Homecoming

Of all the things a missionary ought to learn, saying good goodbyes is rather important. After a month separation from Malawi, I am feeling the irony of saying farewell as an afterthought, including the lapse in a final blog entry. So here it is.

The week before my departure, I did anything but reflect on leaving, perhaps because a person can’t process some things by articulation until a bit distanced from the overwhelming thing. But my friends Jody and Danny and I spent a whirlwind couple of days dining, laughing, and visiting with everyone around the community before I left. And the words of wisdom people spoke to me in farewell are still fresh in my mind and worth more to me than I realized when receiving them. Those wise words have helped me articulate the seemingly inarticulable and acclimate to the jarringly familiar yet foreign life here in Georgia.

Evening descends upon Lilongwe early-around 5:30 each day, the sky (which is much more vibrant in color any time of day than the Georgia horizon, muted either with humid heat or automobile exhaust) turns pinkish fading to green which melts into corn blue that deepens into a tangible velvet. Sometimes Charisa would call me to our little porch where she liked to sit in the corner of a wicker chair, and we would watch the sunset just over the west wall of the campus. The one advantage of our house was the sunset-best on campus. Otherwise, we were known as the black hole, ABC anomaly, spider house, etc. Our water cistern was often dry, leaving us the first house on campus without running water since gravity or the grace of God ensured other houses water before ours, our phone landline didn’t function after February despite multiple attempts at repair, our washer and dryer made scary noises when running, our wireless internet antennae on top of the roof became home to a hive of bees, and our phone line died three months before the end of the school year, never again to be revived, despite repeated attempts. Anyway, in our beloved, bit-of-a-disaster house one night, Charisa and I paused on the porch on our way to the car to watch the sun grasp at the little hill that often looked like a picture of Virginian countryside (a bit dried out) just beyond our wall. As we neared the bottom of the hill in our little academy car, we were discussing something or other in the manner which Charisa has…few words but well chosen. The guard saluted us as he opened the gate, and then Charisa said something that really hit me, as if I felt the words move those three little bones in my ears whose names I used to know and as if I felt letters sink into the gray matter just past my thick skull and translate into my soul. Really, it won’t seem so profound to others, and ironically, I can’t remember EXACTLY what she said, only that I translated it to mean that goodbyes are periods at the end of our life experiences. Without periods, we can understand the meaning of things, we just have to work much harder and reflect more after we’ve read a passage. But add those little specks, like pepper on a page, and suddenly, understanding becomes easier and the reading more meaningful.

The greatest frustration with spending ten months in that strange place which became home, more familiar and beautiful to me than any city with 5 billion CVS stores that have more variety of product in them than the nicest grocery in Lilongwe, is that I am afraid of losing the experience. I fear the sand has run through the glass without being captured at the other end. I long to be changed, and to remember, to capture the grains so one only has to tilt the glass in the other direction for the grains to resume their motion. So I needed periods to conclude the ten months. But it seems so insignificant to merely dot. I wanted an exclamation point, or several, and yet, I barely even trailed off an ending. My desire to maintain normalcy in life there until the last possible moment perhaps perpetuated attitude and actions of denial about leaving. Just two nights before I left, I had dinner with the Byerlys. A fly on the wall would never have guessed I might depart the country indefinitely in less than 48 hours (if a fly could cognate such a thought). We discussed problems we wanted to help solve around campus and in the community, students we enjoyed during the year, drama of missionaries on campus, and other plans, but not plans to leave Lilongwe.

But Charisa came to the rescue again. She asked me about packing, insisting I send a couple of bags home with the short term team visiting from Arizona. As I turned my back on her chopping at a pepper on the kitchen counter so she couldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes, I heard her remind me that missionaries don’t leave the mission field, they simply exchange one for the other. Perhaps these pearls seem trivial now or less revolutionary as they did then, but they are familiar sort of sayings because they’ve been so helpful to others along the way also. In the end, I realize one important aspect of Jesus’ Great Commission: he commands us to go equally for the benefit of those carrying the gospel to a place foreign to themselves as for the benefit of those receiving the stranger with God’s message. I went to benefit those in Lilongwe with the Good News and I reaped so much joy and sanctification in the process.

My G’Daddy (Grandfather Holliday) held the belief that fiction didn’t bear much truth on reality, but I’ve found that fiction often magnifies truths that we would never see as clearly without imaginative authors. At the expense of being cliché, one my favorite work of fiction is Lord of the Rings, which speaks volumes of helpful truth about traveling through life. Tolkien expressed homecoming beautifully when, in response to Merry’s comment, “Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together…it seems like a dream that has slowly faded,” Frodo says, “Not to me…to me it feels more like falling asleep again.” Everything in Malawi seemed so stark, simple, clear. It’s returning to Macon and the hurricane speed of life here that seems to lull me back into blindness toward some things and people that I was so lovingly awakened to in Africa. But I trust in God’s sovereign plan that Macon, Georgia is to be my home for now. At the end of all their journeys as ring bearers, poor Sam wanted to go to Rivendell with Frodo but also stay in the Shire with sweet Rosie, his wife, or feel “torn in two.” Frodo’s wise response speaks to my heart: “You were meant to be solid and whole, and you will be.” I won’t long for those friends and relationships I had there forever or be forced to leave Macon in order to be reunited. One day, I’ll be in the place God has prepared for me and can truly feel “whole,” and enjoy the blessings more richly of having met so many people in Malawi for part of my journey on Earth.