I approach life with calculated and strategic precision. I tailor my social skills to the observations I glean from cues both verbal and non-verbal. I think three and four steps ahead so as to be prepared for the situations that may arise. I gracefully avoid tasks I may not immediately excel at and attempt to keep myself educated in an extensive list of topics in an effort to engage in a host of conversation opportunities that may arise.
You might look at my life and think me arrogant (or psychotic as many of my friends might attest). But when it comes down to it, I like the feeling of being right. I like knowing what’s going on, I like being included in conversations I am able to speak intelligently about and I like being respected by those around me. This embarassing pride has been my downfall for most of my life.
The scope of this confession might taint my persona in a negative way. Yet, one of the qualities I am committed to this next year is honesty. If I’m honest, I don’t like feeling stupid. I don’t like being uneducated or feeling out of the loop. I don’t like being laughed at for reasons I don’t understand. I struggle with the need to be “right” all the time and if anything is going to continue to refine this out of me, it’s 11 months in scenarios such as I’ve just described.
What I am trying most fiercly to guard against is a feeling of entering new cultures with a “superiority complex.” Like most men, I’m a fixer. I don’t like problems, I like solutions. In fact, my life has been about solutions and creative fixes to obstacles or challenges in my personal and professional roles for the last several years. I enjoy a good solution, a good fix, a good surgery that will lead once again to wholeness. What I’ve been realizing is that my definition of “problem” is about to change dramatically.
One of my biggest critiques of the Christian church is the way we’ve packaged evangelism into “quick easy steps” and “once in a lifetime opportunities” many of which don’t take into account the person or the circumstance. It has been a crucial step toward my understanding of what next year will hold. I want to learn, but will continue to fight the desire to “fix” (and by “fix” I’m learning I really mean “make like something I am familiar with or that has worked in the past.”) I’m not completely sure I understand all the implications of these epiphanies but the beginning of this process has opened my eyes to a mindset I am glad has surfaced sooner rather than later.
This trip has never been about me, but what I must admit is that it’s also not about what I have to offer. I choose to make myself a willing vessel but my heart is to expose where God is already working within a culture rather than to deceive myself into thinking that I am bringing God to a culture. I am one insignificant piece to the puzzle that can be significant only through the work of the Spirit through me.
My blog theme is “soul searching.” I will naturally search my own soul for truths that are being revealed, but the souls of those I have been sent to love have overwhelming lessons, truth and love of their own that can, if I am willing to allow it, change me. May it be so.
