Lately everything has been very down to earth. The house shrunk from 15 people to 2 people. It stayed like this for a while and all of a sudden I found myself preparing beds and welcome baskets for a number of people (who will also be leaving relatively soonish). Just trying to keep the house in order, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, filling up the water bottle every time it starts beeping, I even tried to destroy the weeds in the garden in our backyard - the heat defeated me and I am not even halfway done... 1 - 0 and I am not on the winning side. Asking God to be present in all the cleaning and failed weeding project. And He is. And I am grateful.
So I said that the house often feels very much like a bus station. People come go come and go and come and go - you get the pattern. There's another staff house. Smaller and I do have the choice to move there - but I don't want to. So I was wondering why. Because honestly - it is not easy to live in a house where people constantly come and go. But despite that - I still don't want to move to a less trafficIE house. Why? I sat down on the stairs outside my home and found the answer.
Every time I sit down on those stairs to just sit and rest I remember a very specific person and conversation I had at that very spot. I go inside, look at the walls - yes, I painted those. Jet lagged, tired and superbly confused I spent a week with a bunch of other people painting these walls. I go inside the lecture room and remember how it looked 6 months ago - all the desks and computes and how I switched from one desk to another and then Seung Hyun was my desk neighbor and then all of a sudden decided to leave me =P, and how the staff would sit every morning in a circle for a 10 am meeting.I go into the kitchen and remember the many conversations I had, the korean dramas I watched with YongUn, the meals I cooked for the DTS team.
To make a very long list short - every curve, corner and crack is filled with people's names, conversations, prayers, worship, simply sitting, crying, laughing and other memories. It's not just a place to store my humble luggage contents for a couple of years. No. It's home. Even in the midst of all this coming and going I find home in the memories I made - the people I met here.
