April 6, 2008

It's Sunday morning in the USA and I've just landed a little while ago at JFK here in New York to sit for the next five hours waiting for my connection to Nashville. I'd reflect more on the whole of the trip but the fact is my body is now telling me it's time to be sleeping and I have to do the jet lag thing all over again.

Our loving moderator team suggested that I take melatonin while I was in India. That sounded like a great plan but I was a little on the cautious side about taking drugs in foreign nations. I figure if you can't drink the water you may need to give the meds a second thought also. Now that I am back on my native soil I may do a little melatonin shopping.

The truth is the trip is so encompassing and overwhelming that I am simply emotionally drained. I'm sitting here off in a corner watching the extremely early flights begining to yawn and que up and I feel numb. I've deplaned from an almost 16 hour flight next to one beautiful woman and one Indian who hadn't discovered deoderant yet. Each of them were distracting enough for me to just shut my eyes and try to sleep. While I was in that twilight I tried to look at my experience in India as a whole and I couldn't. It was too large. Too many paradigm shifts. Too many questions. Too many answers. I can recall a few days ago asking God to speak to me and give me some context for why He had brought me half way around the world to disrupt and basically ruin all my tidy little conceptions of Him once again. I had to scurry for my journal because the things He spoke ruined me all the more.

Since the DAB began I've traveled a lot. This is nothing new but I've traveled a lot on Kingdom business. I've spoken a lot and taught a lot and each time I go I feel like I leave a piece of myself behind. India is no different. I left a big piece of my heart in India and maybe that's as it should be. I've left a piece of my heart and to be whole again Christ will have to come and be what is missing. Maybe the idea is that eventually my heart will literally be His and there won't be a me anymore. I don't mean that as in I will not exist but perhaps we will all one day get to the place that our heart so belongs to Christ and (this is the important part) to each other that we finally can feel what it's like to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. Here's hoping....

Onward Comrades,

Brian