Some things we share on this blog will be fairly objective, explaining where we are with the details of our move and service. But other times (like today) we will share some deeper things. The things we are wading through in our hearts and souls. This is one of those.
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11/19
I just finished watching a beautiful video about Ruby Ranch. The Hansow family did an online TV series about different ministries in Nicaragua that are bringing hope and light and one of the episodes featured Ruby Ranch.
I could barely hold back the tears (I only did because I was sitting here at the coffee shop). Tears of joy, over those sweet faces I am growing in hope and love for. Tears of expectation, imagining what it will feel like to be at the Ranch year round, ushering in the helpers and the recipients, facilitating their time there. Tears of sadness and mourning over the fact that I am still here, even though my heart is so clearly there.
I even pause to share these feelings. Sometimes my honesty forgets to be sensitive. It forgets that loved ones here feel big emotions towards this whole thing, too. I don’t want to be insensitive. And the desire to be there does not replace my desire to be near loved ones here. In fact all it does is remind that from now on, my heart will be torn. Torn between the place I will spend my life serving in, and the place where my roots began. Torn between the place of newness and adventure, and the place of familiarity and history. The former could not exist without the latter. Oregon (and in writing that name I mean all the family, friends and communities I have known and know here) prepared me for Nicaragua. It saw me through joy and pain. Days of great triumphs and great doubt. It grew me up and provided a place to launch from. As deep of an impact as I have had here, so I have received as well. And so I could not sit here in excitement without having first resided here in comfort. Without first having learned to ‘just be’ here in Eugene. In these circles. At these tables. On these streets.
So I hope my honesty isn’t painful to anyone. I pray it isn’t taken as flippancy towards the countless hours I have spent here. Because that is the last thing I hope to convey. Instead I hope that it is just what it is, honest explanations of the big things stirring in my soul that I had thought were dead and gone. Things that I thought I had lost when I boarded that plane in Kigali, back in 2009.
La Vida Nica 