Adjusting

Adjusting to life back in the States continues to prove difficult.

I still have not been able to get on a regular sleep schedule - in fact, I slept until 11 o'clock today.

We have not yet been able to settle into our own place, so we are currently living with my parents. They are so kind to let us do this and we love getting to spend so much time with them (especially after a year away), but it is certainly not the ideal situation for any of us.

Since we haven't been able to get a place of our own, most of our belongings are in Tennessee, while we're in Texas. It gets frustrating having to dig around for things (such as social security cards) when you're not even sure if they're in the same state as you.

But by far, the hardest adjustment has been church culture.

In China, there were 7 to 9 of us who met every Sunday. We had no set time to meet. We wore whatever we had on - shorts, jeans, t-shirts...it didn't matter. Our meetings usually lasted 3 or 4 hours. But the greatest thing about church for us was that we shared a deep spiritual intimacy. That was something I had never experienced before. Every week, we shared the joys that we had encountered. Every week, we shared the struggles that we were trying to overcome. I knew what was going on in all of their lives - every day of every week. And they knew what was going on in mine. We prayed for each other very specifically every day. We studied God's Word and then we held each other accountable in obeying what we had learned throughout the week.

I miss that.

I don't think that American church culture is wrong. I just think it's different. And it's hard to adjust back to, after coming from the Chinese church culture that we created. It's difficult sitting in a room with hundreds upon hundreds of people, most of whom I don't know - and if I do know, I don't know that well. They don't know me - not really. They don't know what made me laugh or cry the week before. They don't know what I'm worried about in the upcoming week. They don't know what sin I am struggling with. My first Sunday back at worship in America, I cried most of the way through. I was upset that it felt like a fashion show, when so many in the world didn't even know the name of Jesus. Of course, the people of that congregation are wonderful, and most of them probably didn't wear what they wore to get attention or to look the best. That was just how it appeared to me from what and where I was coming from.

It is hard for me to explain (and I'm sure hard for you to understand if you haven't experienced it). I just have to keep reminding myself that it's not wrong, it's just different. But mostly I just miss my brothers and sisters in China that knew me better than any others, and still loved me, and with whom I grew so much.

Start to Finish

Coming home was a bit of a nightmare. But it's been a week and a half, so I think I can talk about it now.

The school that Michael and I taught for only allotted us a specific amount of money for our airline tickets home, so we had to find the cheapest flight possible. That happened to be China Eastern Airlines. This was a bit of a risky move considering that we were going to be on that plane for 12 hours, but we didn't have much of a choice, so we tried to be optimistic.

We got to the airport several hours before our flight. After some drama, including going to the wrong terminal (I guess we were wrong to assume that a flight to LA would be in the international terminal), having to change gates 3 times, and waiting in line to board for about an hour, we finally boarded the plane. We got settled in and waited for take-off, and waited, and waited... After another half hour or so sitting on the tarmac, we find out that our flight is being delayed due to "bad weather." We looked out the window - it wasn't even raining; in fact, it wasn't even cloudy. I had already taken my Dramamine, so I fell asleep and completely missed take-off.

The 12-hour flight was as to be expected. After sleeping as long as I could, then reading as long as I could, then watching movies as long as I could, I looked at the clock and we still had 2 hours to go.

We were so excited to be back on US soil. We were completely beside ourselves to see signs that we could actually read, to see other Americans, and even to hear people speaking Spanish. We made it through immigration without a hitch. Then we had to pick up our luggage to go through customs. Again, China Eastern made us wait, and wait, and wait. When we started waiting for the bags, we had 1 hour to make it to our connecting flight (we were supposed to have a 3-hour layover). We got our suitcases, loaded our carts and took off at a run for customs. They let us through quickly and we sprinted out of the international terminal and to the domestic terminal. We found an American Airlines agent to help us - we had 30 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave. She informed us that we were 15 minutes late. Your suitcases have to be checked 45 minutes before scheduled departure. That's when the crying started.

Missing the flight might not have been so bad - after all, it's LA and they have lots of flights going to Dallas everyday - but another American Airlines flight to Dallas had been canceled. So a full flight of passengers had to be put on standby for the remaining flights to DFW. We waited in a ticketing line for 2 hours to find out that all the flights were overbooked and the best she could do was put us on stand-by. By this time I was crying so hard that the poor airline agent gave us "stand-by priority." But that doesn't mean much when there are 65 people on the stand-by list.

So we went to the gate for the next flight out, sat on the floor and prayed for them to call our names. They didn't. We used a pay phone to call my mom. She said to keep praying, then she made some phone calls and had a whole bunch of other people praying for us as well. We made a trek to the gate for the next flight out. As the line of boarding passengers dwindled to nothing, they started calling names for standby's. We were numbers 3 and 4. Numbers 1 and 2 didn't show up. More tears - this time they were tears of joy.

After all that, we finally made it home. I was so happy, I hardly even noticed that we were 4 hours later than we were supposed to be.

While we were sitting in the airport, praying desperately to get home, I asked Michael why I could ask for something so desperately of my Father and He wouldn't give it to me. Wasn't there a verse about that? 1 John 3:22 says, "and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him." Hadn't we been spending the past year keeping His commandments and doing what pleased Him?

I doubted Him. After all that He had done, after all that He had gotten me through, I doubted Him.

I am so thankful that I have people in my life who keep faith even in difficult times. And looking back, I'm so thankful for those few hours of testing that I received in the Los Angeles airport.

My focus had been lacking over those last few days in China. I was so consumed with going "home," that I had forgotten that my life is God's and that there is no shifting of the wind that He does not have a hand in. I relied on myself to get me "home." I needed a reminder that I NEED Him, even when I'm going home.

He took me to China. He protected, supported, and held me up while we were there, and He brought me safely home. He was there from Start to Finish. And He is still here. And He will always be here.