Let Your Love Be More

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since posting a blog. I feel like the updates have just piled high over the last few months, and finding time to try to put them into words has been equally difficult. Thank you so much for continuing to support and follow my journey. I appreciate the love everyone has shown as I have updated through Facebook and Instagram. My hope is to post more updates and stories from the race that I haven’t been able to write about yet. Please let me know if there are specific things you guys would like to hear about each month! 

To begin, most recently, I’ve been home for a little over two weeks now. Being back in America has been CRAZY. When we first arrived in the states, we flew into the JFK airport in New York. Not thinking much of it, I bought an overnight bus ticket for $40 to take me from Manhattan, NY to Charlotte, NC. It was an 11 hour bus ride, but it was way cheaper than any plane ticket I would have bought. With jet lag putting my sleeping schedule off, plus my excitement to get home and see my family for the first time, I didn’t sleep much on the bus. I watched the sunrise and saw all of these street and highway signs that I could actually read and understand for the first time in 11 months. As people on the bus woke up, I could also understand all of the conversations going on around me because everyone spoke English. It was crazy! I had not been around so many things in English in so long. It felt like my brain unlocked a super power to interpret all things. I also noticed how significantly cleaner and organized the highways, cities, and even poorer neighborhoods looked than the places we lived in the last year. It felt like I was in one of those movies about traveling to the future. 

My mom was the one to pick me up at the bus stop. She welcomed me home with my favorite Krispy Kreme donut for breakfast and a huge sign she made that said “Welcome Home Abby!!!”. The plan was for me to stay with her and my step-dad while I readjusted back to the states. Once we pulled in to the driveway, she brought out the dogs to be my second greeters and I sobbed. I mean, I seriously ugly cried. I didn’t experience having a real home that was my home-home in so long. Walking into the kitchen and seeing the familiar rooms, the hallways with family photos, and my dogs (cause I really missed my dogs) I was overwhelmed. After settling in, I took the longest shower of my life and tried to take in that I was finally home. 

Each day since being back has continued to be an adventure. Grocery stores blow my mind with how many options we have. The fruits and veggies worry me though, because they all look copy and pasted. In fact, I noticed that there are more questionable food choices here than the more natural stuff we got to eat during the race. Another adjustment is that after a year of having to do dishes by hand…the dishwasher is both the greatest and the hardest blessing to adjust to. Having unlimited hot showers has been absolutely incredible. Big crowds are overwhelming, but then again they have never been my jam so that’s not particularly new. Traffic here is like a kiddie ride compared to the traffic over seas. There’s no fear of a wild elephant coming out of no where or having 7 cars driving beside each other on a 4 lane road with mopeds and tuk tuks doing whatever they want. Air conditioning is also nice, but it’s causing allergy issues that I haven’t had in the past year. Overall, it has been great being home and it’s been interesting seeing the definite change in perspective and appreciation.   
Seeing family and friends has also been an emotional experience. So far, I have only seen my family and a few friends. It’s been great seeing familiar faces of people that have known me my entire life and are so supportive and welcoming. It has also had it’s challenges though. The people that have always known me the best don’t necessarily know me as well anymore. After spending a year apart there are things that have grown and shaped us into having new attributes to learn about each other. I know my year following God has brought me home a transformed person, and I know there are things that happened that also changed my friends and family’s lives. It’s been an awkward battle to try to understand in what ways we have changed since I’ve been gone and how it affects us moving forward. Many times things appear to be back to normal, and I’m welcomed back into the normal groove of things, but I catch myself in moments where I feel like I’m back tracking into my old self, ways that are good and also not so good. Each day is a learning experience that I have to figure out how to take this past year and apply it to my life here at home. I am very grateful to have friends and family that talk through these struggles I am having, and fight with me to figure out what it looks like to move forward with the growth I’ve gained from my experience on the race. I have yet to have one person not be willing to do whatever they could to help me, and it has been incredibly humbling to see the amount of love God pours out through my friends and family. 

Through the ups and downs, the celebrations and grieving, the learning and adjusting there has been one piece of advice that has helped me a lot. My friend Caroline told me something she learned from the Lord recently, which is that in every circumstance “let your love be more”. In the frustrations and hardships of coming back, let my love be so powerful that it trumps the desire to shut down or shut people out. When I am on fire about sharing all that I learned from the Lord this year, let my love for others humble me to speak in grace and truth. As I figure out my next steps in life to let my love for God make me submit to His plans and desires. “Let your love be more” has also helped to remind me that God’s love is more than any of the trivial things that come my way. No matter how hard coming home has been, God’s love has brought trust and rest in His good promises.