It's the start of month five, and I am tired.
I don't think I realised just how much this was the case until I typed that just now, and tears started to well up in my eyes.
I'm really tired.
I got off our 4 hour bus ride yesterday from our month four ministry in White River to debrief in Pretoria, dumped my backpack on the first bed I saw and curled up tight.
Right now, you might be thinking, this girl is on the adventure of a lifetime, seeing some of the most beautiful places on the planet... and she wants to talk about how tired she is?
Yah. I do. And I'm not apologizing for it, either.
Instead, I want to create space for you to relate.
I sat on the wrinkly paper bed at the doctor's office a few days ago and tried not to throw up as a white-haired African nurse stuck a brown Popsicle stick too far down my throat.
"Doesn't it ever become too much? To have lived in five countries in the last four months, never staying, always moving - it doesn't seem healthy."
Reflexively, I shook my head no; even though at the moment, she LITERALLY had a point.
Truth is, I could sleep for two weeks straight.
I woke up missing home for the first time several days ago, and even though I'm proud it took me until month 5 to start missing familiar love, the missing is hard to put away once it's bubbled up.
So much is changing. The year, for one thing, and you and I have got at least THAT in common. Team changes will be revealed tomorrow afternoon, so the people I live and work with will be brand new. Goodbye, Team Embrace the Chaos/Left Arm Tat/Every Taco Counts. Goodbye, five woman who know my morning hair, bathroom habits and tickle spots. And, most significantly, my sister is preparing to undergo brain surgery in a few weeks, and I'm trying to lay down the burden of worrying whether or not the sister I left in September will be the same girl I come home to in July.
I'm tired - body, mind, and emotions.
During month one, Felicia and I did a thing called "Jesus Vacation". Supposedly it's a way to consciously stop whatever you're doing or stressing about and find a way to be with Jesus. This type of improvised, imaginative "you-time" works well with Race life, where the closest you ever get to being alone is saying, "I'm going to the bathroom."
This is how it works: you close your eyes (or, if you're an eyes-open processor, like me, you look into the middle-distance), and you imagine yourself somewhere alone with Jesus. This idea might be weird to some of you, and that's because it is weird.
Still, I tried it.
The picture that immediately dropped into my head is a European cobblestone street, lined with tall, old white buildings, flags flapping from balconies and blue sky stretching for miles. But the street is packed so tightly with people coming and going that I can hardly see the road. I'm dressed in my favorite outfit, dark jeans and t-shirt, my leather jacket wrapped around me like armor and a backpack strapped between my shoulder blades. Everything is loud, people push, and I push back, lost in the transit of bodies, unseen.
And then, there's Jesus. He's a head above the crowd, He's wearing a leather jacket, and he moves through the crowd straight towards me. He doesn't say anything as He throws his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close, except, "Let's go."
When Felicia pictures herself with Jesus, she's at her home in Rio Rancho, watching Netflix and drinking blue Gatorade.
Sometimes, I wish my relationship with God was more of a Gatorade love - a love marked by that easy trust and comfort. I'm 23 and kind of wish my Jesus didn't need to come rescue me from the middle of a crowd like a lost kid at the supermarket.
I wish I didn't get tired.
I wish I could say this was easy, or that this week I pondered the Bible more than I did cuddling in a blanket fort or Applebee's You Pick Two. (Mozzarella sticks and spinach artichoke dip.)
Something I've seriously wrestled a lot with through all this has even the fear of being perceived as a hermit, that people who don't know me won't want to live with me or even be my friend because I can't bring myself to leave the couch most afternoons this debrief. THEN. This fear was realised when another squad-mate made an off-hand comment that a flaw of mine was the fact that I'm "a recluse".
Aubrey laughed when I told her that, put her arms around me, and shook her head. "You aren't; and that's also not a flaw. The way you process is beautiful. Don't worry about what other people think when they see you taking what you need."
If there is a moral to any of this nonsense, I guess it would be this: I'm learning to take what I need. That you don't need to ask permission to rest, when the time comes.
Maybe for you, resting means mingling in a crowd, or surrounding yourself with as many people as possible. Maybe, you rest the way that I do: with pages of Wikipedia bookmarks, Fleetwood Mac and an empty room.
In the words of the great Carly Brown - "You do you, Boo."
I'll be in dorm E, if anyone needs me.