Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”? {31 Days of Re-Entry}

During one of my trips back to America while I was living in China, I remember bemoaning to a mentor of mine about being single. She comforted me with the statement, “You have a higher calling.”

You mean I have a more important call than my friend living back in America with three kids? I thought.

“You have a higher calling.”

“You are DOING IT–you are going!”

“Be radical and sold out for Jesus!”

“Do big things for God.”

“I could never do what you do.”

“God has called YOU!”

It is statements like these that make it so difficult to return from the mission field to the humdrum life where you blend in with everyone else–and instead pursue a “lower calling.”

Growing up in the church, youth group, summer camps and Christian college, I had never really noticed these appeals to our pride until a few years ago. Our first year of marriage, my husband and I led a team of college students back to China with the organization I had been with. We had a week of training, complete with all the inspiring sermons, small groups, emotional praise and worship, prayer and individual devotionals I had been used to all my life. Not having grown up in the church, my husband would point out aspects of the messages I had never noticed before and how missions was made out to be the end-all, the only option for any Christian who was truly “sold out for Christ.”

An actor by trade, he actually saw many parallels between this group and all his acting teachers, who also considered the art to be a “calling.”

I was called to missions, but my husband was called to acting. Doctors feel called to save people. Artists are called to their particular art form–to dance, paint, sing, sculpt, compose or photograph. And the expectation is that you are either all in, or you are a sell out. Calling is not just a Christian term, it is a human term for people who are searching for purpose and meaning in life.

A quick Google search will lead you to articles such as: “10 Ways to Determine God’s Calling in Your Life,” “Find Your Calling: 5 Steps to Identify Your Purpose,” “4 Steps to Finding Your Calling,” “10 Signs you Found Your Calling,” and “Oprah On Finding Your Calling–What I Know for Sure.” It is not just Christians who want to make a difference in the world.

In February of 2015, in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “I Don’t Have a Job. I Have a Higher Calling,” one researcher noted that “those who can connect their work to a higher purpose—whether they are a janitor or a banker—tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, put in longer hours and rack up fewer absences.” God has put eternity in the hearts of man (Eccl. 3:11) and placed a desire to live for something or someone greater than ourselves within each of us.

The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren, has sold over 32 million copies world-wide for a reason. We want to have purpose. “What is your calling?” is a common question in Bible studies and small groups that assumes that each person has a unique and purposeful calling from God, though the “call to missions” seems to be the golden badge while the others are silver and copper.

Karen Yates puts it like this in her article “Your Calling is Closer Than You Think,” “We have an expectation that our calling is discoverable. It’s the gold nugget buried within the river bank. Search for it, be patient, don’t give up, we’ll find it (or stumble upon it) one day, eventually, and our lives will never be the same.”

When I answered the call to missions, I thought that it was an “all-in or all-out” situation. I felt sure God wouldn’t call me to do something halfway, so I threw myself completely into my work overseas. As mentioned in previous posts, God’s will for me turned out to be very different than I’d planned and I was heartbroken when I began to realize that I was going to have to be in the “all-out” camp of “less-than” Christians.

Missions, as it turns out, was a call on my life, but not the call. My call was first and foremost to intimacy with Jesus Christ.

I had left my first love to serve at the altar of my usefulness and worshipped what I could do for Christ rather than what He had already done for me. I had made my call to missions my idol, tightly winding my identity all around it, so that when I returned home I unraveled. I had no idea who I was anymore if I wasn’t “Someone’s friend or sister or daughter who is giving up everything to serve God in China.” I was just me again–Leslie without the “higher calling.” Leslie who lives in Chicago. Leslie the teacher. Leslie the wife.”

Like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, my calling had become my precious ring I clung to for security and significance. It took leaving, getting married and reentering American life to pry my fingers off of what had started out good, but had slowly become something I worshipped. God had always only wanted me to hold it with open hands.

Karen Yates remarks, “The problem I see with that over-used, over-emphasized, over-preached word “calling” is that many of us have limited the definition of “calling” to a profession, a career or a role. In this view, calling is about what we do, not about who we are. Calling becomes about assignment—my calling to be a mother, or a psychologist, or a missionary, or a teacher; my “calling” to “go into ministry” or “go on the mission field.” And then when our children walk out the door, when we lose our jobs, when our spouses suddenly die, when the funding doesn’t come in, when we become desensitized with our workplace, or when we simply grow old and hunched over, what then? Where is our calling?” (Yates, “Your Calling is Closer than You Think”)

I do still believe God calls us to specific work at specific times. Sometimes it is through a burning bush moment, but often it is walking through one open door in obedience, then the next, then the next until we find that we are somewhere very different than where we started. And I do think that telling the nations about Christ is a privilege and a joy that is very different from other callings. But we need to be careful with the superlatives, lest we throw ourselves wholeheartedly at the altar of our call instead of at the altar of our Savior.

What other phrases does the church use to inspire us to go instead of remind us who we are in Christ? Have you ever struggled with this issue of calling? What have you learned over the years?

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Related Articles:

Your Calling is Closer than You Think,” by Karen Yates, Relevant Magazine, May 28, 2013.

The Idolatry of Missions,” by Jonathan Trotter, A Life Overseas, Nov. 9, 2014.

Farewell to the Missionary Hero,” by Amy Peterson, Christianity Today, Sept. 14, 2015.

“I Don’t Have a Job.  I Have a Calling.” by Rachel Feintzeig, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24, 2015.

This post is day 17 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days during the month of October. Check out my other posts in this series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Linking up with Literacy Musing Mondays
and Taking Route

Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie {31 Days of Re-Entry}

I am an experience junkie.  There, I said it.  I’m addicted to change, hilarity and the absurd, being stretched and emerging with ridiculous tales.  I don’t know how I survived college intact since I took advantage of as many opportunities as would possibly fit into my schedule. 

My sophomore year, I debated whether or not I should do a six month internship in a developing country.  When I asked a trusted professor in his 50’s, he told me, “I think you should do it.  If I died tomorrow, you wouldn’t have to mourn me at all for the amount of experiences I’ve already had in my lifetime.”

So I lived with a Ugandan family in a village with no indoor plumbing for six months, commuting into Kampala each day to volunteer at a Compassion International child project (don’t be too impressed–I mostly did filing and editing!).

But I thought of my professor’s words…

When I saw a woman balancing 20 pounds of water on her head and a baby on her back who would most likely never travel more than a few miles from her home in her lifetime.

When I saw dying women in the slums covered in flies and dirty children running all around them.

When I realized the girls my age that I befriended had to scrounge for food to feed me when I spent the night at their house. 

And later in China, when my students’ dreams were to “go to America,” and I knew they would most likely only be able to take a job teaching back in their poor village and marry a man chosen by their parents.


In Ningxia, China, with my student, the first in her village to go to college

And I wondered:  Would the sum total of their life experiences equal:

a less fulfilling life? 

a less abundant life? 

a less valuable life?

a less meaningful life? 

Using my professor’s words, would the reverse be true of their “limited” existence–that we’d have to mourn their lives more because they hadn’t had the chance to go to summer camp as a kid, travel to 10 different countries or earn a Masters degree?   

With every experience I am given, I am given more responsibility.  I am held more responsible to tell other’s stories, educate those back in my passport country, to be the one voice in the crowd and in the church that can honestly say, “But it isn’t done that way everywhere.” 

And I can honestly say that while these experiences are addicting, this kind of exposure to the world and the level of responsibility that it brings can be almost immobilizing.

I feel guilty that I can spend thousands of dollars travelling when it costs me $300 to educate a girl in Uganda for the entire year.

I am burdened when I think of visiting children in an orphanage in Tajikistan who were paralyzed simply because they were never held, sitting hours on plastic toilets in the courtyard.

I am sickened by the 12 year old Thai girls I saw in Chiang Mai in the arms of their 65 year old white tourist “patrons.”

And I ache for the countless women in China that were forced to have abortions because they would have exceeded the number of children allowed by the government.

Yes, I am an experience addict, but the more that I see of the world, the more I find that the experience math just doesn’t compute.  Every life is a valuable life, regardless of the amount of experiences.  That soot-stained old man selling sweet potatoes on the side of the road in China every day from 7 am to 10 pm is JUST as valuable as me.  

God has gifted me with these opportunities not because I am more loved or valuable, but because He expects me to do something with what I experience.

~~~~~~

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This post is day 12 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas {31 Days of Re-Entry}

As mentioned before, one positive effect of re-entry is the perspective you gain on your time spent abroad.

I haven’t been in the blogging world very long, but I have noticed that bloggers seem to like lists, so in solidarity, here’s my contribution to the numerous “list posts.”

(This is not me running.)

I ran my first post-baby half marathon on Sunday and all I could do was keep thinking how similar it was to serving overseas, so here it is: 

12 Race-day Lessons for Serving Overseas:

1. Run YOUR race, at YOUR pace.
My race on Sunday wasn’t just for people doing a half marathon, but also included those doing a 10K and a full marathon.  Before I realized this, it was easy to compare myself to those around me thinking, They’re running too fast too soon–they’re going to burn out.  Or They are sooo slow.  Wow.  Hope they finish in time.  When I approached the six mile mark (of 13), some people around me started sprinting.  It wasn’t until then that I realized their race was half as long as mine, so they had a completely different pace.  Short-termers and long-termers have entirely different “paces,” so don’t compare your race to theirs!


2. Train beforehand.
Most people wouldn’t just sign up to run 13 miles if they haven’t been running at all, but I know plenty of people who have gone overseas without training.  If your organization doesn’t require cross-cultural training, I would definitely recommend finding a church that offers Perspectives or even signing up for a course or two at a nearby Christian College.  Many of them offer short week-long courses during Christmas or summer break.

3. Don’t run through the pain.
Cross-cultural workers think that they have to have everything together.  Some of this is the fault of the church, who lifts us up as Super Christians and expects us to be perfectly spiritual.  But, just like running, when you run through the pain, you risk further injury–to yourself and to others.  It is okay to step out of the race for a while when you need help.

4. Use props, because sometimes it is just boring.
When I run long races, I like to listen to sermons or music.  When you are overseas, sometimes you just need to pamper yourself on days when life is difficult.  Listen to music.  Watch movies.  Read books.  Get a massage. Chat with a friend for two hours.  It’s okay if you don’t live exactly like the people in the culture at all times!     

5. Notice the course.
The course I ran this weekend was around a reservoir in Colorado.  It was a grey and misty day, but I enjoyed the farms, the mountains in the distance and even watching the people around me.  Living abroad, it’s actually pretty impossible NOT to notice when you are in a setting so different from your own, but after five years overseas, I realized I was forgetting to appreciate the world around me.  It got too easy to have tunnel vision or even look at the ground on an entire trip to the grocery store because I was just so sick of being stared at (those were the days when I needed to hide out in my apartment for a few days to get recharged).  If this is you, slow down and take notice again. 

6. It’s okay to walk sometimes.
Sometimes you don’t need to quit the race entirely, but you’ll be better able to run if you just slow down for a little while.  I certainly did this on Sunday and after walking or stopping to stretch, I felt so much more able to keep running.  Make space in your schedule for “being.”  Most other cultures are actually better at doing this than western ones, so you can learn from your host culture.  Take naps when they do.  In China, it was an expectation that you would nap after lunch and people would feel so sorry for you if I told them you hadn’t napped.  Rest.  You will be more productive if you do.

7.  Take the free Gatorade.
This race had aide stations every couple miles that offered water and Gatorade for weary runners.  If you are living overseas, you may not have many people offering to carry your burdens, but when you do, be sure you take advantage!

8. Use someone to keep pace.
I picked this woman that was actually older than me once I realized she was going at a much steadier pace than I was.  When you serve overseas, it is so helpful to have a mentor.  Put aside your fear and ask questions of those who have been there longer than you.


9.  It’s easier if you have at least one cheerleader on the sidelines.
I ran my first half marathon in Beijing, China, a place where people were so unfamiliar with running for fun that they asked me after the race if I won it. There were spectators, but not many cheerleaders (mainly people scowling at the stupid running people who were stopping up traffic).  But being a whitey in a sea of Asians, I stood out enough to be spotted by at least three different people from my organization on the sidelines who cheered me on.  Likewise, when you are living overseas, find your “person,” who will check on you relentlessly and pray for you fervently.   (Check out a recent article on A Life Overseas by Craig Thompson, “That One Safe Friend.”)

10.  Sometimes you feel alone even when you are running in a crowd.
In a race, overseas, and just in life, we are really running our races alone.  Sometimes you can gather adrenaline from the crowd, but at the end of the day, you cross the finish line alone.  (Of course, if you know the Lord, you know that you are never truly alone!)

11. If you can, run with a friend.
This was the first race I actually had a friend train with me for and it made it go so much more quickly! In China, I had a “team” of two–including me–but this teammate was the hugest blessing in my life.  We were forced to rely on one another.  Seek out a friend in country–even if you can just keep in touch via Internet or text messages–who will remind you to keep running on the days you want to bow out.

12. It’s not about winning the race, it’s about finishing.
I will never place in a race.  In the five half marathons I have run so far, my goal has always been just to finish (and maybe shave a minute or two off my previous time).  It is easy to get competitive when you are living overseas–especially when it comes to language.  Remember that just because you pass one person, doesn’t mean that you win the race.  Be faithful, my friend.  Unlike a half marathon, this race is actually not about you–and you have more than just Gatorade and energy bars fueling you–you have the Holy Spirit!  And He wants you to finish strong.  (And the last will be first, after all.)

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Hebrews 12:1-3 (NIV)

~~~~~~

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This post is day 11 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)


Linking up with Blessed but Stressed and Velvet Ashes

Photo: By Peter van der Sluijs (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Day 9: Caring for Your Dorothy {31 Days of Re-Entry}

Dorothy must have experienced some serious reverse culture shock, in spite of the fact that all she wanted was to leave Oz.  I wonder how Auntie Em and Uncle Henry cared for her?  Did they acknowledge her experience, or just try to urge her to move on with life as usual? 

Maybe you were like Dorothy, clicking your sparkly heels, chanting, “There’s no place like home.”  Or maybe you were like me, kicking and hurling myself on the ground like a toddler throwing a tantrum because I want to STAY!  I have heard that it is easier to return if you were truly ready to do so, but that it is much more difficult if you were thriving abroad and had to come home.  Pretty logical.

But this post is more for the Auntie Em’s and Uncle Henry’s than for us Dorothy’s.

One of the main aspects of re-entry is grieving, so it makes sense that you would care for your Dorothy as you would care for someone who is grieving.

5 Ways to Care for your Dorothy

1. Listen
Listen to our stories, look at our pictures and try and understand what life was like for us.  Listen when we need to talk about how much we miss our old life even if it means the same conversation over and over and over again.  I just kept waiting for the day my then-fiancé would roll his eyes and say, “But we already talked about this a million times!”  But he never did.

2. Ask
Ask us how we’re doing–and keep asking.  Just as a grieving person does not forget the person who died after a day, week, month or year, neither have we forgotten our old life.  Just because we may stop talking about it doesn’t mean we aren’t still thinking about it.  We just think you may be sick of hearing about it (as you may be).  But please keep asking.  When you do, this brings emotional healing and is a salve to our souls.  A simple, “How are you doing with re-entry?” is a good question to ask every few weeks.

3.  Give us time
There is no time limit on re-entry.  Five years later, I STILL struggle from time to time.  It takes much longer than you think it should, but hold on because we WILL reemerge from having our bodies in Kansas and our heads in Oz.  Eventually.

4. Give us grace
We are re-learning how to function in a society that has moved forward while we have been moving in a different direction.  We may not be up on current events, media, technology, and pop culture, so help us out.  Watch our faces carefully to see if we are following and gently enlighten us if we seem confused.  We want to re-engage, we just don’t know how yet.

5. Pray
Pray for us and with us.  Sometimes all we really need and want is for you to say, “Can I pray for you?”  You don’t have to have the magic words or even have a long prayer, but just entering God’s presence together helps remind us that this struggle is temporary, but that we serve an eternal God who transcends time, culture and emotional confusion.


What would you add to this list?  How have your friends and family cared for you as you have negotiated the waves of re-entry?

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This post is day 9 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Find many other great 31 day blogs here!



Photo:  By Warner Bros. (1949 re-issue trailer. See: TCM Movie Database) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass {31 Days of Re-Entry}

“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.  Alice replied, rather shyly, “I-I hardly know, sir, just at present-at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain MYSELF, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 5)


Last week, my husband and I got to see the stage production of Looking Glass Alice and I couldn’t help thinking how much her experience compared to the way I felt in returning to America.  

I was probably overly confident as I stepped off the plane in Chicago.  I had experienced closure of sorts in China, was eagerly anticipating getting engaged and married and felt that I would be able to move forward at the same rate of emotional and spiritual growth that I had the past five years in China.  But, like Alice, my reality was severely altered.  When you come back from being assimilated into another culture, you have changed in ways that you can’t even imagine, much less explain to another person.

As I packed up my apartment at the end of my time in China, I popped the pictures out of their frames, which were too bulky for a suitcase, thinking how much like the pictures I was–staying the same, but just changing frames.  I had no idea that not only was my frame changing, but that I was an entirely different picture than I was when I left five years before.

Two months after returning from China, I wrote:
Sept. 18, 2010
“Had a major meltdown Thursday night.  I think the tiredness and emotions of the past few weeks finally just needed a release.  It seems like I’m in tears every couple weeks and that has never been my pattern.  But I think a lot of it is reverse culture shock.  As expected, it’s strange to work in the exact same place I did before where everyone assumes that I, too, am the same.”

In China, I taught no more than 16 hours a week, leaving the rest of my time open to develop relationships with Chinese people.  An extrovert, this was a dream come true for me.  You mean my JOB is to hang out with people?!  So it was no wonder that when I returned to America and immediately entered into a 50 hour a week teaching job (and was planning a wedding), I felt life was like a rope that I could never quite grasp as it was constantly slipping through my fingers, chafing and burning along the way.

A little over two months after I returned to America, I wrote:
Sept. 30, 2010
“The weeks are flying by.  I can’t believe it’s already the 4th week of school.  Every second has been accounted for, every spare minute claimed for some important task.  I miss being.”

Nov. 13, 2010
“This is such a strange time of my life.  It’s uncomfortable having my time shoved into a vice and compressed down to minutes.  And I’m still missing China…”

Not only had my expectations for amount of time I would have for people and quiet time in a day changed, but many of my simple life routines had altered as well.  With fresh vegetable stands outside my apartment complex year-round, no car, a grocery store a mile away and little access to western food, my eating habits in China had changed drastically. 

Along with that, all the people where I lived would come home from work and school to have lunch as a family and NAP from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm.  I eventually followed suit.  It was glorious.  Even my laundry routines changed.  Five years later, I STILL can’t bear to dry my clothes after having to hang dry them for five years.

My expectations of relationships shifted as well.  In America, I had forgotten that with many people, you have to plan several weeks in advance if you want to hang out.  In China, I would plan in advance in my head, but invite someone to do something the day before or maybe two days beforehand (otherwise, you’d get stood up!). 

As I reflect back on this rocky time of life, I think I should have taken a bit more time to re-adapt to my home culture.  If I could do it again, I wouldn’t have taken such a demanding job at such a time of transition.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I would have sought out counseling to work through some of this change and asked for more help from friends.

But it’s difficult when you are trapped in the looking glass to know exactly how to get yourself out. 

“So you think you’re changed, do you?”

“I’m afraid I am, sir,” said Alice, “I can’t remember things as I used–and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!”

(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 5)

A few weeks after returning to Chicago, I wrote:
Aug. 26, 2010
“Lord, please help me to move on from the last chapter and live fully in this one and the one after that.  Prepare my heart.  Give me godly counsel and godly perspective…Help me to recognize that no matter where I am, who I’m with or what I’m doing, that my identity will not change.  I am a daughter of the King.  I am Christ’s beloved, bathed and cleansed from sin and shame and allowed to dance and worship before my Creator.”


How has living overseas changed you?  Have you brought any daily routines back into your passport culture with you?



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This post is day 6 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Find many other great 31 day blogs here!

Picture:  Arthur Rackham [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Day 4: Wasted Gifts {31 Days of Re-Entry}

If you read my post yesterday, you know that I struggle with pride, so it will come as no surprise to you that when watching the movie, The Incredibles, I identify with being an undercover super hero.  If you haven’t seen the movie, a super hero couple marries and decides to try and live a “normal” suburban life without using their powers, until, of course evil forces threaten and they are coerced into using their powers once again.  Currently a stay-at-home-mom in America, I sometimes feel like some of my gifts for language, culture and teaching have gone into hiding. I am Elastigirl incognito.

From childhood, we develop gifts that we often use only for a season, or they are latent in us until we have an opportunity to feed and water them once more.  Those who have changed careers, left jobs to stay home with children, immigrants with PhD’s working at McDonald’s in the states, those who were concert pianists, on the varsity team or on the traveling dance team in their childhood can probably relate. 

Missionaries develop a unique skill set that is often less useful if they return to their passport country:  tribal languages, cultural knowledge, bargaining skills, and the ability to live without running water and electricity aren’t skills that are usually in high demand in the western world.   If you return home, are you wasting your gifts?  Will you ever use them again?

I returned to the states to marry an amazing man, an actor who had just begun recording audio books full time, but did theater on the side.  He studied theater in college and has his MFA in acting.  In addition to loving God (and me), His passions in life are books, theater, Frisbee and craft coffee (in changing order depending on the time of day).

Before I met my husband, I got my Masters in Intercultural Studies and spent five years studying Mandarin Chinese, including two years of full time study, fully intending to spend the rest of my life in China.  Weeks before we met, I began applying to PhD programs in cultural studies.  

But God had different plans for us.

It seemed that each of us, in being called to marriage, were being called to lay our most precious gifts on the altar.  Missions and China for me and theater for him.

Upon returning to the states, one of the most painful questions someone could ask me was, “Are you using your Chinese?”  It triggered a sense of shame that I was perhaps squandering a gift I had spent hours in honing.  Likewise, my husband now knows to brace himself for sadness when he attends his friend’s plays or is asked what show he is currently in.

In the past five years of being back in the states, my husband and I have each had some opportunities to use these latent gifts, which I may go into in another post, but for the most part, we have had to leave these talents buried in the ground.

From the world’s perspective, this is “waste,” but God seems to operate by a different economy and at times, His equations just don’t seem to balance.  Living overseas, I was always surprised when the most “qualified” people (fluent in the language, with deep relationships, culturally savvy) were the ones that seemed to leave. How could God want that when they were “doing so much to help the kingdom?” 

Similarly, in Scripture, I have always been baffled by the fact that God called Paul, who seems like he would have been the perfect candidate for ministry to the Jews, to preach to the Gentiles.  Not logical.

Paul must have felt this loss.  It seems to come through in Philippians 3, where he recounts his qualifications as being a Pharisee from the “right” lineage.  He knew what he was capable of by the world’s standards.  And yet.  He counts all these as LOSS for the sake of Christ.  He is willing to lose all–his status, education, gifts and abilities–for the sake of knowing Christ.

This is the kind of man God wanted to use to spread His kingdom in the world. 

Jesus, take my gifts.
I break this valuable alabaster jar and pour it out for you.
You are worthy of my every sacrifice because you already sacrificed your life for mine.
Nothing done for you or for your glory can ever be considered “waste.”
Thank you, Jesus.


Do you feel that you have latent gifts?  What gifts is Christ asking you to lay at His feet until He chooses to use them again?

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This post is day 4 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Day 3: No One Is Special {31 Days of Re-entry}

This short story is my gift to you.  It’s my favorite.

Before I met my husband, he needed to have his wisdom teeth removed.  As many of us have done, he thought to himself, This anesthetic isn’t going to work on ME.  I’m special.  And then he woke up.  Soon, he began getting tons of text messages from friends he hadn’t heard from in years.  “We think you’re special, Adam!” they said.  Or, “Praying for you!” Confused, he checked back in his sent box on his phone to see if perhaps he may have sent something in his drugged state.  Sure enough, he had sent a message to EVERYONE in his contacts–old professors, clients, acquaintances…everyone:  a picture of himself with puffy, black and blue cheeks and bloody gauze sticking out of his mouth with the caption, “No one is special.”

With the exception of a few places in the world, when you go to live in a non-western culture, you feel special.  Living in the middle of nowhere in northwest China with four foreigners in our entire city, I literally caused fender benders.  

When I visited spots like the Terracotta Warriors or the Great Wall, people would ask to take their picture with me (seriously!  I counted 10 different people once!)  Once I was reading in a noodle shop when I looked up to see a group of Hui (Muslim) men decked out in National Geographic-worthy garb, holding their cell phones up to sneak a picture of me! 

People would jab their friends to look up at us as we walked down the street (even after living on the same street for three years).   We were called foreign “experts.” Ha.  I’m still not sure what I was supposed to be an expert at.  In large meetings at our university, we would always be given the best food, hotel rooms and seats–simply because we were their guests.  I certainly felt special.

It was a bit more tame, but the pedestal effect was present in the U.S. as well.  I mean, I must have been special to have multiple invitations to speak in small groups and in front of churches, right?  People supported me financially, prayerfully and just socially as they prioritized my yearly visits.  Missionaries receive a certain kind of fame within the church that is just hard not to enjoy.  In the eyes of the church, you are a Super Christian.

And then you’re not.

You step down and walk among all the normal, “boring” Christians again.  You go to Target, get a “secular” job and are no longer sought out by people at church who once wanted to meet the “missionary who lives in China.”  As annoying as the attention could be on those days back in the country where you just wanted to be anonymous and buy a tube of toothpaste without everyone commenting on your decision, it somehow sunk into your brain that you should be noticed.  You’re special, after all.

So now I believe that one of God’s greatest gifts to me was to bring me back.  The painful process has reminded me that I am not special.  Am I loved by God?  Yes.  But special?  Jesus Himself, though He was equal with God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but took the nature of a servant (Phil. 2).  My motives in serving overseas had slowly shifted as I had begun to selfishly enjoy that I was “special.”

I love this quote from Amy Young about her return to the states after living in China for over 20 years:
“Was I willing to stay in a story I thought was interesting on the surface so that people would think I am interesting even though I was fading in it? Was I the kind of person who cared so much about others opinions I was willing to prostitute myself to being interesting? Was being interesting my altar?”
(From the post “A Great Fear {As Pertaining to the Story of my Life}”, by Amy Young of The Messy Middle, Dec. 6, 2013.)

After being back in the states for 3 months, I copied this down in my journal from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers (Oct. 16):

“No Christian has a special work to do.  A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own…and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do.  Our Lord calls us to no special work–He calls us to Himself.”

Stepping out of the spotlight, we are stripped down to the essence of who we truly are–and that can be terrifying.  This is grace.  He is grace.  And our identity is found through our humble acceptance that we are nothing without Christ, but are complete in Him and Him alone.

Have you ever noticed that you have begun enjoying the feeling of being special just because you live overseas?  Do you think missionaries are somehow more special than others?  If you have returned, how have you dealt with this realization?
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Resources:
Jonathan Trotter wrote this article (that I wish I had written!) for the website, A Life Overseas, called “The Idolatry of Missions.”  Such a poignant and true testament to some of what I have experienced.
 

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This post is day 3 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)
 Also linking up with Velvet Ashes. 

Keeping Your Bearings When Living Cross-Culturally

It is easy to feel lost when you cross cultures.  Really any of the analogies will suffice—lost at sea, stranded in a crowd, wandering in the forest or in a new place in the dark.  A few years ago I learned how to scuba dive and the most terrifying feeling was when you became so disoriented that you lost track of the surface of the water. Living cross culturally can feel just like that (though re-entry can feel much the same)—you are swimming along enjoying the experience when you’re suddenly lost, alone and scared.  Here are some of the ways to keep your bearings when you begin to lose track of who you are, where you are and what you’re even doing there in the first place.

1. Die to yourself, but don’t lose yourself.  You are going to have to die to yourself daily and most of the time you won’t get to choose the crosses.  You may as well accept this.  God will honor your sacrifice.  At the same time, look for ways the Lord is trying to bless you by allowing you to be the person you were before you moved overseas.  For me, it was running and cooking.  In China, I lived near the countryside, so I could run without everyone in town elbowing their neighbor to come out and check out the strange white girl running without being chased, but I know other foreigners who had gym memberships and used that as their outlet.  When I lived in Africa, I laced up and ran through the village in my long skirt at the crack of dawn.  You can make it work.


2. You are not going to change the culture, so you may as well start noticing some of the great parts about it.  Anyone who has visited China knows those aspects of Chinese culture that just grate westerners the wrong way (no lines, pushing in crowds, never actually saying no even when you mean no—to name a few), but what about those aspects of non-western culture that we need to learn from?  Those parts that are actually, possibly MORE biblical, like not being so darn independent and individualistic that we can’t ask for help?


 3. Stay calibrated and keep your bearings. Have you ever had to “calibrate” your printer? According to dummies.com:


 “Calibration refers to the proper alignment of the inkjet cartridge nozzles to the paper and each other; without a properly calibrated printer, your print quality degrades. You’ll want to calibrate your printer when you see lines appearing fuzzy in artwork or when colored areas in printed images start or stop before they should.” 

 If your “print quality” is “degrading” or your lines are appearing “fuzzy,” then it’s back to the cross with you for calibration!  This is often easier said than done, but taking an hour or two out of my day or week to sit at the feet of Jesus can do wonders for my perspective.  Do you need to spend some time being “calibrated” and realigned to Jesus again? 

Most of us are familiar with this verse (though the Message version was new to me):

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people:  religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever.  I didn’t take on their way of life.  I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view.  I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.  I did all this because of the Message.  I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”  1 Corinthians 9: 22-23 (MSG) 

We need to keep our bearings in Christ—not our bearings in ourselves, our culture, our expat community or even in the culture we are striving so hard to adjust to, but our bearings in Christ first.  He is our true North in the disorienting confusion of a culture that we start to understand just in time to be eluded by another question.

4. Lastly, enjoy the gift of Kingdom Culture.  Kingdom Culture is that sweet spot of culture sharing made possible by belief in the same Savior; the center of a Venn diagram where insider and outsider culture collide into a central culture of love, sacrifice and humility at the foot of the cross. There is nothing like the cross to serve as the great equalizer.  I finally discovered this through relationships with other brothers and sisters in Christ who just seemed to “get” me even though our cultures collided in so many ways.  This is a special gift of grace made possible by a gracious Father.
 

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
 
From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.
 

 

What are some of the ways you have creatively been able to retain parts of your identity even though you are living overseas?  Are you staying calibrated to the cross?  What changes to you need to make to be able to do this?  How have you experienced Kingdom Culture?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linking up with Velvet Ashes

 

Here are a few related posts that I found interesting:

“The Seven Lies of Living Cross-Culturally,” http://www.thecultureblend.com/?p=2172

“Living Well Where you don’t belong,”   http://www.alifeoverseas.com/living-well-where-you-dont-belong/

“17 Things that Change Forever When you Live Abroad,”  http://masedimburgo.com/2014/06/04/17-things-change-forever-live-abroad/

 

Photo: By Jeremy Harbeck (NASA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

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