Bittersweet

I stared down at my cup of coffee and wondered what is wrong with me. It tasted sweet because I had already put two spoonfuls of sugar before I added the flavored creamer without knowing that it too was sweetened. I was giddy making it - the Kurig machine, the sugar, the flavored creamer - it was all so luxurious compared to the simple Nescafé instant coffee that I had gotten used to over the past year. When I sat down to drink it, it was sweet in my mouth but slightly bitter in my heart. I wanted to enjoy it fully, but I couldn't. 

It's a weird thing - coming back to the United States after a year in Africa. This is my third time to do this in the past three years since moving to Burkina Faso, and I search each time for the words to describe it. In a way, it's like going to Disney world. It's magical, it's unreal. It's like everything is manicured and people are wearing costumes and everyone is walking around trying to have a good time. It's a world of indulgence and pleasure and delight, but it's vacation; it's not real life. It's not the way the vast majority of the world lives. 

America will always be my home and my culture, but the girl that moved away three years ago is not the same one who has returned. It's as if time and space have left a gap - one that she doesn't quite know how to fill. Or if she even can. 

You're making too big deal out of this, I say to myself as I try to enjoy this cup of coffee that I know I should be enjoying. Just enjoy the sweetness of it. Enjoy the sweetness of being in America without making things complicated by how you feel. But is it really fair to tell yourself to not feel when you have tears welling up in your eyes? 

My Bible was open beside my cup of coffee. Some things between Africa and America don't change. The taste of the coffee does, but my habit of meeting God in the mornings doesn't. His word doesn't. Who he is doesn't. With that reminder, my next sip of coffee was a little sweeter. 

I don't know how to even explain how I feel, but I offer it to you, Father. And in the silence of that simple prayer, God spoke. 

I realized that I asked for this. I asked God for this life. I asked him to make me a missionary. I asked him to send me into the world. One time, when I was walking through an African village, I dreamed and asked God to let me live in a place like this. And he has given me what I asked for and a hundred times more. 

I didn't know how hard some parts of it would be when I asked for it, but I'm so glad he gave it to me anyway. It is worth it. I am overwhelmingly grateful and amazed at how much I love the missionary life God has given me, and even the hard parts are so worth it for the joy of seeing him work in the world. 

The way my crazy heart struggles to fit in to both African and American culture, like I'm somewhere caught between two worlds and not fully belonging to either, the way I feel like a "third culture adult" - these are the things that make my coffee bittersweet, but that's why coffee is good. It's a perfect blend of bitter and sweet, and putting both together makes it good. 

I am learning that the enemy wants to take the way I feel about coming home to America, and he wants to turn it into confusion, isolation, discouragement, anger, guilt, and sadness. But the Lord, oh how he takes this unsettledness that I feel and turns it into a hunger for him and heaven. All this makes me love him more - him who is eternally consistent and unchanging in my life of fluctuation and change. And knowing two different worlds and not being able to fit fully into either makes me long for heaven, the only place that I will ever truly feel completely at home. 

I mixed thankfulness in with my coffee. And that made it taste good to my heart. It makes the transition a little easier. I still have moments when I would give up my fancy coffee for a cup of Nescafé. The experiences I have had in Africa are a part of me, and it makes me see the world differently; it makes me not fit in entirely, but that's okay. Because I asked for this, and God has blessed me with it - a love, a family, a life in two different worlds. A double portion. 

I finished my cup of good coffee and rose up to start my day with the freedom to enjoy my family and my life here in America without feeling guilty, sad, confused, or angry. I just taste the bittersweetness of it all, and that's what makes it so good. God is what makes it all good.