Thoughts from Today

A few things I have learned so far after almost a week in Cambodia:
 - Air conditioning is a priceless gift
- Not being able to communicate is frustrating
- Language learning is hard work and I haven't even officially started yet!
 - I am so thankful for team and how they act like family.
 - I love the smiles here
- The traffic never ceases to make me smile. You never know what you will see
- I hate that I am probably making thousands of cultural mistakes without even realizing it
- It breaks my heart to see the brokenness here, in many forms. I wonder daily what I can do about it with my limited language.
 - I don't know what God has for the future but I KNOW for right now I am exactly where I need to be.

We Have Arrived!

It is so exciting to finally be in the place we have been preparing to come to for so long! One of the ways God confirmed his calling to me back in 2011 in the village was that I had this overwhelming sense of being home. When we landed in Phnom Penh on Sunday and began our journey to the guesthouse in the tuk tuk piled high with all of our earthly belongings, I couldn't help smiling. It doesn't feel quite like the plains of Nebraska which will always be home for me, but I have definitely felt a peace here knowing this is what God has for me right now.

It is has been a productive few days here already! I have gotten to have some of my favorite Cambodian treats- iced coffee with sweet cream (there is nothing quite like it!), rice and fried pork, and curry. Someone found a wonderful apartment for us and we were able to check it out and sign the contract right away. We should be able to move in later this week. We visited a couple of language schools and settled on one that is right around the corner from our apartment! Kristin and I will meet every day with a tutor for a couple of hours and then will go out to the market and other areas to put what we have learned into practice. Already we know of a couple of shops where we can visit often to enjoy a cold glass of juice or iced coffee and build relationships as we practice the language.

Right now I am enjoying all of the new experiences and cool ways that God is providing for our every need! I have been so thankful for all of the help from our field supervisor and local team here to help us get settled and adjusted. I know there will be frustrating days ahead and I appreciate everyone's prayers so much! Please pray for a clear and quick mind as we begin to learn the language and that even though we can't communicate we can be a light for the Father.

The Waiting

“Waiting is boring. It’s discouraging and worst of all it gives place to schemes. When we see nothing happening we want to make something happen. That’s what Sarah did when she told Abraham to take Hagar and have a baby with her. She had reached the point where the possibility of new life being created inside of her seemed ridiculous. Impossible. Laughable.” (Robin Jones Gunn)

God gave me a dream and a prayer to pray last year. A seemingly impossible dream for the person my sister would marry- my teammate Kristin’s brother Ben. I prayed diligently through the summer until the two of them had the chance to travel to Cambodia together and then I prayed like crazy while they were there.

Beth came home and she was in love. Wow! God had answered at least half of the prayer. We waited and started praying together. But the waiting seemed long and I fought the temptation to “scheme”, to figure out some way to make it happen. There were moments of hope when anything seemed possible, but I wasn’t sure if I was just making it up. There were moments when I said, “Lord, did I get this wrong? If this is what You want then why isn’t anything happening?”

They came to see Kristin and me in Colorado in April, my siblings and Ben. A perfect weekend together of hiking and dining and talking and laughing- seven “siblings” all together. They left and I fell on my knees. “God I am tired of waiting!”

That morning I read Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I gave all of these hopes and dreams over to Him. I said, “Lord, I give you my heart. Fill it with the desires YOU want to be there”. There was nothing magical in that prayer, but God heard. The very next day there was a text message and a phone call and a random trip to Kearney, and God said, “This is the story that only I could write”. And now three weeks later they are engaged, ready to serve God and advance His Kingdom and model in their relationship the love Jesus has for us.

Waiting is hard. There are prayers I have prayed, dreams in my heart that are still residing there, unanswered. I now ask that God puts HIS desires there and shapes those dreams to match His. In the waiting, I know I can grow. I can be pruned so that when the bloom of hope and answers come, it is more beautiful than I can even imagine. I keep praying and trusting the Almighty God who controls the universe and knows my heart.

“We are held by the One who put these dreams in our hearts. All we can do is wait. He infuses that which appears hopeless with life-giving, resurrection power. He brings the beauty in His time”. (Robin Jones Gunn)

Last Days in Texas

March, 2013

Beth was in Texas for Candidate Conference and we got to visit downtown Dallas and the art museum. 

My favorite building in all of Dallas- Fountain Place!

One last steak dinner

The office hosted a going-away party for me complete with delicious Asian food

What a fun time of fellowship

A fun version of Pictionary

The whole group!

I had many wonderful lunches and dinners with friends before leaving!

Give Me Your Heart

For the longest time I thought I was independent and capable. I was good at my job and took great pride in knowing the answer to any question thrown at me. I was good at school, at least at maintaining a 4.0 during graduate school, knowing how to write a paper that would please my professor. I was a generally good person, not making any major life mistakes and was respected for the choices I was making to follow The Lord.

But I see now that I was self-righteous, leaning on my own strength, conceited and keeping God at a distance. I could not let myself be vulnerable before others or The Lord. My prayers for the most part were shallow because I did not trust my heart before the Father. While I was at MTI the last five weeks, God said, "No more. I want your heart. I want your dependence on me and not on yourself". It happened all of a sudden. One of the guys who was at PILAT as a drill coach said something to me at supper that struck me to the core. It wasn't meant that way at all but it was like the curtain was thrown back and I saw my heart for what it was- a sinful mess. I went back to my room and wept. I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping up the front that doesn't allow anyone into my heart during the first two weeks of training, but going into the last three that wasn't possible. Every day we examined our lives, learned about how we fail and we try to act like we know more than God but fall on our faces before Him. By the end of my time at MTI, I felt more weak, vulnerable, and incapable than I ever have before.

But I discovered God's mercy. When I am weak and open, He pours His strength in me. As we wept over the things we are grieving and our goodbyes, I thought, "There is no way I can do this. It hurts too much". But God was right there to say, "Keep my eyes on Me. I will go with you". So I cling to Him, in these days when I can't keep my head on straight as I try to remember all I have to do and buy and pack. I cling to the Rock when I feel like my entire world is shaken, when I can't imagine life without grocery stores, internet, Christian radio, my family and sibling time, and church community. 

I know that the pruning is not done yet and I am so thankful that God does not leave us as we are!
The discipline is not pleasant but I yearn for His work in my life so that I am not left to my own devices. He is Good and He is Faithful.

 From The Valley of Vision: "O God, make me worthy of this calling, that the name of Jesus may be glorified in me and I in him".

A Time for Mourning

Jeremiah 9:17-18 This is what The Lord Almighty says: "Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids".

Today we grieved together. Each stage of life includes transition and with that comes losses that must be grieved. Some of these griefs hurt and sting worse than others but we cannot avoid them.

Leaving our homes and families and life as we have known it means saying goodbye to many different things. It might mean saying goodbye and grieving the loss of close friends, stability, safety, and identity.

Today the tears flowed and we wept together. We mourned together these things, prayed over these things and wrote out our laments to God. We went back to Scripture, clinging to God's promises and proclaiming His praises in the midst of the tears.

I want to allow myself to mourn the losses that I am experiencing, the dreams I am giving up, the deep pain that saying goodbye is stirring in my heart. But I don't want to stay there. I need to incorporate the losses into my understanding of who I am, who God is and move on to grow. Loss is part of life and I want to acknowledge that just as I am saying goodbye, so too are my parents and friends and others. I want to say in the midst of it all, "God is good. He is all-sufficient for me".

Being Rooted

Yesterday we talked about the stages of transition. After such a traumatic week, I was ready for something easy. Instead, I found myself wrestling with God. I like my roots! I like to know that I am safe, comfortable, connected. This is the Settled Stage.

Then change happens. We get pulled up and enter the Unsettled Stage. I don't like the feeling that my "snow globe" is being shaken, that I must let go of the familiar and comfortable. I feel in many ways like I am in this stage right now. I started out my time at MTI excited and ready to go to the field. This last week especially I have been confronted with my weaknesses and the things that I am saying goodbye to. It hurts and it is hard!

The middle stage is scary too. It is the rootless stage or Chaos! In this stage I am often anxious and fearful. I also know that it is in the chaos that God holds my hand tight. I learn to lean into Him, cling to the Rock when I have nothing else to hold on to. I know that I am getting ready to enter this stage soon.

But there is hope (there always is in Jesus)! Although the unsettled stage and chaos stages are hard, God reshapes us, pulls apart our dry and clumped roots so they can be transplanted again. The Re-settling might be a bit confusing, but God gives grace.

Then we must find the "new normal", the new settled. It will never be the same as the old settled, but my hope is that as I go through this process and come out on the other side, I am more mature and more dependent on The Lord.

I don't like the idea of change or transition, but I am learning that through it all, I can lean on The Lord and find my rest in Him, even in the midst of chaos.

Beauty in the Valley

From The Valley of Vision
Destroy in me every lofty thought,
Break pride to pieces and scatter it to the winds,
Annihilate each clinging shred of self-righteousness,
Implant in me true lowliness of spirit,
Abase me to self-loathing and self-abhorrence,
Open in me a fount of penitential tears,
Break me, then bind me up;
Thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling place for my God...
I ask great things of a great God.

The last few days have been such a roller-coaster.

I have seen God answer two big, bold prayers in a way that only He could.

I have seen God bring healing to brokenness and freedom from lies from the past.

I have hidden from rebel forces, watched them take and shoot hostages, all in a simulation to find out who I am under stress.

I have celebrated a birthday, a day to look at my expectations and my reality and say still, "God is faithful and He is good".

I have wept at the things and people that I am saying goodbye to, declaring again, "It is worth it".

Through all of this, God is exposing the icky parts of Sarah, the places in my heart that need to be broken and bound up, healed and redeemed, made vulnerable in order to find freedom. It hurts and I don't like it, but I want my heart to be a prepared dwelling place for my God, fully surrendered and totally His.

The Wrestling

We started Week #2 of SPLICE today, and my brain is full from everything we have been learning (at least it feels like there is no room left!). Much of what is happening in my heart is wrestling. There are questions that have come up, issues that we are dealing with and there are no easy answers.

Friday we spent the whole day learning about different ways of resolving conflict and the strengths and weaknesses of each. There are five major styles of conflict resolution:

- Directing: these people's goals are highly important to them but their concern for what matters to others tends to be of minor importance (high focus on task, lower focus on relationship).

- Avoiding: these people tend to withdraw in order to avoid conflicts and spend a lot of time processing (low focus on task, lower focus on relationships).

- Harmonizing: the relationship is of great importance, while their own agenda is of little importance; conflict should be avoided in favor of harmony (low focus on task, high focus on relationship).

- Compromising: these people are moderately concerned with their own agenda and about their relationships with people, seek a solution that spreads the winning and losing (moderate focus on task and relationship).

- Collaborating: they view conflicts as a problem to be solved and seek a solution that achieves both their goals and the goals of the other person in conflict; they are not satisfied until a solution is found (high focus on task, high focus on relationship).

I am definitely a Harmonizer and it was fascinating to hear the perspectives of the other styles. I was confronted with ways that I deal with confrontation that hurt others or make them feel demotivated. As part of our homework over the weekend we had to talk with someone close to us, someone from our family of origin, and a teammate to get their viewpoint of our conflict resolution style and I felt like some of the things I had been learning were confirmed, and other things were revealed that I need to continue to deal with in my heart. This is the wrestling.

Other big questions from today (that probably need an entire post some day):

- Am I reading the Bible through a cultural lens? (um, yes)
- What does truth telling look like in another culture?
- To what degree am I willing to give up feeling "normal" and what does that look like?

 Philippians 2:3-4 (The Message) Put yourself aside and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Making Judgments

We are on Day 2 of SPLICE, our training in cross-cultural adaptation. It has been an intense couple of days and my heart is full!

Today we did a simulation to illustrate how we observe and interact in new cultures. I am normally pretty apprehensive about these kinds of things, but was curious about what would take place. The setting was an island on which our airplane had to make an emergency landing. The men and women were separated and told to wait for what seemed like a long time in lines. Then we were ushered into a room (our training room) where all the tables and chairs were up-ended, trash was everywhere, the lights were off and a large sign on the wall said, "Keep silent. Women to the back". There were forms to fill out, but all the letters were backwards. We were told to fill them out, stay separated, and we waited for what again seemed like forever. Finally we were ushered back out to re-board our plane.

In going through the simulation, I made judgments of this "culture" based on my observations. I was looking through a filter, standing on a certain meaning base in order to interpret what I was experiencing. Later after we talked through the exercise, our trainer gave us information about the values of the "culture". I was convicted and humbled actually, because of the negative judgments I had made. This "culture" seemed wrong compared to my American filter.

Now, I have traveled a fair amount cross-culturally and had lots of good training on how to value differences and suspend judgment. But thrown into a situation that was intimidating and unnerving (I was pretty sure we were going to be lined up and randomly "shot at"), I went right back to making judgments. And I was completely wrong! I have a lot to learn as I prepare to enter a new culture.