I laid down for a short power nap, but my mind began churning through what I was going to bring home to my family and friends from my experience in Africa. I saw visions for my house and my family about how solar power and water catchments would do us so much good financially, how the extra work would be good for us physically, and how the reconnection with nature would allow us to spiritually flourish. This all was my nap turning into a dream, but then I turned back to the time I’ve spent here and again wondered how any of this could be translated back to my life back home. I then realized I couldn’t even remember all that I wanted to share, and I’m not even out of Africa yet. I fretted going back with this sense of responsibility to remember what I’d learned and draw on my experiences from Africa to improve things back home. But I was at a loss. I could just see me back home scrambling for words that would do justice to my time here, but none came. I didn’t even know where to begin? The books I’d read seemed okay, but I’ll have other things to read, and even if I do go through them the insights will be different and the meaning changed. How can I capture some of what I felt and saw this semester? How can I give my family and friends or even myself what we want to here about my valuable time here? Perhaps if I had kept a journal of every experience or insight I had, then I’d be set. But I haven’t, and even if I did it’d be too long to serve any purpose.
Thinking about this I realized I was projecting myself into the future; I was already back in America. I still have more than 8 days here, and I’m already thinking about next semester, spring break, and the summer. Do I get a job like a responsible college student to help pay for college? A job on campus would be free room and board and a much simpler life than back home, but I’m away from home. Do I work at home then? Or do I go home just to be with my family whom I haven’t seen in almost a year? How awesome would it be to go back and really be with my family for the first time? Actually practice presence with the ones I love the most. There are so many ideas I have about how to bolster bonding and foster holistic health; it would be a shame to miss all that for a summer at Eastern. I could learn to cook with Oma (grandmother) and talk theology with Opa (grandfather). Africa’s showed me the importance of a good meal and how bonding cooking and eating can be, and I’m becoming a pacifist with many questions about life, so I’m sure a wise and retired military Chaplin might have a few more answers than I. They are still young and spry but are not immortal; to miss these opportunities now would be a shame. I’m still in my youth and have energy to use, I have dreams and visions I don’t want to loose.
But how practical is it to actually “change” anything back home? You’ve tried it before with a good heart and failed, and whatever did change was only temporal. What makes you think things will be different now? But the ideas are so wonderful, practical, and right. They always are, but that’s not how people change. You have nothing to offer apart from your surrender to God. Family activities and customs can be changed or rearranged to fit the ideal we see, but all is worthless apart from Christ. Simple to say, redundant to hear, difficult to flesh out.
These circles are endless and unproductive. My logic may be irrefutable, my plans and dreams may be fresh and revitalizing, and my faith may be more than a mustard seed’s worth, but the wheels just spin faster, the rabbit trials increase exponentially, and the unanswered questions pierce relentlessly. Would I really find what I’m looking for if my family became the solar, water-saving, composting environmentalist hippies of the neighborhood? The sustainably minded, low-fat vegan Brady Bunch may not be the utopia I imagine it to be. Perhaps, then, might I find what I’m looking for in uncritically accepting my family and home the way they are? Would I be satisfied bottling up my visions and dreams in fear of unleashing them naïve of how the world ‘really’ works? The passive, fearful, indifferent and even cynical Davis is not the least bit enticing, though perhaps easier for a time.
Such a dilemma is too much to think about when trying to a nap; so I just gave up thinking about it and found rest in not trying to figure out anything about home. It was then I found what I was looking for (imagine that). It was simple. There was nothing I could say or do here or there that would give me what I wanted (whatever it was; I still don’t exactly know). No reform, insight, words of wisdom, change in lifestyle, or story could fulfill what I desired. As soon as I gave up the search for what I was going to do and say that would make the most of my time here and most benefit those at home and myself, I found joy. Perhaps that’s all I wanted. I expected joy to be found after telling epic stories about rafting the Nile and going on safari, or the adventures of daily life in Africa, or surely about how much I received from living with Ugandans for four months. But all that was secondary and not what life was about. Those kinds of things always make an experience and adventure more interesting, especially when you really tell the stories well and can captivate your audience entirely. But if that’s the ends – and too often it becomes that way – then we have lessened ourselves, our friends and family, and even God into convenient portable tales that make us feel good.
I don’t intend down adventure, stories, and amazing experiences, for if God wasn’t a fan of story telling than why do we have the gospels? I am, however, challenging the expectations that I feel from home (whether real or imagined) and expectations I have put on myself to have something to tell when I get back. So much of who we are and what we believe is based off of that notion we should “have something to tell.” We watch movies about things we deem worthy to be told. Same with books. We listen to the radio, flip through magazines, go on adventures, study abroad, go to Africa and stay in Africa all with some expectation that will hopefully have something to tell. But what are we telling and why is it worthy to be told? It was here I found what I was looking for. So long as I hunt for that which makes a good story, pull only the pictures that people will be interested in, and construct concise and exciting accounts of my four months in Africa, I will have only so much to tell. Even if I beautifully recount my most influential experiences and bring to life the people I met and lived with, my story will only be incomplete. What am I telling people and why am I telling it? My story is not over, that’s why it will feel incomplete. I can’t tell stories that have an end, for they belong to an eternal God.
What do I tell? I tell only what glorifies Him. As soon as I bend the story into myself or others I have nothing more to tell.
Why do I tell it? I tell to glorify Him. There is no greater fulfillment than to tell of Him and Him alone, for both the teller and the told are blessed. As soon as I tell for the sake of my audience or for my own sake I have nothing more to tell. It was here I found what I was looking for and exactly what God intended me to find for some time now. Praise Him!