How was it?
That’s the question I keep getting. That’s the question that keeps ringing in my ears every time I walk out of my home, and the one question that makes every piece of my body cringe with emotional havoc. To say I hate that question may be an understatement.
It was great… is all I can manage to throw out there with the best-fake smile I can put together to try to smooth it over.
How am I supposed to answer a question like that? Especially with people who have the attention spans of “oh wait! Squirrel!”
Yes, it was great, but it was also hard and amazing and stretching and complicated and emotional and spiritual and growth-enducing and everything in between. That’s not a question that can just be… I don’t know… answered simply. Plus, for the most part, people are only asking it out of feelings of obligation. They don’t really want to sit and hear the complicated, long response. That’s too real.
Yesterday, I cried. A few times, actually. Why? I wasn’t sure at first. I knew I wasn’t looking forward to going to church because I knew what would happen. Everyone would come at me with that same, horrid question.
I also knew I wasn’t looking forward to going to work afterward because of how horrible it felt on Saturday. What felt horrible about it? It took me a bit to figure that one out, but I think I may know at least part of the answer.
I’m working in a Christian bookstore. You’d think I would feel right back on the field in an environment like that, right? Wrong. I spent the last 11 months of my life where my job was to help people. To love them, to spend time with them, to encourage them and do the best I could to be Jesus to them. That was literally my job. Now, even at this bookstore, my job is nothing more than to put money in a man’s pocket. Every time I would find someone to talk to in the aisles, a sudden buzz in my earpiece headset would scream at me to go back to the Bible section so I could talk someone into buying an $80 Bible instead of focusing on the person I was engaging with. Perhaps that’s not a terrible thing, but when my whole life this year has been about focusing on spending time with and talking to people, being a pushy old night-market lady is not really what I’m into these days.
The truth is, I’m different. I see things different. Not only do I see things differently, I want things to be different. An interesting factor in all of this is that I can also see how easy it would be to roll back into the mundane, meaningless routines of life that I indulged in beforehand, and drudgingly go about my days with nothing more in mind besides making it to the next one. The pointless, faith-without-works death notice of a life that I lived and called normal. Sure, it paid the bills. Sure, it got me things I wanted (or thought I wanted). Sure, it even made me comfortable at times. But you see, I’ve tasted something different now. I’ve tasted a life outside of the normal, ordinary. I’ve tasted the extra-ordinary of being outside of comfort and having to rely on God… the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
While it would be easy, and almost tempting to walk back into familiar territory as an ordinary nobody, I don’t want that anymore. I want to live out the foolish things that confound the wise. Not because I wish to be seen, but because I’ve learned that loving my God… truly loving Him with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength leads to that: stepping outside the familiarities of comfort and living out the extraordinary that shows the greatness of my God’s love. I don’t want to live comfortably when I have brothers and sisters in Cambodia and Malaysia and Korea and Turkey and all over the world who are suffering for the sake of Gospel. For the sake of the good news. Because they love God and love people so much that they are willing to walk outside life’s comforts and into the fires of persecution.
This is why I can’t hear that question – How was it? – without cringing. Because nothing is the same. IT awoke things that needed to be awakened and reawakened. IT shattered things that needed to broken. IT built things that needed to be built. IT strengthened gifts that needed to be strong. IT changed me. And with God’s strength I intend to keep these changes and grow upon them.
