Drunken Mystic

Of course the transition to Korea was extremely difficult. I don’t want to minimize that in the least. New place to live, new stuff (some of which we acquired from the street), entirely new culture, and a new fellowship of believers.

I don’t believe you can fully prepare to go overseas and live as a missionary. I know that many organizations have their methods of orientation, and they do help, but the actual transition that you go through cannot be fully understood in a seminar or conference setting. Practice is always different from the actual game. As necessary as practice can be, once the clock starts and it is for real, it all changes.

This is why leaving alone is not sufficient. We had to be the people we were called to be in the place He called us to. We had to play in the game where the score counted.

Several difficulties had to be addressed. First, just the ability to do “normal” things was limited. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a month or so until we figured out how to get certain things at the local grocery store. You feel like an idiot when you live in another culture for an extended period of time because everybody seems to inherently know so much that you do not. I embarass myself routinely in my home culture, so you can only imagine the horror I was there sometimes.

It was incredibly humbling. What a blessing.

Of course, we had to make new friends. While it was a blessing to mourn our American-ness, it was torture, literally, to mourn our close friendships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. There is an eternal nature to them that is difficult to live without when certain people have become a part of you.

Opening up and becoming vulnerable in the midst of that was hard and necessary all at once. Thankfully, our new community made it difficult to be isolated, and we did make some amazing friends that are now our family, too.

But another transition was in the area of Christian fellowship. As a member of a thriving house church, I knew a freedom in Christ that, sadly, most do not experience, nor do they care to. To be thrust in such a traditional environment was, quite honestly, much like being a college graduate and sitting in those little first grade desks again. The feeling of going backwards was uncomfortable.

But knowing God’s call was key. We truly felt the Lord had us in that community; so we gave as much as we could to others through the fellowship there. We spoke truth and used our gifts as there was opportunity. But because of who we were in the system, conflict naturally arose.

Believing the truth that conflict exists to prove character (1 Corinthians), we loved despite the accusation and opposition, choosing to honor instead of gossip, to unify instead of divide. It was frustrating but we endured.

God began teaching me that I did not have to make room for my gift. My gift would make room for me.

And my gift did make room.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 2:08 pm and is filed under crucible of korea series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.