I've officially been home for a week. I've been thinking about what I could possibly write this blog post about and there are so many things: The pain I feel being away from my friends, how introverted I've become, what has been easy about being home, how home no longer feels like home, the jealousy I feel when looking at pictures of other people smiling with the art school students, the possibilities are endless.
As I sit here, I'm still not really sure what I want to write about, but I know there are things I need to get off my chest, so I just hope it comes out cognitively. All I know is that God brought me to Guatemala for a reason. And looking back at pictures and my blog posts and my journal, I am told that loud and clear. But the hardest thing to accept is that God brought me back to the states for a reason as well.
During our debrief, before we (the first session of interns) left to come back to the states we were forced to face our emotions about leaving. We got asked many hard questions that sometimes we just didn't have the words to answer. One of these difficult questions was: "Where am I in the process of discovering my true calling and what role did my experience [in Guatemala] play in this process?"
One of the things that I learned about Americans while I was in Guatemala is that we like to know what is coming next, we like to have a laid out plan that is written in stone. However, the problem with that is, (as many Christ followers have come to learn throughout their lives) our plans are not always God's plans, and God does not always lay out the blue prints of our lives for us to see exactly when we want to see them.
Before I left school, I changed my major to "Christian Education/Youth Ministry" with a minor in "Teaching English as a Second Language". When I left school for the summer I was still a little weary of the decision. This weariness mostly came from people asking me questions like "well, what is your plan?" or "what are you going to do with that?" well, I wasn't sure. Before I left for Guatemala I told my mom "If God doesn't use this trip to answer my questions about my future, I'm not going back to school." But God did answer my questions. He told me, you are going to love Me and love others, you are going to honor Me and teach others about Me, you are going to follow my commands even when it's hard and even when people look at you like you're crazy for going to school for a ministry degree.
So I guess I have to be content with being back in the states. Because if God didn't want me here right now, I wouldn't be here right now. He would have made me lose my passport or shut down the airport or something. Because I am 100% sure that God won't let me go anywhere that He doesn't intend to use me. I have to be content with seeing pictures of other people hugging and smiling with the students at the art school and the people of Magdalena because that means they are being loved and that's what I want most. I have to find a way to serve my King in this confusing time of feeling like I don't belong, and that is exactly what I intend to do.
Being back is way more difficult than I imagined it would be. I am a different person on the inside, I'm just struggling to let that person out now. I've become what some people might call a "bottler" with all my emotions stored up inside me, wanting to always just be left alone with my thoughts. And for a person who left the country very emotional, extroverted and most of the time willing to share my thoughts, that's not exactly a good place to be. But I'm working on it, and I'm sure God will help me turn things around and be the Erin that he refined me to be while I was in Guatemala.
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