlds. It can be as simple as little things like songs on the radio I've never heard before but everyone here already knows. It can be as big as missing my friends and colleagues in my host country. 

It might be a different life to most. It might be hard sometimes because no matter where I am I'm away from people I love and care for. But it is an amazing life. I am blessed and privileged to be able to be "forever caught between two worlds."