amarjamitsutomi - Pretty Soon, This Will All Just Be A Memory

I have about three months left in this country that I have never quite loved but grown to appreciate. I have started a few new projects at Daughters so it keeps me on my toes and it makes time fly by. Before you know it, I'll be packing up getting ready to board my flight back to the States after having spent two foundational years of my life overseas in a country that is nothing like my own.

Yesterday when I was at the market buying vegetables for the week, I thought to myself... "pretty soon, this will all just be a memory."

I often contemplate how strange life is. We're just a bunch of people trying to do our best to get by, none of us understanding the full meaning of life no matter how hard we try. Yet, strangely everything we experience can teach us something new about it.

And that's all life really is, a journey of constant learning (if we are willing to be taught), a wrestle with the things we don't understand, and an opportunity to bless or curse the One who gave us the gift of living it.

In the last twenty months I have felt like a rubber band being stretched to the point of breaking, but God has kept me. I have questioned the meaning of life. I have doubted. I have cried. I have thrown fits. I have rejoiced. I have danced. I have laughed. I have loved. I have realized how limited I am. I have learned how I can be a genuine, caring neighbor to my friends in need. But man, has some of the hopelessness at times been a deep, dark pit that has just about pulled me down with it!

I don't understand how people can survive through such atrocities such as the genocide that happened with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Regime. I have met people who lost their entire families, their limbs, their livelihoods at the hands of one man's crazy idea of creating a utopia. I have met woman who have been raped and forced to sell their bodies in order to support their families. I have seen the hungry kids with the pot bellies from the "feed the children" commercials and all of it absolutely breaks my heart!

BUT DESPITE ALL OF THE TRAGEDY, WHAT STICKS OUT TO ME THE MOST IS THE INCREDIBLE ABILITY PEOPLE HAVE TO HEAL!

Where does their smile come from? Where does their hope come from? Where does their joy come from? I suppose that's another reality of life that is true for each of us. Each of us experience pain and suffering in this life, (to different degrees have you), but nonetheless we all go through seasons of what we consider utter tragedy.

...And I ponder some more...

Without pain, how would we know healing? Without sorrow, how would we know joy? Without mourning, how would we know laughter?

In three months, I will leave this place forever changed.

Pretty soon, all of this will just be a bundle of memories organized in my brain as,