Now what?

I can't believe it has been over a month since Kayla and I left London. It has been surreal this week to be watching the Olympics on television and see the sweeping scenes of the city and say, "I've been there!" There is joy and gratefulness in the remembering. Wonderment and disbelief that it actually happened. I can't believe we got to live in Belgium for three months and on top of that got to travel in England and Ireland. It was a dream come true.

Now we have been home for almost seven weeks, taken the first two-three weeks just to crash and catch up with friends, have moved out of and said goodbye to the house that Kayla and I lived in for a bit, taken a short trip to Pryor, Oklahoma to see family that we haven't seen since we moved to New Mexico. It has been good and hard, but mostly good.

Tonight watching the Olympics though, I felt an ache. I have become an addict. I can't wait to go back. I am longing for the familiar places that I just barely got to know and for all the places I haven't yet been. I want to look up again at buildings that have stood for centuries and watch the countryside fly by as I hear the clack-clack-clack of the wheels against the train tracks. I want to get lost again in a big city and not care that I don't know where I am, only caring that I am somewhere I have never been before. I want to go back and do all the things we didn't have time for or were just too tired to see.

I want to meet people who have grown up in a different culture than I and be astounded at the common grace of God to let human beings connect to one another in laughter and awkwardness and kindness.

Yet, I am so blessed to be home. To see my family that I missed like crazy for all that time, to see my dear friends; to travel back to good ol' small town Oklahoma and enjoy being with family and recede back into my Oklahoma accent for awhile, to go tubing on the lake and soak up the muggy, sunny atmosphere. To go hiking in the Sandia foothills again and watch the sunset. To have my own room again and be surrounded in a teal ocean that calms me like almost nothing else.

But after all these good things and resting and readjusting the question that has been on the back burner for the last four months has come to the forefront. Now what?