Still Homesick

I keep wanting to update my blog...but I can't do it without feeling like I'm whining at the moment. Much of my life right now is spent battling a complete lack of gratefulness for where I am, and writing whiny blog entries certainly doesn't help with that. So, this is an attempt to name the deeper culture shocks for what they are without being whiny. I hope it works. :-)

When you are a stranger in your own country, no one expects you to be a stranger. I find myself going into my "Japanese coping mode" on a regular basic, which is to say...lots and lots of passive listening. If there's something I don't understand, I shove it into a back corner of my brain and listen all the harder to try to figure out what is going on. And there is a surprisingly large number of things going on that I don't understand.

Some of them are similar to being in Japan. For example, I've been present for a number of conversations that go something like this:

Person A: So-and-so did (or didn't) do ______.
Person B: Wow. That's really offensive!
Pamela (thinking): Umm...wow...how could that possibly be offensive? *begins thinking very hard to try to figure it out*

Pamela: *shares about one sentence of personal experience*
Person A: *manages to turn my experience into a theological argument*
Pamela: *gives in and responds to the theological argument, all the while mourning the lack of intimacy with anyone*

In some of them I am obviously the one at fault...

Pamela: America is $^*#@&)*(%@*&$*#@&$@*#&$*)@&#%(&)(%$@(*%&()$
Poor suffering family member of Pamela: ...umm...don't you think that's a little negative, Pamela?
Pamela: (Someone is listening to me!!!) No! It's not negative! Because $^*#&$*&#!@%(*&$)%&@)%&*#@&%@)($@) (huh...that actually does sound kind of negative...)

I'm also finding myself with a high need to save the world at the moment. Pamela without a vision is a sad sight...I am convinced that the reason God usually lets me have a vision is that I would destroy the world with my self-created visions otherwise.

Last night, my vision was not a world-destroying one, though, thankfully. But it was still ridiculous. If I got home from my church visiting between 5 and 6, I was supposed to go rescue my dog Ebony from the dog hotel (here after called "jail"). (My parents and I have been gone this week...me visiting sponsoring churches and my parents catching swine flu...er...going to church convention in El Paso) [No...they haven't caught swine flu. They were just crossing the border, so we've been joking about it.] Anyway. Somehow in my mind I translated 5-6 to 5:30 to 6:30. I hit the outskirts of my hometown right at 6:30, not having stopped to rest or eat for the past three hours. Normally I can't do that in a car, but I was fueled by this crazy vision to break my dog out of jail that night. I raced over to try to find the jail per my parents insane directions, and all the while my mind was shouting, "I'm coming, Ebony!" While a very small voice was saying to me: "There is no way you can make it, Pamela...just drive home."

(I'm laughing at myself telling you this story, by the way. So I hope you're laughing too!)

Needless to say, when I pulled into the jail, the desk was empty and the door locked. I could hear Ebony barking, but there was nothing I could do but slip away again as quietly as possible--not wanting to upset him by letting him know I'd been there.

So...on the non-laughing-at-myself level...I keep trying to figure out how to connect to God without a vision. This is something I've been trying to figure out for *months* now...not just since coming to the States, but pretty much ever since I understood that God was going to ask me to move away from the vision I'd thrown my heart into. It bothers me that I don't know how. I haven't been able to talk to many people about it, because as soon as I do, they criticize me for my inability to do it. And I know it's bad that I can't do it...that's why I try to reach out about it...to get other people's wisdom and try to learn from it.

But I'm fighting against actually learning how to just 'be' with all my heart...it often turns into this crazy quest to figure out what I'm doing next. And in my processing the other day, I realized the one option I wasn't considering was that it wasn't time to figure out what to do next.

As I was driving home in the car, I was thinking all these frustrations up at God, and it was kind of like he said, "What if I just want a vacation with you?" My response to this was pretty much to be horrified.

And I'm reminded of my mom, who just wishes home were a place of comfort for me. My constant need for a vision is actually wounding to the people who are trying to give me a place to rest.

Like Ebony, maybe it's me who's turning the hotel into a prison. Maybe the small cage is meant to protect me from wearing myself out with too much running. Or maybe I'm taking the metaphor too far...it just seemed to fall in place. But I'm so afraid to make the cage my home. What if my world stays this small? What if God asked me to "settle down" in America instead of in a foreign mission field?