Restless

       I have never been so anxious and restless before. It’s like the minutes are literally crawling by. I can’t sit and read for more than 30-40min before I feel the need to pace. Seconds feel like minutes and minutes feel like hours. I close my eyes and dream of the morning I get to wake up and know that I’m going home. Turmoil rises and swirls in my heart as I think of seven more weeks. It’s a two-fold hope. On one hand seven weeks compared to over forty weeks is such a ray of hope but on the other hand I know how slowly it can take and how much effort it expends to just get through one single week here. I had a friend say to me “oh I’m sorry” the moment I excitedly mentioned I had seven weeks left. Curious, I asked “why are you sorry?” Their blatant response was simply “cause seven weeks is still a long time.” I could feel my heart drop. In essence they are right. Seven weeks is a long time.  However we must go back and hold that candle to the light of what I’ve come through so far…What I’ve had to endure. And I’ve come this far….so why is the last stretch proving to be the hardest of them all? I literally pack my bags nightly. It has become a comfort ritual to stare at my suitcase and want so badly to throw everything in it and run away. I’m tired of being told what I had put all my hope into is just another “mistake” or having my principal telling me to “just hold on another week.” I’m tired. Plain and simple, I’m tired of this. I want to go home and forget this year ever happened. Forget I ever decided to be an SM. Forget what it’s taken me to get through this year, forget the place, forget the pain. Forget the loneliness and be surrounded by people that love and care about me again. People that will see me as who I am and simply that. People who don’t expect anything from me, or throw another job I dread my way, or ask how I’m doing just to be polite and not to actually know. I know I asked for a stronger faith and relationship with God and through the tears and fights that’s exactly what I’ve gotten and now I want to go home. To be with my best friend again, have supper at my grandmas house, run further than 20 feet before having to turn a corner and make a circle back, hang out with girl friends, walk hand in hand with my little cousins, text a friend to run to taco bell, or just sit in the living room in the arms of someone that loves me and feel protected. I have never felt so alone then I have at many times in the last 9 months.

      I sang the song “I will follow you, where you go, I’ll go. Where you stay, I’ll stay. When you move, I’ll move. Who you love, I’ll love.” I meant it. This year has stretched me beyond my own comprehension. It’s been a fight to the finish. Every single day till the end. I have screamed at God, raised my hands in complete surrender and turned my back on him all in the span of eight and a half very long months. But isn’t that what I came to do? I look back on the paragraph I just wrote and all I see are “I”s. Me, me, me, me. Is that how an SM is supposed to be, selfish? The song goes; Where YOU go, I’ll go. Where YOU stay, I’ll stay. When YOU move, I’ll move. Who YOU love, I’ll love. Okay. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I want to be here any longer. There are many times this week I’ve wished I had just packed up and left  a long time ago. The strongest point of that when my principal announced, in front of everyone, that my replacement was not coming AGAIN…..Why did I stay? Why am I still fighting so hard to get through the days here? Why? I’ll let you know the answer to that when God reveals it to me. That could be the day I leave Yap, a month later, a year later or maybe not ever will I know what these 10months were for. Let’s wait till June 3 as to how staying feels. That Sabbath morning I get to open my eyes up with a big smile on my face and warmth in my heart to know that I’m going home. I’m finally going home.