Not Nervous, Just Ready

As the holiday weekend reaches a close, I reflect upon the past few days. A weekend of countless conversations with my extended family that hasn't seen me since my PC nomination, and also many with wizened, doting parishioners from my grandparents' church who prayed a blessing over me for safe travels. All asked me in hushed voices how nervous I was about my departure.

My response, invariably, was a shrug and an "I'm really not at all."

They would then purse their lips and say, "Hm, okay" in a pacifying voice that clearly indicated that they knew how I was feeling better than I did.

I let them do what they needed to.

Truth was, I really wasn't nervous. My intense personality paired with an eerie calm that came with the territory of knowing that Salone was where I was supposed to be at this point in my life gave me a serenity that most people probably mistook for gas.

If they had known what was going through my mind, maybe they would have let me be. What occupied my thoughts more than anything else lately was the kind of people with whom I would be serving. Constantly, they were running through my mind.

Since the invention of the Internet, the imagination has had a whole lot of help. If I had been serving 15 years ago, I would have nothing but the wilderness of my mind to concoct these future friends from. Now we have Facebook and with that come the story of their lives. At least the lives they choose to share with cyberspace.

I'm so ready to meet these people.

What are their real stories, not just Facebook stories? How did they get to this junction? How are their parents coping with them leaving? Were they like my dad, who just shoved me on my way like he knew he'd always have to? Or were they like my mom, a control freak that was steadily losing control over me and was stretching it to any area she could (medical forms, packing lists, my going away party)

Who's going to be best friends? Who's going to break curfew every night? Who's going to fall in love? Who is going to wish me dead every second of the day because I never just shut the hell up? Who's going to be seriously injured on a hike, rendering them the spectator all through training? Who's the Hermione? Whose wedding will we all be reuniting at after we return home? Who's the Quiet one? Are there going to be cliques? Are we too cool for that? 

All I can think about is getting to know these people. My people. More than ever before, I look forward to a goodbye because I know that hellos are soon to follow.

So, to my future friends, I promise I'm not insane. Just mega-pumped to meet you all. This is the adventure of a lifetime.

 And we're going together.

"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."

- Henry David Thoreau

Leap of Faith

As my departure grows steadily closer, the more unsteady my mind becomes. I have to remember the passwords to exceptionally more portals than any person should, trying to complete the never-ending mound of paperwork that the Peace Corps needs from me. I feel excessively popular as people are coming out of the woodwork, making plans for “one last day” and making me nervous that perhaps people think I might not be coming back.

There’s been so many questions hurled my way, I'm becoming a pompous old windbag, answering them trying to use my very expensive English degree in a way that would make my professors proud. I'm spouting words like pivotal, and integral and cultural diversity to explain why I’m embarking on this journey that sounds more crazy the closer it gets.

What I've been avoiding is the truth.

Most that know me knows that Jesus and I are bros. Honestly, that’s really the best way to describe the thing we’ve got going. I didn’t become a Christian until later in life, and as such, my faith has always looked a lot different than everyone else’s. I had to play catch up with the bible stories and become a human thesaurus about the titles of God. Savior, King, Almighty, those were the words that got thrown around a lot in my church.

But that’s never really who he was to me.

There’s a passage in 1 Kings where an angel tells Elijah to go up on a mountain and wait for God and a great many huge things happen: an earthquake, a hurricane and a fire, but they go on to say that God wasn’t in those things. He came after, “ a still, small voice.”

That’s always what God has been to me. Someone I could talk to.  A still, small voice that answered when I talked. He wasn’t bossy, He wasn’t condemning, and He just listened.

He was very polite when I was 18 and He told me that He wanted me to become a missionary and I more or less told him to fuck off. He let it go for a few years, and then gently reminded me again when I was about 20. My uncle, a missionary himself, had been coming home from Africa more and more. I told God no again, but reluctantly brought it up to my uncle, one of my favorite people in the world. He simply told me to trust.

Finally, when I was finishing my junior year at North Park, God brought it up again. Basically, I told Him I would apply to the Peace Corps if it would shut Him up. Knowing the statistics of how many people are accepted, I thought I was the cleverest person ever. When I didn’t get in, I had a ready-made excuse not to leave.

However, as soon as I started the application process, I was surprised to find how much I actually wanted to go. It felt right, the work that the Peace Corps was doing. The statistics that had comforted me before now daunted me, as I wondered if I was going to be good enough. 

10 months later I sat at my computer, mouth gaping as I read my invitation to Sierra Leone. As I said the name out loud for the first time, I knew this was what He had meant. I didn’t beat the odds by getting in, this was what He had intended for me. As I talked to my campus pastor and she pulled out the same story of Elijah that I had clung to in the beginning of my faith, I finally saw the connection.

 This is the real story of why I’m going. 

I’m going because I know that this is where I’m meant to be. I can’t wait to meet the people that I’ll be there with, and hear their stories of how they got there. I can’t wait to meet my students and start teaching in a place totally new to me. Cooperative Teaching takes on a whole new meaning out there in the Bush.

I can’t wait to see what else God has for me over there.

“For I know the plans I have for you.” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.”

                        ~Jeremiah 29:11