The Irish Never Forget

Me

Scene: Third grade creative writing class.

My teacher asks us to write out a list of our favorite places. As an eight-year-old I wait for a moment with my pencil poised, thinking. I look around me and notice that all of the other students have already set to work scribbling down such things as “my grandma’s house” and “Holiday World”. Of course, my list will probably be mostly the same. But, first, I write something different. My very favorite place. I’ve never even been there, but somehow I know deep down in my heart that I love it. I don’t even remember when the call first came to me, the thirst to see the place my grandmother came to America from as a teenager. It’s just sort of always been there. And so I write.

1. Ireland

 

 

Scene: My kitchen

I’m only a sophomore in high school, but people are already starting to ask me where I plan on going to college. It’s kind of disconcerting, actually, because I have no idea. Why do they keep pushing these decisions on me when I still have two years to decide?

My mom is currently sitting at the big computer in our kitchen, looking up information on Taylor University. She’s been trying to convince me to go there ever since some very close family friends – and Taylor alumni – started talking about it all the time. It’s like they’re doing everything in their power to get me there. As for me, I’ve got no interest in going there whatsoever. Our friends just keep telling me stories about all of the disgusting pranks which they and their roommates played on each other. If that’s what Taylor people are like, I want NO part of it.

But my mom has started looking into the professional writing program, which sounds like exactly what I want. I start paying just a bit more attention. Then she gaps.

“Kenzi, look at this! They have a program where you can actually go study in Ireland!”

The unquenchable desire to go to Ireland has lain dormant for some time, now. When I was a little kid it was so strong that I could barely stand it, but as I gradually came to the realization that there was no way my parents were going to take us on a vacation to Europe, I kind of gave up on it. The tugging was still there, of course, I just didn’t think about it as obsessively.

Now it awoke again, and in full force, slamming into my brain like a train wreck. Feeling slightly dizzy, I came to stand beside her at the computer. This is it. This is my chance. It’s like my whole life has been building up to this. What I said was my only conscious thought in that moment – “all right, that’s where I’m going, then.”

 

Scene: My kitchen

The door slams shut behind me as I bring today’s mail pile over to the counter. Mom and my siblings are gone, but they’ll be home soon. It’s been weeks since I sent my application in to Taylor’s Freshman Irish Studies Program. Surely those who were accepted have gotten their letters by now. It’s early May – I’ll be graduating soon. I really, really thought that God wanted me to go to Ireland. I’m beginning to think I was wrong.

But today, an envelope came from Taylor University. Not thick enough to be what I’m hoping for, I tell myself, but still I can’t help the excitement boiling up inside. I rip open the top and pull out the card inside.

Congratulations, you’re going to Ireland

            I press my hand against my mouth in complete shock, my flow of oxygen totally cut off. Everything is spinning, and for an instant time stands still.

Then I hear the rumbling of the garage door rising.

I run to the door, the card clutched in my sweating hand and a still-unreleased scream lodged somewhere down in my throat.

My dreams just came true.

 

Scene: The parking garage outside my neurosurgeon’s office in Louisville

Funny thing is that God’s plans hardly ever work out the way we think they’re supposed to. Like, ten days before I was supposed to leave for Taylor, I ended up having to have surgery to remove a cyst from my brain. So…yeah. Worst days of my life. I Skyped in to the class that my teammates took for their five days at Taylor, but they’ve flown to Ireland, by now. They’ve been there for about a week.

And my surgeon just said I could go join them.

I don’t know what to do. Jump, scream, sing Celtic Woman, laugh, cry…no one should recover that quickly from brain surgery. No one should be going to Ireland a week after they got out of the hospital.

But I am! My God is good beyond imagining.

I quickly send a group text to all of my closest friends and family members.

They let me go, they let me GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Scene: Dún Aonghasa, an ancient fort in the Aran Islands

Foaming water smashes against the cliffs below me as I lie on my stomach and peek over the edge.

I’m here.

I’m in Ireland.

Lying on my stomach at the edge of a cliff.

In a fort that’s far older than the Roman Empire.

It’s as if, for the first time in my life, I’m really and truly alive.

At just a little older than my grandmother was when she left Ireland, I’ve come back. It’s like my heart has always been tied to this place, and it’s been calling me back throughout my life.

And now here I am. I used to think I’d love to visit Ireland, but never actually live there. Today, my mind has begun to change in that respect.

 

Scene: Taylor chapel

The cold days of January make me wish I was back in Ireland. It’s been hard adjusting to life at Taylor after the fall semester of a life time, but I’ve got good friends and so it’s been all right.

Today our chapel message is about silence and solitude. It’s not really a message at all – more like a guided time of silence, of searching for what God wants to say to our hearts.

And it’s now that the passion flares up again.

I thought that Ireland would be like all of the other trips I’ve taken. A thirst to see a place which is satiated once I’ve been there.

But it wasn’t. My longing to be in Ireland, to be with the Irish, to become Irish, has only grown stronger. I love the land. I love the people. Everything about it was…home.

And now I begin to realize it. What I’ve had in my heart throughout all of my life is not just a longing to see a beautiful place – it’s a calling. A calling to go home. God wants me in Ireland. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how long (it could be just a few years), but I know I have to go. He’s been telling me my whole life – it just took a very strange series of events for me to be able to put it together. There have only been a few times in my life when I’ve heard His voice this clearly.

As if in confirmation, the worship team begins to sing my favorite hymn. It’s also been something of an anthem to describe my Irish longing all of these years because of its Celtic sound.

Be Thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me save that Thou art! Thou my best thought by day or by night. Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

            Now I understand.

Now I see.

As my grandmother left Ireland, so I return to it. My life has a path to take and a direction to follow. Irishness is in my blood – has been since the day I was born.

And the Irish never forget.

 

 

 

 

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