paradox

I wasn't sure whether I should write about this now or after the fact, but I find myself with a quiet moment, the rest of the girls heading back to the house where they're staying, escorted by the boys. And so I suppose now is as good a time as any.

We're going home.

It's all gotten to be too much. The seventeen-hour bus rides and changes in climate and nights of no sleep and days filled with ministry and pain. I'm not getting any better, and it's to the point where I'm risking doing permanent damage to myself if I push on for the next five weeks.

So tomorrow will be our last day of ministry, a day filled with kids' programs. We've been living above a preschool this week, and one of the things that helped us make the decision to go home was the fact that I haven't been able to actually play with the kids. I can't sit on the ground or crouch down to talk to them at their level. I can't pick them up or push them on the swings, and so I know that something is terribly wrong. We'll finish out the day, go out for dinner with the team, and early Monday morning we'll start the process of heading back up to Iquitos to pick up the rest of our things and then on to New Jersey where I'll see some doctors and hopefully get some answers.

It's hard to know what to say right now. It feels like failing, even though I know that we're making the wise choice. But everything in me wants to push forward, to go on with the team to Bolivia and back to Peru and finish what we started back at the end of February, back when I really had no idea what dengue was.

And yet. (There's always an and yet, isn't there?)

I spoke at a youth service we did this evening in a tiny church up in the mountains. Or rather, I should say, God spoke. Purpose, passion and peace. Draw close to Him, walk in step with Him and He will give you all these. I have always understood the purpose and the passion; it's what gives me such joy working in Africa and traveling around the world and doing crazy dances in the dirt streets of Peru. But it wasn't until I started talking to them about peace that I realized that I've learned about that, too, here.

I've learned what it means to be at peace even when I don't understand, to trust when everything in me is crying out for answers. It's a strange paradox, this. Being filled with questions and yet knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything is okay, that I'm safe under the shelter of His wings and protected in the confines of His hands.

There's room here for my seeking, because I'm surrounded by this peace and I know that nothing can touch me here.

And so that's that. We'll be home Wednesday morning, after which you can expect to see lots and lots of photos, once I'm back on an internet connection that allows for that sort of thing.

Thank you so much for all your love and prayers and encouragement during this time here in Peru. We are still planning to head back to the ship and Sierra Leone in the fall, a big part of the reasoning behind going home and getting things sorted out sooner rather than later. So, although posting is most likely going to drop off for a while here, don't go anywhere, because soon enough I'll be back to my floating home with lots more to share.