Here we are again, after...ahem... a 4 year break. In very early autumn, I'll board a Delta jet and fly to Bangkok, Thailand - where I'll spend the next year of my life working with Word Made Flesh's Creative Life Foundation.
As I type these sentences, so many thoughts spring around in my mind - and drop to my stomach. A year - it feels life such a long time to not see the faces of my family and friends. To not celebrate and grieve with them in person, but then in the same breath it feels short, and doable, and exciting. A year to be, and grow, and learn; to be broken and healed in the sacred spaces where the poor live.
It's so easy to type those words -but it will most certainly hold some of the hardest, best, messiest, and dearest moments of my life.
This thing- this yearning - this desire to be in Asia in the this way - I've held it so closely. It's in me, in my bones. In so many ways I feel like I can't not do it. There were a few seasons over the past couple of years where I felt as if I couldn't even utter the hope of being in the South East, because it was too raw and too painful to speak the desire.
I am so incredibly grateful for this internship - this next year. It's an honor to go - and to learn. I'm still at here - sitting in air conditioned kitchen - and I've already been invited to grow - to learn how to receive grace and generosity well.
My hope for the next 8 weeks is that they are full-to-the-brim of joy and wonder with those I love.
Thanks for reading these words.
EM
