Sunday, February 22, 2015

Retrospective Hope


As many of you know by now, I head back to Argentina tomorrow.

How long will you be there this time?

I don’t know (probably a couple of months)

What will you be doing?

I don’t really know that, either (teaching and helping out in some capacity or another).

Has the uncertainty got to you yet? It has certainly got to me a time or two.

Since I left Buenos Aires in December, there’s been a couple of game changers. The seminary building is getting sold/demolished. The graduates obviously won’t be coming back, but neither will my first-year English class students. Courses will be done online until a new building can be found. I will be living in the seminary, Thief Lord style and mostly alone, until it gets razed. I will be helping- not entirely sure with what, or how- during this transition time.

Doubts and questions crowd my mind tighter than an overflowing suitcase. Not only what I’m supposed to be doing, but why…and why not do something else entirely? Why not save up money in the months before I start a Master in Teaching (surprise- don’t know where that will be, either)? Why not stay home? Why not go off the grid for a while and hike? Why not avoid final farewells? Why not ignore that Voice that sometimes I hear with my ears but more often lately in the pit of my stomach?

Why not? When will I be home? Where is home? What will I be doing? And why?

I remember my fears roughly this time last year, too.

Will I be able to function 24/7 in my second language? Who will my roommate be? What about the guy I’m dating? How will I balance being a student, friend, and teacher?

They seem small now because I lived through them, and God walked with me every step of the way. I was able to function in Spanish from the start and quickly found a best friend in Lucy, who helped me get through the long distance and break-up blues. I found more than a community in the 20 people I shared the seminary with; I found family. In hindsight, I can see absolute provision, faithfulness, and goodness shining brightly in the mist of every uncertainty.

In the words of a dear friend, “hasn’t God been good to you so far? So what’s to stop Him from being good tomorrow as well?”

And those rhetorical questions I can answer with absolute certainty: yes and nothing!


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