27 life lessons, installment three

As I move away from the lessons I've learned here in Kenya that center around teaching and cultural adaptation and home life, it's going to get a bit more personal.  These lessons are being learned not under purely positive and encouraging circumstances.  They've been learned in the crucible, in pain and loneliness and self-searching.  But there's joy in what I'm learning here, too.  Because I absolutely believe that collecting this knowledge along the way and beginning the process of letting it truly transform my mind and my heart is the principle purpose for the circumstances and calling that God gives to me.  After all, it's very rarely ever about me.  I'm not here on some grand spiritual errand that only I can fulfill.  Most of the work God desires to do is in me, not through me.

So here are the first couple of lessons I'm learning as I grow here with the Lord...

Lesson 6. Love and Serve Others Whole-Heartedly, Unabashedly, and Without Condition: I’ll admit that this has been a lesson I’ve neglected in my time here in Kenya.  In beginning this discipleship program within the high school, I’ve realized that while I’ve said that my purpose here is to love and know my students personally in order that they may know Christ and grow in their knowledge and relationship with him…I’m not certain that I’ve actually acted upon that known purpose.  Sure, I’ve committed myself to teaching my students as well as I’m able.  I’ve tried to make time for them, in and outside of the classroom environment.  I smile as much as possible.  I offer hugs when it looks like a kid’s struggling.  I’ve believed that this was enough.  But in loving, there is never an enough.  I remember at the end of my first year at WNS, I gave my students a course and instructor evaluation form to complete.  I was surprised – and even a little hurt – to see so many students giving me low ratings for the category “Empathy and Understanding of Student Concerns” and “Approachability Outside of Class.”  But they were right.  I was so busy fumbling around, trying desperately to do everything right and please everyone and lesson plan and grade and track things and people and resources down that I lost sight of my purpose.  How does that happen? 

It happens, friends, when we lose sight of who first loved us.  Who compels us to love.  Who invented love.  It happens when we make our lives about ourselves.  How many times have I “punished” someone by withholding affection and kindness because I felt they’d slighted me first?  How many times have I neglected someone who desperately needed someone to listen?  How often have I felt entitled to relationship, but found myself disappointed and lonely?  How often have I felt unlovable myself?  All are instances when I place the “I” in my life above “them” – and more importantly, above “Him.”  I ought to be so desperately in love with my Savior and Lord that I am compelled to love others.  And because He loves to often without even the promise or possibility of being loved in return, how much more should I be willing to love others – regardless of whether I’ll be loved back?  Relationships here on earth are always a catalyst for our relationship with the Lord.  If I’m able to truly love others as He loved me, then it’s only because I’ve learned to understand His love first.

Lesson 5.  Be Still and Listen: I’m an external processor.  I really only know what I think or feel about something once I’ve said it out loud or put it down on paper.  I’ve recently begun calling my roommate Jen “My Journal” because of how frequently she’ll patiently sit with me and serve as a sounding board for my processing.  You’re all my journals.  My students are my journals.  Friendships are my journals.  All of those relationships serve to teach me something, and I love to learn through talking.  I am less adept at learning through truly listening. 

I meet twice a month with my discipler, Kara.  We usually meet at her house after her kids have gone to bed or find a fun restaurant to have coffee or dessert (or both).  A few weeks ago, as Kara and I met, she gently offered some wisdom and a challenge to me.  She recalled one meeting we’d had last year where I had “literally talked for 45 minutes straight” without really taking even the tiniest break.  I hadn’t done so in a while, but the pattern still existed.  Take a breath, she admonished and encouraged softly – let your mind quiet and listen. 

Embarrassed at first, thinking that every relationship I have with people must be broken in some way because I’m an irritating twit who won’t shut up, I realized that there was absolutely truth in what she’d said.  To some degree, this has been modeled for me and is absolutely normal.  I remember sitting around countless dinner tables, everyone talking and talking – sometimes talking over someone else – a joyful, albeit noisy kind of daily event.  There weren’t even that many of us.  But we could sure fill dead air.  Everyone except for my little brother, Sam.  The poor sweet singular internal processor among us, no one ever really understood why he wouldn’t talk and share and debrief.  Shy?  Preoccupied?  Willful?  A teenager?  No, Weiants, that’s just a round peg in our square dinner table. 


But moving beyond the initial embarrassment, I realized that there is deep truth in this.  In constantly allowing the motor of my mind and mouth to run, I ignore the subtle signals in relationship.  I ignore a need.  I belittle someone else's story.  I limit intimacy.  I make assumptions.  I have so many words of my own, I even put some of them in other people's mouths.  

This matters very much to me at present, and I hope it’s a “life lesson” that sticks with me.  I’m already seeing this affect my relationships just in small changes.  Because I don’t need to fill the quiet.  I don’t need to be heard all of the time.  Sometimes I really need to just sit with someone and listen.  But as much as I’m trying to apply this important principle in my relationships here, I feel it’s also meant to change the way I communicate with the Lord.  I talk and talk to God.  I ask Him to give me guidance and answers, and I wait a whole two minutes and I’m on to the next thing.  Listen, Kate.  Be still.  Let me talk to you.  Let me share my days with you.