first official day back at work...

today was my first official day back at work.  lawyering on behalf of big companies and selfish family members did not really suit me before my trip and now, post-major-life-experience, I feel even more out of place.

I received an email from a partner that said:

Welcome back.  I hope you had a wonderful, life-affirming trip.  Now that you are back...(fill in mundane work assignment).

I laughed when I read that.  Life-affirming? My trip has led me to question my life, not affirm it.  It affirmed my faith - in God, in people, in the strength of the human spirit, in the game of soccer as a unifier of worlds....but I somehow I don't think that is what he meant.  This same partner commented to me before I left that he hoped I returned from Africa.  Perhaps even he could sense my struggles of the last year, where I wondered exactly what I was supposed to be doing, where I was supposed to be doing it, and if there was anyone there for me to be with (I guess "do it with" works, too but I am trying to keep it clean).

I spent a good portion of my day, looking at pictures members of my team had posted, looking for jobs where I can make a difference, looking at pictures again.  All this while fielding some family crises relating to my sister's upcoming wedding.  A family member decided not to come, sending ripples of discontent throughout my extended family.  It is a struggle to listen to what feels like petty disagreements in light of all that I just saw.  I felt myself ready to snap at my sister and tell her the exact design of the ice sculpture does not matter to me when children in Swaziland, children I had just held in my arms, did not have shoes. 

That is one of the difficulties with this experience - I do not want this experience to transform me into someone who can't get past what she saw.  I am no better than someone who has not gone to Swaziland and seen what I've seen.  I can't use this experience to think better of myself, to announce to the world that their problems, their issues, do not matter simply because there are starving children in Africa. (Oh, but how I wanted to about fifty times today).

Yes, what I saw is important and I will never forget - I will do everything in my power to tell others about what I saw.  My sister knows what I saw, she saw the pictures, and she knows there are people suffering there. But she is thirty-four years old and has dreamed of this day for as long as she can remember and if she wants to throw a hissy fit about an ice sculpture, then perhaps, she is entitled. 

Instead, I have to figure out someway to live with what I saw and remember all the lessons that were fresh in my heart just a week ago.  Lessons about what is truly important in life, lessons about giving back to the community, lessons about the glorious love of God.