anniversary [a long, musing post. consider yourself warned]

a year ago i was excited to the point of no sleep, checking off endless mental lists, second guessing packing, wondering what in the world i had gotten myself into, so stoked to be getting on a plane to Joburg. 
nothing i had read or watched or asked about could prepare me for the exchange of Google maps for tangible streets.

i spent some exciting days at SIM headquarters in Charlotte, NC getting debriefed and prayed for and encouraged and cautioned and discipled in preparation for leaving the US and being immersed in a different culture halfway across the world. i was about to leave the country and the people that i knew best for a whole different way of life. at the start, three months seemed like a forever long period of time. however, by the last week of craziness in the life that i had adapted to, three months seemed like i had blinked and suddenly it was over. nothing had prepared me for coming. nothing could prepare me for leaving. it was one of the hardest weeks of my life. 

since i have been back, life hasn't been necessarily what i expected, although i am not entirely sure what i was expecting. i know that i didn't want to come away from three months in South Africa with out having changed, but i also knew that i didn't want my three months there to be solely a "mountain top" experience. i didn't want to leave Joburg having not been impacted by what i had seen and done and lived. i didn't want the lives i had lived with to be forgotten, the names that took me so long to learn to become nothing more than faded memories. i didn't want lessons that God taught me about his character and who i am to be forgotten pages in my journal.

but i also wanted SO BADLY for life back home in the States to be normal. i didn't want relationships with people to be different. i didn't want people to have moved on and have learned their own lessons and have built new traditions without me. in my mind i guess i just wanted to be able to come back, slide back into a work routine, pick up where i left off at church and fit right back in with my old group of friends.
never mind the fact that my friends had been getting married and engaged and dating and having kids and moving across the country in my absence. never mind the fact that I would get home and in the middle of readjusting and diving right back into work, i would be squeezing in time with family who were going through their own cultural adjustments. never mind the fact that i would be switching youth ministry from kindergarteners to the "dreaded middle schoolers" and other silly little adjustments at church. never mind that i would finally feel like i was getting back into the groove of things when i would break my leg and life would get upset all over again. 

it's been such a crazy whirlwind of a year. 

i still find myself readjusting.
i hardly pass a day when i feel like i could just close my eyes and be taken right back to my little flat, and the shopping center and the hospitals and driving in the morning to school and the blossoming trees and the security gates and the noise of the city and the beauty of the culture. it's hard to put into words all that life was to me there. at first it was hard and foreign. and then it was normal. and then i had to leave it. 

and i hesitate a lot of times to say "so this one time in Joburg..." because i am afraid that i won't convey it properly. i am afraid that it won't be appreciated at all. i am afraid that people will get tired of listening. so i keep the way i get overwhelmed by certain times of day and clothes and smells and sounds tucked inside. i keep the way that pictures of the kids' faces bring back the feel of their hands and hugs and laughter and fighting and voices and whispers and tears to myself. a lot of times it makes me laugh to remember. a lot of times it makes me want to cry. a lot of times i just have an inexpressible  ache to have tangible interaction again. 

sometimes i wish it wasn't so easy for me to get attached. 

i do know that i don't regret time here or time there. if anything, it's been driving home the necessity to be willing to be used by God wherever he puts me. it's been learning to be satisfied and to trust God in all of the unexpecteds of life. it's been learning to value to make the most of time with people no matter how long or how brief that time is. 

right now, God has blessed me with an indefinite period of time with awesome people in hot town, and, thanks to technology, i can continue to have time with my friends across the world. 

who knows. maybe one of God's unexpecteds for the future will be a return visit to Jozi. i would love that beyond words.