Airports and paradoxes.

I have been in a lot of airports this year.  Chicago-Frankfurt-Bucureşti, on our way back to Romania after Christmas.  Bucureşti-London-Boston-Miami-Managua-Miami-Port au Prince-New York-London-Bucureşti (whew!), for IMPACT trainings this spring in Nicaragua and Haiti.  Bucureşti-Istanbul at Easter.  Bucureşti-Vienna-Tirana and back to Bucureşti again on Friday.

(Speaking of which, after that list, I would like to take a moment to thank the Vienna International Airport for having enormous couches around all the gates, for inventing a place called the "relaxing room," for decorating the terminals with World Cup-themed paintings and playing live matches on a giant projector in Terminal E, and for having a make-your-own musli bar.  I was really, really grateful.)

Anyway. Moving on from my newfound love for Vienna (and hatred for Miami, but that's another story)...

I am currently in Tirana, Albania, helping facilitate a mini-training on SKYE -- basically, a slightly more "grown up" and condensed version of IMPACT international, focused on meeting the specific learning needs of youth age 18-25, with emphasis on job skills preparation and business creation.  It is a little surreal to be part of the process of crafting a program whose target group are me and my peers, but it's also remarkably encouraging.  I am really excited and optimistic about this project, and I feel like I'm in my sweet spot in my work here.

Yet, every time I travel for IMPACT International, I feel torn, like there are two versions of myself that aren't quite sure how to coexist.  On the one hand, I love this part of my job.  I love meeting brilliant people from other countries, listening to their expertise, asking about their context, tasting the insights and wisdom and uniqueness of each country as it applies to this beautiful work of youth development.  (And the new food.  Tasting that part is pretty great too.)  I can even get myself excited for the travel bit, for the weird sterile bustle of airports and the curious fact of so many different people, with so many stories, all passing through the same bit of ground.  It makes me feel the same sort of gleeful possibility and opportunity that inspired me for so many years when, as a kid, I dreamed of traveling the world.  And I thrive in this space, in this grueling, intense, lots-of-work-and-constant-thinking-and-little-sleep world of work.  Training and teaching and discussing and planning.  Shutting off my brain and pausing to reflect, in these periods of time, takes effort.

On the other hand, there is this part of me that dreads this.  The part of me that thinks, "I moved to Romania to live in Romania.  As a missionary. What am I doing here?"  The part of me that wants to be settled and simple, that wants time to read novels and plant gardens and invite people over for dinner and go running in the mountains.  The part of me that wants time and mental space for reflection and imagination and prayer and music and exercise and peace.  The part of me that wonders what my work-loving side means for my future, as a wife and mother and sister and friend -- things that I also want oh so badly, oh so deeply.

I know it's not like the two can't coexist, and I try to live in a balance.  I really do.  But these airports, these weeks of time away from home, away from Jack, away from the places where I have established rhythms and patterns of work & rest... they make me wonder how far that balancing act can go.  Will it ever give? Will the scales ever tip?  How will I notice?

I do believe God gives us gifts, that He makes us complex and whole people, that He calls us to different things in different times and different places.  Okay, yes.  And the balancing of that is hard and beautiful, and probably just as it is supposed to be.  It means all of those things are alive in our life, and that they all matter, and that's Good stuff.  I just wonder every now and then, when it feels like a paradox.  I guess that's why we keep listening.  God seems to be a God of paradoxes anyway -- judgment & grace, love & truth, three in one, holy & personal -- so maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.