The end is in sight

But how I feel about the end being sight is a totally different subject all together.  Haiti is well non-comprehensible if you've never been here.  I've lived here for 2 years and she’s altered me.  Altered me in a way I may never nor choose to recover from.  The end of this journey will swiftly come to an end in just 4 short weeks.  Transition is always awkward and uncomfortable.  Remember when I moved here, I was convinced I was a crazy person, and as I leave I just feel THANKFUL.  Thankful for the fire, thankful for this people, INCREDIBLY thankful for my American team that has become family, and thankful I said yes.  It wasn't easy, and there are many things I won’t miss, lying under a breeze less mosquito net many nights to name one.  But I will miss simplicity.  I am not looking forward to but am looking forward to the grocery store, menus, car shopping, house hunting, support raising, getting a cell phone plane, purchasing US health insurance, and all the other million and a half things you do in a regular American life.  It’s busy there.  I don’t want to be busy, I want to be present a rare gift of life here.  You can’t not be present, it’s all up in your face.  Oh God teach me to be present at every moment, of every day, with every friend as I return.  I want to learn a new discipline in the busyness of the states to be a present person, not a busy distracted person.   I hope to slow down my striver & speed up my rester.  God is God, He will move, He will work, I choose to go with Him and His ways.  Teach me God.

Who have I become?  This is a question I’m asking myself as I transition back to a western nation.  What do I value, what do I cherish that I didn't 2 years ago?  What will I take back as a discipline that was gifted as a reality here?  I have seen darkness, I have known emotional despair, but I know the LIGHT of God trumps all.  I've experienced it.  2 years ago I was lower than low, and today I know HOPE trumps it all.  Will I remember this?  Will I remember that darkness & despair are as light to Him?  Or will I become consumed with the newest fad, newest television show, and trying to keep up with the Jones's on instagram?  Will I maintain a little bit of oddity as the girl who lived in Haiti for 2 years?  I know I will be a little weird, and honestly I hope to stay a little weird.  Ask my cousin Duke, he personally watched a the weirdness occur while trying to order breakfast over my Christmas break.  I love my home here, I love my life here, and I’m really ready to drive on paved roads. It's all these competing emotions mixed up in one bag. A friend of mine sent me a blog post written by someone that puts into words how I've been feeling the last few weeks.  I wouldn't agree with all of it, but some of his/her words describe what will be weird to me.  http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/what-happens-when-you-live-abroad/.  I’m a little confused, but that’s ok.  God spoke this.  When God speaks, what isn't comes to be.  His word is that powerful.  I go with the word of God, it’s solid rock, my emotions are fickle.  He is God.  He said light, and well we have it every day.

I’m moving back to America; something I've known about for over a year.  But as I pack my suitcases, as I say goodbye, and as I pass off my work responsibilities it’s becoming very real.  Before I moved to Haiti a Pastor at our church was praying for me and shared a sense from the Lord; this was that I would be so changed and so altered that I wouldn't even recognize who I used to be.  That prayer has become a reality.  I am changed.  I don’t have words for it, but I’m not who I used to be and by the grace, power, and mercy of God, I don’t want to go back to who I was. 

As I look towards a new life in the states, a new church, a new city, and just re-starting I’m looking head on into another fire.  This time I’m running into it.  I choose to live fearless.  When you look into a fire you know there will be heat & pain.  I tiptoed in once, and I found a depth in God that can’t be exchanged or explained.  This time I RUN IN, though I’m totally freaking out.  I choose to be the crazy person who says yes again.  In my yes’s I've found God.  Would I be a yesser 100% all the time.  If I go to the fire, I’ll find God.  This time the fire will just look different.  I don’t know and I don’t care, but I’m going.

I’m moving to a town I've visited for 3 days.  I know about 5 people who will/are living there.  I was a little weird to begin with and now have a good amount of PTSD from malfunctioning generators.  I don’t call my updates Amanda’s Adventures to be cute.  I’m on a life adventure with God, that has peaks, valleys, dark caves, unstable rock, and ends in eternity.  I won’t lie that I do hope this next season in Lawrence is a little more of the electricity & infrastructure nature, but it will be different.  I will be a little odd.

Yes is my anthem.