Tears

A year ago, I would not have considered myself a person who cries easily. In fact, I can recall some uncomfortable conversations where I was profoundly impacted, but I’m sure my face just wouldn’t register my deep sadness or concern. Thanks to Cambodia, that seems to have changed.

I am homesick. It seems rather strange to write it out like that, like I’m admitting to some kind of addiction. “Hi, my name is Kate, and I’m homesick.” People told me it was coming; they reassured me that I could not escape it. I am resigned to feeling this ache for a time. It’s not the kind of homesickness that makes me cry myself to sleep every night, and it’s not the kind that makes me break down in the middle of the afternoon. It’s just a steady, continually present realization that I am very, very far away from people I care about. And that all of the things I thought were familiar are now changing, without me, and that I am changing too.

Perhaps nostalgic is a better word for what I’m feeling. I don’t want to leave Cambodia. I’m settled in now, and I have a routine and a rhythm here. I like it. It is a home for me now. Yet there are things missing that I can’t quite name, but can feel. People don’t really use the phone here so much. In the US, I would have good phone conversations with people, and I could call and check in. With friendships here, it’s usually more about spending time together, and sending an SMS to check in. Both ways are good, but it’s hard to explain just what those lengthy conversations meant in terms of the relationships they built and the friendships they solidified. And it’s hard to explain why hearing someone’s voice—especially someone across the country—was such a good thing.

These sorts of thoughts bring me back to thinking about the life I left in the US, the one I won’t be getting back. Friendships change, people change, and we should fully expect them to. I think what is most frightening is that I will change. I have already. I am used to being a person who doesn’t cry but am now one who tears up at the sight of prostitutes, or gets emotional over a line in an email. This kind of thing is scary, because it leads me to think about what two years of this might change in me. Beyond the language, beyond the experience, I will learn things in Cambodia about depending on God, fighting for change, and praying for this nation that I couldn’t know if I stayed in the States. It is part of what I signed up for (and what I put on the front page of this blog, for goodness sake). I don’t regret it, but it is overwhelming.

I’ve seen my prayers answered here, and I’ve seen myself change. These are good things. I am learning about brokenness, about trust, and about patience—hard lessons. So I am homesick: for people, for places, and for who I used to be. I am grappling with the old while in pursuit of the new. In the midst of it, though, I have found myself crying out to the One who brought me here, who is teaching me, and who will stay with me. “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God” (Psalm 42:5). I will become a person who sheds tears, a person who weeps even, and I will trust that the person I am becoming is the person God wants me to be.