Distance Makes You Foreign

We have been contemplating going overseas for as little as a month and as much as an entire year because we still don't know where God is calling us to live after traveling around North America for two years (and then some). We also want to soak up our probable final year of full-time traveling. Life is too short to wait until you're retired. You may never get there. So if you can go, you should go.

However, we've had unexpected circumstances keep us in our old stomping grounds north of Atlanta for longer than we would have liked. With the loss of my father-in-law, as well as minor surgery for myself, and with extra orthodontic work for my kids, our rig stayed sedentary in one place for longer than it has since we bought it.

Even though I know the Southeast like the back of my hand, the past two returns home have made me feel like a foreigner. It's as if I already moved overseas, and I'm just here for a reverse-culture shock reunion.

I came across some candid quotes by "Morgan in Spain," that helped me make sense of my incongruent feelings. When your home is no longer your home, you feel like a guest, not a local.

You "respond to homesickness in both directions. Abroad you're a foreigner, and at home you're a foreigner. You exist between two worlds. You belong everywhere and nowhere all at once. Saying goodbye doesn't get easier, it just becomes more familiar. Emotions are packed like luggage. You carry them with you to the next place. Reunions carry a quiet countdown. You confusingly long for both the home you left and the one you are currently in. Distance makes the familiar feel foreign, and you a little foreign too. The old home smells the same and looks the same, but something is different. That's when you realize maybe it's not the place that's changed, it's you."

When we are asked about our favorite part of traveling, I wonder how I can condense a whole new life into a handful of short sentences. I want to soak up these easy friendships that don't require obligatory introductions like all the ones from the road, but my heart aches because so much has changed. We can't just sit in that old comfortable place where we are "doing life" together, so we must find our commonalities in the present.

Thankfully the more people I visited with back home, the more I realized we are all somewhat the same. Our journeys may look very different, but we all arrive at the same destination. We are all foreigners looking for someone familiar. We don't have to choose between two homes, we only choose how we respond to growth and change in our current one.

The discrepancy happens when we react to change and growth like a mega church. We keep increasing our real-estate, keep adding programs, and keep pursuing pragmatic functions in order to accommodate our growing numbers. All the while, we fit our programmatic mold into the western world with forced assumptions. We must pause long enough to pray, and then respond with internal conviction to our foreign feelings rather than externally react with comparisons.

It's okay to be uncomfortable. When did man surmise that discomfort was something to be eradicated? Without it, we never know if changes are beneficial or superficial. More than that, we never know how to love those who are in fact uncomfortably foreign.

My foreignness aids in my ability to conquer fears, and it prepares me for a forever home... in Heaven. I must resist the urge to feel local because internal peace stems from embracing my foreign nature.

~Carefully & Carelessly Foreign