The Never Ending Cycle

Here I sit, alone in my house, and listen to the sounds of afternoon fading into evening. The parrot screeches from its roost down the street and the smaller birds fuss like so many parents scolding their children to go to bed. The bright colors of day soften into the hazy hues of twilight. Clouds swathe the hills like a down comforter pulled over knobby heads, and everything drips with the remnants of the late afternoon rain. It is a cacophony of peace, a clamor of stillness, with which this valley so expertly surrounds its brood daily.

The last couple of months have been a season of goodbyes. Many of the group that came at the same time as me have left for furlough or have finished their commitment to working here. The high school seniors I’ve come to know through helping with plays or mentoring them at the clinic have graduated and have gone back to their passport countries to start college or university. The constant cycle of time and the ebb and flow of change continue their relentless and irrevocable race onward. I feel a bit like a spectator sitting on a porch swing and watching the world go by.

Granted, most of you know me well enough to know that I rarely just sit and be still. I’m usually involved in all kinds of things and merely watching is generally not on my to-do list. However, as I have been thinking about all of those who are leaving (or have left) and all that has gone on in the last three years there’s part of me that feels like I’m watching what is going on from the outside. There’s a sense that while I’m here I’ve stepped into a space that is both out of time and inextricably bound to time all at once. Every season here is much the same as the last and the shift from winter to summer is a matter of a few degrees and a drop or rise in the rain levels. But its also a place where you witness a lot of leave-taking followed by greetings for those who are fresh and new and wet behind the ears. Strange. I feel like I’m perpetually somewhere in the middle. I’m neither leaving, nor am I coming. I’m not a novice but neither am I experienced. It’s like I’m in a time-between-times and I straddle the line between two worlds. 

Soon, school will be back in full swing and newly trained missionaries will spill out of blue bellied planes and the cycle with start all over again. And I, in my out-of-time kind of way, will continue to work, and watch and see what God will do with me and through me in this incredible country in my place in its never ending cycle.