| | [Note: this is a copy of an email I sent tonight to my friends and family]
My room is empty except for two overstuffed suitcases. In the morning I'm using up the last of my bread to make two honey sandwiches for the road. I'll put away the dishes I bought, fold up the sheets I bought, and stuff the two pillows I bought into the closet for someone who didn't buy them. I'll put the toiletries I'm taking back with me into my carry-on bag, call a cab, and make another last-minute inspection before walking down the hallway and giving a Bulgarian girl my keys for when the super comes back on Monday. I'll close the big orange door for the last time.
The last couple of days have been a big blur. I've had to close this account, cancel that service, and each day has had its own last-minute hassles. I spent today running around buying souvenirs from shops I've scooped out throughout the whole semester only to discover that I owed my super 9.50 (euros) for not paying my rent in time. That was about 9.50 (euros) more than I had (unexpected fees have a way of draining your bank account). After lots of emailing and phone calling, I got it all worked out.
I feel like the whole semester has been like that: putting this off to the last minute, finding unexpected fees and hassles all the time - just one more thing. I've really enjoyed my time here - don't get me wrong - but from the minute I stepped off the plane in Munich last February, an internal timer has been counting down the time until I come back home. There were definitely times where I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, when I was frustrated with everybody and everything. I had to grow up in a lot of ways over the last six months. Like digging ditches over Christmas break, I can look back on it now and say it was good, but at the time - during the duress and hassle of the whole thing - I hated it.
I've met a lot of cool people, some of whom I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with. I also visited a lot of places where few poor white boys from Franklin County have ever been. I've seen and smelled and touched and lived more of Europe than I ever expected. Yet throughout the whole thing, the familiar things of home were always at the forefront of my mind. "If I were in Sewanee right now, I'd be taking finals/at church/serving overpriced food/laying on top of my car at the lake with my friends." Even in the middle of the last few nights, where I spent all kinds of time with my new friends in the (now) most comfortable of German pubs, I thought about how none of it equaled one cherry limeade with Chelsey, not one Thursday night Bible study, not one single conversation past midnight in Waffle House. I will look back very fondly on Germany, and I won't regret what I might have missed this summer back home, but I won't fool myself by saying, "I'm sad to leave." I'm not.
Germany is a great place, full of great people (and especially great food). The language and the culture are just unmatched - that is, until you compare it with a cool spring afternoon at the Cross, or one night watching episode after episode of "Law and Order" with good friends. We try to pour ourselves into the right-here, right-now, and I think that definitely has a time and a place. Thing is, we'll always go back to what feels like home for us in our hearts. Germany is great, but it's not home.
God says that He has placed eternity in our hearts. He also tells us that Christ doesn't just redeem us from a deserved death, but from the fear of death in this life. We will always be missing something that we don't have right now. It's not just us - all of creation is groaning under the weight of sin and the hope of final redemption. Deep inside me, I know that Sewanee is not my home. Neither is Winchester or Richmond or Columbia. While I live in this tent, this temporary shelter, I will always yearn to leave the tension of "already, not yet" in which the people of God live for now. One day we will live in a city whose Builder and Architect will Himself be our glory, to the exclusion of all places and people we have ever loved. The sun will be embarrassed to show his face in a land where God dwells with people and provides more light in His mere presence than the thousands of nuclear bombs going off every second in our little star. That is something to remember, whether in Bamberg or Sewanee.
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| | Posted 7/20/2007 6:52 PM - 39 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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