Uncrossing Arms
Uncrossing Arms
Deuteronomy 30:19
…I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Therefore choose life…
Before we came to PNG, I read several blogs about living
overseas, missions, and culture shock. I read about what people had experienced
when they lived as expats for the first time: the good, the bad, and the
unmentionable. One of the things I read in several different blogs was that it
takes a year before you really settle into a new place and begin to see
it…Honestly, I didn’t believe it. I knew it would be a tough transition, but
surely it wouldn’t take a year?! And suddenly, here we are at the end of 10
months and I’ve never been so wrong. As we close in on one year in PNG, I can
say without a doubt that it really has taken me this long to begin to uncross
my arms. Let me explain a bit.
The first couple of months here, we were surprised at the
level of exhaustion we were experiencing. Every single night, we were ready for
bed by 8:30 or 9. We seemed to have only enough energy to make it through the
tasks of the day (our work assignments, cooking dinner, laundry, and washing
dishes) and that was it. We were done. It became clear pretty quickly that what
used to be easy was now hard and took twice as long. Dishes with no dishwasher,
laundry with no dryer and daily rain in the forecast, every meal made from
scratch, grocery shopping for an entire month at a time and an hour away on a
rough road, driving on the opposite side, not to mention cultural shocks by the
dozen meant that our nerves were raw and our confidence we could make it here,
low. It seemed that I ended up in tears at least every other day wondering what
we had done in coming here. Just surviving was difficult…how could I ever hope
to contribute to the Kingdom in any way if I couldn’t even figure out how to
run my (much smaller than in Tennessee) house?
And what's more, I was angry. Not really at anybody, but angry at how hard this was. Why would anybody purposefully have chosen this? We were grieving hard. We were homesick for family and friends and all that was easy and familiar. Everything we had known as our "norm" had been stripped away and I didn't like it. As a result, I think I missed out on some blessings in these first months because I wasn't ready to let my guard down...uncross my arms...and let this place and its people in. And in all honesty, weren't these people and their needs the reason we felt called here? Without that call, I wouldn't be here and I would still have my nice normal life, right?
I also noticed another phenomena…most of the social media
posts I was making were about living life in PNG: scenery, our family doing unusual
things, the market, my laundry on the line…but there wasn’t much about our
ministry. Now looking back, though we were involved (and continue to be
involved) in our respective ministry assignments, living life here was just so
different that it became my focus. I’m not sure it could have been otherwise.
Now, this is a thing that, in the past, would have made me feel guilty. Realizing
that I was more absorbed in what was happening in our lives, what we’d lost
(and gained), and feeling like a tourist instead of a missionary is definitely something
that would have made me feel an immense amount of guilt just a year ago.
But part of what’s changed in me in PNG is that guilt or
shame about how I do or don’t feel, accomplish, measure up to, or compare to
others is really non-existent. I call it grace. God has broken through so many
times in the past 10 months and reminded me that NOTHING is wasted. NOTHING.
Whether I’ve had an incredibly ‘successful’ ministry in my first year here or
not isn’t dependent on anything except my complete and utter dependence on God.
That’s something I’ve had to learn. And it takes time. So I could hang my head
in shame and feel sorry that I haven’t done more, been more, whatever more…or,
I could take what has happened to me and through me as part of the process of
the Holy Spirit continuing its work in my life. And I am nothing but grateful.
Realizing that our missions experience isn’t going to look like anyone else’s
and it doesn’t have to measure up to some ideal of what we thought it would be
has been freeing. The truth is that it’s been a hard adjustment. The hardest of
our lives. But God has been faithful and has invited us in to this adventure in
ways we couldn’t have imagined.
This week, there was a new flower about to bloom in our front
flower bed. It was gorgeous, even in its pod stage. Y’all know I love
metaphors, and man, this one hit me hard. We’ve been planted here and it’s
taken awhile, but now, finally, I feel like that flower. It’s taken 10 months,
but I’m beginning to open up…uncross my arms…to what is going to happen next. I ran
across a meme recently that compared burial to planting…it feels the same, but
with a different result. And I’m ready.
There are people to meet, relationships to develop,
ministries to participate in, and work to be done. I’m so glad that I get to be
part of it here at Kudjip.
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