Hey everyone! Incase you didn’t already know I did make it home safely from my two months in Uganda. To catch you up to speed as to what has happened in the past two weeks, I said goodbye to the children, teachers, and adults, I saw some elephants, giraffes, and hippos, and I boarded a plane for the Atlanta airport. The goodbyes were some of the hardest I have ever had to make. I can’t quite describe to you what it feels like to leave children that you have come to love with your whole heart and who you have created a mutual dependance with. If ever I felt the sensation of being a Mother it was when I had to wipe their tears as I said goodbye. I literally thought I was going to break. Natalee and I cried during our closing ceremony as the children sang us farewell songs and celebrated our time their. We cried as we said goodbye to the first route of children leaving on the bus. We did hold it together some. We didn’t completely break down sobbing then. We hugged their necks and laughed and cried and made sure they knew just how much we loved them. Then we got in the car. The moment we started pulling away from the school for the last time was when the heavens opened up. Our poor driver, Jackson, was trying to drive down the road as these two young, white, girls are a sobbing mess. Not that the moment was laughable, but I’m sure we were definitely a site for all the people we drove past.
I think what made this goodbye so different than any other I have made before was that I felt like these children had a need for me or at least someone like me. A need for a loving, caring parent who would hold them when they cried, bandaged their scraped knee, sing them to sleep when they had a nightmare, kiss them on the forehead before they went to bed, make them chocolate chip cookies after a big test, love them no matter what they did wrong. This goodbye was just different. When I say goodbye to my families and friends I know that they will miss me, but they will be fine whether I am there or not. When I said goodbye to these children the look in their eyes was one of abandonment and it sure felt like I was. It still breaks my heart to think about.
So I went home with the conviction that I would not forget them. I wouldn’t forget their smiling faces or their grief stricken ones. I wouldn’t forget their joy and blessings or their sorrow and needs. I would come home and figure out what I could do to help them from here since God has called me home. I kept waiting for that moment of intense culture shock to happen when I got home. I kept waiting for the moment I would break down because of the overwhelming differences in the place I just lived for two months and the place I was born. It didn’t happen the moment I stepped into the Atlanta airport. It didn’t happen when I ate my first meal at Ingleside Village Pizza. It didn’t even happen when I first walked in to wal-mart or even at Old Navy. It waited until today in the middle of the Verizon store.
So before I tell you this I just want to go ahead and apologize if you have tried to call me or text me since I have gotten home and not heard anything back. My phone decided before I left that it was going to do what it wanted, when it wanted and I just decided to wait to get a new one until I got home. So I went with my Mom today to pick out a new one. My plan was to go in and get the cheapest, most reliable phone possible. I didn’t want to spend money on a nice new phone, I just wanted something that would work. I walked into the store and began to look around. Prices seem to have skyrocketed since I left. I asked the sales clerk who was helping us what the cheapest, most reliable phone was that they had. She kind of smiled at me and said what you see is what we have. I looked at her a little confused because all of the phones I saw seemed to be phones that required a data plan, a data plan that I neither needed nor wanted to spend money on. I then proceeded to ask her if they had any phones that didn’t require data packages. This time she laughed at me and said “No, all of our phones now require data packages.” At this point I’m frustrated. I don’t want to spend money that I could spend helping send one of my kids to school on a stupid data package that I don’t need. My Mom walks in at this point and begins conversing with the sales lady. I sit back as they begin discussing because I mean what am I going to do, tell the sales clerk this is just not acceptable because I just spent two months in Uganda and the thought of spending $120 for a phone makes me cringe. By the time their decision is coming to an end they have helped eliminate every phone in the store but two. One phone is priced at $90 and the other $120. I sat there for a good 5 minutes trying to decide which phone to get. The latter one was an iphone and would make it really easy to synch my laptop and i-pod to. As my Mom is telling me the pro’s to spending the extra $30 on the i-phone I’m standing there fighting back the tears. Why do I have to spend $120 on a phone that would send my sweet little Evelyne to school for a semester? Why do I have to make this decision? Why can’t I just be back in Uganda sitting with my kids in the classroom laughing about how strange body hair is or that my skin has freckles on it?
That moment hit. I asked my Mom if I could go sit in the car for a few minutes before I decided what I wanted to do. She, being the wise woman that she is, said no. She knew that if I went and got in the car, those tears that were threatening to spill over would come crashing down and I would probably just end up not getting a phone and still not being able to communicate with anyone. So I did it. I bought the i-phone and the whole time I had these mixed feelings of being excited at finally having a new phone and feeling extremely guilty.
Why is it that I can buy a smart phone while I just met children who couldn’t buy a meal to feed themselves? Why did God choose me to be the one placed in a loving, Christian family where I have all that I could ever need or want when there are so many who die from lack of proper medical care or sanitary conditions or just plain malnutrition? Is it honestly enough to say that God is all they need and leave it at that? It is really ok as a Christ follower to justify the excessive amount of money I spend on pointless things when my brothers and sisters are starving by saying Christ is all the food they need? No, it isn’t. It isn’t ok and... that is ok. It is ok for me to cry in the middle of the Verizon store about buying an i-phone. It is ok that my heart breaks to think about the children who don’t have food, clothing, shelter, or just the love of a parent. It is more than ok because that is the very heart of our Father. His heart is to feed the hungry, heal the wounded, fix the broken, father the orphaned, and love the lonely. His heart is what I want mine to be. I can’t quite explain to you how it feels to be home. How can you be so happy and so broken at the same time? How can you be so happy that your church is getting focused on missions and so sad at the same time by the new chairs they purchased that you are sitting in? I can’t explain it to you because you haven’t seen the church buildings with no chairs or even walls for that matter. You haven’t seen the children whose needs are the basics, none of which include a new phone.
I don’t quite know where I am going with this blog post. Mainly its more an update on me. On how it feels to be overjoyed to see friends and family and feel guilty at the same time for doing it. I know guilt is not from the Lord but I know this broken heart is. Right now I’m trying to figure out where the two meet in the middle. Let me know if you all figure it out. In the mean time I’m going to keep letting my heart be broken for the broken.
