neither yellow nor blue

"Grief melts away/Like snow in May,/ As if there were no such cold thing." - George Herbert, "The Flower"
Even the peak of the Texas summer heat can not be compared with the months of Thai humidity. Its almost been a month since I have returned home, and instead of feeling like my life overseas was a dream, the faces and experiences of Bangkok have left such an impression on my heart to remind me that my life there was in a sense, the closest to human reality I have ever experienced.
Someone explained culture shock once as the country you have been raised in as "yellow" and the country you visit as being "blue." After your experience you are neither yellow nor blue, but fade into a deep green. Every culture is imprinted so deeply on your very being, that to deny the effect of one or the other would be to almost deny a certain aspect of yourself.
What a difficult thing to come home and not be the same, and even harder, to realize that those around you have changed. Sometimes it would be so much easier if time could sit still, so much easier if we could just come to terms where are life has been. But those moments of complete stillness are an illusion. Life is always moving and to evade this truth is to be in denial of the very essence of what life is: an accumlation of events.
Its so easy to get trapped in what we wish our life could have been, so tempting to visit those vivid memories that we feel like have defined us. The challenge of life is to press forward. To appreciate your experiences, but to sail on embracing what comes.
One of the hardest lessons for me to learn is that I can not change people and that I am not the world's savior. I am a mere sojourner wandering through life trying to find some definite purpose.
Oh God, I think to myself all the time, let my life be meaningful. Help me never to forget these images, even if they eat away at me. And most of all, help me to remember that quality is more important than quantity. Help me to remember that my purpose will be fulfilled in pouring myself out into the little things that everyone else over looks.
Because after all, for theirs is the kingdom.