Well, it finally happened. I hit the culture shock wall, and I freaked out a little. (Okay, I freaked out a lot.) It's an odd sort of feeling to think that in the place where you look so much like everyone else, you feel least at home. I'm tall, white, blonde, a lifelong member of the RCA, I eat olliebollen, and I own wooden shoes. I should feel right at home in Holland, right?
Wrong.
I felt more at home in India than I do in Holland.
I see so many deeply embedded cultural assumptions in Holland, so many practices, that make me cringe--physically or mentally. I see the RCA as a denomination continuing to walk in this circle of isolation, and I see immense disconnect from reality.
In short, the vision of human flourishing that's implicit in how the majority of west Michigan works is not a vision that I want to adopt. It's narrow, it's rigid, and it's crumbling. It stands on a foundation of similarity and conformity, not diversity and engagement.
And yet, I can't leave--at least not yet. I have somewhere between a year and a half and three years before I graduate from Western, and the Spirit will not give me peace about going anywhere else. (Believe me, I. have. tried.)
So here I sit, in my ridiculously oversized apartment, wondering what's next. I'll spend the summer in Holland, working at the library and visiting the beach often. The sun will help, I think. Hopefully, I'll learn to play nice with the RCA, even when I would rather scream and/or smack my colleagues upside the head with my hardcover Bible.
Perhaps I just need to take up kickboxing.
But as I sit here, there's also a restlessness in my soul. I want to travel, to engage the world that God loves so much--and the world that I've come to love. I want to go.
I've never wanted anything more than to sit among God's people in other cultures, other nations, and other languages, and learn from them what it means to "belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to [our] faithful savior--Jesus Christ." (Answer #1, Heidelberg Catechism) And I know in my heart of hearts that I have so much to learn.
And so we have two competing impulses: to go and to stay.
Perhaps I'll find a way to do both--after all, I've never been one to play by the rules.
Oh Sara, I know these feelings so well: coming home from India and having the worst culture shock of my life, then living among Christians I could never agree with, and always caught between believing in staying and wanting to run far away. It gets better. Really, it does. It gets harder and harder, and then it gets better. Because where God gives you the desire and puts you through the boot camp, he also comes through on the fun part.
ReplyDeleteAnd hey, if you ever want to travel on the cheap in a very un-American place, you're always welcome in Kosovo!
Just remember that the struggles of one season are a great indication of the glories of the next! Praying that your heart would be full of perseverance, without losing whatever wildness you picked up on the far side of the world.
Love,
Liz