Returning

By Chuck Cherry

My lovely wife MaryAnn, whom I sometimes affectionately refer to as “my editor,” has reminded me several times that it’s my turn to write a blog post about our recent trip to Myanmar (March 1 to March 16, 2020). And since I always do what my editor tells me to do, here it is, for better or worse.

Return (verb): to come or go back to a previous place.

I write this from our current place of residence in Spanaway, Washington, USA. We returned here from Myanmar a few days ago. The day after we got here I returned to work. I work from home as a computer programmer on contract, so it was pretty easy to pick up from where I left off and continue working on “my” module of the system we are building.

Normally, returning to our daily routine after a trip to Myanmar takes several days, and sometimes longer. The jet lag hits really hard travelling west to east, or so it seems to us. But this time we had a thirty-three hour layover in the Seoul Incheon International Airport and we were able to get a good night’s sleep in the wonderful transit hotel located inside the airport. That seemed to make a big difference.

The world around us is struggling with how best to deal with the exploding COVID-19 pandemic. Washington was the first state in the USA to have a confirmed case of the virus, and since then there have been hundreds more, with several dozen deaths attributed to the virus so far. Now many other states are reporting cases and deaths, with New York taking one of the worst hits.

People are being told to stay home and avoid contact with other other people. Schools and businesses are closed, worship services and other public activities are cancelled, and life in general is being disrupted for most.

MaryAnn and I are homebodies and since we both already work from home, our lives are not that much different than before.

This is the life that we returned to when we came back from Myanmar.

However, when I think of the word return I cannot help but look forward to returning again to Myanmar. With each trip back from our friends and family in Myanmar it seems more like we are leaving home and going away on a temporary exile, and counting down the days until we can return again to our home in Myanmar. We don’t own a home of our own there, but it feels to us like home, and I know our family there would say that their home is our home, too.

(MaryAnn literally counts down the days to our next visit using an app on her phone. Ask her anytime and she can tell you the exact number of days until our next trip.)

Return (verb): to give, do, or get something after something similar has been given or done to you.

Many people over the years have asked us why we go to Myanmar. It’s hard to answer that question in just a few short sentences. Depending on who’s asking, sometimes I’ll just say, “To visit family and friends.” If the questioner seems really interested, and is not just being polite, I will expand on that to talk about the people that we love, the family that we cherish, and the work that we do there.

All of those are truly reasons why we go. But there is a greater reason, and it has to do with the word return. We want to return some of what we have been given.

We were blessed with love and friendship when Palal, Kikim, and Solomon came and shared a home with us for a few years. We want to return that love and friendship with them and with their other children, Cherry, Noah, and Mary.

We are blessed by our Father in Heaven with material wealth (relatively speaking) and we want to return some of that back to Him through our giving and loving and going.

We are blessed with eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, and we want to share that life with those who don’t yet possess it by proclaiming the Gospel of the King. We want to teach others how to live in it, at least to the best of our knowledge and abilities. This is our way of returning the blessings.

And we are most certainly not only on the giving side of this equation! The people of Myanmar return to us so many gifts of indescribable worth. Gifts of love, joy, hospitality, freedom, respect, honor, commitment, faith, and so much more. We always feel like we receive back so much more than we have ever given, and that feeling compels us to return again and again.

Return (verb): to happen again.

Another definition of the word return means to “happen again.” As in, “When I think of our family in Myanmar, and our wonderful visits there, many good feelings and memories return.”

But my favorite definition of the word return was the first one I mentioned: “to come or go back to a previous place.”

As in, “I can’t wait until we return to Myanmar again!”

Blessings,

Chuck Cherry