My boy is coming home Tuesday.He has spent the last 3 weeks working as a missionary in Busan (or Pusan), South Korea with Operation Mobilization.
I'm ready. I can hardly wait to hear his stories, see his pictures and find out how this experience has changed him. I know it has changed me.
I don't know that my heart has grown any fonder, but I do know that his absence has underscored just how important that boy is to me. I have missed our Saturday morning breakfasts and the sound of him aggravating his mom or his sister.
I have especially missed the guitar music. Ethan's guitar picking has become, I think, my personal soundtrack. Without it, my life feels like a TV show with the sound muted. The people are doing something, you just don't know what.
I've prayed more for my boy over the past three weeks than I probably have in my whole life.
It still stops me in my tracks to think that people have invested in him and that God chose him for this opportunity.
He has helped remodel a Korean home, served in the cafeteria of a ship and worked as a deck hand and in the engine room. He has climbed Busan's highest peak and slept in a jjimjilbang. He has played his guitar for worship and at a home for the physically and mentally disabled. Just yesterday he told me about a beach he discovered where the salty waves polish stones to jewel-like smoothness. I'm sure there are many more stories, and I can't wait to hear them.
For the past 19 or so days, I have started my day by checking Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, to see if he has updated his status or posted another picture.
We've talked on the phone a couple of times, and I can hear a difference in his voice. It's subtle, but I sense a maturity that was not there before. His posts are, for the most part, more spiritual. It's obvious that he has been on a journey of discovery and that he is drinking in the lessons.
I have been too.
These kids? They aren't ours to give to God. Rather, they are His. My wife and I are the missionaries.
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