Coming to the end of my internship, I don't know people as well as I wish. The youth there, I wish I knew them better and closer, but I don't. I don't know if that's because of some failure on my part or what. But my knowledge of them isn't some measurement of success, I guess. I don't think there is any tangible measurement of "success" here. Hopefully, and probably, God has used me in ways that I'm not even aware of to do his work.
Work. To talk about "God's work" seems very impersonal to me. Like God has these labors to complete. I'm not sure if I can explain it, but it's almost like "doing God's work" is a human take on something that is much more personal and intimate and mysterious. I want to "do God's work" and join in with God in what he's doing, but I would rather know God deeply and let the work follow from that and because of that and because of love.
All in all, I don't know people as deeply as I want to. I'm not sure what this means or what to do about it. I know that everything grows in its own time, that relationships grow in their own time. I don't know whether or not it's accurate, but when I look back to Thailand, it seems like my relationships there were much deeper than here. But the situation in Thailand was an unusual one. It's been important to realize that America is not Thailand, Seattle is not Chiang Rai and it never will be. There were things that were great about Chiang Rai that I don't have here, and there were things that were terrible and hard about Chiang Rai that I don't have here. Not to mention, the people I was with in Thailand, I was with for a long time. Here, most of my friends I met this last school year. Different.
I'm still adjusting to not being alone with people very often, because that's how most of my interactions were in Thailand. It was normal there, while normal here is that if I'm around one of my friends, I'm probably around 3. Alone is probably where I'll always be more comfortable, talking, but it's important to adjust so that I can be fully functional when I'm with more than one or two people.
I don't know God as well as I would like. Some days I think that I don't know him at all.
1 comment:
Its going to be pretty hard for me to adjust back to states side living. Especially with friends. Most of the time with friends here it is more one on one, but I remember in the states that that rarely happened. That will be hard to get used to again. But you're right. Thailand is not America and some of the good things of Thailand will not be in America and yet some of the bad things of Thailand won't be there either, so in the end maybe it balances out?.
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