We’re back, and really, it’s all back.

We received the warmest, craziest welcome you could imagine. There were so many kiddos pounding toward the truck; Mong Ey came running to us crying. We were all tongue-tied to remember our haphazard communication, but we just hugged and shouted.

And then the kids come every morning and every night, shouting “Stephen! Kelli”‘ They ask for water and play games and try to sneak into our kitchen.

And everybody knows our names.

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Being back also means there was clean up to be had. Heidi, our coworker who was looking after our house & neighborhood while we were away, sweetly cleaned up before we came home and put some groceries in our fridge. This was so helpful, allowing us to have dinner and sleep.

Then Thursday, we tackled the deeper clean.

In our house, we have no closed cabinets, which means everything we own was left to collect three months worth of dust.  We spent a significant amount of time dusting and wiping. This included every single cup, plate, serving dish, and measuring spoon in the kitchen, all washed and dried by hand in a bathroom-sized sink.

We also swept up cobwebs and scared lizards out of the kitchen and mopped up behind them.

The worst–even worse than the many, many dishes–was cleaning the bathroom.  I really dislike our bathroom.  The rest of the house is fine and salvageable, but the bathroom–it’s just ugly and gross, and I could never decorate enough or clean enough to save that.  It is a “wet bathroom”, so you shower into the whole room.  The sink, squatty potty, and metal cupboard are constantly wet. The room is constantly humid, even after a cold shower. Bugs thrive here, and the toilet paper is almost always damp. And just to top it all off, the landlords chose horrible tile. In the tiniest room there are more shades of blue than I could count, including little clock tiles that surround the room, constantly pointing to 9:05. We are eternally late.

I really explain all that to say this: since the whole room is tile and wet, I clean while I am in the shower and naked. This allows me to fearlessly use excessive amounts of bleach, so I can at least attempt to have a clean bathroom once a week.

Stephen was mopping yesterday while I was cleaning the bathroom. One of the secret hiding places of critters is behind our “extra water tub”– a large tub of water in the bathroom that we keep full for when we run out of water. This seems odd, yes, but just keep reading and it won’t seem so crazy.  Because it is full of water, though, creatures like to hide in the humid darkness behind it and come out for water.  They usually die before too long, and I simply wash out the dead bug carcasses regularly.

I know how jealous you are of my bathroom now.

Well this time, I poured a water & bleach mixture down behind the tub, expecting some carcasses to run out and down the drain. And while I was expecting a high number of carcasses, I was not expecting a large number of live cockroaches, big and small, to descend upon me.

I’ll admit, I responded as though I have just been in America for three months. I screamed. I’ll claim it was something about the vulnerability of being naked and having nothing but my skin to protect me from these vile creatures.

Stephen came to the rescue with a shoe and we successfully discovered and attacked the nest of cockroaches. It will still probably take me a few weeks to enjoy showers.

And having used an excess amount of water to clean our dishes & clothes, flood the bathroom, and mop our floors, we ran out of water. Bummer. We are currently using the aforementioned “extra water tub” and praying for water to come back on soon. I’d really love to cook and take a shower and just be.

What can we say?

We’re back, in full grandeur.

I’ll just get right to the point: we started a community fund while we were home.

Officially, we have an additional bank account labeled “Community Fund.”

We didn’t really have plans for this: all of our work with our community has been day-by-day and situation-by-situation. I am usually sitting in the waiting room hoping that I have enough cash in my purse to pay for this visit; we simply purchase fruit and tea for the neighborhood out of our own food budget; when I find toys I think would be great for the kids, we purchase them.

This has been a very wonderful stage of seeing God provide and not necessarily counting where the numbers add up, but seeing them add up beautifully. I wouldn’t trade this stage for anything.

But I will welcome the next stage.

We were given two very generous donations for our community specifically. They asked for it to go toward the medical needs and other opportunities within the community. Since we weren’t needing to spend it right away, we weren’t sure where to put it and how to keep it separated for when it was most needed.

So we started another account, allowing us to separate out money for the community. We can have a little cushion to pick up medical expenses or cover Christmas dinners. We can access funds for the community as needs arise, aside from our own personal rent, food, & transportation needs.

Of all the friendships and opportunities we love in Mae Sot, our neighborhood has been missed the most. They hold a very special place in our hearts and have been at the forefront of so many prayers. It is encouraging to see God break our hearts for this community and then provide above and beyond our imagination.

He is good. And we so thankful that he is providing.

And on that note, I’ll include the video Stephen made to capture our little collective.

Each time I see that, I am so ready to be back. I am so ready to hear “Stephen! Kelli!” at our front door, to have dirty little hands grabbing my arm and tanaka-covered faces rubbing up against my shirt.

I am ready for that mess to be normal again.
And I’m so thankful to see God provide for that normal to continue.

I will note here that if you would like to give directly to the community fund, we would love to make that possible for you! We aren’t aiming to raise funds for anything in particular right now, but send us an email at stephen.spurlock@partnersworld.org if you would like more information.

I stopped writing, as you can see.
It seemed another task to tackle, and well, I wasn’t up for it.

I have been debating how best to describe our furlough. How do you wrap up three brimming months?  How do I explain how thankful I am for the time, how exhausted we are, how ready we are to go home, how sad we are to leave?

Thus, I concluded that our furlough was like three months in a wave pool.

Wave pools are pretty great. You are jumping and swimming; you are among friends and surfing waves.

We caught a lot of good waves while we were here: we had meals with family; we saw friends; we had rich  conversations. We met new babies! We took road trips; we went shopping. We ate delicious food! We went on dates and shivered in the cold and understood English. We sang loudly in church.  It was one good wave after another.

But there is another side of a wave pool. There is always something that causes one wave to go above your head, and if you can’t get back you’re footing pretty quickly, your just overtaken. There is water everywhere, you’re banging into people and gasping for breath. Water is in your ears and nose and eyes; your holding onto your swimsuit for dear life.

Maybe most of you are wondering what I’m talking about and how I could ever come that close to drowning in a wave pool. I’m not incredibly coordinated, so just bear with me.

Once you’re under, it just keeps pummeling you. The waves just keep coming, and you just want the eight minutes to be up so you come up for air and get yourself sorted.

A few waves went over my head in March, quite a few more in April, and by May, I was just scrambling to find which way was up.  The waves were coming quick: good waves, bad waves. It was just getting ugly quick.

And that’s why I’m ready to go home. I want out just so I can sort out what was fun and what just felt like drowning; and why are those so easily confused? I want out so I can catch my breath.

The past three months were so full of joy, laughter, & hope; but they were also covered in tears, pain, confusion, questions, and fears. I’m sitting at the airport now and still gasping for air.

Each night we were able to have dinner with my sister & her family, the kids would sing their prayer song, with the rest of us harmonizing:

God our Father, God our Father
Once again, once again
May we ask your blessing, may we ask your blessing
Amen. Amen.

And now it’s just mulling around in my head: can we ask You to just bless these next weeks and months as we get ourselves re-oriented? Can we find rest and space to process all the waves that just knocked us off our feet? May we ask your blessing–again?

Whoa.

We haven’t really done furlough before, and this is just a whole new ball game.

It’s not vacation; it’s not work. Vacation should be much more restful and less chaotic; work would be more structured and I would feel more accomplished at the end of every day.

There are meetings and giving presentations; there are birthday parties and wedding showers and doctor appointments. There are road trips and shopping trips. There are so many conversations, and a particularly large percentage that I understand, that I never have the time to process or think through before we are talking to someone else.

This is what I would imagine an out-of-body experience being like.

Or perhaps if my life was a science fiction movie and aliens just picked me off our planet and placed me on another.

But really, all this insanity isn’t why I haven’t been blogging. That is part of it: where is the time?  But really, where is the time in Mae Sot, either? It’s more that I love to write, and it helps me analyze the questions that I am asking day after day.

I’m still asking those questions here, and I would love to write out all my analysis of it all.

But I can’t. Because you’re all reading it. You’re in the culture, and you’re in the stories.

Stephen & I have a rule, and I think most couples do, really: we can each joke about our own families, but jokes about each others’ families must be chosen very, very carefully.  I can tease about my mother’s abnormal level of cleanliness because I’m in the family; I followed those rules and grew up in that home.  He doesn’t have the same freedom: it requires a well-placed and wisely-chosen joke. Likewise, I don’t even feel the freedom to give a similar example of something crazy in his family on here. Being in the family gives you the rights.

I think I feel similar in Mae Sot–that because I am living it, I have a right to analyze and comment and laugh. But in returning to the States, I don’t feel a part of it, and I don’t feel that I have the right to say all that I’m thinking. I don’t feel I have the right to analyze what you are living day to day.

And I think I at least have enough decency to filter it in writing.  I don’t do as well in person, as many of you know already. My apologies.

Our chaotic schedules are genuine, yes, but they are just an excuse. It’s really just that this is much more foreign than I expected. And I don’t believe it is because Mae Sot miraculously feels like home; I feel foreign there, too. (Perhaps that’s why I expected that I still fit here?)

In an attempt at optimism, I am trying to focus on the great opportunity it is to live between two worlds, rather than centering my eyes on the large chasm we seem to be straddling. Because it is: this is a unique and privileged opportunity. We flew around the world, and we are spending three months soaking up time with some amazing people. We are enjoying some beautiful weather, having incredible conversations, and experiencing great things.  And soon, we will fly back around the world and hear some really beautiful little voices shout “Kelli! Stephen!” into our window at 7am. We will spend hours at the hospital and drink tea with our neighbors.

These are all really wonderful opportunities. We just have to see them as such.