quiet comfort...

I can't get over how quiet it is here. I sit in my room in the house I grew up in and all of life sounds subdued. It's a chilly morning and I can hear birds out my window, but they're chirping softly, in the distance. In my room in Managua birds woke me up most mornings (if not the heat) and did so with volume and abrasiveness and persistence that seemed fitting to the intensity of that place. Their calls and cries shared the soundtrack with the pleas of street vendors and aggressive drivers, horn happy and sin muffler.

Here in my other reality - my first reality - the neighbors are exchanging niceties, cars hum by, a lawn mower purrs down the block: consistent, gentle, throwing that quintessentially small town, fresh-cut-grass-smell into the air. For a few days, I felt somewhat out of place here, and I suppose that won't go away entirely. But I don't know that I'll ever feel totally out of place here, this is where I grew up, this town is in me. As much as I marvel at the contrast between life here in small town Minnesota and life in Managua, it's frighteningly easy for me to start thinking that this, this quiet, comfortable way of existing is normal. I struggle with the temptation of that comfort, it's alluring in many ways.

I'm beyond blessed to have a few months here at home before I head back down to Central America for another year of work with the same program. I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to work with my team again and be part of a process that I so strongly believe in. But in the meantime, I've come home to a new nephew, to loads more family that I adore and to friends that squeeze every possible drop of meaning and humor out of any situation, and that constantly teach me how to grow. I'm home and I'm happy, not comfortable but cognizant of all of my blessings.