this is not a job.

This is the Golden Question... "What does a normal day look like to you?" I just have to laugh because using the word normal to explain any part of our lives is comical to me. However, it is a valid question and I want to give a valid answer. Please read on if you actually want to know what a day in the life of a missionary. If not, skip down beneath the line.

I wake up around 7:30 am (let's be honest...my alarm was set for 7:30 but I didn't get out of bed until 8 am). I walk downstairs to make a pot of coffee and see that one of my roommates is working out in our living room with a student who lives down the street. My other roommate is meeting with a student on our porch. I start the coffeepot, run upstairs to get dressed and grab my coffee on the way out to meet up with a girl who I have invited to bible study for two weeks. She only has 30 minutes in between her classes so I jump on my bike and race to the Union to meet her. After meeting with her, I invite her to join me for mass at noon--which she does. Afterwards, I walk downstairs to eat lunch in the Newman cafeteria. I try to find some new people that I've never met before and I sit down at a table with a girl who has her sorority letters on her necklace. We make conversation and I find out that she's a transfer student living at Newman who is in a sorority. I invite her to come to the bible study I'm having later that afternoon and she says she will see if she's free. Once I finish lunch, I go into one of the study rooms to prep bible study for that afternoon. After spending an hour or so prepping, I go to meet another student at the Quad to go on a rosary walk and talk about her prayer life and her bible study. While walking on the Quad, we stop and talk to a woman sitting by herself and introduce ourselves. She's Muslim and is celebrating one of their holidays this weekend. We ask her if she's ever been into a Catholic church and she hadn't, so we invite her to come to St. John's with us and show her around. She was amazed and thanked us for showing her around--we told her she is always welcome here. That afternoon is bible study and afterward I run home and have a date with my guitar #datingfast. Right when I get home, three students knock on our door and want to come over and hang out. I keep my guitar out and we sit around and share life, talk about our days, play some guitar and at about midnight we call it a night.

I don't have a time card that I punch after a certain amount of hours that tells me I'm "off the clock." I can't go home and lay on the couch and leave work at work. Sixteen hour days are the norm. I'm not in an office, secluded from the world, just trying to get through the day so I can get to the weekend just to start it all over again the next week. No, this is not a job. I don't get an hourly wage that I can get overtime for if I need it that week. 

This is not a job. 

This is my life. 

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June 1, 2015 was the first time I ever really understood what "missionary life" meant--the day I started as a FOCUS missionary. I didn't necessary fully realize what I was signing up for but I knew that this is what God called me to and my past has told me He knows what's up better than I do. I figured, "I can do anything for two years. Let's do this, God." But what I didn't realize was that my whole life would change. Literally.

I didn't want to have to ask people to support me financially--who wants to live fully dependent on other people's tithing? Our world, culture, and sometimes families tell us you work hard for your money and you put in the hours to get the paycheck. We are living counter-culturally (even biblically if you wanna go there) in asking other people to partner with us in this mission and support us as we share the Gospel.

Home was no longer a place but more of a foreign concept that I couldn't really put my finger on. When I moved to Champaign, I was homesick. I was longing for that place that I knew everyone and everyone knew me. I wanted to be back with my family and to be with people who knew my life and  understood where I was coming from. As the year went on, however, I started living life and creating memories with the people around me. The strangers quickly became my family and I was going through all of these changes with them and not the people I had been with for the last several years. I was feeling things that I didn't really understand but I was figuring it out with the students I became friends with, my team, and our priests and religious sisters. Soon enough, the people who I was closest with in Nebraska (my family and friends) no longer understood my everyday life and talking to them made that apparent. I could explain things on the phone but I couldn't explain in words the loneliness I felt while being surrounded with people, or the excitement I got when one girl finally came to bible study after three months. Or the stressfulness in planning a mission trip to Rome over spring break because I suck at details and felt like the world was on my shoulders. But Anne Marie was there when I just needed to break down in our one-on-one meeting because I didn't understand why no one understood. Honor was there to just listen to me talk about my friends even though she had no idea who they were or what was going on. Teresa was there to play volleyball with on a Sunday night because I missed playing with my sister. Kanji was there to listen to me when I just needed a guy's perspective on my crazy thoughts and ideas. MK was there to bring back the "sorority girl" in me when I was missing my own memories in Gamma Phi. Brad was there to teach me that dang B minor chord when I just wanted to give up and skip it (I still haven't gotten it but I promise...this year...). Thomas was there to let me crash his 11 PM holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament when the only thing I needed was to sit in front of the One who just knew.

These people became my friends. They became the ones I made memories with and the ones I laughed with on a daily basis. And soon, a piece of my heart got stuck in Champaign, Illinois and I started calling it home. All the while still longing to be back in Nebraska.

After countless plane rides, conferences, trainings, weddings, holidays, etc., I realized that not even "home" feels like home anymore. My heart is so restless and I just want to scream because I'm so desperately wanting to feel settled without really knowing what that even means. I see my friends settling into their new apartments with their fiancé's and dogs and finally getting in the groove of their new jobs. They have a home. And yet, I'm out here living day by day, looking for the next person God is going to put in front of me that He needs me to encounter. I have no idea what today holds, let alone what next year holds for me.

I'm starting to realize that the moment I became a missionary, home became heaven.

And my heart will always be restless until it rests with You, my Lord and my God. So take this heart of mine wherever You desire it to be. I am your missionary for the rest of my life. Lead me in Your way and even though I desire with my whole heart to be settled and living a comfortable life, I know now that I was not made for comfort. Take me to the ends of the earth if that's where You will be--because I only desire You and nothing more.