What color are you?

I remember sitting in the conference in Brazil. It seems like so so so long ago, and yet not even a year has passed. I was missing my boys and Gary who were miles away, but having wonderful fellowship with other missionary women, and trying to get a handle on all the changes that were coming our way with our move back to the states.

I remember hearing someone describe perfectly what I felt as a missionary wife. So many people have asked how we are, how we feel, how we're "settling in"... this is the best way I know to answer that question... Close your eyes and imagine yourself colored blue. I think some people see a little cartoon person, a paper doll cut out type, but for some reason I see a dot person. Kind of a cross between the M&M man and the dot people from the Ranger's games dot races :) don't ask, who knows why my imagination goes the direction it goes, but I digress...

So you're blue, and you board a plane bound for yellow land. You get to yellow land, you feel like you stick out kind of like a sore thumb oh wait, you do... you're blue. But even though you stick out, you grow to love yellow land. Parts of yellow land even rub off on you and you begin to look... yep, you've got it, green. So in yellow land, you don't stick out quite as badly as you used to. Green does at least carry an element of yellow in it.

But then the time comes for you to go back to blue land. It's been awhile, and it's time, it is after all where you're from. But as you're getting off the plane in blue land, you realize there's enough yellow that's rubbed off on you that even in your "home" land you don't look blue anymore. You're still that bright shade of green.

And Green is good. Green carries an element of BOTH blue and yellow within it, but it's still green... it's NOT blue, and it's NOT yellow. And in that moment, you realize you don't fit, anywhere anymore. You might go through resentment, moments of regret that you let the yellow rub off on you, moments where you wonder what life would have been like if you never left blue land... and then in the very next thought, moment, or breath you realize how grateful you are for every shade of yellow that you now proudly carry. You're grateful for the ways it has changed your perspective, your life, your family, your children, your marriage, and changed you for the better, forever... but no matter how you look at it, no matter how hard it was to leave blue land in the first place, or how hard it was to adapt to yellow land, how hard it was to leave yellow land after the roots you put down there, or how hard it was to come "home", or how grateful you are for all that your experience in yellow land has added to your life and heart, the truth remains the same... you're GREEN and you don't seem to fit anywhere...