As Feelings Fade: June 2015

Living abroad has its ups and downs… as to be expected, and China is no exception. We rarely actually leave on time, things hardly work out how we want them to, and our plans are thwarted. All.the.time. In these instances, all we can do is shake our head and say “That’s just life in China.”

And in the chaos of a life far from predictability, I have faced the rawness of my impatience, and ugly entitlement that I fear my cushioned, semi-controllable, and American life encouraged.

A few examples from the past week:

On Saturday, Emma and I had these ‘elaborate’ plans to head to the center of Luoyang to blog while sipping coffee in one of our favorite coffee shops, then to grab lunch at a noodle place (yum!), and to top of our wonderful day with grocery shopping! But little did we expect that all taxi drivers went on strike. Every.single.one. Taxis are the only way that Emma and I can get around seeing that we can’t/won’t drive scooters (go figure), don’t have a Chinese drivers license (we would die), and we haven’t quite mastered the bus system (stressful). A couple hundred Chinese taxi drivers had thwarted our perfect plans.

We literally stood by the window for a good ten minutes, praying that the taxis would come out of nowhere, the strike would be over, and we could go on our merry way.

Then, earlier this week, Emma and I went with our ‘boss’, his son, and our wonderful Chinese medical translator to one of Show Hope’s new units that is not yet open. We began setting the place up to eventually hold some precious kiddos. This included putting together cribs, hanging up quilts, and other random tasks. Emma, Bradley, and I were tasked with putting together 36 baby cribs while Nate and Polly went to look at furniture. We couldn’t wait to get started and to whip these cribs out!

We started out great and grew so confident that we began timing how long it took to put together a crib. After our second or third crib, we were able to put one together in ten minutes! Woohoo! Then we hit our first ‘difficult’ crib. These cribs are literally China made… which means that every hole may not match up, and that every thing may not fit together perfectly. We worked for twenty minutes on the crib and couldn’t get it to fit together… so we put it aside for Nate to look at. We kept working… and getting stuck again and again. One or two screws wouldn’t fit and the entire crib couldn’t be completed. Soon we had three or four cribs in a room of twelve cribs that we needed help with.

Needless to say, we were all groaning a little bit more, praying under our breath, and tiring more and more easily. This was not just hard work; it was unpredictable, difficult, and downright frustrating hard work! These cribs were not agreeing with our plans. I sat there, almost wanting to cry- I just wanted to put these cribs to easily go together!

Maybe it’s the struggle of being a type-A, firstborn perfectionist. But, I would challenge that most of us who have grown up in the States have become accustomed to a world that abides by our plans. A world where we can generally go on our merry way, without hindrance, and every nut and bolt fits perfectly for us. A world where we challenge the idea that we need Jesus.

In this season of life, living in the its-just-China makes me more and more aware of my desperate and deep need for a Savior who came so that I could have full and joyful life in Him. He shows me that a life that matters is not a life where everything goes my way, but a life that truly matters is a life that is rooted in Him.