As I was driving home, windows down, cotton candy sky as the sun set and the air cooled, I was thinking of the pictures and the memories of mission in NYC with Catholic Christian Outreach that I wanted to share. I’d held off on posting on social media because I had told myself that I wanted to share my mission experience with the people who mattered the most first: the people who helped me get there. And while this is true, I think the real reason I didn't share is that I didn’t have the words. How do I sum up two weeks of God moving in me and through me? The answer is: I don’t. I have many glory stories I could share, funny moments, revelations, and ways that God changed my heart that maybe one day I’ll share here, but today I’m sharing about life at home after my mission trip.
It would be wrong to deny the irrefutable fact that God changed my heart on mission, that He is healing the broken pieces of my heart, making me whole, making me new. While I was on mission, I met people who were not only materially poor but also spiritually poor. They needed more than something to eat and something to drink; they needed to be loved, and by the grace of God, I was able to love them. I would say that I touched countless people’s lives through this mission trip, but it’s not countless, I know each of their names: Steve, Joanne, Wanda, Paula, Mr. Lee, Uncle Benny, Audrey, Jayda, Niah, Rosanna, Mark, Ryan, David, Ebriena, and many more. When I encountered these people, I encountered Jesus, and it changed my heart forever.
Every person I have ever known who has gone on a mission trip has told me that coming home from mission is hard, so I expected it. I thought I knew why coming home from mission would be hard: leaving my mission team, change in routine, catching up on what I missed, exhaustion from lack of sleep during mission – the typical “back to real-life” things. But these things were the least of what was difficult after mission.
The hardest part of coming home from mission was being faced with the fact that I am still the same person I was when I left for mission, yet a little bit different somehow. My pride tells me that it will be easy to live this new identity, but reality humbles me. The number of times I have failed to love since returning home from mission makes my heart hurt. The number of times I have failed to stop and give my care and attention to a homeless person who asks me for spare change stings a little. I always have an excuse: “I don’t want to hold up the group”, or “I’m alone, what if something happens”. Both these excuses are really masks for the real reason, which is that it’s hard to love, for many reasons: pride, fear, selfishness, the list goes on and on. And while it is hard to love, encountering the people of New York showed me both how much the world is longing to be loved and how much my heart is filled when I give love.
I’m glad that it is hard for me to come home from mission, because it shows me the places I still need to keep working, the ways in which I especially need to rely on God’s grace. As the days go by, I'm learning how to integrate how I grew on mission into my life at home. Mission showed me the love I am capable of giving, and it equipped me in many ways, teaching me how to love. But the greatest thing I learned on mission is that I have choice in every moment to choose love, and to choose love is the best choice.