little bit

I had a sad Mali day today. I don't really know what else to call it. I haven't spent much time thinking, remembering, talking about it. And then today I just felt sad. And misplaced and different and lonely. Today I didn't want to be an American, didn't want to be here. But I'm not sure that I wanted to be there either. Sometimes I cry without realizing I'm going to. Without knowing why. My heart tightens and my throat swells and pretty soon my face is leaking. I miss the people I learned to love and the flow of time and the depth of relationship. I miss the simplicity and the smiles and the tea time and colors and smells. Most of all I miss how clearly I could see His movement in life. Everything gets so muddles and muffled and messy here. It's so easy for me to lose my burn for Him. I don't realize it until I'm at the point of crumbling. It's hard for me to talk about Mali without talking about Him. The story of Him taking me to the desert, of allowing me to wander and thirst, of gently leading me back out. I'm so intimately aware of that chapter of my life. And I feel that loss, the loss of nearness and my loss of desire. And it hurts. I almost feel more disoriented here than I did there. Because even though there I was navigating through an unfamiliar world, my heart was aware of where it was going, what it was learning and where it needed to be. Here I'm familiar with life and how it goes, but my heart gets lost and its need for Him loses to the loudness and craziness of living. And it's so easy to blame it on America. The busyness and demands and lists. But really, it's me. That's what makes it the hardest.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity