August 4, 2013

• Why We are Crazy and Why We Often Leave Too Soon

  I have learned a thing or two and heard a thing or two about missionaries and their/our quirks. During our missionary training school they told us lots of stories and warned us and prepared us on how not to become crazy and how not to burn out fast. Then we get here and have heard lots of stories of missionaries in all kinds of organizations doing this exact thing: coming crazy and burning out fast. And as much as we convinced ourselves that we wouldn’t, sometimes I can feel it already knocking on my door a tiny bit…the crazy – that’ what’s knocking….not that I’m inviting it in…but sometimes I hear it knocking. Go away crazy.

  Crazy, not as in I think I might start rocking back and forth and mumbling to myself, but crazy as in an over-zealous desire to make my reality match my dreams. An aggressive, impatient, insensitive, inflexible attitude that wants to prove to myself (and everyone else) that everything I left behind was, in truth, worth it.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve been imagining being a missionary since I was 11, but a girl has to talk herself into moving to another country even when it’s what she always dreamed. I had to talk myself into it when we put our house that I loved on the market and had strangers stomp through it in dirty shoes and with critical eyes. When we sold our furniture for which we had saved for years for a small percentage of what we had paid. When I laid out on tables in my driveway the stuff that I loved: wedding gifts, hand me downs from my mom, grandmas, and great grandmothers – treasures, comforters that we loved and slept under every night, frames that I carefully picked out to house my favorite photographs that I had taken myself in the fields around our neighborhood, curtains and my favorite dishes, my shorts – dang I miss my shorts, jewelry and the floating shelves on my walls that I wanted so badly. I sold it ALL to people who haggled me down to practically giving it away… all because of my passion to be a missionary. And with everything sold I just made my dreams bigger. Imagined deeper and hoped stronger…that being a missionary would be everything I’d ever believed it would be. I traded my love for all my beautiful things and imagined it transferring to the Guatemalan people, the moms, the children, the sick ones and the lost ones. The teenagers and college students we would get to know and work with and minister to. They were going to be worth every sacrifice.

  As I thought about leaving behind friends that I loved and our youth that I felt fiercely protected of. When I thought of leaving a place where I felt safe to drive 10 hours away by myself with the kids to visit grandparents. Toilets that flushed toilet paper, tap water that I could put in my mouth, and grocery stores that have EVERYTHING I need. Where policemen and guards didn’t carry around big and scary guns and we didn’t walk out of the bank feeling nervous after cashing a check. Where I knew the language inside and out and we had parks and sports for the kids and my favorite places to eat. But I thought about what we’d be doing…our job, our work, our responsibilities, the opportunities, the need and I told myself that it was going to be worth the sacrifice.

  It was a LOT Of building expectations to get me through the hard of letting go of everything. I ignored the lump in my throat and focused on big dreams. My dreams, if tangible would have overflowed the 20 suitcases and carry ons we brought to Guatemala.

  Guatemala is beautiful. More beautiful than I dreamed. Guatemalans are friendly, gracious, and they touch my heart in a way I never imagined. It already feels like home here which happened faster than I ever expected.

  But on the other hand I admit that this is hard. This can be lonely. I can feel very deep, down sad that sometimes my expectations and my reality are not even on the same planet. Some moments out of nowhere I just grieve for something I sold or left behind. Something that I didn’t let myself grieve about at the moment I let it go because I was too passionate about the future. But now that I’m in the future I realize: “I’m really sad that I had to let that go.” And in the middle of letting myself feel sad, I get a big punch of reality and crazy starts knocking. Stupid crazy. Go away.

  I know what I should say here. “This isn’t about you Christina.” How many times have I said that to myself since I’ve been here? More than I can count.
  But can I tell you a dark secret? Sometimes it doesn’t help.

  The last few days Crazy has been the annoying neighbor kid who knocks when people (me) should be sleeping or when I JUST finished telling him it was time to go home.

  So for a minute I gave myself permission to NOT say the words, “It’s not about you Christina.

  Instead I just imagined myself standing before God. I saw myself with my head bowed not out of humility but out of defeat. I saw myself with emotions in my hands held out before Him that I’m not proud of. I saw my hair hanging in front of my face like that you tube video where they put that scary looking child holding the doll in the elevator to scare people, because, well, I know God sees Crazy knocking on my door.

  And you know what I saw, what I felt, what I heard as I stood there before the Lord?
  Acceptance.
  Acceptance that makes me think of love.
  Love that I feel pouring from Jesus straight to my defeated heart.
  Love that covers a multitude of sins…most of which are my sins.
  Love that fills up my heart so much that I think of the things I gave up as a gift back to Jesus for loving me so much, instead of things I gave up for Guatemala.
  Love that calms me into the realization that things are going to work out. And that it’s really not the end of the world when reality is different than I expected. And that Jesus has got this and He’s got me and we are all going to be okay.

  Love that overwhelms me to the point that I feel pretty darn sure that crazy has left the building…for today.

  • 12:22 pm
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