The Words I've Found (Honduras 2015, Part 1)

I don't want to write about it...

I don't want to miss it...

I just want to be there.  With my team.  In that culture.  Where my heart is at home.

I returned home from Honduras just over 5 weeks ago...

But my heart did not return with me.......

I have spent the past five weeks at a complete loss for words to share about the whole thing.  The memories are just so beautiful, no words can match them.  My first days back, I avoided discussion about Honduras at all costs, except with my teammates from the trip; not knowing how to explain the experience that nobody could possibly understand without having been there.  I refused to write about it and have it be seen as just a memory to look back on. In fact, I don't want it to be memory at all.  That feeling of being smack dab in the center of God's will is something I want to experience every day.  God has completely wrecked me in the most perfect way- for His calling.  I am in this season where writing and sharing about missions has just not been what is important.  I have become content flying under the radar and simply living this adventure, taking it in a little more every day.  I don't want to forget the culture, the sounds of people's laughs, the details of their faces, the hilarious moments in the back of the bus while riding through the mountains.... 

For me, this wasn't just a short term mission trip. This was a "evaluating how I can serve God like this for the rest of my life" trip. I don't know yet what that will look like.  What I do know, is that I came home five weeks ago...but my heart did not come home with me.  Last month, Honduras became my heart's home. My team became family, living all together in one place. I was adapting to the culture...the language...the food...the JOY. And even though it is only a "heart adoption" rather than a legal one at this point, I became a heart mama to nine year old Estefani. And I don't think any words can really tell that story....to describe how badly I miss it.  Miss her.  Her hugs.  Her laughs.  Her cute little curls.

  

While talking with a fellow teammate about adjusting back home after an experience like this, he asked me, "Do you ever think, you know it will be okay eventually, but you don't want it to be okay?".  He took my every thought from the past five weeks and put them into a single sentence.  Right now, I feel that.  Eventually, you do adjust back to life in the states.  Your heart stops longing to go back every second of every day.  You get used to not having your kids and your teammates there with you.  You start to get comfortable and even excited about other opportunities.  Summer ends, fall comes (here in Western Pennsylvania, that usually happens in like...August), and you somehow fit right into this new season of cool weather, church bonfires, and pumpkin spice lattes.  You lose your grip on just how amazing life there really was.  It becomes okay.  But I don't want that.  I don't want to forget how perfect it was for my heart to be at home.

I know this post may sound depressing, but I am actually filled with so much JOY over everything God is doing. It is the story that my heart sings every day, but my lips have spent the past five weeks refusing to speak; because without being there, you can never really know. For this reason, these blogs may be less orderly and chronological that any missions series I have written in the past. I may or may not even write a whole detailed series; but there are things that I want the world to know.  Not just about Estefani and my older sponsored children either...

I want the world to know how amazing it feels to live every second of every day nauseous from the heat and the agua verde (green water, a term of endearment we created for the hotel’s bottled water that was always slightly discolored), yet never happier.  How it feels to open your mouth and suddenly have Spanish come out, phrases you weren't even aware you knew.  How it feels to go on adventures in the murder capital of the world, ride through gang-ridden areas in the back of a pickup truck, spend your nights swimming at a hot spring heated by lava rock, or get stuck in a government protest while just trying to go to the mall...

Note the torches

I want the world to know how much I miss living in a little hotel and laying out on the porch in a hammock.  Or how I miss living in community with my team who quickly became family... never being without fellowship, because our rooms all opened up to the same long-stretched porch.  How I miss the culture where church and worship mean fancy costumes and tambourines.  And without being there, you will never understand why I even miss the agua verde....

The view from the roof in Gracias, Lempira, Honduras

Church in San Pedro Sula

  

I have been coming to God completely empty.  No empty as in lacking.  I am so filled, so blessed, and so excited for the future.  There are many things I have, but nothing that I cling to.  I am coming to Him open- open for Him to lead me in any direction from here.  To give and take away the desires of my heart.  Being in Honduras freed me to absolutely anything He may have in store.  I can't sit still.  I now know what is out there.  Some nights, late at night, I get so excited that I go outside and just walk...or run...or sometimes just lay on the grass.  Anything to feel closer to that place....the heat, the dirt, the scenery....

In the stillness, I hear God speak:

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.  I will counsel you with my eye upon you." -Psalm 32:8

This verse has been following me since I have been home.  I am learning to follow His voice.  In this time of feeling like the whole world is my possibility, I know that God is instructing me in the way I should go.

Even writing this now, I know my words are not doing it justice.  But I pray that the Spirit will speak to each heart who reads it.  Greater things are still to be done....

More soon...