Normalcy

In sort of unrelated news to anything except my emotions, here is an update.
I figured something out today, but first, lets go back.
When we left home, I didn't think that I would miss very much. Growing up, I always had to adapt to change & changing environments. In the most extreme of examples, I moved from living with a Mexican family in the backwoods of Montana to living with a white family in LA when I was 10. Needless to say, I adjusted because that's what kids do. Of the two, my motto has always been closer to "out of sight, out of mind" than to "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and I was ok with that, hence why I thought I wouldn't miss home too much.
Leaving Moreno Valley was difficult. As we drove off from saying goodbye to Jessika and Robert, I couldn't help but to cry, a lot. It was strange-I had left friends before and I had lost friends before. Why was it so difficult this time? Perhaps I just needed to get over it, give it a few days. Time wore on and on and I missed home more and more. For the first 5-6 months, time dragged on. It seemed as though we had been gone for an eternity. Life had become a pattern-pull into a city, go to a church, make some friends, connect, create an awesome bond, hang for a few days, then, just like the last time, leave, not knowing when or if we'll meet again.
Fast forward to the semi-present. We arrived in Ocean Grove, NJ on November 10th. (It is now December 20th.) The longer I'm here, the more I fall in love with this place. It really is the picture of classic, innocent, American charm-small town, Christian community, cute little cottages everywhere and everyone knows everyone else. In an ideal world, this is what my city would be like, only where I actually live instead of way on the opposite side of the country and the reason I wouldn't move here is because everyone I love lives roughly 3,000 miles away. And yet, as our time draws to an end, I am sad to go. Sad to be here and yet, sad to leave. How does that work?
Well, that's what I figured out today. What I miss about home is the familiarity, the people that I love and the faces that I know. I look at my girls and I know their stories and I know that they know mine. I go to church and I know who is who and where I can help and what I can do. At work, I dislike the job, but I love the people and experiences, all because they are mine. I have all that I need, I feel normal, steady, welcomed. Everywhere else, I am a stranger. I don't know their history, their family issues, their trustworthy people, I don't know anything. I am a foreigner.
But now, now I'm in a place where, by the time I leave, I'll have been here for 7 whole weeks. That's a decade in comparison to every other state. And I realize why I'll be sad to go-I've developed normalcy. People know me and, albeit surface, I know them. I can walk down the street and say hi to Hellen and Bill, I can run into Jackie at the Barbaric Bean, I can chat with Robin as I fold laundry, I can joke with the same guy at the hardware store because I'm always in there, or run into Walter, Mark, or Chris, because they're always around. I am comfortable, welcomed, accepted here. They've let me in and although I don't quite belong, I'm not a foreigner. I'm grasping at the wind of this feeling that I only have for a few days at a time on the road but everyday at home-comfortableness and I've had it for 6 weeks now. Come the 28th, that will make leaving all the more difficult.
Today we said goodbye to the 2 people I will probably miss the most here in Ocean Grove-Rob and Meg. Having worked side by side with them nearly everyday, they have become such good friends. Even though they were our bosses, they treated us with such equality, love, and respect and we never felt as though they lorded anything over us. I will definitely miss them incredibly.
For some time now, I have had a feeling that after our commitment in Georgia ends on January 5th, we would be called back to California. I didn't put too much stock in it, only because I had had this feeling before and clearly, it wasn't God's timing so much as my desires. As I've prayed, and definitely not as much as I should have, I am reminded of God's goodness. The other day at the coffee shop, we were able to have an evangelistic and borderline apologetic conversation with a gentleman who had some pretty far out ideas about God and heaven. It kind of sparked an excitement in me, a remembrance of the good ol' days where that's all we did. Later that day, as I was copying pictures to an external hard drive, I started to look through old pictures of the trip. Ten months is a lot of memories, 8,108 pictures thus far to be exact and once again, that excitement and nostalgia started to set in. My firm grip on desiring normalcy loosened, albeit just a tad, to let in the adventurous, spontaneous, and ever changing reality of life on the road....again. Now we have just about a week until it's time to go and everyday I grow a smidge more ok with it. Maybe because I don't have a choice, maybe because I truly am excited, I can't really say.
All that to say that I miss home, but that is the semi-permanent state I'm in. I figure, I'd rather miss home than suffer what Paul suffered through so bring on the foreign-ness. :)
Thanks for taking the time to read this, it helps me to know that people I love, care. :)