These were all actually in the last few days. I'm a delicate person, prone to stress and anxiety especially since moving to Cambodia, but for each of these occasions I did ok. I held my head, and just got on with it.
But by the end of the week, a simple little thing caused me to break down. The sky was dark, rain was spitting. Ben sent me off to the street market to quickly buy some vegetables and deodorant before the rain came, and he went off to find some of his favourite fried potato snack a little lady sells from a plate she carries on her head. I approached a stall were a lady was selling cleaning and beauty products. I pointed to her deodorants and asked her which was the cheapest one. And that's where it went wrong. I don't know if she was offended that I, a 'wealthy white lady' (despite the only $2 in my hand, ruffled hair, mud up my legs and a plastic bag of veges just like everyone else in that place) would buy the cheapest product I could, or if she was just having a rough day herself, but she became quite harsh towards me. Her manner made me feel so small and she called out to other shop keepers and talked about me while I stood there. When I didn't understand her asking if I wanted a bag for that, she made fun of me that I didn't know what a plastic bag was. I realised and stuttered out in my worst Khmer 'khnyom ot cong plastik tong te, orkun'. She laughed at me loudly and I left.
It was just 5 minutes. In 5 minutes everything came crashing down- Was she mad at me? Did I offend her? Why was she mean? I can't understand her Khmer. My Khmer is so rubbish. I'm a bumbling fool. I'll never speak Khmer well. I'll never fit in. I'm an outsider, whiter than white no matter how hard I try. I always will be. What good is my being here. I never should have come.
Something little like that shouldn't have got to me. As a foreigner here we face things like that all the time, mostly from street kids whose Khmer is even more colloquial and full of slang I can't understand at all! I've always been stared at, talked about, from when I was 11yrs old and in this country the first time. But of all the little things that went wrong this week, why did that one affect me so much? A friend of mine here recently informed me of something called 'Bad Cambodia Days'. They're just days where things suck for no apparent reason. Every expat or missionary or foreigner living here has them. The trick for me is let them each be their own problem. To keep them a circle, a problem with a set of emotions and eventually a solution. Not, as Ben says, a spiral, where you get lost in your own head, thinking about them and all other related bad things that did or could happen, building up and accumulating into a big ugly breakdown waiting to happen (I'll neither confirm nor deny that one or many of those may or may not have occurred already) and not let them overshadow the bigger picture of our time here and reason for it.
So here is an article I found really comforting and drew some tears. It reminded me that life here can be tough, even for the foreigners, and that is ok. We are no longer in our home country and we will never really be part of the host country -we, along with thousands of other foreigners- are stuck somewhere in the middle of a 'third culture'. And whilst sometimes being part of that community is awesome, it comes with it's own set of disadvantages. Yet being able to fall apart occasionally, even over the tiniest thing, is something that we as expats or missionaries or whatever you like to call us, should be allowed to do openly, as a badge of honour for being moulded by both the harsh realities of this fallen world (that mind you, we see around us daily in these poverty stricken nations), and the untouchable and holy plans that the Almighty has for our lives; To strip us down and build us up again as perfectly his.
This article is taken from http://www.alifeoverseas.com/what-if-i-fall-apart-on-the-mission-field/
What If I Fall Apart on the Mission Field?
They say that living overseas will bring out all our bad stuff. They say it like it’s a warning, like it’s supposed to scare us out of going. Like only a superhuman could go and survive.
And what if they’re right? What if moving overseas does bring out all our dark stuff, putting it on display for all to see? What if all the inner turmoil we kept so neatly concealed in our passport countries – or didn’t even know existed – starts falling out of our hearts, falling out of our mouths? What if it spills out into daily life, interfering with all the good works we’re supposed to be doing?
But — what if that’s not such a bad thing? I mean, what if it doesn’t end there, with you at the end of yourself? What if all the stuff that surfaces is supposed to surface? What if the only way to know what’s inside your heart is for it to come out? And what if the junk that needs to come out wouldn’t actually come out in your home country?
So maybe those multiple breakdowns have a purpose. Maybe knowing your weaknesses means you know God more intimately. Maybe you are exactly where He wants you to be, right at this moment. Maybe living overseas means becoming the person that God created you to be.
You followed Him across oceans and continents, across countries and cultures. You prepared for this for years, dreamedof it for longer. And all for what? Just to fall apart on arrival?
No, I don’t believe that. You followed Him this far for a purpose, because you love Him, and because He loves you. And now that you are where He wants you to be, He’s not going to leave you alone and without help. If God brought you to this place, don’t you think He will use cross-cultural living to shape you into the person He wants you to be?
When all our darkness reveals itself, God is right there beside us, waiting, ready to bring ever greater healing to our hearts. Through all this nasty falling-apartness, I believe God wants to heal the broken pieces of our lives. And living overseas might mean that we’re in just the right place to accept those healing changes.
So maybe they’re right. Maybe living overseas will draw out all our bad stuff. Maybe we won’t be able to hide it any more. But I no longer think that’s something to be afraid of — life with God is not something to fear.
So today, if you find yourself in that broken place, at the bottom of a mountain of messes in your life, have faith in the One who called you. Trust Him to put you back together again. Because falling apart is not the end of the story, but it just might be the beginning of a new one.
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