I was having serious second thoughts.
We were
flying on a small airplane through breath-taking, snow-capped into the Alaskan
bush where we used to live.
My second thoughts were not about
our decision to visit our favorite bush community of Port Alsworth when we
still couldn’t think straight from jet lag. Not about the lack of warm winter
clothes I’d packed for our May, but still-freezing-cold trip to Alaska. Not
about going on furlough after a four-year term in Indonesia.
Instead, I was having second thoughts
about doing this at all. This overseas thing. This working as an MAF family in
Indonesia with our three kids. This living-on-the-other-side-of-the-world from
all the things that used to be familiar that now sometimes feels foreign.
Don’t
get me wrong. I love our work. I love our home in Indonesia. I love living a
life of purpose and sacrifice and service. I love our friends there. I love
seeing God do His divine best in and through our human mess.
But every once in a while, I lose my nerve. I start to think that we’re crazy doing this. That this was all a bad
idea.
Like when I’ve hardly slept in three days as we traveled from Indonesia
through Korea to the lower 48 and then up to Alaska. With a 4-year-old and a
2-year-old and a baby. Like when I don’t
feel prepared, despite the fact that I’ve been working on a miles-long list of
furlough-prep stuff for months.
Like when I forget what it’s like to live in
America and still don’t have Asian life completely figured out, but am asking
myself and my family to straddle both without making a scene in the airport security line.
Like when we’re leaving for furlough when the
needs are great and the workers are few.
And like when I have to swing from
giving, giving, giving to receiving, and accepting and needing. Which, at that
point, felt harder than having not much electricity, too many shrews, and what
felt like endless stress of the past few months.
There’s something about being
on the receiving end that is humbling and makes me feel vulnerable and is just plain hard
to accept.
From
the moment we arrived in Port Alsworth, our friends started giving to us.
Things we hadn’t used or tasted in years. Snuggly winter clothes. Cheetos.
Mexican food with cheesy nacho sauce, a respite in a beautiful apartment in a
gorgeous, quiet part of the world.
All
this goodness kept coming as we traveled to Idaho, then Colorado, then Texas,
even as I was adjusting from the sparseness that has become my life overseas,
as a mom of young kids.
After an especially hard year in
Indonesia, I’ve gotten used to things going wrong. To being disappointed. To
having no more than a few minutes to myself each day. To getting hardly any
sleep due to pregnancy, a newborn, roosters, calls-to-prayer, traffic that
never stops, off-key karaoke from our neighborhood eatery, fighting cats, and
power outages that turn into long, sticky nights.
And I’ve gotten used to giving more
than I thought I even had and watching it still not be enough.
And as we flew into Alaska, with
the sweat barely dried from our time in Indonesia, I thought that’s how it
would continue. I thought we’d freeze in our too-thin jackets. I thought we
wouldn’t have any food to eat until I ordered it from town to make it on
another airplane that would arrive who-knows-when.
And to be completely honest, I
thought people would have forgotten who we were. After all, it’s been a
particularly long four years.
But even as I knew that a burnout
meltdown was threatening to break through my try-hard smile, the gifts kept
coming.
I pried open my fatigued, but clenched-tight-to-keep-from-falling hands
to receive gift cards for treats from special friends, envelopes filled with
others’ generosity, delicious meals, encouraging conversations, toys for my
kids, a birthday party for my son, a week at a cabin in the Idaho mountains,
offers of help and baby-sitting, free or cheap places to live. On and on the
list goes with a zillion other acts of kindness.
And most of all, I had to accept the
truth that comes with those gifts.The truth that it’s OK to receive.
That I’m not the only one giving. That it’s OK to say that I need, too. That
I’m not alone. That I have friends who won't let me disappear no matter how far away I live or how rarely they see me.
And the funny thing is, this truth
has been there all along while I’ve lived in Indonesia…in the prayers and the
giving and the friendship that spans the miles and the friends who live next
door and in the God who loves to bless. I just couldn’t always see it with all
that sweat blurring my vision.
And even though I look forward to
returning to the life of giving in Indonesia in a few months, I'm learning it’s OK to spend
a season healing, recovering, resting, and letting God use others to fill me
up.
So, thank you, dear friends, for reminding me of His abundance, grace and crazy, crazy love.
I think of you often and hope I get to see you again. We attend church with your in laws. I hope you are resting and healing.
ReplyDeletexo rachel