A Happy New Year's Ramble

I spent this New Year’s night like I have spent many nights this past year – in an airport.

I celebrated New Years Eve in a very uncomfortable chair in the Philadelphia airport during a six hour layover. I watched on a muted television CNN’s coverage of Times Square as I ate a pretzel and cup of coffee for dinner. When the clock struck twelve and the new year of 2014 arrived, I was standing at a baggage carousel in the Boston airport waiting for my green backpackers backpack to appear. The airport seemed empty except for my fellow passengers. Someone let out a tamed “Happy New Year” as we all waited around to claim our luggage.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I really couldn’t have ended 2013 and started 2014 in a more fitting way.

The past year has been a constant series of micro-journeys, a collection of various adventures, and a relentless passage into new things. 2013 was a year of moving forward and only bringing with me what I could carry, in the physical sense as well as in the emotional, mental, and spiritual. I’ve had to pack my bags in more ways than one, leave things behind that didn’t fit in my suitcase or weren’t needed on the trip before me. It was a year like many before it, one that was stressful, fun, challenging, painful and good. It was one of getting to travel to new places, dealing with illnesses, meeting new wonderful friends, hugging old wonderful friends goodbye, new cities, old cities, stimulating work, lots of tears and laughter, all the usual stuff. Yet it was unlike any other year I have been to before. It’s a year, that as I sit here now with a tear making its way down my cheek, that makes me want to sigh and say “What on earth happened?”

I’m a little bit stunned to be honest. I cannot sum up in a phrase what 2013 was all about. I cannot articulate all of the lessons and principles I’ve wrestled through. I am overwhelmed. I am overcome with the reality that while Dad never changes, He is always surprising me – in both good and hard ways.

It has been six months now since I moved to America from Asia. Six months and I still am surprised every morning at the incredible water pressure in the shower, at the fact that taxi drivers always understand where I want to go, and at the reality that no one gets what I’m saying when I use the word ‘mafan’. Six months and I still haven’t found a friend that resembles anything like my community in Asia. Six months and my stomach still isn’t used to the food here (TMI?:-). Six months and I still experience a little bit of culture shock at least once a day. Time works wonders for many things, but there are some things it does not heal – some things I hope it never heals.

I usually get all reflective around New Years. I think about the past year and think about the new one ahead. But this time, all I’ve got is, “I made it!”