As I packed up to leave war-torn Liberia, I crammed wads of relief and reluctance amid my dirty clothes. After two days of flying, I dropped my bags in the living room and unpacked those emotions slowly.

I relished the conveniences I had been without in Liberia — a country largely without electricity or running water due to a 14-year civil war that began in 1989 and ended in 2003.

On-demand electricity.

Hot showers.

Clean feet.

But it didn't take long for the guilt — stuffed deep into the bottom of my suitcases — to sprawl out and fill my heart like one of those magic sponge capsules that unfurls and pops into a green monster when it hits a sink full of warm water.

Back home, I had a brand new car waiting for me in the driveway. My very generous parents had surprised me with the car a few weeks before I left for Liberia, after my old car left me stranded for about the fifth time.

During those first few days settling into home sweet home, I drove my new car on perfectly paved streets, blow-dried my hair, ate Mexican food, read People Magazine, bought a new dress, and watched the VMAs.

One night, I stretched out on my parents' wide, comfy couch mindlessly watching reality TV shows. I couldn't stop looking at my spotless feet hanging off the end of the couch. I only had to wash them once a day now.

Ah, home. Where I could eat vegetables without soaking them in Chlorox, get my legs waxed and buy Splenda. Life was easier. And that felt good.

In Liberia, I remember sitting in a Land Cruiser, looking out the back window as the vehicle sped across the country's remote, wounded dirt roads. The white vehicle swung from side to side, dodging deep potholes formed from years of war and neglect. It was dry season, a long stretch from December to May when the heavens in Liberia dry up. The dust wafted in thick russet plumes, covering the back window like the inside of a smoky bar.

The difference, of course, was that I was on the inside. I didn't have to inhale the smoke, touch the broken people fastened to bar stools, drink the bitter tonic of war and brutality and loss.

I watched the children in dirty clothes, the women carrying large loads on their heads and babies on their backs, the young girls with neat, black braids. I watched as they walked on the wounded, red dirt roads. I pressed my hand to the cool window. Many of them ran after the speeding white Land Cruiser, pushing their outstretched palms toward me.

And then they were gone. In a plume of russet dust, they were gone.

I no longer had to think about their pain, their poverty, their despair as they endured another day in a country ruined by civil war. Behind the glass, their brokenness couldn't touch me.

Throughout my time in Liberia and even now as I write, I still struggle with all the pain I have witnessed — and the guilt I have for leaving.

Several months ago, I tried to explain this to my friends:

I live in a city where I get a glimpse of blue skies through the viewfinder of rusted barbed wire wrapping dirty concrete walls. The beaches I walk share the same Atlantic Ocean with you. But my beaches have turned into trash dumping sites. My neighborhood streets are dark. Day and night, they are canvassed by beggars asking for small money. I watch as so many Liberians — many of them children — push wheelbarrows full of random secondhand goods down broken sidewalks. They are desperately trying to sell whatever they can. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it when you look at the sweat on their brows. You can see it in their expressions. It's desperation ... and humiliation ... and I don't know what else ... is it hope?

Please, God, just let someone buy something.

They will walk miles for the chance to sell an old stuffed animal or bottle of cheap perfume or Duke University t-shirt. I feel badly every time I see this — the eyes, the sweat, the expressions, the desperation.

I walk into communities with my audio recorder and camera and reporter's notebook, and I spend a few hours learning about someone's life ... where they've been, what happened to them during the war, what is going on in their life now, what they dream about.

And I count it an honor and a privilege to tell their stories to a world that doesn't know them. But when the interview is over, when I've gotten the photo I need, when I've asked question after question and they have given me the time because they are kind and don't want to deny my request ...

I get to leave. Because I can leave. Because I don't have to stay — living in the midst of so much pain and suffering and poverty and trash and violence. And that sounds terrible. And I feel guilty. But it's honest. And yes, I'm thankful that I get to go home in a few months. But I also hate that I get to leave. And I hate that I don't want to stay forever. And I hate that sometimes I look at my calendar and I even think about leaving early. And I fear what will happen when I finally do leave — will I forget what I've seen? Will I forget the people who have died in the short time I've been here? Will I forget the darkness and the trash and the barbed wire and the diseases? Will I forget the desperation?

Will I forget? Will I forget? Will I forget?

Oh God, please, I hope not.

Some people look at my Liberia experience as a huge sacrifice. But what did I sacrifice — a few months without electricity or running water or Internet? Maybe that's sacrificial if you've grown up in a country with clean vegetables and leg waxers and Splenda.

But that's not really sacrificial.

I struggled with questions that I couldn't answer. Questions like why I was born in the United States. And what did I do with this guilt — the guilt that I left them, guilt that I was a "humanitarian" for a year and then decided that that was enough, guilt that I left because I can.

Guilt that I was stretched out on a comfy couch with clean feet and reality TV and People while they struggled and starved.

What do I do with that?

Why wasn't I a poor, uneducated Liberian girl, a girl who has seen the terrible face of war, who has been raped, who will bear many children into a life of poverty, who will prostitute her body, who will go to sleep hungry, who won't have the opportunity to get a first degree much less a second.

The hardest question I continue to ask: What is my responsibility?

My friend Mick, who also has wrestled with this question, wrote to me:

In college I started thinking, "Why don't I sell everything I have and JUST follow Christ?" I met a guy my age who was sitting on around $150 million. He was a believer and had a similar dilemma. Some people asked him why he didn't buy a ton of food for starving people in Africa. In thinking it through, he realized he could probably feed the entire continent — but only for a few days.

In my mind I inserted this guy into the parable of the talents. God gifts you with $150 million, what do you do? You could give it all away in a single day. Just write a check to Compassion International. You could aggressively invest it and try to double your money, then write a $300 million check to Compassion a few years down the road. You could put it in a low-risk investment, something making 4-5%. At that rate you'd make $20,000 every day and could give that much to someone different every day of your life and still have $150 million sitting there until the right opportunity presents itself. It's a difficult call, but I think the goal would be to do as much with the money as possible so as to be called the "good and faithful servant" when it's all over with.

I don't think this guy should feel badly that he inherited $150 million — or sit around wondering why God didn't pick another kid to bless financially. Instead, he should leverage the gifts God has given him and be thankful that God has entrusted him with so much.

It took me a while to realize that the problem wasn't the owning of the wealth. It was not being willing to let go of it. Or believing that there was safety and security in it. I don't believe at all that life is fair. I can't think of one reason why I deserve my position in this life. But I can't feel guilty about it; I didn't place myself here. I didn't place someone else in poverty. I can only be responsible for myself and the gifts I've been given.

Mick is right. I shouldn't feel badly because I was born in the United States. I can't blame myself for growing up in family where I had food to eat and had everything I needed and more. I can't change what is unchangeable.

But I can do something. I do have a duty in the midst of my "goodbye guilt."

The Bible is full of examples of Jesus calling His followers into the darkest, deepest holes of society — and jumping in Himself. Because I am His child, Jesus has asked me to go into those holes with Him. To go into the deepest parts of my community, my city, the world — and to help pull people out of the darkness and into the light.

But Jesus didn't just stay in one hole. He jumped into many.

In Luke, Jesus spends a day changing people's lives, but when it is time to leave, the crowds try to keep him from going. Scripture says that Jesus tells the crowd, "I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose" (Luke 4:43).

As these difficult re-entry days pass, I'm learning that leaving is OK. But as I look out of the clear windshield of my new car, the wide glass covering that protects me from the pain and poverty and despair around me in the United States — I'm learning that I still have work to do.

My responsibility is to, like Jesus, continue seeking out the dark holes in my world.

And to continue jumping.