my Indian ending

I don’t know if you have gathered from my blog posts this summer, but India was perfect. I truly mean that. It was perfect. Every minute. It has taken me a while to gather my thoughts about my summer and that is why my blog post is so late this week, but leaving was really tough for me. I’m still trying to recover and adjust to life here. I’ve been trying my best to focus on being happy that I went and not sad that I left, but it’s been a struggle and me sitting around watching videos and reading notes that the kids gave me over and over again probably isn’t helping. I knew when I decided to go to India that leaving after three months would be difficult, but I don’t think I realized it would be the hardest thing I had ever done. But, that doesn’t mean that for a minute I have regretted the most wonderful three months I have ever spent.

It’s beautiful how things seem to fall into my life at the perfect time. I learned and grew more in India that I think I could anywhere else. All the people that I met, all the trials that I went through, all the kids that I love so dearly were exactly what I had been wanting, craving, and desperately needing in my life.

At the last dinner of each volunteer session, we ask the volunteers to stand up and tell something that they learned in India or that they want to take home. The long term volunteers always sat out on these nights and listened, so I guess I never really got to share, so here is mine.

Other than a little lice (that I promise is gone now), I’m bringing home a whole lot of love. I think I had forgotten what it meant to love. To love every physical, spiritual, mental inch of someone. To care about someone so much that your emotions are intertwined. I felt it all, the happiness, sadness, fear, joy. Love is lacing your emotions with a heart foreign to your own. I have laced my heart to those of the children at Rising Star, the people of India, and my fellow volunteers, and I miss them so desperately. I ache for when I will be back with them, but more importantly celebrate the time that I have spent with them. But, I have learned too much about love in my time away to be foolish enough to leave all of it in India. Now it is time for me to bring it home. To spread love everywhere I go. Mother Theresa said, “I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there will be no more hurt, only love.”

This is one of my favorite poems and I feel it rather appropriate…

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
-e.e. cummings

India I love you. There is no doubt about that. I’m longing for the next time I will have the kids of Rising Star in my arms, I’m waiting to hear Dani the Dragon being called out, and I’m begging to laugh with those kids again. But, in the mean time, I will be off spreading love. Everywhere I go.

Here is a compilation of some of the videos that I took of these super children this summer. This is the first video I have ever put together so…don’t judge too harshly.

Have a summer as incredible as mine next year!! Check out www.risingstaroutreach.org to look at volunteer dates or discover other ways you can help.

peace. love. and India.