Because Bull in an Albanian shop doesn’t quite have the same meaning.
The first few weeks here in Albania have been tough for me. I expressed my struggles with sitting and being patient in relation to our travels, and that lesson has grown upon itself and continued into other aspects of my life on this race.
I’ll add a little bit of context for the psychologists reading this. I’m an only child, and spent a year in an apartment by myself with only me to manage. The job that I had for the last two years was one that had little interactions between coworkers for the most part, and there were very few times that initiative was a bad thing.
That is not the case here on the race. I am in constant community with five people plus our ministry host, and we are expected to operate together as a team to complete our current tasks. It should be no surprise that styles of work conflict, and our ways of living do not overlap.
Example one. We’re expected to leave at 9:30. It’s 8:40 and I have already showered and dressed. The only thing between me and the van is breakfast, so I’m good to go. My roommate, however, is still asleep. I’m a little nervous that he’s still in bed. He has less than an hour to get ready. Before I do anything rash, the alarm on his wrist-watch goes off.
Ok good. He’ll wake up, and all will be well.
But then it doesn’t. It beeps and beeps and stops. He’s still asleep. He’s slept through his alarm. And hot dang if I didn’t wake him up right then and there to get ready for the day.
A situation more or less similar happened for a few days in a row, and I was addressed on the matter. Turns out, he has multiple alarms set and I had woke him up earlier than he intended pretty much every morning since we had arrived in Albania.
Oops.
I was stifling his adulthood and treating him more like a child because his idea of a good morning didn’t match my idea of one. I didn’t trust his ability to get up and be responsible, so I took it upon myself to be responsible for his schedule. That definitely wasn’t my job, and was not something I should have done.
Example two. Dinner and shopping has been something of a struggle as well. I’m used to cooking for me and having the convenience of a restaurant if life has just been too hard and I can’t even right now. I have cooked for hundreds of people before when I worked at a restaurant, but running out of food or supplies was never really an issue. Suffice to say, it has been a challenge for me to shop for six people and cook for six people two to three times a day. I can say with confidence that if Shirletha was not helping me with all of it (and in many cases, doing more work than I am) I would be burdened with a lot more stress from it.
Our windows for cooking at our first location were somewhat limited. Most nights we started cooking at 8 pm or so (or 20:00 because Europe). On this particular evening it was becoming dark, and there was an important ingredient that we forgot to purchase for tonight’s dinner. I asked our treasurer if I could have money to shop, but she was busy working. So I took it upon myself to grab a translator and go purchase the food with my own money. In my head it was good because we would have dinner ready on time and all would be well with the world. Turns out we also needed to purchase breakfast, and my team was looking for me while I was out.
Oops.
This was an experience where I definitely did not communicate with my team members accurately what needed to be done, and took it upon myself to complete my perceived (and incomplete) checklist for the evening.
Example three. I keep breaking things!!! I’m baffled that I’ve broken three things in just a few days. I’m normally the person who keeps his hands to his self, doesn’t touch anything in museums, and scolds people who touch things that don’t belong to them (long-time friends really know this about me. Sorry guys! Love you).
So how is it that I broke a small foot and a half tall lamp on a sidewalk? I was carrying one of my teammates bags (which weighed somewhere around 40lbs) and it caught a corner of the lamp and snapped the thing off at the base. What?! It didn’t even struggle or pull or offer any resistance. Pop! There it goes.
I was dumbfounded. We were loading our bags into a van to transfer from our first ministry location to our second with little time to leave. One of the staff commented on it, and I picked it up (the wires were connected, so I assumed it was functional) and balanced it back on the stand. The break was so clean that it sat perfectly when I put it back, so I proceeded to finish loading our bags and didn’t worry about it. I let the problem remain carefully hidden. (For clarification, I definitely should have mentioned the lamp to the host and offered some sort of solution. I’ll be in communication with that ministry host to resolve it later).
Maybe two days later, I was sitting on the couch of my new ministry host playing with some super nifty gelatinous cubes that she uses to decorates her apartment. You place them in water and they absorb it, swell in size, and become reasonably invisible. You can poke your finger in the plant’s vase and fully expect your finger to sink into water. Surprise, it would be met by a small jelly wall. So nifty! So cool! So I picked up a jelly cube to observe. Greg had picked one up the day before and tinkered with it, but I didn’t get the chance to check it out.
Well, it was slippery and gelatinous and vulnerable. My hand was five or six inches away from the table, so I felt safe. Nope. Gelatinous cube slipped out of my grip, bounced once (and very far, I might add, for such a water-engorged and dense entity), and splattered into many pieces on the hardwood floor.
“Just like the lamp.” I thought. I’ll tell the host immediately. So I did, and it turned out to be fine (Greg got a good chuckle out of it too), but I was apalled. So much breaking! How was I doing this without even trying?
I didn’t think too much on it afterwards. It turns out that the host bought those cubes in bags of three-hundred. Thank God. No big deal.
Unfortunately, my path of destruction wasn’t finished. Just this morning, I was washing out a bag with a detacheable shower head. It was very nice and safe. I had anti-slip shoes, the bag was nice and tough, I wasn’t using enough water to be considered wasteful and I really couldn’t see what could go wrong. I casually went to hang the shower head on the hook and it didn’t quite fit. So I gave it a push.
A loud plastic crack heralded my disbelief and frustration.
Really?! This was too much. I’m not the hulk, and I’m usually very careful. All I did was push down. Just a little bit. The shower hook split down the middle. So I showed our host and she replied with, “everything’s cheap here” and I super-glued it back together.
Some of this is random circumstance, but I do believe some of these little occurances have metaphor and meaning. I may not be in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis, but God is working in my heart, in the hearts of my team, and in the hearts of the kids and staff that we are ministering to.
This is mostly a review of my previous blog, but I thought of a few scriptures (and there are so many more) to go along with it.
Galations 4:22-24: “The Scriptures say that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave wife and one from his freeborn wife. The son of the slave wife was born ina human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God’s own fulfillment of his promise.”
When Abraham was promised a son by God, he and his wife were well past the child-bearing age. He sought for a way to fulfill God’s promise by sleeping with a woman that wasn’t his wife in order to get a son. That son was not a fulfillment of God’s covenant. However, God later allowed Abraham’s wife to conceive, and that was the son of the promise, and the bloodline that God would continue to bless and protect.
I sympathize with Abraham. There are many times that I step out of line with a plan to complete a task because I feel like it’s the only way that the task will be completed. I think it’s a good realization for me to take a step back and trust God, but not only God, also my team here on the race, to do things together and as we planned.
Luke 22:49-51: “When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, “Lord, should we fight? We brought the swords!” And one of them struck at the high priest’s slave, slashing off his right ear. But Jesus said, “No more of this.” and he touched the man’s ear and healed him.”
Oh Peter. And me. So many times leading up to Jesus’ death he would boldly proclaim that he would protect Jesus and even die for him. All of the disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem, but when the guards came to arrest Jesus, Peter struck first. I believe that it was fear and love in Peter’s heart, but it also can’t be ignored that Peter simply did not understand in entirety who Jesus was and what he was capable of.
When Jesus said that “I am he” to the soldiers, they drew back and fell to the ground (as per John’s account). Understand that he was using the “I am” that God used in the old testament, and the phrase carried so much power the Jews did not use it because it made the claim that the speaker was God. Peter witnessed this display of power, not to mention all of his previous miracles, and still felt the need to draw his weapon.
Then imagine the feeling in his heart when Jesus heals the man’s ear and tells them to stop. I would be mortified, and feel so small and powerless. He had just leapt forward with boldness, and I feel like you could interpose a good action hero’s yell of, “I’ll save you!” only to have his actions reversed, and then to have the person you just “saved” tell the soldiers not to punish you for your actions.
God is so good, and so powerful, and has such an excellent plan for us. If only we had the faith to take a step back and allow him to work. If only Peter had really listened to what Jesus said and truthfully believed it. If only we would. I viewed my little jaunt into the food market as me going ahead without consulting God. We have to communicate with him before big decisions. Maybe there’s so much more within a situation than we can even perceive, and we will not be prepared for it on our own.
Exodus 17:9-13 “Moses commanded Joshua, “Choose some men to go out and fight the army of Amalek for us. Tomorrow, I will stand at the top of the hill, holding the staff of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as commanded and fought the army of Amalek. Meanwhile, Moses, Aaron, and Hur climbed to the top of the nearby hill. As long as Moses help up the staff in his hand, the Isrealites had the advantage. But whenever he dropped his hand, the Amalekites gained the advantage. Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset. As a result, Joshua overwhelmed the army of Amalek in battle.”
This is Moses and the Isrealites holding on to God as a banner and a beacon for their trials. It’s a difficult ordeal, as Moses gets tired and begins to fail. The Christian walk is difficult in many ways, and we will get tired and fall, but when we have a community of believers to come together and support us and help us stay on the track of God’s will for us, the results are significantly better.
Here’s what I’ve gathered from my brief jaunt as a wrecking ball.
You are not the hero of your story. God is. Step back and watch him work and trust that he will take care of what needs to be taken care of, and trust that he cares more about the situation more than you ever will.
But in regards to our emotional health, we can’t ignore hurt and pain with those very close in to us, and we absolutely cannot ignore God in those moments either. I think that the broken lamp is representative of a lot of the pain that many people hide in their lives. I snapped this poor little thing in half, and stood it back up. It still worked. It looked fine and functional, the little light shines and everything looks okay, but when someone comes and brushes up against us we fall over and people see the brokenness and the exposed wires. I don’t think that is what God intended for us. He is a God of healing a restoration, but we have to be willing to address a situation and work through it with him and with the people around us in order to bring that about.
So talk about the pain and the hurt. It can’t be fixed without that first step.
