It's the slight differences that surprised me the most. Changes around the house. Changes in my parents and sister. Changes in my hometown. Changes I'm not sure anyone would've really picked up on unless you were taken out of your life for a year and then dropped back into it.

I haven't unpacked. I mean, my clothes are out and washed and in drawers now; however, I haven't unpacked. Everything was laid out on the floor and could've gone somewhere else, but I put it all back into my pack as if ready for the next travel day. My toiletries are hanging in my toiletry bag on the rack in the bathroom, just as they would've any other month of the Race.

The strangest part was when I took a shower. The hot water felt weird. It wasn't overwhelming, but, as I stood under the heat, I found it too abnormal. I had taken a hot shower in Boston and loved it! No problem. Nothing out of the ordinary. But, here--in this home I've grown up in and in this place which should be most normal and most familiar--normal became abnormal.

So, I took a cold shower.

Honestly, I didn't believe I would be one of the Racers to need a sense of normal or that I would struggle with returning to a life which really doesn't seem like mine now that I think about it. But, every part of coming back to this once-familiar place has been like stepping into a scalding stream of water. My pores have opened. I might be sweating. There's steam that makes it hard to breathe. I love this place--just as I love a nice, hot shower--yet, it's all so strange and new and I'm none the braver in stepping back over the threshold.

I know, given time, I'll find a new normal. I imagine all of us Racers will. Or we'll fall off the wagon and it will hurt and we'll have to pick up the pieces. Either way, God is throwing us back in as a new variable to the equation everyone back home thought they already solved. We are intended to spark change. We are intended to shake everything up. We've done that every month of the Race, so why stop with those eleven months? How effective are we really if we are letting home change us more than we are changing home? Isn't that the call of the disciple? Jesus turned over the tables! He kicked the money-changers out of the Lord's temple! And the disciple follows in his example. 

I'm not saying we must be harsh or cruel to those who just don't understand how much they truly have, but why leave people in a place of ignorance? However bliss-filled that ignorance seems, we need people who's trees have been shaken up. We need the fruit that falls. We need the seeds that come from that fruit to be planted and for a crop to spring up on every corner and down every avenue and within every community.

I just think more people could use a cold shower.