Forgetfulness

A saying that's never fit me well is "absence makes the heart grow fonder."  I'm sure that fits some people.  But when I'm experiencing an absence of someone/thing, generally I go a little nuts.  Maybe some people interpret that as fondness, but I just interpret it as going insane over something I can't control.  It's not a pleasant feeling at all.
Eventually, I do fall into another cliche:  out of sight, out of mind.  It's not that I care any less about the person or thing that I miss.  It's just that I'm human, and humans forget.  Last July, as I was preparing to go to Kenya with a team from my church, I was forgetting a lot.  I had a lot going on back here in the States, and I wasn't sure I should really be going to Kenya again.  I had people here I wanted to visit, I had the school year coming up to prepare for, and leaving the country (and your comfort zone) is always stressful.  I'd forgotten my experiences the year before, I'd forgotten God's voice calling me back.  But I had committed to the trip, and I knew deep down that it would be a good trip, so I didn't try to back out.
When I got to Kenya and it was no longer "out of sight," I remembered how being there made me feel so much more alive than anything else I'd experienced.  I remembered the joy of working with the children and the church leaders.  I remembered why God had called me to serve there.  I just needed to have my memory jogged.
When I realized that I wouldn't be hopping a plane to Kenya this summer, I worried that I would forget.  It's easy to ignore a calling when it isn't clear yet, when it's to a foreign land, and when it's still so far away.  And I do find myself forgetting:  forgetting to pray about whatever future I may have in Kenya, forgetting to pray for the people I met there, forgetting the resolution I had in knowing I need to go back long-term, forgetting the urgency of preparing myself for whatever comes next.  Distractions aren't hard to find.
So I'm going to make an effort this week to go back and read my journals from my trips to Kenya, to look through my folders of pictures on my hard drive, and, hopefully, dust off the Rosetta Stone for Kiswahili that I'm borrowing from a friend.  I'm hoping to come across stories worth sharing (probably re-sharing for many of you who read this), so check back later in the week once I've jogged my memory!