She sometimes felt like a plant taken out of rich Cambodian soil. Uprooted. Strangely, the US no longer felt like home to her. She was re-learning. Most of her reactions or impulses, wrong. 

Her mind constantly wondered. Her focus unresolved. The silliest thing, a flood of memories.

She felt as though she belonged in a village. It’s the same feeling she felt 8 years ago, uprooted, committed to a land that didn’t feel as comfortable as "home" should. 

The people she had loved there had been a home. 

Where God's peace and provision abound, that is home. 

She is "homesick", and can’t help tears at the most sporadic and inconvenient times. Confused. 

Thankful for sunglasses. 

She smiles to herself - a different person had come home. She was a woman, and not a 20-something girl anymore. She had loved and learned and worked and grown. 

And as it had done to others before her, the beauty and struggles of Cambodians and all she had become there crept into her soul. It is now her. And it was hard to find it applicable. 

The lifestyle in the country she had been born to had largely become strange to her. She had become a different, worn, strong woman. And they wouldn’t know how, other than small glimpses or impassioned conversation. 

She smiles again. It's a terrible, wonderful secret.