“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand...there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep…that have taken hold.” –JRR Tolkien
Today marks three weeks since I left Zambia to come back home, and even though I have so much to say I have felt at a loss for words. I have been avoiding blogging because quite simply I don’t know how to express the things I have been feeling lately. But then I heard this quote, and it gave me the motivation I needed to just sit down and start writing, so here I am. This quote is part of one of the ending scenes of The Lord of the Rings. The setting is Frodo’s study: he has returned from his mission of destroying the ring, and now he is sitting at his desk finishing the book his Uncle had started years ago. And as I watched this ending scene and heard the quote, I felt like I could connect with it because I have been asking myself the same question lately…how do you pick up the threads of an old life—how do you ever move on—when you know that there is no going back? But something that I am learning, is that it is OK to not know how to pick up the threads, which right now means that it’s OK to have many emotions all raging at once. I’m allowed to miss Zambia like crazy while still being thankful that I’m in Canada. I’m not a calloused person for enjoying the comforts of home, and I’m not a dramatic person for hating how we as North American’s take so much for granted. I am also learning that it is OK to not want to move on. It’s OK to not want to go back to the way things were. Because the truth is my experiences in Zambia (the people I met, the things I saw, the conversations I had), all changed me for the better. So I don’t want my coming home to be me going back, because that would be a regression. I want all of those experiences to impact and change me long term: To budget better so I can give more funds to the school. To set aside time so I can pray for the children. To live my life in a way that isn’t excessive or wasteful—to not forget the realities that I witnessed just a few weeks ago. So how do you pick up the threads of an old life? I don’t know. Maybe you don’t. Maybe those threads stay where they are and God starts weaving a new part of the tapestry altogether with fresh colours, and in the end both the old and the new will connect into a beautiful picture that I just can’t see now.
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