I slam my fists on the steering wheel, because I’ve forgotten my library card — it’s in the other wallet and the kids are strapped into their car seats on our way to the library.
It’s funny how you can be both the best version of yourself and the worst version of yourself within the same week — and across two entirely different continents.
I’ve been home for 24 hours and awake for 36, with catnaps and fitful nights, and as I swing the car around on the highway, Aiden begins to whimper in the back seat. I look in the rear-view at my oldest son who has my face. “What is it, Aiden?”
He won’t tell me, just whines, and Kasher’s pulling at his hood and asking me to take off his jacket and then I see that Aiden’s lunch has fallen on the floor.
I speed home to get the missing card, wanting to cry but clenching my jaw. There’s no airplane bathroom to weep in, here. There’s no complimentary glass of wine or time to journal as there was on the plane heading back from five days in Uganda and Rwanda — five days of witnessing the effects of the genocide and the Lord’s Resistance Army, five days of holding orphans and seeing what God is doing through World Help.
And then, home. Back to the land of white: white snow, white faces, and the white noise of First World problems which no longer make me so sympathetic.
Including the complaints of my own sons.
I run into the house, grab the card. Trent calls, “You’re back already?”
“I forgot my stupid card. Bye.”
Back to the van, pick up Aiden’s fallen lunch, slide into the front seat and then pause.
“Can we pray, boys?”
So we bow there, for a moment, and I ask God in a shaky voice to keep us safe and to give us good moments today, Amen.
On the way home from Africa — the 24 hour flight from Rwanda to Uganda, and then to Amsterdam, on to Seattle and finally, Edmonton, only to drive two hours to our tiny Dutch hamlet — my chest cavity was a hole. I’ve never felt such an ache in my heart. I kept gasping in my seat, gasping for air because my chest would seize up for the pain.
I would be relieved when I went to the tiny airplane bathroom where I wept, hard. Sobbing, for the people I left, for the pain I’d encountered and could not fix, for the faith I’d witnessed and the literal ripping of my body from Africa’s as I had to return home. And then, the guilt.
The guilt of being so in love with a country when my family lives in another.
The pain in my chest, it was a new heart growing.
The trick is, when God gives you a new heart, to ask him to make space for the old places and people who love you. Because it’s not enough to just come home. It’s not enough to enter the door and smell the wood smoke of a fire, to see the tiny boots of your sons and the larger ones of your husband, to hear Trent saying, “Mommy’s home” and then the running of little feet and the boys taking the stairs and falling into your arms, your husband close behind. It’s not enough.
Because you’ve been broken. Snapped in two, for a world they do not know. You cannot bring back the smells — the smell of the African sun on the heads of the children you did art with, the smell of boiled plantain and the dry sweat of the slums, the African coffee with ginger. You can show them pictures. You can describe the storks standing tall on the traffic poles and the cows asleep in the middle of the traffic circle but you can’t say too much, or their eyes will glaze over.
Before going home, my team leader told me four tips for handling the transition. He said:
1. Adjust physically to whatever time it is at home.
So if it’s day there, stay awake where you are.
2. Sit quietly with a cup of coffee and thank God for everything in your life.
Because it’s important to be grateful for what God has given you. It allows you to live generously. “It’s not about me versus them; it’s about all of us,” he said. “You must remember that, going home.”
3. Journal.
4. Don’t share too much, too fast.
Because grace has been given you to understand what others cannot, unless they also go. Respect that grace, and extend it to others.
And here is one final tip which I would add to anyone re-entering:
5. Let yourself cry.
Cry hard, for everything and everyone and don’t hold back. Because the tears water a new kind of love — love which will grow large enough to include your new world and your old one.
So I’m being gentle with myself even as I hold my babies. And I’m praying for eyes to see my own people, even as I prayed for eyes to see Africa.
Because it’s all a gift, to be slowly unwrapped, and prayed over, and forgiven for.
This thing called life.
Friends — we’ve fully funded the first phase of our rescue home for abandoned babies. We’re here in Africa with #AFRICAWH to build this home, so the fatherless and motherless can find a family with Destiny Villages of Hope. Won’t you help us by giving HERE? Thank you for all your prayers and support.
Photo courtesy of Emily Wierrenga.
