A new year, a new continent, a new team, a new start. I like new beginnings (sometimes). I like the possibilities they hold. I like the chance to find new roads and have new experiences and learn new things. But for me as important as a good start, is a good ending before. So as the Eastern Europe leg of this journey comes to a close I wanted to reflect back on what it has taught me and how I have grown as well as what I want to take into Africa with me and to share my hopes for the future to come.
Our last night in Greece, before leaving for debrief, as a team, we give everyone on the team both constructive and encouraging feedback. I was told how amazing it has been to watch me grow and change for the better. While I agree I have grown, I hadn’t realized the outward change that other people had.
Need for Acceptance. This is something I began to let go of in Bulgaria. While I still struggle with confidence, I rarely worry about doing or not doing things out of the need for acceptance. My lack of confidence stems from not believing in myself. Guess we know another area that needs to be work on.
Fear of Failure. This is something I recognized in Romania but have struggled to step into and work on. While it is not something I have been actively pursuing it is never far from my mind as something I need to keep checking myself on.
Commitment to Prayer. I love praying for people but it had never been something I did daily or even regularly. In Romania I explored this and decided to work on it and I committed to praying daily throughout Albania. I really enjoyed developing the discipline of prayer and did see a lot of fruit in that. But as I went into Greece and worked to develop more disciplines, my commitment to prayer at times took a back seat. This is something I want to step back into and take ownership of going forward.
Memorizing Scripture. Not something I ever thought I would want to do even though I am good at it and do enjoy the challenge of memorization. I stepped into this in Albania and Greece and have enjoyed it and plan to keep it up.
The last thing I learned was probably the most impactful but also the most difficult and uncomfortable: the need for open and constant communication in community. I have always thought I was open and vulnerable but had forgotten something that God showed me at training camp: that I while good at this, I don’t do it completely. Like an ice burg, I show what I want, the easy and pretty stuff, and then I keep the rest to myself. I had forgotten this revelation, and as a result, wasn’t openly sharing with my team. It turns out this had resulted in a problem, not only within my regular team, but it was also a problem that I was unaware of in Albania with my manistry month team. In Albania I was sick a lot due to my parasite and massive gallstone and missed a lot of ministry and then in Greece I spent the first two weeks very sick with the parasite. I thought I had been communicating to my team that I was sick in more specific ways than just the blanket statement of “I don’t feel well” but they never heard me. It left them unsure with what was wrong with me and if I really was not feeling well because of something physical or if I was just saying I don’t feel well to cover a myriad of other things. Unfortunately I never realized they felt this way and unfortunately it took them a long time before reluctantly coming to me with it. The resulting conversation was not comfortable and was not easy and was not something anyone of us wanted to do but we all knew it was a conversation that needed to be had. The result was amazing. After we got the hurt feelings and frustrations aired on both ends, we for the first time, came together as a team and started truly sharing with each other. I didn’t realize that I needed spell things out in a very specific way in a setting where their attention was completely on what I was saying. I thought passing remarks were enough. I hadn’t wanted to share in such a focused way because life had taught me that I would sound like a broken record and ran the risk of being labelled a Debbie Downer. I felt like I had been saying ‘I don’t feel well’ since October 10th in Romania…and I had been! Truly I didn’t feel well, but I didn’t want to bring people down by dwelling on it and at the same time, I didn’t realize that me deciding to not share openly was me pushing them away and not welcoming them into my life. No wonder they began to question if I really was sick.
I can’t wait for Africa and a new chapter to this journey and my life. I feel like I have finally learned how to do community right. It is what I was most looking forward to on the race but it was also the thing I struggled most with these first four months. I know I still have things to learn about living in community, such as giving effective but gentle feedback, but I feel like I am starting this next chapter off with a better understanding of community than I did before. It’s not easy being so completely open and transparent especially when it comes to issues of pride but I am not going to let that hold me back. I plan to go into this new team with the same level of openness and honestly that I came to find in my last time; no backsliding. That is my resolution to myself and to my team.
On New Year’s Eve we all took a moment to pause and think about the things we wanted to leave behind here in Europe to be free of and not take with us into Africa. We wrote them out and then burnt them in the fireplace. I wrote selfishness, pride, need for acceptance (because it does still creep in from time to time) and lack of confidence in myself. It isn’t easy to publically admit these ugly things about myself but owning the fact that they live in me is the first step in banishing them from my life. I am also thankful that these first four months as well as training camp have taught me that just because I have these things in me doesn’t mean that is who I am. We all have ugly in us, just most people don’t bare it to the world, and I am no less of a person because of the ugly inside of me. God can redeem the ugly and he will if I let him. So as I close this chapter on this part of the journey I am excited to see where I am and what I have to report at the closing of the next.
To new beginnings!
