November 18, 2016. I’m standing just inside the glass doors of Newark airport, travel-weary, clutching my suitcase. Outside is the grit of New Jersey, the seemingly endless blast of horns and ungodly shouting for no reason at all. I’m obviously no longer in Israel. There will be no more fresh hummus with every meal, no more desert sunrises, and no more Bible verses etched into the walls everywhere I turn.
(Casually overlooking Nazareth)
“How do you feel?” Pastor asks, standing beside me.
I pause. “I don’t want to go out there.”
The euphoria lasted, for a little while. Later, I sat in my living room and cried over my travel photographs. Photos I took. I was there. Let me never forget this, I prayed, trying to keep the fullness of God with me long after my Holy Land departure.
Of course, that euphoria eventually faded. Sometimes I felt it in snippets, like when reading the Bible (“I’ve been there!”) or gazing at the Jerusalem panorama on my wall (that I took), but ultimately it was life as usual.
Until, two years later, when it wasn’t.
At first, I didn’t recognize its return. It was different this time—there wasn’t the looming dread that I’d have to return home. There was no “waiting at the airport.” But after I received the Eucharist this week, I knelt in the pew and burst into tears. I felt a similar sense of being overwhelmed when I looked at those travel photos for the first time. It’s a lot to take in, because it’s real. It happened. It’s happening.
I don’t want to say Confirmation was a blur, because I remember so much from that day. It’s a blur the same way Israel was a blur: It’s all happening at once, but what do you focus on? Do you marvel at walking the ground Jesus walked, or ignore the tour guide to photograph everything? Do you focus on the priest’s words of Confirmation, or pray to the Spirit you’re about to receive?
The answer is yes. All of it. You allow yourself to be overwhelmed, to listen and to watch and to pray. But as a result, you don’t understand the enormity of what’s happening. It’s why I didn’t cry during my first Eucharist, because I was so focused on doing and saying the right thing. It wasn’t until a week later, in my first Mass as a “full” Catholic…
I’m leaving that thought unfinished. Because I stopped writing, just staring at that phrase for a while. This is huge. I’ve received God body and soul. I’m Catholic. Who are we to deserve that? Who am I to deserve that?
A pilgrimage has to end. Eventually, you have to go home. Then you annoy everyone by talking about it for two years after (sorry, friends). But this isn’t merely a two-week trip. This is a life-changing, Spirit-filled glow, experiencing that Holy Land euphoria every day. Once, I stood in the airport mourning that I had to go out into a world that was not Israel. But maybe, finally, I’m ready to be out there.
(In the rare chance that I never shared my Israel photos with you, they’re archived over here.)
