Transition

What would you think if I told you my house had burned down.... and with it all my pictures and sentimental items.      What if I told you at the same time I’d lost my job and no one is hiring.   And that my closest friends had all moved away.   

It’s hard to explain what is going on in my heart during this transition time.    People see me in church chatting with others.  I look normal.  I nod and smile at the appropriate places.  I look like I’m adjusted and fit right in.    Maybe if my skin was a different color or I spoke with an accent people might wonder if I felt comfortable in this place.  But because I look like everyone else....it’s assumed that I’m fine.

16 years of my life have ended.   It feels like the memories are destroyed like pictures in a fire.    The little stool that my chubby toddlers stood on to lick the spoon is gone.....  but for some reason the memory feels dead too.    Since there is no one here who walked with me in those years in the tribe there is no one to rehash the memory with.   (And face it, one sided rehashed memories really aren’t fun for the other person.)     

My job as I knew it is over.  I’ve been fired.  And not by choice.   The skills I acquired to live and function and minister in a foreign country are not required nor desired here.   No one cares that I can make refried beans in a pressure cooker,  can calm down a scared national because their baby has epilepsy,  that I can converse in foreign languages and understand foreign culture, or that I can make our family survive on 2 gallons of water a day.  The years of learning the nuances of Guarijio culture don’t matter because I’ve not learned the intricacies of Garrett County culture in the process.  And that is what matters now.  I feel lost.  

 My missionary friends who understand me are far away.  (Although thank God for Facebook)   Even though I never felt close relationship with the Guarijio I now realize that I did feel ‘community’ with them.   Community there means depending on each other, needing each other, using each other, being in each other’s lives daily even if it’s annoying and messy.    I haven’t learned what community is here yet.... but so far what I’ve seen is independent people not really wanting to need others or use others and are very afraid of bothering others.    And I don’t know how to fit in with that.    No one is hiring.      My whole world is upside down.  I do not have it all together- I do not even have a little bit of it together.  

 I am grieving many invisible deaths. 

Maybe in 5 years I’ll fit in.