Wind, Rain, and the Nomadic Life

3 months, 17 beds, 12 flights and counting.

Colin and I are sitting at the Brunei international airport Coffee Bean waiting for our connecting flight back to Manila. The shop is packed with Kiwis (New Zealanders), Australians, and various other white people. It’s like we’ve all subconsciously congregated to be under the comfort of the trendy lights and drink our expensive lattés.

I suppose that’s unfair.

I’m drinking a frozen Mocha…and really, everything is expensive at the airport.

I digress.

It’s at moments like this, when we are in the in between, that I feel most like a wanderer. I imagine it being like the calm in the eye of a storm where the wind ferociously rotates around a tranquil center. If I could feel the wind, I would simply be dealing with my environment instinctually. But right now, I am in expectation. I have experienced the rain and this moment of “peace” is anything but… because I know what is coming. Or, to be more correct, I imagine what is coming.

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“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

-John 3:8

Sure, we lived in Manila for a few weeks, but Malaysia had finally felt comfortable and familiar. Now, as we sit in this Westernized shop surrounded by English speakers and the aroma of coffee and chocolate, I am anxious.

The weird thing is, I am anxious being here in THIS place. I want to be back in the storm. The wind itself has become energizing and I both long for it and am terrified by it. It’s so hard to rest sometimes.

We are all wanderers at heart.

It breaks my heart when I meet people who have forgotten the journey. Pride is what happens when be make rest the goal. We try to figure out God and assume that there is nothing left to learn.

I should know. I began my faith walk with a concrete theology that had an answer for almost everything. If it was questioned, I would become deeply and personally offended.  It’s strange that the older I become and the more I learn, I realize how little I actually know. That means that, more than anything else, we are nomads on a search for something.

Still, as scary as that may sound, we are never alone on our walk.

“If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” –Psalm 139:8-12