Good News for Good Women

Some of my favorite words Jesus spoke: "Only one thing is needed."

There are days when I wake up late and skip class. Then I fully intend to have a beautiful and powerful prayer time before exercising, and that gets interrupted for whatever reason. Perhaps I sit in front of the computer with a cup of coffee and space out. Perhaps I go back to sleep. Then appointments with friends fall through, I honk angrily in traffic, and come back home at the end of the day wondering what I did with that precious time the Lord gave me. I strive to be a "good woman," a good person, but I fail. I may keep up outward appearances, but I still fail.

But I ask for forgiveness, and He gives me more grace. And I get to try again. I get a new day formed for me by the power of the One who raised me from the dead.

Oh how badly I want to find the time to write more, to prepare more for the future, to figure out what exactly it is I want to do with my life (if anyone ever figures that out), to cook more, to learn ukulele, make time for playing piano, make time for praying and worshiping more, go out into the countryside and take photographs, go out to some random place and brave the hot sun so I can meet new people, meet with more and more friends as my time here is short (but they always have exams), at the same time to go take naps in parks more, and I cry out to Father that I want the full life and there simply isn't enough time in each day to cram everything in. I am a classic case of what they call "FOMO (fear of missing out)." (Google it). I am also a classic case of others-depend-on-me-so-I-must-live-up-to-this-standard-and-be-perfect (that's just my term...much less catchy. You're welcome).

But no matter what the world may say, what my striving flesh may say, only one thing is needed.

You are worried about many things, but only one thing is needed.

Wow, Lord, does that even include Proverbs 31? I don't even need to be exactly like her? Businesswoman, homemaker, caretaker, up early, master of many skills, yet loving and gentle and honorable all at the same time?

Only one thing is needed.

Jesus is so scandalously liberating that we are afraid to step into the wide open spaces He has laid out for us. We are so used to telling ourselves we have to be a certain way, have to do so many things, that we forget what pleases His heart most...what pleases our hearts most, what makes us sing. When will we learn to take His grace seriously?

And when will I learn that I am an eternal soul? My time is not short. Though I may leave this country soon, though my life will fly by in the blink of God's eye, I must never feel that I haven't enough time to experience all I'm supposed to experience or do all I'm supposed to do or serve those I'm supposed to serve. My days were written down for me before one of them came to be. He's got a chart for my life and is mapping its progress, and not a day will be outside of His will, His plan. I will do exactly enough. I will see and hear exactly enough (though the fleshly mind never has its fill of seeing and hearing, according to Solomon), I will be exactly enough. And at the end, I will be told, Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. And that kingdom will never end; it will have a richness and a beauty of which this planet can only offer glimpses...and its wonders will never be exhausted.

Oh how I pray that when that anxiety wells up in my chest, when I feel despair creeping in and smothering my hope, and when I am tempted to worry because everyone else around me is worrying (or because no one else around me is worrying!)...
that I will hear His gentle and powerful words: Only one thing is needed.

My Obsession With Me

I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to myself.
Maybe I'm not alone in this. Perhaps you're addicted to yourself too. In some ways, I think we all are.

For me, it usually doesn't manifest itself in a prideful, I'm-so-awesome type of way, although now and then it does take that form.

Usually, it's worse than that.

It's self-loathing.

Self-loathing is an addiction, a harmful and destructive drug in every sense. When I make a mistake in class, it's lurking there, waiting for me to slip into its arms and embrace what it says about me, who it says I am.

It is ready to capitalize on every moment of weakness.

When I realize I am not the favorite person in the room, there it hovers, ready for me to swallow that pill and descend into dark and untrue places in which I am small and everyone else is big and tramples over me. When I'm acutely aware of everyone staring at me, when strangers shout at me ("Hey! Foreigner!"), there it is again at my shoulder, saying, "You should hide. If only you didn't look different from everyone else, if only you could blend in." And it spirals from there into deeper self-consciousness, into a fear that spreads and smothers my soul and makes me walk around with a cast-down face and a scowl, in hopes that I might disappear.

Self-loathing is by no means confined to a single phase of my life or a single country. In college, in the United States, I remember days walking around in a pretty summer dress, because, well, I like dresses, and when I caught stares in the corner of my eye, my mind would immediately flutter to "She's thinking, who does that girl think she is, wearing a dress to class? Who does she think she's trying to impress? Why isn't she in Nike shorts and a t-shirt like the rest of us?" It was difficult to believe that perhaps someone might actually be staring because they like my dress; it was even more difficult for me to not care one bit about what I was wearing and feel beautiful and loved all the same. Then the next day I would wear Nike shorts and a t-shirt, and that same horrible voice would whisper, "You're so much uglier than the other girls. Look how fashionable she is. Why aren't you wearing that hipster outfit from Urban Outfitters?" Then the next day I could wear the hipster outfit from Urban Outfitters, and...well, you get the idea.

Here's the thing, though: In the middle of my spiral of self-loathing thoughts, I always hear my Savior and King call out to me, but sometimes His voice sounds far away. I hear Him call out, "All your days were written in my book before one of them came to be!" I hear him say, "I have numbered the hairs on your head, and every one of them is precious, my daughter!" But I shake my head in denial. His voice seems so distant and powerless, whereas the voice of self-loathing is so close and seemingly so invincible, its breath hot in my ear. It's like that quote from Pretty Woman: "The bad stuff is easier to believe." I'm like her. I don't believe Him. I deny His authority. I choose to take the pill without protest.

I give power to that which should have no power and deny the true power of the Lord. I submit to that horrible voice/spirit outside of me and refuse to submit to the one Voice and Spirit I should obey, the one that is living and active in the very depths of my being.

One day when I was admitting all my self-destructive thoughts to my mom, she said, "Have you noticed a common thread here? Me, me, me. I'M worthless, I'M unloved, I'M unlovable. Turn that focus upward and outward instead of downward and inward." This truth has been circulating in my mind ever since. But turning thoughts upward and outward is some heavy, gravity-defying lifting. The problem is that my thoughts literally implode on my soul, and I let them sit there so long without protesting that they get too heavy for me, by myself, to lift. Thus, the truth is crushed, and the lie wins.

The Lord has been patiently and persistently releasing me of this terrible, tenacious stronghold for years, but I keep failing and running back to it. It's always the little things. The self-loathing starts with someone ignoring me, or complimenting someone else instead of me, or me feeling stupid, or someone disagreeing with me in a rude way, and spirals downward, ending with me dissolving into tears, thinking everyone hates me, wondering why I even exist and what use my life is. I can tell the difference between deception and truth, and I know mentally what the truth is, but my heart still finds God hard to believe, and my mouth still finds self-loathing easier to swallow than his promises. As the title suggests, self-loathing is, too, a form of pride, a form of obsession with the self, preferring masochism to grace as long as it means I can refuse His hand. Self-loathing is painful, but it's at least a realm with which I'm all too familiar. A poisonous security blanket. Freedom from comparison with others, unshakable joy, full confidence that I am forever loved? These are relatively new concepts. And, though already accepted mentally, they are sometimes hard to swallow when faced with an indifferent world that seems to so easily smother the Word of God in my head.

I'm reading good ol' Beth Moore, and she's talking about release from strongholds. She writes, "Maybe you can't yet picture being free from that stronghold for the rest of your life. But can you picture it for a day? How about until lunch? How about for an hour?" She said that when the Lord was freeing her of her destructive thought cycles, she would count the days she went without giving in to those thoughts, and the day she gave in, she would start right back at 1 the next day. But rather than getting discouraged, she encouraged us to rejoice that we even have the opportunity to start back at 1. To try again. To be allowed to take our first tentative steps, fail, and yet know we will be picked right back up again and set on the right path. Every. Time.

Right now I would say I'm in the "withdrawal season" from this drug of self-loathing. It might last for a long time. It will be incredibly easy to have relapses. Thankfully, I'm in a rehab program called "Conforming to His Image," and this program will never give up on me or kick me out. Though I may burn out and give up and return to the poisonous security blanket time and time again, His loving hand will not rest until His goal is obtained. He who began a good work in me will carry it through to completion. He will not rest until I am living in victory.

The point is not my failure, but His faithfulness. I am not strong enough on my own; I am crushed under the weight of lies before I can even consciously redirect my thoughts toward the truth, before I can even recall those Scriptures to mind that I have been trying to memorize. It is so much easier for me to think of myself rather than others, to follow a bad train of thought to its conclusion rather than immediately fighting it with the sword of the Spirit. Thankfully, He is faithful to do the heavy lifting for me. If He hasn't given up on me, I know He hasn't given up on you either, whatever your stronghold may be.

Oh, can we all take a moment and praise His glorious name for that?

Slave to Sin

Yesterday, for the billionth time, someone annoyed me. Someone stepped out of their place and said things they shouldn't say. Someone dared to insult me, to make me feel uncomfortable, to treat me as lower than them. And I deserve special treatment, right? Because I'm a foreigner, because this isn't my first language, because I'm older than them, because I'm a girl...whatever, I can always come up with some reason.

And I let him know he annoyed me too. I didn't care one bit that my putting him in his place was completely counter-cultural (in fact, the horrible, rebellious, prideful side of me rather enjoyed that fact). In the moment that I was seeing red, it didn't matter. I had no desire to even try to follow Jesus, no desire to even try to act like him. In that moment my desire was completely to act on the rage/wounds that had built up inside me. I didn't care how I looked to others, didn't care if this guy knew any of my friends...I just had to stand up for myself.

Later, I told God, Okay God, I know that wasn't right, but did you see what he said? How dare he, right? I know it was sin on my part, but it was understandable sin. It was in response to another sin.

But whatever I might have said to justify myself, my heart still knew it was wrong. I am the world's worst at turning the other cheek. If someone insults me or wounds my pride or says I'm wrong when I'm right, of course I have to let them know it. It's completely understandable. It's what the world says I should do.

It's in those moments that I realize how not conformed to Christ I am. How, even though I generally desire to follow Him, in those brief moments of anger I only have a desire to follow myself.

Later, as I sat at the table thoughtfully peeling an orange, the dog I'm watching trotted in. As soon as I started peeling it, I knew the fragrance would waft through the house, and she would have no choice. It was only a matter of time; she would have to run in. She began begging in the most pitiful voice, even tapping me with her paw to let me know she was there, as if I didn't already know. No dignity. She would do anything to get a piece of that orange.

I realized that I am as much a slave to these "understandable sins" as the dog is to that orange.

I obey my fleshly desires just as reflexively and helplessly as she obeys her nose. What can be done? It's the way we're wired, right? She as a dog is wired to act on that nose, to do anything for food, and I as a human am wired to do anything to satisfy my own desires.

Then as I threw a couple slices to the dog (she gobbled them up and was back to begging as pathetically as if I had never given her any orange slices...there are definitely more parallels there), my thoughts turned from her to a medical problem I've had. Six months, many doctors, many medicines. The severity comes and goes, but it's always there. I saw another parallel between that problem and these respectable sins, like what we like to call "justifiable anger."

Wouldn't it be ridiculous if I just let this ailment go on without at least trying to treat it? The treatments aren't working perfectly, granted...but what if I just completely let it go?

I even tried that for a bit, in fact, and trust me...it was complete misery.

You can't let a huge, persistent problem like that go untreated. Especially when it so deeply affects your all-around quality of life and infiltrates every moment, reminding you that you're unwell. You wouldn't let a non-life-threatening ailment go completely untreated and justify it by saying that at least it isn't cancer.

And yet that's what I do with my "understandable, respectable, justifiable" sins.

I just patch over them after the fact, reasoning that everyone around me when I made that nasty comment or lost my temper at that car that honked too much or yelled at that guy who was rude to me must have surely been on my side, right? Everyone must have seen that what I did was okay. God must have even given me an understanding pat on the shoulder and a knowing wink, right? And so I just let the problems go on untreated. Oh, sure, at first they may be no big deal, and everyone may understand why I made that snarky comment, but what happens when it gets worse and worse, and before I know it I have absolutely no control over my tongue?

I'm no better than the dog. My tongue owns me the same as her nose owns her.

"What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:15-23

Not gonna lie, the phrase "slaves to righteousness" didn't used to be one of my favorites. I pictured a monk or a nun living a life of self-denial, no laughter, going to bed at 8pm, a boring life, if I can be quite honest. I ran away from that picture. But now...I want so badly to be a slave of righteousness! I realize so fully the implications of my slavery to sin. I have been released from so much, but Jesus wants to release me from so much more. When sin is my master, I am helpless against the awful things that want to spring out of my mouth. I am helpless against things like self-condemnation and jealousy. My own thoughts devour me. Continuing in slavery to sin, when you have already been purchased for Christ and marked for sanctification, is so painful. It's like trying to serve two masters. Now I think my increased understanding of slavery to sin helps me understand the true beauty of what slavery to righteousness would be. Currently, awful thoughts take root in my head, horrible words come out of my mouth before I can stop them, and anger clenches my heart so forcefully that I lose the will to pry its fingers away. If I were a slave to righteousness, my allegiance and vivid vision of Christ before me would not allow me to say horrible words even if they were on the tip of my tongue. Evil thoughts would be forced to die no matter how much my flesh wanted them to take root. Mercy would come out of my mouth before anger would even have a chance. Oh how wonderful that would be!

I must present myself to him as a slave - nothing else. Anything other than a slave means that I still retain the right to tell him, "Oh, but that sin was justified, right? You understand. I mean, we can't turn the other cheek all the time, right? That's just impractical. We have to stand up for ourselves or people will run all over us." These kinds of things. But if I am a slave, I have no right to stand up for my sin, to justify it - and hopefully, as I get in the habit, not even a desire to do so. I would so much rather be his slave than my sin's slave! My sin does not have my best interests at heart. My sin will not make me into the person that I need to become. As the book of James says, "The anger of man does not bring about the righteousness of God." There is no way that I will attain to his full righteousness if I still allow angry thoughts to take root.

Pure obedience from the heart - this is what I desire. A heart that, instead of forgetting Jesus in that moment of seeing red, will see him all the more clearly on the cross. I pray that, instead of losing my temper or patience and then immediately repenting, my repentance will take place before the anger even has a chance to come out. I will see him there on the cross and feel remorse at the idea that I was even thinking of nailing him once again. That rather than seeing the person who is annoying/insulting/whatevering me standing before me, I will only see my Savior, the one who was pierced for all my willful sins, pierced for all the moments I conveniently forget I belong to Him.

We are slaves of what we obey. I don't want to bend my will to that which destroys my soul. I want to gladly offer myself as a slave of the only One who can offer true freedom.

Audience

from Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

"And then it all came together. It all became so obvious, it was actually frightening. Moses was explaining all of humanity, right there in Genesis chapter 3, and because people were always reading it looking for the formula, they never saw it.

"Here is what I think Moses was saying: Man is wired so he gets his glory (his security, his understanding of value, his feeling of purpose, his feeling of rightness with his Maker, his security for eternity) from God, and this relationship is so strong, and God's love is so pure, that Adam and Eve felt no insecurity at all, so much so that they walked around naked and didn't even realize they were naked. But when that relationship was broken, they knew it instantly. All of their glory, the glory that came from God, was gone. It wouldn't be unlike being in love and having somebody love you and then all of a sudden that person is gone, like a kid lost in the store. All of the insecurity rises the instant you realize you are alone. No insecurity was felt when the person who loved you was around, but in his absence, it instantly comes tot he surface. in this way, Adam and Eve were naked and weren't ashamed when God was around, but the second the relationship was broken, they realized it and were ashamed. And that is just the beginning.

"If man was wired so that something outside himself told him who he was, and if God's presence was giving him a feeling of fulfillment, then when that relationship was broken, man would be pining for other people to tell him that he was good, right, okay with the world, and eternally secure. As I wrote earlier, we all compare ourselves to others, and none of our emotions - like jealousy and envy and lust - could exist unless man was wired so that somebody else told him who he was, and that somebody else was gone."

...

"A child learns early there is a fashionable and an unfashionable in the world, an ugly and a pretty, a valued and an unvalued. Where this system comes from, God only knows, but it is rarely questioned, and though completely illogical and agreed upon by everyone as evil, it remains in play, commanding our emotions as something that comes naturally, as though a radioactive kind of tragedy happened, screwing up our souls. Adulterated or policed, the system can grow to something more civilized, but no less dominant as a drive of nature. In youth the system is obvious. If you want to learn the operating system to which humans are subjected, step into a classroom of preteen students and listen to the dialogue. You will hear the constant measurements, the talk about family wealth, whose father drives what car, who lives in what neighborhood, or who is dating whom.

"Here is how it feels: From the first day of school the conversation is the same as it would be if hundreds of students were told to stand in line ranging from best to worst, coolest to most uncool, each presenting their case for value, each presenting an offense to the cases of others, alliances being formed as caricatures of reality television (or vice versa).

"And here is what is terrible: There will be a sort of punishment being dealt to those at the end of the line, each person dealing out castigation as a way of dissociation from the geeks, driven by the fear that associating with somebody at the end of the line might cost them position, as if the two might be averaged, landing each of them in the space between. And so, in this way, students are constantly looking to associate themselves with those higher in line, and dissociate from those of low position. Great lengths will be taken to associate with those at the front of the line. Students will kiss up, drop names, lie about friendships  and so on. Many will hate the most popular and yet subject themselves to their approval s though they were small gods. But the great crime, the great tragedy, is not in the attempts to associate but rather the efforts to dissociate. If a person feels his space in the hierarchy is threatened, that he might lose position, the vehemence he feels toward the lesser person is nearly malevolent."

...

"It must have been wonderful to spend time with Christ, with Somebody who liked you, loved you, believed in you, and sought a closeness foreign to skin-bound man. A person would feel significant in His presence. After all, those who knew Christ personally went on to accomplish amazing feats, proving unwavering devotion. It must have been thrilling to look into the eyes of God and have Him look back and communicate that human beings, down to the individual, are of immense worth and beauty and worthy of intimacy with each other and the Godhead. Such an understanding fueled a lifetime of joy and emotional health among the disciples that neither crowds of people jeering insults  nor prison, nor torture, nor exclusion could undo. They were faithful to the end, even to their own deaths.

"I recently read an interview in which the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison was asked why she had become a great writer, what books she had read, what method she had used to structure her practice. She laughed and said, 'Oh, no, that is not why I am a great writer. I am a great writer because when I was a little girl and walked into a room where my father was sitting, his eyes would light up. That is why I am a great writer. That is why. There isn't any other reason.'"

...

"I would imagine, then, that the repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another."

24 years

I don't think that God's grading me on how well I understand election vs. free will, or how well I can explain the genocides in the Old Testament, or any of the other burdens other men try to put on my back so I can prove myself a real Christian, someone who fits the mold and isn't heretical.

I think, perhaps, He really means what he says: that he freely gives love and grace through his perfect and precious son Jesus - love and grace that I have accepted with all my heart. Love and grace that I still must remind myself to accept every morning when I wake up, lest I fall back into slavery to what others think of me and what culture tells me to do.

I think, perhaps, He desires with all His heart that I love Him and love His people, rather than that I understand Him perfectly and explain Him without contradiction to others.

After all, "his ways are beyond searching out," right? Doesn't he sit enthroned above the earth? Isn't it foolish to think I can ever understand all his ways or explain away everything He does so that He never angers me, never terrifies me, never awes me, never confuses me?

I think it's impossible to ever get to that point, where I can understand God well enough that I can point a finger at others and say without a doubt that THEY'RE WRONG. May I never, ever be one of those "ministers of the gospel" who smiles smugly and self-assuredly while others walk away confused and lonely. I ask that instead I'm the one who prays with them and puts a blanket around their shoulders. I may not understand, but I love you, and I know that He does too.

However,

One thing I think is perfectly possible,

and that the Word agrees is perfectly possible,

is to tell of the Jesus I know and love intimately,
to tell what He has done for me,
what He has done for others,
what He has done for the world.

I can tell of the new life He gives.
I can tell of His healing power, both physically and spiritually.
I can talk about how I continue to struggle with things all the time, dark things like depression and loneliness and feelings of unworthiness
(not unlike the writer of the Psalms),
and how,
while He hasn't completely cured me of those things,
He holds me and walks me through those times,
step by step,
never leaving, even though He may be the only one who walks beside me.

I can tell of how I am fearfully and wonderfully made,
(how you are fearfully [with great care] and wonderfully made),
even though sometimes I look at myself and wonder why he saw fit to make me,
why I'm here,
what I'm doing,
where I'm going.
I can still say, "I believe You when You say I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Though my heart doesn't agree right now, and my head doesn't know where I'm headed, I know in my soul that You have a purpose for my life."

I can't explain all His ways,
But I can say those things.
I can believe Him.
I can do that.

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Jane Austen Lovers

Written as part of the "Broken Hallelujah" series with Prodigal and SheLoves Magazine

When October approached and I had been here a year, I felt I was really getting the hang of things. I could go to the tea shop and help my friends sort tea, I could eat the local noodles without gagging, and I found I was actually WANTING hot peppers in my food. My language had improved a lot. Though my grammar was still oftentimes horrific, I could communicate with people pretty well, and I felt I had grown to understand the culture much better. Crowds and honking didn't bother me as much as they had at first. I could keep my cool in chaotic situations that would have made me lose it a year before, and I could now speak to people in situations where before I would have frozen up. Oh, sure, there would still be moments when I used the wrong tone and had to repeat myself, but even the local people have those problems sometimes. All in all, I was feeling pretty comfortable.

A friend invited me to go to her hometown for the Mid-Autumn Festival. I was so excited to be spending a few days with all local people, even though I was a little nervous about it. But I felt I was ready, and I loved this precious friend. So we squeezed into the crowded bus like so many sardines, moving and pulsing as one with the squeaky stoppings and goings of the bus, and then packed ourselves onto a train where I sat across from a shirtless elderly man who liked to spit on the floor. I smiled as I thought how this was no big deal to me. In fact, I enjoyed the smooth motion of the train and was not too bothered by everyone peering over their chairs or strolling down the aisles only to stop and stare at me. Even the people walking down the aisles of the train shouting as they sold things like toothbrushes and light-up bouncy balls just made me laugh, even when they woke me up.

We arrived at my friend's hometown late at night. It was much colder than my city. The entire town has no taxis or buses, as you can mostly walk anywhere or pay the equivalent of a dollar if you want to take a little 3-wheel red vehicle to get somewhere. Or if you had a lot of people, you could take a bouncy white bread truck. We loaded up in a bouncy bread truck and thumpity-thump-thumped all the way to my friend's home. We walked up the stairs to the apartment, and I ate some instant noodles because I hadn't had any dinner. I looked up at the posters of prosperity gods and the Chairman plastered on the aging walls during the local TV commercials.

When it came time to sleep, we turned off the matchmaking game show and I shared my friend's bed, a hard board covered with a thin blanket but with a big poofy comforter on top. The windows were all open even though it was cold outside; I slept like a baby.

In the mornings we would eat the local noodles and moon cakes. We might go do a short activity in the late morning, then her mom might make lunch that consisted of things like greens, beer fish, pigs' ears, and chicken soup. Then we would have a long nap in the afternoon and maybe get up at 3:30pm. I couldn't understand her mom very well because she spoke their local dialect, but she was so kind to me.

There was nothing at all wrong with what we were doing every day. It was wonderful to be so immersed in my local friend's life and language. We would go to beautiful pagodas and hills and temples, we would go visit her various family members - uncles and grandparents - and we were getting some great rest and fresh air. But suddenly a longing for home gripped my heart so tight and wouldn't let go.

It's not that everything was bad - it was just all DIFFERENT: Meeting all her different family members, who all had shrines to the female Buddha in their homes and looked at me as a big curiosity and yet were incredibly hospitable and gracious to me; eating countryside food all the time; eating the noodles not just now and then but every single day for breakfast; constantly being corrected in my language usage because this was the first time I'd ever had to use it all day every day; not being able to understand anything my friend's family was saying because they would all jovially shout at each other at dinner in the local dialect; sleeping on a bed that, while comfortable to me, was so different from my own; being careful to not step into the squatty as I showered and dumping buckets of water into it to flush it; and waking up to the smell of incense offered to the female Buddha every morning. I realized that even though I'd been here a year, I still had always had my little me-centered refuge of an apartment that I could return to at the end of the day, complete with cheese and hot chocolate and heating.

I felt a strange shyness creep over me. I began concentrating very hard on my food at meals and feeling oppressed by the unintelligible local dialect that was being shouted across the table. I began relishing times in the afternoon when I could read the very western Jane Austen and escape back to my culture and to my comfort zone, glorying that English flowed so easily in and out of my brain.

Then one day, after sitting down at another meal with tons of local people I didn't know all shouting at each other, looking desperately through the fat and organ meat for a piece of meat I wanted to eat, I walked out of the room to escape the noise and jumped out of my skin as a bazillion firecrackers went off just feet from me, followed by a whole wedding party staring at me. I ran to take refuge in the squatty potty so I could find a place where I could rest, where I knew no one was staring at me. When I got the courage to emerge, we then rode in my friend's dad's bread truck, where he bounced frighteningly fast over mountain roads and knocked the side mirror off of a fellow bread truck that was hurtling toward us at an equally dangerous speed. Then he let my friend drive and gave her a driving lesson by shouting at her constantly in the local dialect as she swerved off the road and onto the other side of the road quite a few times. This swerving caused my stomach to churn on top of everything I was feeling.

Tears started coming down before I could stop them.

I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I'm supposed to be hardcore and cross-cultural, right? I'm not supposed to let my American-ness get to me. In my heart of hearts, I love the countryside here and the small towns and their precious people. In my heart of hearts, I knew her family was being nothing but gracious and hospitable to me. Even what sounded like "shouting" to my American ears was not shouting to them, but lively dinner conversation and cautious instruction from a loving father teaching his daughter to drive (and perhaps not wanting to die). They were offering the best food they could give, and incorporating me, a foreigner, into their daily lives during a very traditional festival.

I was so ashamed that they noticed, and of course they immediately began driving back home. When we got there, I escaped to my friend's room and got away with Jane Austen, tears still blurring my eyes as I tried to read. Even though my eyes were reading Victorian prose, my heart was still in Asia, searching...why was I reacting like this? I'd been in this country a year now. I thought I had outgrown all my weird discomfort over things that were not bad, just different. I felt so ungrateful, so in need of the Father's grace. I felt so ashamed because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my friend's feelings after all the kindness she and her family had shown to me. I felt like a spoiled, selfish American brat. I told God I was sorry for failing him by failing to have constant joy and love for my friends.

And first, quietly, my friend's little brother's girlfriend walked in. She is tall and thin and soft-spoken and graceful. She has a sweet and gentle heart. You would think she'd listened to all of Beth Moore's lessons or something. But she's never heard of Beth Moore. And the only reason she's read a little of the book I read every day is because I've shown it to her.

Yet she came in and quietly put her arm around me, speaking words of comfort in both her language and mine. I kept apologizing, and she kept showing grace and love. Then my friend who originally invited me came in with a cup of tea for me, sitting down and saying, "JC says not to cry. We are your friends and we love you," and even talking to him for me, though she believes differently.

That night as we sat outside drinking oil tea, I made friends with a cute chubby little boy who wanted to practice his English, and his mom gave me all these local gifts because she was so happy her son had an English speaker to converse with. A guy close to my age who was introduced to me by my friend promptly said, "Sorry, I am shy because you are a beautiful girl!" As we all laughed, I thought to myself how we might all have a lot more dates if American guys were that blunt.

And my friend started opening up to me a lot more. Because I had been open with my ugliness and my shortcomings, she began to open up  - about how it is so difficult having divorced parents in the countryside because it is still very taboo there. How she hates the rush in your late twenties here to get married before you get "left over." How marriage should be about true love, not finances or family connections. And I shared in turn what my favorite book says about marriage, what a beautiful picture it paints. She told me the story of the female Buddha and how people in the countryside still revere her because they had nothing else to pray to during the starving times, and they felt they understood her because she had sought a life of suffering so as to identify better with the poor of the world. We talked about poverty and how Father dearly loves and fights for the poor and the sick and the starving.

On the bus ride home, as I continued to read Jane Austen, I meditated on how even when I'm ashamed of myself and feel like a failure, when I feel like a victim of the comfort I have grown up in, Father lavishes me with grace and good gifts and laughter...even, yes, even through the people I feel I've offended. And this is a grace, not that spoils me, but that refines me and helps me grow. This is a grace that gives me security and peace. It is not conditional, it is not given if I am a good girl; it is freely given that I might have the abundant life and be free to love Him in return with all of my heart. And so in the middle of my shortcomings and failures and chains to my own culture and language, my eyes turn not inward but upward and outward, to Him who gives grace and to the precious friends through whom He gives it. And so when I feel completely unlovable, I can rest in the assurance that I am still eternally loved, and I can still whisper a feeble, contrite, yet hopeful "halellujah."

The Gift of Love

Though I may speak with bravest fire,
And have the gift to all inspire,
And have not love, my words are vain,
As sounding brass, and hopeless gain.

Though I may give all I possess,
And striving so my love profess,
But not be given by love within,
The profit soon turns strangely thin.

Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control,
Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed;
By this we worship, and are freed.

- Hal Hopson, inspired by 1 Corinthians 13

If you've never heard it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QITeybpH0U8
or here if you like those awesome deep old-school church voices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_dlh4vtOU