Blogging in Bangkok: liminal space.

Liminal space is "a state of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage" between two seasons, or places in life. I think that this middle ground is the hard stuff of transitions... When you are no longer where you are, but not yet where you are going.

As I am wrapping things up here in America, my body can sense change coming... I'm trying to plan and prepare while also being "in the moment" and treasuring these last three days with the people I love. I still have bags to pack and people to see. Monday morning I'll depart with Steph for our long journey back to Bangkok. I think that's why I can't sleep... I don't want to miss anything.

A lot of people have asked where my heart is at, what I'm feeling and processing about returning to Thailand for 6 more months. Am I excited? Am I nervous? Am I sad? I think the emotion that I'm feeling needs a new label, because it's a conglomerate of a great many things.

God is doing incredible things at Spotswood and I have been singularly blessed to have been able to jump back into life here these past few weeks. It's so encouraging to see the new faces and changes that the last year has brought! For this brief window, I've been able to serve and observe... I love that. I have also been able to reconnect with friends and have face-to-face/heart-to-heart conversations that have watered my soul. And yet, as good as those things are, they also make me a little sad to leave because I know more acutely what I am missing.

At the same time, however, I am excited to go back to Thailand. I know that Bangkok is where God has called me for the next six months. I'm excited to help Steph adjust to life/ministry, picking back up with tutoring the girls at Rahab (and meeting some new faces!), serving alongside the dozen college interns coming for Mission Training School at LifePoint, meeting new "family members" at the Community House and teaching classes again! It'll be a busy start to the term, but an exciting one... and I'm looking forward to jumping in and picking up where I left off.

For all of you who have continued to lift me up in prayer, thank you. It has been a crazy-wonderful-whirlwind year... and it's not over! I still very much covet your prayers as I enter into this new chapter, which, though similar, will be a different season with different lessons. I still don't do transitions as smoothly as I wish I did, so please keep me in your prayers as life wraps up here and as God prepares my heart to return to the work He has prepared for me in Thailand. I'm thankful that God is the God of every season... even the weird in-between liminal ones! :)

At risk of being a little sentimental, here are a couple pictures/moments from my time in the US of A.