Closing the chapter even as God’s river of delights pours forth

I am back where I started three months ago, back at Southeastern and nestled once again with my studies and wrestling with library hours and my gloriously All-American To-Do list. And I love it. It feels wonderful to be back even though I hardly had a summer vacation. (Although I must admit that my week in Spain helped.)
Yet even as the dust settles from my whirlwind arrival late Saturday night and the subsequent dash to North Wake and group hug with my southern kin, the question de jour is: “So, how was it?”
This innocuously double-edged question that everyone is asking places me in the delicate position of sharing too much of one aspect of the culture and then glossing over the rest…this is a terrible injustice. It would be a lie to suggest that I am an expert after a summer. Rather, I’m still reeling with the implications of living in a drastically different worldview and reevaluating my experiences in light of my return to the States.
Still, I manage to sum my experience with these three words: difficult, challenging and blessed.
The difficulty was that I was very ill half the summer as I had picked up a dastardly amoeba from the some contaminated fruit at a store. Following which I experienced migraines, horrible dizzy spells and a fatigue that guaranteed that I would be flopped half-unconsciously on my bed as soon as I was finished teaching my classes in the morning and night. The hospitals, unfortunately, are rubbish---even the locals won’t go so we had to find antibiotics on hearsay. Nonetheless, God is good and I recovered.
The challenge was the pace of the culture: slowing down and being willing to be simple. This is actually harder than it sounds if you are used to learning and thinking and experiencing a great deal of personal liberty and independence. As a woman in the Middle East, those aspects are hardly encouraged. I must have seemed quite odd to them: a rather modest, polite and God-loving young woman who studied and worked and travelled around the world without an escort. That combination is a difficult concept to them. Because of my natural independence, the real challenge was my wanting to shake up their culture to accommodate my own preferences or beliefs. Yet even if I strongly wished to do so on moral and ethical grounds, I wasn’t there for that. I am commanded by King Jesus to be salt (a preservative for what IS still good in a rotting land) and light (exposing wickedness) to an unbelieving world.
But the sum is the whole of all the parts, and the blessings were evident to me all around my allotted time. I joined one of the few gyms in the city and was warmly included in the class activities. It tripped me out that no one seemed to know how to swim and yet they always had fun running into one another. Now, I miss seeing the ladies with their kind smiles and gallant efforts to speak English. I miss my instructor who repeatedly threw me off the treadmill because she didn’t want me to lose any weight (they thought I was in danger of becoming too skinny—classic). I miss my students who giggled when we talked about marriage and dating as if they were 12 year olds instead of adults. I miss the conversations and how they shared their hopes and fears about their country and their dreams.
Since I’ve been back, I’ve actually experienced a reverse culture-shock. I miss people wanting me to be with them: it’s a powerful thing, to be wanted. Then there was their incredible generosity to strangers, neighbors and internationals…this is abnormal even in a southern country subculture. If they know someone is in need, they step in and step up with a ready alacrity that shames me. Moreover, their lovely concept of community maintains a dignity people with a comfortable commitment to relationships that endure for a lifetime---with great regularity! When I left, I was happy to return to my rights and privileges---and indeed, I was skipping around Istanbul for two days to be back in Europe. I wouldn’t want to live in the Middle East: I’m much too independent to settle down to such docility. Yet, I owe the people my sincere gratitude for the love that they displayed by taking me in and loving me so well. I’m grateful and I humbly acknowledge the superiority of some of their customs over my own. I want to share those noble aspects wherever I go and take the choicest piece of their culture with me: real community. Meanwhile, I am still running. And the pages and letters march on.