The Heartache of Home

Well, I did it.  I left.  Somehow.

My last half an hour at Noah's Ark was one of my favorites in the last three months. While my bags were packed and I was waiting for my ride to the airport, I was able to just be with some of the kids. It started with Leah venturing out after lunch. Then a few more joined. More children kept trickling out of the home until we had quite a large—and loud—group. There was the normal shouting and singing and secret-telling that accompanies a group of children anywhere in the world and it was wonderful.

When I finally had to get in the van to leave, it was surrounded by half a dozen volunteers and twenty children. Naturally it took me quite some time to actually get into the vehicle, what with last hugs and last last hugs and the fact that I was reluctant to be going anyway.

Closing the door and pulling away from the group of beautiful Ugandan children all yelling, “Goodbye, Auntie Katie!” seems like it would have been a surreal moment. Indeed, it would have been… if I hadn’t known them. But it wasn’t just any group of beautiful Ugandan children. It was Andrew who nearly got his fingers slammed in the door. It was Betty who quietly hung out toward the back like she tends to do. It was Lydia who continued knitting while she walked with the crowd. It was Margaret (or Mary or Gladys) singing a song about how much she loves me. In three months, what started out as surreal has become very REAL.

I have been back for a week, and it has been hard. It’s not just hard that I left a place and a people I have come to know and love. It’s hard because I now realize that no matter where I am or where I go, it will always require leaving a place and a people I love.

Sometimes I think God has given me too many homes. When I am in Wisconsin, I miss my family in Washington. When I was in Uganda, I missed my family in America. Now I am on my way from Washington to Wisconsin and I miss my Uganda family something terrible. Does it ever end?

No. As long as God’s family is all over the world, so mine will be too. But I’m beginning to realize that’s not such a bad thing. Because no matter where I go, I know God will give me family.

I have spent the last week at home in Morton with my parents and Annie. It was a whirlwind week of inviting family to our house, catching up with high school friends, and visiting PLU and the small handful of people still there from when I was a student. We decorated the house for Christmas and I played the piano and we ran with the dogs. More than any other time I have been back in the last two years, it felt like home.

Now I am sitting at the Portland airport waiting for someone to change the tires on my plane so I can go home to Wisconsin and see my family there. It will be another few crazy days full of dates with my boyfriend, catching up with his family, handing out gifts from my trip and settling back into my apartment. Then on to Iowa for Christmas to celebrate the birth of Christ with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and any other family I am blessed to see in that short time.

Family overload? Never. It’s better to always be missing someone than to never have someone to miss. Home to Washington. Home to Wisconsin. Someday, I hope to return home to Uganda as well. I don’t know when and I don’t know for how long, but it will happen. I’m almost sure of it.

Sometimes I ask God why all the people I love can’t be in one place. The problem is that He keeps giving me more people to love.  And someday—someday—we will all be in heaven together. Irene and Angel and Rebecca can meet my grandmother and my sister can hold little Florence and my cousin John can play music with Augustine and Vanessa and we will all be one family. Just one. What a family reunion that will be!

And for now I will stop crying over the people I miss and remember that I am blessed to have so many people to love regardless of what state, country, or continent in which I find myself. God has given me one more home this fall, and I praise Him for that gift.

p.s. This is theoretically my last blog, now that I am home (the America one, that is) and back to normal life. Thanks for reading, especially since I know I can be rather long-winded! Please keep the children and staff at Noah’s Ark and New Horizon in your prayers and search your bookshelves over the holidays to find something to donate to the secondary school library. If that didn’t make sense, read my last post. God bless you this Christmas!