Road Trip

Origination: St. Petersburg, Florida

Destination: St. Paul, Minnesota

The road trip started around 4:30(EST) this morning, embarking from one set of grandparent’s house and ending our day in High Point, North Carolina with another set of grandparents. 4 states and 12 hours of driving.

Observation: Driving is much less eventful in America than it is in Rwanda, what with the straight and smooth roads and carefully obeyed traffic laws.

Technically this trip started out 6 days ago in Kigali, Rwanda. It was just an air trip at that point in time, not a road trip. 3 countries, 3 airplanes, and 27 hours of travel time.

I didn’t think that the move from Kigali to St. Paul would be that big of a deal but now that I’m in the middle of it, it does kind of seem like a long way.

The last 5 days have mainly been filled with observation and trying to remember how this culture works. Fast walking, loud talking, bright lights, air conditioning, certain phrases said in conversations that don’t mean what I think it means…things like that. It definitely doesn’t classify as culture shock, more like culture adjustment.  

I have a lot of adjustments ahead of me as I not only move from one country to another country, but also from a southern state in America to a state so far north it may as well be in the Arctic Circle. And then there’s the adjustment of living on a college campus and going back to school. But it’s all okay because this is what God has asked me to do in this season of my life and no adjustment or transition is bigger than He is.

There’s this passage that I keep going back to in my transition and desire for home: Hebrews 11:13b-16

 …having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, this is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.

In all of my moving around, there is no place here on earth that will satisfy my need for a home. I’m desiring something much bigger. And so I’ll hold on to all these things loosely, while still embracing them fully, and making the most of what God has laid before me.