Studying The Distance

A few nights ago there was a luna llena, a full moon. I left early that morning with my family before the sun outshone it to go to Guanacaste, a beach town, to visit relatives as well as the beach. We left Monteverde where I live at about 4:00AM and by the time we were winding around the roads down the mountain, the sun began to rise pink and orange and all the colors I imagine draw out my dreams at night. The full moon stayed visible though and as the roads winded, so did my head trying to keep my eyes on the moon over the mountain, which looked more like a big patch of the sky that God erased rather than the moon. I thought about the distance between me and the moon and I thought about what would happen if the car were to drive off the cliff I looked down out my window and concluded that yes, if I had the chance to save someone I would save myself first. I thought also about the distance between home, and me, and that seemed to puncture what I didn’t realize was an open wound-I feel farther away from home than from the moon. It’s not the distance measured in meters, it’s the distance measured in Emmas. I don’t know how to define home, and nonetheless myself and as I discover this I realize that I never had. I’ve heard “Home is where the heart is” and that is true, but that also means I have a lot of homes. The distance in between them is me, and maybe within myself where God is, is where home is. A friend told me that you don’t have to leave yourself behind to grow, and that he doesn’t burn his house down just because it’s messy. When he told me this, that I don’t have to leave myself behind to grow, for some reason it was the most profound knowledge revealed to me. I didn’t totally want to believe it because my main focus since I’ve been here has been to “leave myself behind!” and let God “change me!”. I don’t doubt that he has. But now that I’m looking back I don’t doubt that all parts, traits, flaws of me were included in evaluating and calculating what the change would be. He likes every aspect of who I am, and wants me to grow, but to hold on to who I genuinely am at heart and not to let that change. If He wanted me to completely change, to be somebody else, wouldn’t He have made me that way? On the drive back home after a busy weekend-LOTS of relatives to meet, bull riding matches which turn into hooligians running in front of the bull to provoke it then towards the fence for their lives when the bull charges, and a beach full of local Costa Ricans eyeing me wondering how exactly I fit-my five year old host brother Jean Carlo came up with a new game. He looked around, out the window, asked his brother, whatever he could do to think of words that I then would translate to English. “Gato!” he’d exclaim, “cat.” I’d reply, trying to fill myself with the same excitement. “Oja!” “Leaf!” “Gallo pinto!” “Spotted rooster…” I replied, trying to directly translate the words we use for rice and beans. This went on for what seemed like hours until finally he got bored and occupied himself by counting to thirty nine, (then onto one hundred, making me question my education and developed knowledge that forty comes after thirty nine..). I couldn’t tell if this game was a quiz about the Spanish words I know, or a way for him to learn English, but there was interest, and that was the distance he went. He chased his interest, the way I chased mine here to Costa Rica, and pursued his goal, though I never figured out what it was. There is a distance we will all go for something; for love or for material things, for hope or for a dream. The distance often is not revealed to others, and sometimes not even ourselves, but is present in the way we live. I haven’t calculated the distance of how far I’ve come from the way I was, or how far away I am from who I will be, and the distance changes every day. I’m studying it and letting it guide me and I know that it can’t be measured, thoroughly clarified, or defined but there’s always a distance to something-someone, somewhere-and it guides us and lays between us and the destination even when we aren’t aware it is there.