Back to Being a Baby

Carolyn and I are two weeks into our four-week intercultural communication course; this is the course that meant to is prepare us to live in a brand new culture.   The further we get into this course the more we are learning how much we have yet to learn.  We are continually learning of precautions that I had never considered, and if you remember my blog post from last fall, you may know that I like to plan for everything.  So being told of many things that I did not plan for feels mildly alarming.
 
I have come to the realization that Carolyn and I are more or less going to start over and become babies again.  When we arrive in Romania we will not know how to buy food to eat, and when we do find food we may not know how to cook it.  We will need to learn how to find a place to live, and pay our bills – we won’t even know what bills we need to pay much less how to pay them.  We won’t know how to hail a taxi or pay for a bus ride. (We will still know how to walk, so that’s a bonus!) We will have to relearn everything. So much for planning again.
 
I have come to realize that when we arrive in Romania we will need to rely on others the same way that a child must rely on his or her parents.  As the weeks turn into months we will slowly acquire basic language skills and we will learn how and where to get food on our own.  And as the months turn into years, we will slowly begin to feel like we know what we are doing and Romania will begin to feel like home.  But I think there will always be something missing.  We will always feel out of place in a world that is not our own.
 
I think we will long for home; long for our families.  I think we will long for the peace and security of home. However, we will no longer fit back into the mold we once knew as home. Our hearts will hold both Romania and America in a special way.
 
As image bearers of Christ though, I think that we have all felt that feeling, whether we have realized it or not.  I think that as image bearers of God, placed in a sinful world, there is a disconnect that we must wrestle with on a daily basis.  I think there are times in every person’s life, that like a fish out of water, we feel like we just were not made for this life.  I think in these moments there are many avenues to which we can turn.  The most preferable turn is to turn towards our God and our Creator to embrace His truth in our helplessness.
 
I pray that as upheaving as this cultural move will be, that we will be drawn to our Heavenly Father’s arms.  I pray that we learn to lean into Him as we face our uncomfortability and culture shock.  I pray that we adapt and learn to find our rest in Him instead of this world; in a few short years we will be going to our true home to be with Jesus for eternity.  I think then we will truly feel as though we belong.