A hero comes home.

Today

When she gets off the plane she’ll likely look much like all the passengers — probably weary, probably shifting the backpack and carry-on and probably looking around to see familiar faces. But to us she won’t be just any ordinary passenger and this won’t be just any ordinary trip to the airport.

She’s left behind hundreds and hundreds of orphaned children, muddy red clay, deeply rutted unpaved roads and a world of poverty, famine and loss.  Now she’s become very familiar with a whole different way of life and a culture that’s no longer foreign to her.  She’s left part of her heart with friends and loved ones there. She’s left behind the daily arduous tasks of mere survival.  But she’s also left behind armfuls of love… children for whom her love no words describe.  She’s walked hundreds of miles, dished hundreds of bowls of rice and beans, clipped hundreds of little nails and held hundreds of hands.

But today she returns home…  and our hearts are probably as full of love for her as the love she’s left behind.  It’s sort of a bittersweet thing to wish her here with us and yet to know she’s so loved and needed where she was just yesterday.

But today… our hero comes home.