one month

yesterday i finally finished my india reflection paper. now it's time to start going through my belongings and packing. only, i don't want to start yet. i want to believe that i still have a long time left here. my days are filled with a movement from excitement to saddness. i get very excited when i think about the new experiences that await me at reba place, but it doesn't help the fact that i will no longer be able to see the people i love as regularly as i do now.

here's the conclusion to my paper:

He sat on the floor with his body wrapped in saffron colored clothing. A saffron colored turban covered his head, but his thick, uncut beard let me know that underneath the turban was hair that had also been allowed to grow. It was part of his vow, he said to us. After years of struggling with what it meant to be Hindu and follow Christ, this man, who we called Swami G (a Hindu title that identifies the bearer as a learner of religious and spiritual matters), spoke to us about how his calling led him to make choices that eventually exiled him from both Hindu and Christian communities. He made lifestyle choices that many Christians in India could not endorse – he refused to eat meat as proof of his faith in Christ; he continued to wear the traditional clothing of his culture; he would not marry and would not cut his hair. He lived simply and humbly, believing all his decisions to be guided by his relationship with God. Yet, those within his own culture could not understand him. His choices were made in devotion to a God who was embraced by those in the West. He did not participate fully in their worship acts to their gods. Why was he so exclusive? Why did he not embrace the Hindu gods if he was a renouncer within the Hindu tradition?
Swami G spoke and I began to see that the products of his labor were not the vows and decisions that he had made, but the happiness and satisfaction of knowing that he was in God’s will. Though he was an enigma to many in his country, he was being used by God to make known the love and salvation of Christ to reunite humanity with Deity.
My own choices - to be a vegetarian, to begin the purging of my possessions, to live more simply, to buy less, to find an intentional Christian community in which to live, to possibly remain single the rest of my life – were ones that I made (am considering) prayerfully and deliberately. But these are not the defining yields of my relationship with Christ. They are only my markings, my delights, my attempts to move beyond this world and into life in the Kingdom come. They are choices I make to ensure that I will not be tempted to simply walk by the rows of people Christ demands I stop and love. They are the changes I am making to answer the question I wrote in my journal a few days before I left for my trip: What must I change for my life to be in complete submission? Not to society, not to tradition, not to family, not to norms, but to God’s calling in my life.