In Japan they are meticulous about being clean. Other countries we have been to we are lucky if we get a shower once a week for five minutes. If we get a real shower and one that has warm water it is as if we are winning the lottery.
It’s really cute because our host mom every evening around 8:30 P.M. starts making the shower rounds. She makes a list in her head and starts shaking her head and saying the person who is on the docket to get their shower for the evening. Sometimes our family fills their HUGE bathtub with water and once you are clean you soak in the tub before your shower experience is done. By the way we are super spoiled at our host house because there is also this HUGE window that over looks a picturesque tree like forest right outside our house.
One Saturday we missed our bath time and we were bumped to the morning. Our Sunday morning’s had consisted of going to where our ministry host lives and doing team church but this morning our host mom had started cleaning and we decided to help out. We were cleaning up a storm even our host dad jumped into the cleaning occasion. I was filthy and decided bath time was overdue, so I double checked with host mom and got my scrub on. After my glorious refreshed shower I was drying off to put my clothes on when our host mom walks in on me totally NAKED. I am sure I looked like a deer in headlights and made deep eye contact with her as she screamed, “Sumimasen!” I mean really, my immediate response was..
AM I THAT HIDEOUS!?
I came out of the shower, CLOTHED, and she again apologized. I just smiled and said,
“I guess we are real family now.”
The following Sunday our host mom and another lady who hosts girls from our squad wanted to go to an ONSEN. An onsen is a bathhouse where people come and soak in hot springs. There is a meticulous method to the onsen. You first go into an area where you get clean. There are showers and the Japanese like to sit on little stools. After you are clean then you are able to soak in the springs. Some are hot and some are ice cold. The thing is everyone is completely naked.
We sat around the table as our mom was talking on the phone with the other host trying to figure out where we would go and how much it would cost since it was the weekend. The tone of our mom’s voice was hilarious. We sat and listened trying to figure out what she was cackling about, I mean our mom is pretty vocal for being Japanese but nothing to the extent of what we were hearing. In my mind I translated her telling the other mom about my nakedness. I imagined her telling the other host mom what they were about to be up against with the large American girls that they were going to take to the onsen. My mind flashed back to the moment a week earlier when we had to press into awkwardness and embrace each other in a way I had not expected.
Our host mom passed the phone to me so the other host could speak to me in English.
“We had wanted to go to a really nice onsen but they are expensive on the weekends. Also they don’t allow tattoo’s so we will be going to the public onsen.”
That’s when it hit me. I don’t think my host mom was screaming about my nakedness, I think she was screaming because of my huge circa 2003ish tattoo that covers most of my back but you can not see unless I am pretty much naked.
We got into the car and picked up the other host and the girls that live with her. As we are driving my teammate mentions the tattoo situation.
“Basically tattoo’s mean you are in a gang. It’s not tolerated at the private onsen’s.”
Great so my host mom wasn’t screaming because of my apparent ‘hideous’ body but was screaming “I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY!” because of the shock that I might be in a gang?
We get to the onsen and get into the ladies area and everyone is naked. It must have been old lady day because there were lots of older woman that specific day. In that moment as everything is stripped away you are faced with two ways of thinking.
ONE
I can be embarrassed and live in the world of comparison and not embrace this experience
or
TWO
I can be free and know that God made me this way for a specific purpose.
I see these cute Japanese ladies and they are so small and I wonder why am I so large? I wonder why God made me with big arms and a ghetto booty? I look at my mid section and think, there is a little too much around here. Then I am reminded to have grace and love myself. I have big arms because I am made to carry large loads, both physically and spiritually. I have a ghetto booty because I am going to kick the devil in his stupid face, physically and spiritually. I have a little too much mid section because I love spending time with people who love food, I’ll just start having one less snack every once in a while. I learn to love myself and in the moment at the onsen I pick option two. Not just for that moment but hopefully I choose that moment every day.
We sat in hot springs naked, talking about life and laughing.
I love the onsen. I hope to be naked more, maybe not so much physically but in the way that when you are in the onsen you are vulnerable and free. In the onsen you have nothing covering you up, you have to love yourself, even if there are “flaws.”
Its crazy how easy it is to love others and how hard it seems to love yourself. The thing is you can’t fully love others if you don’t love yourself. When you are capped with loving yourself you are capped with loving others.
Matthew 22:36-40The Message (MSG)
The Most Important Command
34-36 When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
37-40 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
I hope today you get naked, in the sense that you can strip everything away and truly love you. God made you just the way you are for a specific reason. Embrace it. Live. BE! Love and love well!
Sending love from Japan,
<3
Ash
#Teamash
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