A few years back our church in NC challenged us to start actually connecting with one another in our community, especially with our tendency to say "good" or "fine" every time someone asks how we're doing. I still battle with it. I have to purposely stop myself, and be real with people when they ask me how I'm doing, or how i'm "liking it here" in Scotland. I like to struggle inwardly, meaning the harder I'm struggling the more I want to push it down into myself and "make it work." I say, "Great! It's so beautiful!" And it is...beautiful that is, but it is not always great. I am partially hyperventilating typing this. I am in a community of Christians, once again living among them, but it is different still than the last time. They are younger, or single, or not parents, or haven't been married long, or I just haven't known them long enough...to burden them with my struggles. Or how about that my husband is the director of the centre where we live and he works. And how would that look, to confess my/our struggles to his employees? But I am no good at nodding, smiling, and saying, "Great!" for a long time--maybe it's a weakness, but I think God is showing me that living well is living lovingly showing my weaknesses. So here goes.
Scotland is not the US, though it speaks English (not American), and I can understand (most) people, there is still a cultural barrier (I have to say trousers instead of pants, figure out the coinage and currency, and spell things differently, to name just a few). It doesn't yet feel like home--and that sometimes makes me sad and homesick and often just out of the loop on what is normal. I am cautious too, because I feel, maybe mistakenly, that British culture is more subdued and isolated with its intimate sharings of self. How do I tell someone that marriage is hard right now, especially with having been in moving transition for the last 6+ months, that I'm struggling to find my friend and confidant in the husband that I have and desperately love? How do I say that motherhood is isolating, in that I'm not used to being the only full-time stay-at-home-mom I know here (though I am so enjoying the new friendships I am building)? How do I jump in to a culture and community (which I'm so used to doing in normal circumstances, just jumping in and getting to know it and doing everything I can to make it home) where I don't know the rules or "etiquettesies" or even know who to ask, as my husband has never officially lived in the UK as an adult? My vision seems to be blurring even now, just trying to figure out how to push myself, how to grow myself....and here is where I have been learning lately.
It is in this tragic earnest bending that I am failing, that all seems so heavy and impossible. As the rain taps on the windows, as Fiona sleeps in her bed, as toys lay scattered around me, and an empty coffee mug by my side, he is helping me finally get it. I'm sure I'll have to "get it" a thousand more times, but here it is: stop. bending. the. wrong. directions. I can only break from bending in every direction, the creases getting more pronounced the harder I bear down with the grit and sweat of trying. But if I bend towards Him, I can't possibly go wrong. Even as I type that worries pop into my head--how do I just stop caring? Or trying too hard? Do I stop trying at all? What does that mean? But I know that I'm at least headed in the right direction, even if I don't fully understand it yet. Ever opening and bending to Him, his joy will be my strength in weakness. And somewhere in my heart I'm wondering if God has something greater for me in this season, just around the corner, just through these woods I am wandering through, if he is preparing me for somehow serving his glory. I hope so.
