full force.

Over the past year and a half, it seems we have been adjusting to the weight of living here. It has come in small increments, with additional questions, challenges, and dilemmas. Almost like adding a brick each week to a backpack, maybe two or three on occasion, but overall just a steady increase. 

And then suddenly, the backpack is removed for ten days, while you rest on an exotic island in south Thailand.

…Do you see where I’m going with this?

Because when you return to the life you know, the life not on an exotic beach, the glorious backpack of living in a fallen world returns. In full force.

Upon arriving, we saw the poverty of our neighborhood in comparison to the West or development. And yes, it was horrible. It was a weighted brick. But to return to your neighborhood, see the poverty, and know their names–this is a bigger brick, if you will. 

To know rest on a beach, choosing your own schedule again; and then be welcomed with children yelling your name outside the bedroom window at minutes before 8am followed by a patient to take to the hospital right around dinner time. And suddenly, the life that goes around us is writing our schedule again. And every decision is, again, weighted.

Really, I have the same questions now that I have always had. We still live in a broken world with pain and suffering. Sometimes its a malnourished child or repeated poverty; sometimes it’s just me wanting to be near family or learn a language. Very little has truly changed.

But the weight of the questions this week is greater. It’s more unfamiliar, because I took a breath of unweighted, fresh air.