cultural adjustment fail

it may be 100 bajillion degrees outside in Omaha but my house is cool.

i may live in the US now, but I still like to wear pajamas that feel comfortable.

in mongolia, it is totally acceptable and normal and practical to sleep in your long underwear.

all it requires is stripping down a layer (or two depending on the month) and ta-da! you are ready for bed.

so, naturally I got used to using long underwear as a form of sleepwear.

well, after a particularly not-so-good day of oversleeping, running late, thunderstorms messing with work plans and other ridiculousness- I promptly came home, took a shower and put on my most comfortable pair of long underwear.

fast-forward several hours and I hear knocking on my back door.

not a problem, I'm expecting a mission team that's supposed to come shower at my house.

as I answer the door and face the male team leader I suddenly realize anew that I am in fact wearing long underwear.

And that this might be a little strange. Or uncomfortable for this poor team leader whom I have never met before in my life.

Who has no idea that this would be totally normal and appropriate in Mongolia. Who has no idea that sometimes my brain gets stuck back in Mongolia mode and I forget what is proper etiquette in America.

You know like WEARING pants to answer the door.

He kindly acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, telling me when they would come shower and inviting me over to join them in worship.

Which I declined and all, citing the fact that I was already in my pajamas.

fail.

literate courage

it was just the two of us in the meeting room. we made polite conversation as we waited for the facilitator to return from his waiting watch for latecomers to our training session.

talking about what we were doing there, where we were from. He an immigrant. Me just recently returned from my own foreign stay.

training started and we sorted through the paperwork, my own mind lingering on my own claims of home and my inability to answer that question without mentioning that country on the other side of the world.

we came to a pre-test. i started in, answering the questions about proper conduct and behaviors that will not be tolerated by those of us intending to be mentors for high schoolers.

i finished and sat in the silence.

he kept working. reading each question and choosing an answer.

i thought about the questions and the words that were used. i thought about how not simple or easy they were. i thought about the vocabulary knowledge required to answer them.

and I was humbled.

because there is no way my Mongolian skills would allow me to answer a similar test in Mongolian. I would have been done after one question. Or that one question would have taken me one hour.

and here I sat, my mother tongue propelling me through a pre-test without a second thought.

all while my co-trainee was doing this in a language that is not his first. he was doing it. he could do it. he would do it.

i would run straight in the opposite direction of that kind of challenge. i would toss my hands up and throw the "I can't" after about 30 seconds.

i am so cowardly.

***

ipod headphones in my ear, i trudged up the stairs from the YMCA's downstairs gym. i was hot, sweaty and tired after a day of work and a slow slog on the treadmill.

i was thinking about hating treadmills. i was thinking about how i wish i was a faster runner. i was thinking about how i should just give up training for a half-marathon because i'm not capable. i was thinking all sorts of negative, complaining thoughts.

as i walked towards the front desk I slid my headphones out of my ears so i could trade my gym lock for my membership card.

and i heard the director talking to a mom and her son, a translator patiently working the words from English to Spanish and back again.

all of them figuring out how they could make swim lessons happen for a son who doesn't speak English.

all of them trying to make special arrangements so that swimming can occur.

i spent my first day at the Y muttering under my breath and wandering around trying to find the gym room because i refused to ask for help. i avoid trying new classes because i might look like i don't know what i'm doing.

i am so prideful.

***

literacy and fluency steal from me my own awareness of my infallibility.

i get to float around in a self-protected world of knowing and owning and not needing because I can conjugate verbs and don't have to think to respond to questions.

i want to stop giving up before I ever start.

i want to stop refusing to start before I even ask for help.

thinking about stories

"I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants."

-Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, pg 59

it's been over a year since I first read this quote in a car that was driving through rice fields in the Cambodian countryside.

i may not be in Cambodia, but these words still ring true to me in the here and now.

i want to be a grateful participant, not an unwilling victim.

and it's my prayer that we would all have that choice, that we would be working towards a world, a country, a space where no one has that choice taken away from them.

because I am privileged to be able to make that choice.

may I never forget that.