You may
have noticed on our Facebook posts that we will often share what we are
thankful for that day. We do this for good reason. Before we left for
Tanzanian, my mom handed me (Linda) a book that she had been reading with her small
group called A Thousand Gifts: A Dare
to Live Fully Right Where You Are written by Ann Voskamp. I read it
over the course of my first month. While I don’t think the book fully addressed
the problem of pain or the process of grief, it did provide some deep
beautiful insights. The premise of the book is that a friend challenged the
author, Ann Voskamp, to write down 1000 of the gifts in her life. As she
began to take note of and thank God for the little things, she experienced
a remarkable change in her perception of the world and her perception of
God. She chronicled her journey and revelations about God in this book.
In the
book, Ann encourages the readers to recognize the gifts that God has put in
our lives as exactly that, gifts. She observes that in many of Jesus’
miracles, before the miracle occurred, Jesus gave thanks. She believes that
the “Eucharisto” (thanksgiving) is directly linked to the miraculous ways
God works in the world. Alternatively, she observes that “non-eucharisto,
ingratitude, was the fall— humanity’s discontent with all that God freely
gives.” (p. 35). We can find great joy if we take the time to notice and
give thanks for all the little things in life: the color of the bubble floating up from
the dishes, the full round moon, the freckles on a child’s cheeks, jam on
toast, mail in the mailbox…
She also
discovered in her journey that when giving thanks becomes a daily practice,
we are more prepared for the hard times— the times when we wonder if we have
made a terrible mistake, the times when it is difficult to believe that God
could possibly use this for good,
the times when God seems silent, and the times when it’s hard to believe
that God loves us. The lists of ways God has visibly made His presence known
can remind us of His presence when ugliness and pain invade our lives. We
can come to God, not as a being who is required to give us all that we
want, but as the Giver of all good gifts. God knows the whole picture, and
we know only a part. This is not to say that we should never feel hurt,
sadness, or anger at injustice in this world. Ann Voskamp encourages that
we come to God with our raw emotions, honest and vulnerable. She makes this
helpful distinction: “Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who
has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty.
Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this
moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart” (p. 175).
So how
does all of this intersect with my life? Life has not been easy since we
arrived in Tanzania. If you have not heard the term “culture shock” before,
it is defined as “the psychological
disorientation that most people experience when living in a culture
markedly different from one’s own.” Another definition of culture shock is “the anxiety that results
from losing all the familiar signs and symbols that help us understand a
situation.” Some of the potential
symptoms of culture shock are homesickness, loneliness, depression,
anxiety, irritability, excessive sleeping, lethargy, withdrawal, compulsive
eating or loss of appetite, and stereotyping of or hostility towards host
nationals. Symptoms typically peak around the third or fourth month of
being in a new culture, though they can reappear at any time. Since our
first three months in Tanzania were spent in language school surrounded
mostly by expatriates, our timeline was slightly altered. Around the time
we left language school, we were starting to feel the effects of culture
shock, and it has been a gradual incline since then.
Thankfully, Eric and I have
not experienced all of these symptoms as we step away from the familiar, and like
children, learn how to speak, live, and interact with people. Yet, culture shock is a present reality. As my body adjusts to a
new setting, sometimes I am sick of being sick, whether from mouth sores, malaria, intestinal
parasites, chest cold, or some other unknown malady. Sometimes I’ve
wondered what else could possibly go wrong with or further delay fixing our
house and making it our home. Sometimes I get weary of not being able to
understand what people are saying to or about me and weary of not being
able to get across what I want to say. Sometimes I feel very lonely when a
room full of people laughs, and I don’t understand the joke. Sometime my
plans go out the window due to unforeseen complications, and I feel like I
am simply treading water. Sometimes I crave the familiar foods of home and
the ability to cook dinner in less than an hour. Sometimes I desperately
miss family and friends back in the United States and grieve that I am not
there to share in their big life moments.
To be
perfectly honest, there are days when if I didn’t know that culture shock
is completely normal…if I didn’t know that there are people both locally
and internationally that love us, care about us, and are rooting for us…if
I didn’t know that this is where God wants us right now… then I would toss
in the towel and book a flight back to the US. BUT, I do know all these
things, and as we look back on our day each evening, even on the toughest
days, we can see how God has blessed us. We are grateful for the people He
has placed in our lives, for the beauty around us in both the simple and
grand, for progress in our journey, for the opportunities God gives us to
minister to others. We have found that giving thanks to God— on the days
when we feel like it and on the days when we don’t—is one of our best
weapons against the advances of culture shock. I recommend the book A Thousand Gifts, but more than that
I recommend the act of writing down thanksgivings. It can reframe a whole
day—perhaps even a whole life.
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