The Last Word

Well, now that we're 'back again,' I suppose it is time to move on to another blog title. It will be called "Small Town(s) Rule(s)" and I am going to try and talk about life in a small town. Might not work, because in a small town in Wyoming, we all know way too much about each other already...but I'll try to walk that tightrope for a couple entries and see how it goes. I may get booted back across the Pacific. Maybe I can direct the booting and get across the Atlantic this time. Spain. Portugal. Night Train to Lisbon.

At any rate, I let the dust of Australia wash off me yesterday in the shower, and then over dinner Ana wanted to read to us her diary entry, "Going Home." I thought she should have the last words of this chapter, adventure, or what I call "20,000 Miles to Get a Toasted Sandwich Maker: or a Risk Gone South":

Going Home
by Anatolia

Nobody has the perfect life; everybody wants to appear happy but by doing so, end up taking away more and more of what happiness is. Happiness isn't charisma.

Through this whole journey, what has haunted me the most was not losing people, suffering, the hardships of this adventure, but rather the attitude that was a mask, something I encountered in myself and almost everyone else. I tried to grasp depth, but with the fear of lying to myself by listening to the testimonials of others, I slunk back into a hole of maturity, or the appearance of it. I easily become engrossed in stories, movies, and songs, so much so that I seek to become what so many other artists have sought to inspire.

So, being a searcher for deep and dramatic things, I wanted to come back to Lander as someone new and improved, a weathered adventurer who would not fear anything again. Some of this I did gain, but by trying too hard I lost what I most wanted to come back with--a free, selfless heart and the ability to be what God made me to be at the beginning. What I now know is I'm not alone; this goal is something that takes a whole lifetime and not even achieved then. Only when there is only God, like a song that envelops you completely, only then can God destroy you, what you thought was yourself, and bring you to life. I feel this desire, but I cannot trust Him when He puts me in the thick of it.

We've passed the Wyoming border sign. I will love going home with everything, even if those people I wish to be perfect, to love me perfectly, let me down and even if I let them down. If I continue in humility, it will destroy my pride. For this home of mine is not my home. But it is not separate from it. It is a part, more than that, in the timeless picture of God. It is a musical phrase that will lead on, creating the next; I will only catch glimpses of the tonal note, then it will die out, until harmony will put each piece of the journey together; the note that began it will resound forever.

In our adventure, I had so many countless prayers, but prayer is not really asking, it is receiving. Indeed God knows our prayers before we know them, and even in prayer that is confused and muddled, we are letting God fill a little more. Our prayers for Australia God knew, but it was a prayer that we did not know. In prayer we ask for what will make us happy, as if God has ignored our ideas and plans for happiness. No, we should ask for happiness--it is a sign of the willingness to receive; our asking must reflect God. Then the deepest desires will be gained through the loss of ourselves. In Australia, we lost our dogs, we lost the comfortable security of things functioning. I lost part of my childhood, the appearance of a family whose job will work, whose children will not experience hard things.

There is a lot of pride entwined with the attachment to simple securities and appearances of this world. But I did not hate or condemn myself for these vices. God longs to give Himself to crush this fear in me. Indeed, even Mom and Dad were angry at God and we lost some faith. Though many people have seen too much and others live too easily, too well, to believe, the losses of this dog-loving, pizza-eating, shouting, arguing family whose pride is constantly being destroyed, will be filled with more of God. We have scars, and battle wounds, good memories and a lot of tears, and this was God's way of fighting for us and crushing the deepest wounds inside us, fighting the monsters inside us, and finally freeing us.

To sum up the philosophical, theological and intellectual journeys we made, I would say something like what the Aussies might say: "Keep Calm and Love God."