Here I Go Again

The students have been back for one day, and I'm starting to get back into the swing of things. It's actually really good to have them here. It's fun to have people around again.

It's been a little weird, though, for the last day. Outreach is such a weird thing, and it changes you, but it's SO different from normal life that it's hard to really figure out how you have changed right away. And there's all the mix of emotions: total exhaustion from two months of cross-cultural living and traveling, excitement about what God did, disappointment about what he didn't do that you expected him to... relief at being back in a nice, clean, safe place, and guilt at being here while the very people that you spent the last two months with stay in their third-world existence... it's all a lot to take in. You can actually feel it on the base; the sense of being unsettled is almost tangible as these guys process and try to figure out what it all means.

For me, it's so tempting to just say, "here's what you do. Here's how you changed, and here's what you should feel." Because, I think, at this point, some of them would really like some definition. And maybe the things I say would be true, but they are just not for me to say. Which is hard mostly because I want people to be comfortable and happy and feel good. But I really have to be careful, because there's so much value in the tension. It's so important to say, "hey, what is God saying to you? What did he do? Who does he say that you are?" And let people figure it out for themselves. It's hard, but there has to be a safe place where you let the questions simmer a little bit, and where you are really listening to God. If these guys left here with nothing but the ability to ask good questions and to let God in to the answers to those questions, I think the DTS would be a success.

I think that this is what I really love about what I do. I get to make a place to listen and learn and ask questions and figure out a way to channel that all into something that will influence who they are going to be for the rest of their lives. And I think that something I'm really good at is helping people feel okay with that process, because sometimes it can be excruciating. But it's worth it.

Man, I don't know if I'm making sense right now at all. This whole day has been spent trying to communicate with people who are tired, and who are from several different cultures and have spent the last two months in even more different cultures. I totally struggle to say things in a way that everybody will understand. But if they understand, at the end of the day, that they are loved, I guess that's good enough. So I hope that, if nothing else, they got that.

Anyway, that's the brain spew that happens on a day in the life of a DTS leader. If you made it through, thanks for reading! By the way, you are loved, too.