Seven months. Seven months I have been back in the greatest country in the world. Yeah America has her problems, and we continue to fight to make our country better, but in my experience there is way more to be grateful for. If you have never stepped out of the US, its imperative that you do.

So that being said, I should be in the troughs of ecstasy now that I am back in my home country and no longer face the highly populated 3rd world place I had given my life to serve in. However, last night as I watched a podcast of my home church millions of miles away, I began to sob until my eyes were almost swollen shut.

Grief. It is such a multifaceted emotion.

It is loss. Loss of anything that you held dear. 

I held my mission field and my calling from God dearest. In a moment it all came crashings down and my shell of a self was on an 27 hour trek back to the mother land.

Things looked up, I got better medical care, we expected to go back asap.

The tides change quickly and  before I knew it there was no chance of going back.

No hope for healing here in the “promised land” any more than there was in the foreign land. I physically got worse and worse. A heart issue arose, two auto immune diseases, debilitating depression, random anxiety, serotonin syndrome and anemia.

Some of the illnesses started on the field. My journals take me back to the despair, but also to the unshakeable resoluteness to serve until God said enough. I wanted to stay in the hell I was in, because no matter the pain, my love for God was always greater.

Gods love and strength inside of me is why I was not brought back to my family in a body bag.

The hand of his protection is vivid now as I read my darkest thoughts on paper.

“I see a glimmer of hope because I have You living in me. But it hurts so bad. God you feel my pain, you know I am in agony with every breath. I love you God. My pain overwhelms me in moments and I forget where I belong. How long do I suffer? Why did you have me give everything away with a joyful heart and now crush my soul?” Nov 24 2018

I am still processing how you can feel that way,

think of suicide everyday, carve gashes with your fingernails on your legs and arms so deep that you still have scars, but weep with longing when you see your church home and hear the familiar songs and accents of your mission field on a live stream.

Feel a lump in your throat at meet the teacher when you see the Filipino flag flying in your daughters new history class.

Deep regret rising up each day thinking of all the ways you had planned to help the innocent and lost children there.

Anger at seeing your friends who are there, still carrying the torch and feeling the ugly head of jealousy creep in.

As a lot of my sickness has begun to somewhat dissipate the grief is screaming to be dealt with and everything seems to be coming up foreign.

I cant escape it. The beautiful smile of a friend on facebook. The address of my amazon account. The accent on my phone. The news articles suggested for me to read. The struggle that I don’t know where I belong. The way we always want to tell our stories of life “over there” when we know we have told them way to much, but we can’t seem to stop.

Its all coming up foreign and I would go back in a heart beat if God would send me. Tears stream down my face as I type that.

I’m not looking back with rose colored glasses. I know being on the mission field was the hardest thing we have ever done. I’d do it all again. I’d go now.

I have now answers to the why. I only hope to heal and be strong enough to dust myself off and say what next God? Whatever it is, I’ll do it, wherever it is I’ll go.

I am not sure why this is the way I have begun this new “autobiography”.

Maybe it was seeing the physical pain laid out in medical bills that I finally decided to tally up tonight. 

Over 14 grand in unpaind medical bills doesn’t even begin to describe the hurt that my heart has endured, but it did put it in black and white. Maybe that’s all I needed to begin to process some of the grief tonight.

The physical pain is real, the loss is real, the scratching tooth and nail to regain some sense of normal is real. The scary reality of adding up the monetary cut somehow wasn’t what I expected. I expected terror and panic, but I found validation in the strangest of ways.