Having a blog is a funny thing, especially for me. I’m very inconsistent as you can tell! For someone who has had a journal pretty much her entire life I can say i’m just as inconsistent with them too. As I grow it seems that the times I have most to say are the times when I’m not at home. Let’s face it you heard a lot from me when I was in Africa but pretty much zilch since I got home. My apologies. Honestly I think it’s just the way i’m wired.

It’s taken a lot to settle back into life here in UK. More than I realised. These past five months I’ve spent a lot of time, way too much time, sitting on metaphorical fences waiting for the next big adventure. I’ve been afraid to commit to too many things, convinced that I won’t be around long enough to be complete anything I start. The only thing I can compare it to is that feeling when you’re sat in the No-mans land of the airport, the bit between check-in and waiting to get on a plane.

Learning to serve whilst you’re in the ‘waiting room’ is hard. My waiting room times have always been between travel destinations. When I finished uni I went straight to Nepal, I broke up the years with summer and Christmas trips to Brazil, never truly happy until my next adventure was booked and on the horizon.

The most difficult, and amazing times however have been in the waiting. Last years story proved that. Those moments where you piece together what God is trying to communicate, the times when you have to force your fingers out of your ears and face the reality, adventure, fear, test of faith that lies ahead. Having a travelers heart is a great thing, having itchy feet constantly is frustrating, never feeling you have true roots takes it’s toll, having friends all over the world means you are always missing someone. But, I wouldn’t trade my life. I just have to learn to constantly adapt and move with the waves.

God gave me a picture a couple of weeks ago that quelled the fear inside of me and gave me a peace about the waiting. When I arrived home this time the one thing on my mind was travelling again, my favourite line when people asked me about my future travel plans became ‘I’m waiting on what God wants next’

The one thing I want most in the world is to be in the right place for God and to know it. If I’m totally honest with you I was scared when I got home this time, scared to get involved with all of the things I had been involved in before I went away. Scared that I wouldn’t be called abroad again. In my head I wanted to stay hands off in everything so if and when God called me to go then I wouldn’t be attached to anything, I could just go. The longer I’ve been home the more I’ve gradually got back involved with things in church, with work, with life in general. The more I did, the more I got this sinking feeling that maybe I would actually suffocate under the weight of everything.

The picture I got was this:

A flag, anchored in the ground, the hand of God around the base of it. The flag pole was my sending church, my home, the place where when I got home I physically sighed and felt emotional that I was back in the place where I connected with my God on another level. The flag was me, attached loop by loop to the pole of support. The flag was flapping about in the wind as if to say, you may be here, you may be attached to the flag but you can still fly. You can still travel and have adventures in the wind. I felt awash with peace at this, knowing that I could be in the place God called me to be wherever in the world I was but just because I was attached to home didn’t mean I wasn’t doing what God called me to do. I just had to get out of the mind set that I was only useful on the ‘mission field’ and in fact my mission field was the whole world, including home.

Sometimes we need reminding of the obvious things. So yes, I am in the waiting room, I want to get back on another plane and head for a new horizon, but all in His timing. Right now I’m chilling in the waiting room, but the waiting room is a mission field too, even if my feet are on the ground, there’s still work to be done.