Missing A Place

When you are forced to be far away from a place that your heart has claimed, you experience the purest form of "missing." When you must leave that place, your heart becomes so distraught that it breaks, and a piece of it falls down on the place that you fell in love with. Whether you visited that place for half your life of half a day, it doesn't matter, a piece of you is there, and the deal is done. When you try to tell people about that place and your overflowing love for it, they might not understand. They might tell you not to be dramatic, not to miss it anymore, not to feel like you belong anywhere other than the place society carved out for you. As time passes, your enthusiasm to go back to that place turns into a restless longing, like staring out at the ocean and straining your eyes for the opposite shore. You know it's there; Somewhere it is waiting. But you don't ever stop missing it, and the longing is still burning white-hot inside you, and no one can see it or feel the pain of it. These are my thoughts of Ethiopia. My dear, dear, Ethiopia. Two weeks is not a long time to get to know place. It was more like a long handshake with that place, and the invitation to come back and become friends another time. Yet, though it was a short time that passed far too quickly, it was enough. That two weeks was just the amount of time my heart needed to make itself at home in Ethiopia, and make a request permanent residence. When I was forced to deny this request, and go back to the United States, I could feel the pain as my heart bent and warped and cried out for the place I was leaving. I could feel it until it was too much, and then my heart blew up and smashed and fractured and splashed and bled out across every place I had seen and every hand I had held and every face I had looked into. The deal was done. I missed it before I was gone. It was only two weeks, but not a day goes by that I don't miss it. In the next few years I hope to go back, and let God spill even more of my heart out over that country. Until then, I pray every night that God will bring me back and use my life in a beautiful and selfless way. I know he hears me, because he whispers "be patient." And so for now, I practice patience, hope, and love, pursuing every experience God entrusts to this restless soul.