Better Than The Dreamed-of Thing

"I could've sworn I saw fireworks
From your house last night
As the lights flickered and they failed
I had it all figured out."
 - Fireworks, but First Aide Kit


A year ago in November, I purchased my plane ticket to fly back to Texas from Ecuador. Not back for a visit, but back for good. Returning. But also leaving.

I knew, nearly from the beginning of being in Ecuador, that I'd be there for five years. Before my first year there had ended, I knew that I wouldn't be going home when my two-year commitment was complete. I was just starting to build relationships and become a part of the ministries there. It seemed as though I barely had to ask the question, "God, do you want me to stay here longer?" when the answer was there, clear and simple: three more years. Five total. After announcing that decision, I would always say, "Or longer, if God wants," though to be honest, that answer was also always there. Five years in Ecuador, then return to the US. Not often have I felt such overall peace about a decision. A kind of clarity which is rare.

I purchased the plane ticket home after many conversations, ages spent looking at prices and variables, and time sorting through the needed funds. It was night: rain was falling steadily outside, and beside me, the Christmas tree my roommate and I had put up the weekend before glowed in its inviting way. My last Christmas there. I wrote to a couple of people to share the news of my finalized return, then shut my laptop. I walked through the quiet apartment and opened the window leading onto the terrace. I sat in the window for a long time, one hand outstretched the catch the raindrops. The drops splashed onto the cement and I thought of how my Grandma once pointed out that for an instant, as the drops meet the pavement, they form a cup and saucer. I watched them, thinking of her, thinking of how she never got to see me come here, yet was the one who purchased a luggage set for me on my eighteenth birthday which I've since carried to a dozen different countries. She took me to the mall and let me look at set after set until I picked out, thrillingly, the one patterned in blue tapestry. Never have I seen a set like it, making it easy for me to spot my luggage on any airport carousel. The handles are now broken and the frames are bent; it is time to replace them, yet they will serve for one one final trip. They will get me home.

A couple of weeks before, I spent an hour trying not to sob in front of a stranger I had just met. A team had come from the US to do a special retreat for two of the ministry sites I work with, which had included free counseling sessions. I talked with one of the counselors about leaving; what I was leaving behind and how I hoped to end well. I talked about returning: how I was trying to prepare myself for reverse culture shock and not be fearful about a future which was still very unknown. What would I do, how would I fit in? I only had ideas and the possibilities of plans. Reality is different from expectations, and sometimes what I fear the most is the quiet smashing of my own dreams.

A year ago, I was thinking to myself, "Soon and becoming sooner, I will be back in Texas. I will cook in my parent's kitchen, where my Mom's colorful plates are on display, where she has made countless loaves of fresh bread and desserts which my siblings and I ate with gusto. I will walk across their five acres and visit my sister and her husband in the new small house my Dad constructed. I will see sunsets and sunrises, full ones where the sun glows gloriously below the horizon, something I missed while being surrounded by mountains. Still, I will miss the snow-capped mountain peaks, yet the open plains and the rolling hill country speak to my heart. I will tell them I'm coming, I'm coming."

It's been a year since I purchased a plane ticket home. The leaving was hard and painful and wrecking, and the return has been emotional and challenging and soothing and overall so overwhelmingly good. Being with family is the gift I cannot stop being thankful to have once again. For that, and many other reasons, I am so happy. What I couldn't know a year ago was just how incredibly happy I'd be. I've always loved change and adventure mixed with the familiar, but even I didn't know just how wonderfully adventurous the change of going back to things familiar would be. There have been ups and downs with work (though I found a job quickly and chose it among other offers - the whole other story is that I left and subsequently came back; a turbulent bump which worked out well in the end), and with finding my place again among friends and in my church, though overall, the sweetness of this season is something I hold dear. When I watched the rain fall in Quito, I was heartbroken to say goodbye, yet convicted to leave. A year later, I watch the rain fall from the patio of my apartment in Austin. I watch the distant planes take off and land at all hours of the day and night, coming and going as mere lights in the sky which hold so many possibilities. They hold old suitcases and new ones, passengers who are tired and sad and excited and nervous and have no idea what exactly will happen after they land, because none of us do. That's the great adventure; the not knowing, and the deciding and going and doing, anyway.