home at last

In the craziness of the past few months, I have failed to really record all that I have seen and experienced. I feel like it still will take quite some time to fully grasp all of it, but just to get the details down might help me to write more descriptively in the future.

I returned from Australia a few weeks ago and now am going to be home for a while. It's a hard transition to make when you go from being here, there and everywhere, to considering life in the "real" world. I now understand why people travel and then cannot stop. There is a world out there, and no matter where you go, there are new people to meet and all complete with amazing testimonies. The human race is an incredible creation and we can withstand some of the cruelest parts of life, and yet are still able to experience intense moments of joy, gratitude and contemptment. It's hard to describe the deepest darkest places I have seen and experienced and feel completely overwhelmed, because in every dark place the light still exists. Behind every sad story, we are left with a daughter, mother, father or a son. We are left with someone who still smiles, plays like an ordinary child, shares affection and has an ability to love and an ability to believe something so much more than the world itself. Behind every tragedy there are still dreams. So as much as my heart breaks for the suffering, I rejoice in the bits of His Kingdom on this earth.
I read this book while on my last trip Thailand and Cambodia and the writer, Henry Nouwen, seemed to summarize my chaotic thoughts in a far better way than I could ever try. He writes:

... What if our history does not prove to be a blind impersonal sequence of events over which we have no control, but rather reveals to us a guiding hand pointing to a personal encounter in which all our hopes and aspirations will reach their fulfillment?
Then our life would indeed be a different life because then fate becomes opporunity, wounds a warning and paralysis an invitation to search for deeper sources of vitality. Then we can look for hope in the middle of crying cities, burning hospitals and desperate parents and children. Then we can cast off the temptation of despair and speak about the fertile tree while witnessing the dying of the seed. Then indeed we can break out of the prison of an anonymous series of events and listen to the God of history who speaks to us in the center of our solitude and respond to his ever new call for conversion. (Reaching Out).

What if we failed in our call to hope for the hopeless? What if we failed in recognizing Him in any place? It's easy to fail: it's an overwhelming task and takes quite a large amount of time to process the needs of this world, but all the same, we are still called to be His hands and feet. Within that, we find all the strength we will ever need, and never will we be placed in a situation that is more than we can handle. So with all that said: within recognition, truth is born. Within truth comes a selfless love. Within love, responsibility is recognized. Within love and responsibility, we are strengthened to persevere. Then, above all, within perseverence, there is always hope.