I’ve been back in Amsterdam for two weeks now. I would say back “home”,
but Fortaleza felt so much like home, I’m not ready to call Amsterdam home yet.
It’s weird. Culture shock, jet-lag, all those concepts that hit you when you
spend more than just a holiday in a culture different from your own. I would
have thought it wouldn’t hit me this hard having been away only a couple of
weeks, but it has, and it is. Although I think I’m over jet-lag by now.
It was so strange to leave Fortaleza. In two weeks it became normality,
although I was always aware that I was just visiting. Even as I ate lunch
before leaving straight after, it didn’t feel like I was heading off. Pulling
into the parking lot of the airport, the sensation was that it was to pick
someone up, not actually for the purpose of me leaving.
The flight was long. And tiring. And uncomfortable. Usually I do well on
planes, but a sore throat and cough added to a small seat I couldn’t quite get
settled into made it feel so long. No complaints- you get what you pay for and
this was a cheap flight, but still I arrived back in Holland tired. So tired.
I ended up sick after arriving. I attempted to regain some sense of
normality by doing outreach the next day. It was good. A good reminder of why
I’m here, yet I found myself feeling a bit out of it and a bit distant.
Adjusting takes time, and yet there’s the expectation that it’ll be quick and
painless to get back into the routine of things.
Routine. I wish I had one. I wish I had a rhythm that allowed me to “run
in rest”. I find that every day I wake up feeling like it’s yet another day of
too much and too many demands. But when I look at my list I realize that most
of them are things I’ve chosen to put in my schedule, and so I wonder if I’m
expecting more of myself than I should; if I’m making my responsibility to lead
more than it is? If what I am requiring is more than God is asking of me?
As I sit here in my living room writing this I only have a couple of
days before traveling yet again. Off to Moldova to visit some projects and
attend a conference. I’m excited and expectant of what God will do, and yet as
I am sat here I realize that it’s challenging to travel when there doesn’t seem
to be a constant to come back to. Of course there is a constant in the
practical, but I find my heart and my spirit are unsettled. I keep looking for
peace, and when I find it I seem to only manage to grab a hold of it for a
moment before stress comes and whisks it away.
And so as I stop and reflect on where I’m at I realize that peace is
what I need. Peace is what I have to reach for. Peace is what my heart and my
soul needs. And so I continue in my search for it. I know this is just a
season. I know that this too will pass and that I will come into rest again and
will find out how I am meant to “run the race”. But on the journey I cling on
to Jesus who is the Prince of Peace, thankful that even in the challenges,
which seem like small storms, He upholds me and sustains me.