Live the questions.

A friend read this quote to me the other day:

"Have patience with everything that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves - as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." - Rainer Maria Rilke

I read it often now, the beautiful words remind me to be where I am.

I have had a few difficult nights trying to fall asleep. I would lay there, legs restless, frustrated, and then suddenly be crushed under by a gulf of anxiety and grief. It would tighten my lungs, constrict my breathing and in the salt of my tears, I would choke on the reality of my loss. A few months ago, as I was in the thick of my time in Cambodia, I would have random dreams about being prematurely taken out of Asia. Those dreams would leave me devastated every time.

It is not returning that has been necessarily painful. I think it is what being back means. The confrontation of conflicts, both old and new, that forces me to make a decision to compartmentalize not for the sake of denial or avoidance, but simply for the matter of survival. I cannot handle all of these problems at once. I cannot allow myself to feel the full extent of the stress of my parents' lives or the crashing blows occurring in the lives of my friends.

Everything here still feels so strange. The air, my skin, noises outside, noises inside, nothing here is like Cambodia. These experiences of re-entry shock mirrored the same ones I had when I first got to Cam. Adjustment took months, but it came eventually, and with such beautiful experiences along the way that I could have never predicted. But it is in the challenge of allowing yourself to experience the entire rollercoaster process to get there that is the hardest.

Joan Chittister says, "If no one can escape struggle, then it must serve some purpose in life. It is a function of the spirit. It is an organic part of the adventure of development that comes only through the soul-stretching process of struggle. No other dimension of life can possibly offer it because no other process in life requires so much so deeply in us."