change will come

i've felt this pressure this week since i've been back.  when i was in africa i kept saying that i couldn't fully process what was happening there and that once i was home i would be able to process alot more.  and in my mind i guess i imagined this week being when all that would happen.  i guess i naively thought that i could just sit around and think about what just happened to me and come away with a bunch of new insight in a week.  what i'm realizing though is there are some problems with that idea.

first problem: when i have tried to sit down and think about the last six weeks i don't really know what to think about or what to do with my thoughts.  it feels like sitting around thinking about it isn't going to really get me anywhere.

second problem: i thought the processing would come as i told people my stories, and in some ways it has. but what i didn't anticipate is how hard it would be to talk about it.  i'm finding that when people ask me how africa was, my standard first line is "it was really really hard but incredibly good" but then i don't know where to go from there.  it's hard to describe.  it's hard to know where to start the story.  so much of what i just experienced was so wrapped up in the lives of the people there, i was just immersing myself in their stories and all the emotions that go along with it.  and that is a hard thing to communicate with people.  and it was, at first, disappointing because people didn't respond how i expected them to.  the stories didn't rock their world like they did mine.  but derek gave me good advice about this.  he said that second-hand stories aren't enough to change people and that is why i went there myself so that i could experience it.  he told me that the experience is mine and it was meant to change me and that i can't expect it to change other people in the same way.  that was a freeing thing to hear.

third and biggest problem:  i don't think the processing is going to come while i sit in my bedroom and just think. i think it's going to come when i least expect it, in bits and pieces, and without being forced.   i think it is going to come as i engage in normal everyday situations here and realize that my perspective has changed because of what i just experienced in the last 6 weeks.  the problem with my first approach of trying to process while i sit quietly with my thoughts is that i was approaching it as if there were something to be "figured out".  it's like i wanted to figure out what it all means and how it applies to my life.  and in some ways now i feel like that is an insult to what i just experienced.  those stories, that pain, my patients, their brokenness...it's not something to be "figured out".  it's something that i want to remember and let change the way i approach life not because i took away 3 bullet points of what i learned from that time but because i lived fully in those stories and i can't help but be changed by them.