It's Only Temporary

On Sundays for the last 6 weeks, we took a few hours to go out to breakfast and then to a pool at a local hotel in Pokhara. It was a great time together as we prepared for each week ahead. The pool is located directly in front of the landing spot for the paragliders. So each week we watched dozens of paragliding adventures land right in front of us as we swam. It never got old.

This past Sunday, there was a girl at the pool, sitting alone. Upon our arrival, I walked up to her and apologized for ruining her peace and quiet with our small family of seven. She laughed and we started chatting. I learned that she is from France in Nepal visiting her boyfriend who is a paragliding pilot. She was watching him work as she enjoyed the pool. He is Venezuelan, but has not lived there in years due to some political issues. So I asked her, “Where is his home?” She replied, “Nowhere. He moves around all the time and has no country.” We enjoyed meeting her and watching her boyfriend land his parachute beautifully each time.

We had other similar encounters during this trip. Meeting people from all over the world. In shops, restaurants, airports. Becoming friends on Facebook, and wondering if we would ever cross paths again.

Unlike our new paragliding pilot friend, we do have somewhere to go. We do belong to a country. We came to Nepal at the beginning of June. We have a return flight home tomorrow. We are due to pull into our driveway on July 30th. We will be home. During our time in Nepal, we knew the return flight would be approaching. We settled in as best we could, but we never made it our home. Our clothes were in Rubbermaid tubs, our comfort foods were rationed (We had war over the last fruit rollup), our sheets and towels were on loan. We were always guests and were so thankful for the way they loved on our family the whole time. Our time, our home, this experience in Nepal, was only temporary.

But wait, as a follower of Jesus, isn’t my whole experience here on earth supposed to be temporary? God said it in Hebrews 13:14, “For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.” We are supposed to live as though our lives here are temporary. We have spent time thinking about how we lived here in Nepal since this was not our home. We thought about how it would even be possible to live like that in Virginia.

When we get back to VA, we won’t be selling all of our dressers and living out of plastic tubs. I think it’s different than that. What we did with our time, our energy, our resources here, was focused on investing in others for the sake of Christ rather than being distracted by our stuff  and spending our time setting up so we can live comfortable lives. I will still decorate my home and buy gifts for my children. You will still see me in the drive-thru at Chick-Fil-A. But, we want to focus our time, energy and resources on our permanent home, not the one we pay a mortgage on. We want life to be intentional… because this home is only temporary!

The Need

I love learning and exploring new cultures. In fact, I was on an airplane a couple years ago from India to Nepal, sitting next to a young Indian man who had just gotten married. He was very friendly and answered all of my curious questions about life in India and arranged marriage. I learned a lot on that short plane ride that day. After my line of interrogation, I asked him if he had any questions about life in America. What he said to me was so profound, I think of it often. He said, “I have heard that Americans don’t know their neighbors, that you build garages so you don’t ever see your neighbors, and that you don’t REALLY know each other, yet everyone is always ‘fine’ if you ask them.” He then asked me why we don’t need each other. He talked about how they do life together and that without one another, they wouldn’t survive.

I have thought so much about that conversation during these last six weeks of living in Nepal. It has been lived out in front of me daily. This dependence on one another. Each one offers something so important to everyone else. It is family. It is life.

And now, it is becoming life for our family. We all need one another. That concept is sometimes hard to see when we are going in all different directions back home. There’s something so unique and amazing about each person in our family, something that we need from each other. It is unfolding in real time here, and now we get to take it home.

It isn’t just in our family. On the morning we were leaving Lynchburg to start our Nepal adventure, a beautiful friend handed me a stack of envelopes. There was one for each day we would be gone, letters from several different friends. It is hard to describe the lifeline these letters have been for us here. On a day when we were tired, hot and discouraged, we opened up our letter for that day.

We read, “It’s a new week. How are you? You may be getting tired at this point. Praying you find strength in Him! No doubt you’ve had some tense moments already. Don’t stop saying yes. Keep pressing in.”

Yep, we needed that! And we have needed each one!

And the Facebook messages, texts, and emails from countless people encouraging us to keep going. We value each one.

We need people. We all do. We need each other in order to survive. We always talk about this idea of community. We need people who are the same and people who are different from us. Over these past six weeks, that idea has come to life. And now we get to take it home with us.

If this journey were a 50K race, we would be on the last leg, we would have less than 10K to go. We know the finish line is coming up. It has been an amazing race. Full of fun adventure, a gazillion mosquitos, rice, beautiful people, family, huge life lessons, sweat, laughter and emotion.

Now to figure out how to wrap it all up, say goodbye, help our kids transition back, and enjoy the process of coming back home.




If you would like to see pictures of our journey, please follow us on Instagram (SheaFoster or ToddFoster1970) or on Facebook (Shea Williams Foster or Todd Foster).