I Came Home Early -- Here's Why.

I came home nine days early. That's a hard thing for me to say. Not being able to follow through on something? It's hard for me not to call that a failure. On the other hand, risking that feeling and sitting with it has been a success I would never have known had I not come home early.

I came home early because I love my life. Not just the ease of it, although after the last two weeks, I was certainly grateful for the ease. I love the totality of my life. I love my faith and the prayer, study, and work to which it calls me. I love my friends and family, those who make me laugh and let me cry and are perfectly okay sitting with me and saying nothing at all. I love working. I'm not crazy about so much of what's happening at Sand Ridge currently, but I am honored to do the job my gifts allow me to do. I love Wisconsin! I love seasons and all the changes that come with them. I love being able to walk. I love my liberty!

When I was talking with a friend about my trip and my struggles with it, she named my most significant struggle as "loss of liberty." The accuracy of that naming is reflected in my stance that I was on house arrest every night after six p.m. I couldn't go out by my self after dark, and it was dark every night at six. There were nights, of course, when I was with people and was therefore able to stay out late ... you know, until eight or nine ... and I really enjoyed those. But, they were the rare exception to the rule. The accuracy of the naming was apparent, too, in the immense, almost out-of-proportion joy I experienced any time I was able to walk and take pictures. It was almost like holding your breath underwater and then suddenly coming to the surface where you can take that essential life-giving breath.

I came home early because I love my life, the people and beauty in it, and the freedom with which I get to live it. I came home early for one more reason. I didn't like what I was seeing was me. It's easier to say that I didn't like who I was becoming or what the place was turning me into. Easier but not accurate. The difficult truth is that each of us has darkness and the only difference is how willing we are to look at and how able we are to sit with it without self-loathing. I don't like what I saw ... and I'm grateful for whatever allowed me to look at it. I'm grateful for the more complete picture of me, even if more of the picture is shadows. And I'm grateful for grace and mercy with which I've held it.

I feel better able now to tell the story of the end of things, I think, for a couple reasons. First, I'm recovering slowly from the experience; time, rest, and love can do that. Second, and more importantly for me, I just participated in the Rite of Reconciliation (i.e. confession). I sorted out what was mine to confess and what was just ugly and uncomfortable. I received absolution for the former and courage to continue to sit with the latter. I told the stories of leaving Guatemala, my time in Belize, and my final day in Honduras. They're the stories of vulnerability stripping away layers of civility and revealing my ... well, humanity, I guess. And rather than making me less than I am, they're the stories that flesh out who I am and make me whole.

I'll tell those stories in three more entries. As you read each of them, please remember that they're episodes in a bigger story.