a world away

I am sitting in my parents' basement in a small ranch town in Colorado. As Joel described it while driving me to the airport on Wednesday, a world away from Mexico City. I've moved nearly once for every year I've been alive. Usually I'm quite excited about the coming change. Leaving Mexico would be my first time not being excited to move.

The past four months that I have spent living in Mexico have been a confusing mixture. As I have prepared to leave I've been asked many times why I like Mexico so much. Usually my answers come out sounding incredibly shallow and lame. I just can't seem to quite describe what it is I love so much. I'm going to try anyway. I think I just can't get over Mexican culture. There is such an open kindness that seems to be so normal there. The culture has this electric mix of the ancient and the cutting edge that never gets boring. Mexico is shamelessly as full of color as a garden in full bloom. And there is this element of mystery and a little danger that I find irresistible. I have definitely fallen head-over-heels for this country.

On the other hand it was very difficult for me to live with so many people. I can get kind of weird with roommate situations. Something inside my head tells me that things will be better if I am as invisible as possible. I have been called the ghost roommate. All my former roommates have made comments about how I'm never around. I have felt that if I'm gone all the time or very quiet and invisible when home that my roommates will take longer to get tired of me and want me to leave. Nonsense, but the thing in my head that says it is really loud. During my time in Mexico God has been working on my fear of people. It's not been easy. I often found myself crying at night on our roof and wondering why God had put me on a church-planting team knowing I had these fears.

Mexico was a really good place to be as God began to ask me to surrender these things. There is a gentleness and a kindness in the way people treat each other that I found getting past my barriers even on my most frustrating days. My goodbye to this place was a teary one, but hopefully short. I'm hoping to be back sometime in the next year. Even if I'm not I felt strangely encouraged as I walked the dusty streets of Kremmling with my dog today. It's hard to nail it down with words but I really think God changed a lot in me through my time in Mexico. Seeing this evidence of God's hand in my life makes the future, uncertain though it may be, seem very full of hope.