confused

i just returned from a mission trip to new york city with some students from our church college group. i wonder if everyone who goes to new york has a hard time leaving. or is it just me? i have always had a hard time leaving. i am NEVER ready to come home. i can remember all the years we camped in colorado and would start the long drive home. it would depress me to see cars going in the opposite direction with cartop carriers carrying their sleeping bags and luggage and supplies - our fun was ending and theirs was just beginning.

i can remember the first mission trip i took. i came home and sat on the patio in despair. my house and backyard and all the surroundings made me feel like a foreigner. it was all alien to me. i was homesick for the place i had returned from.

i don't get it. am i really geographically misplaced? my friend asks me if i am resisting "being" in the place where God wants me and wants me to be happy?

transition is so hard for me. if i get right back to work and get my mind busy, soon i fall back into my normal routine which soon includes a "passion" for american idol, gray's anatomy, LOST and the internet. what? after sorting and boxing up 1500 men's shirts of various sizes in the World Vision warehouse in the Bronx? after packing 2200 father's day packets complete with deoderant, lotion, and shower gel for underprivileged kids around the world? after prayer walking around manhattan? after reading scripture in the United Nation's building? after working in a soup kitchen at a local episcopal church? in a city where 1/2 of one percent of new yorkers admit to being christian?

we were working with and for Apostle's Church (google it) in manhattan. it is an interdenominational church plant that, after four years of consistent support, is approaching complete self-sufficiency financially (although donations continue to help keep it solvent).

our free time consisted of visiting and enjoying the following:
times square
canal street
yankees/mets game for one hour before the game was rained out
empire state building
rockefeller center
ground zero
battery park
statue of liberty
pinkberry (google it - it is an amazing yogurt delight found only in NY and California)
little italy
chelsea
washington square
grand central station
central park
metropolitan museum
new york cheese cake
sidewalk cafe coffee on a rainy afternoon
honking taxis
FRIENDLY HELPFUL new yorkers
awesome amateur musicians in the subway stations
the subway the subway the subway
walking walking walking

that said, i had returned from albuquerque and sydney's beautiful service and worked for only 2 days before leaving to go to new york. it was a quick, hurried wonderful trip. but as soon as i got settled in my seat on the plane my thoughts became centered once again on my daughter and her family and little sydney. the escape made me feel guilty because i know my daughter can never escape since it is with her and it is her. it still hurts and there are still no words. there is nothing - not even a five day mission trip to an exciting, thrilling new york city - that can ever, ever fill that hole in my heart.