Six weeks in, and I've already gone through a couple minor waves of culture shock. Don't get me wrong, I know there is more coming, and I know it will be worse. But the honeymoon period lasted about two weeks, before disillusionment began to creep in.

Culture shock has done some crazy stuff to me. I have seen a lot more anger in myself than I have seen in about 13 years.

Yesterday I reflected back upon the weekend. I apologized to someone for the edge that was in my voice in a conversation on Sunday. Then I went and asked God why I was irritated. There were several components. My church here stresses me out (it's a long story). I was baking pizza for ten people in a country where I couldn't read labels and haven't figured out how to work the oven properly and where I was on a deadline. My whole day was spent in those two activities, so me being snappish an hour later shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did.

But there was more, God reminded me. A college friend died last Wednesday. I hadn't seen or spoken with him in ten years, so, honestly, my first reaction was, "Well, guess that friendship won't be rekindled!" But despite my initial flippancy, I've been doing more mourning than I was initially willing to admit to myself. Alex was like a big brother to me in a season when I was struggling with my dad and really needed a big brother figure. He graduated at the end of my freshman year, and I've lived under the impression that he found me annoying and clingy. But whether or not that is true, he filled an important spot in my life. I didn't ever really think he was coming back to be friends again. I think what I'm mourning is not having anyone in that spot now. And desperately trying not to hoist the role on the male figures here.

Or maybe the irritation is the next wave of culture shock. It gets tricky when culture shock and mourning and stress all kinda combine together.

But it also makes me wonder if culture shock isn't a type of mourning. Maybe we really are mourning for the way things used to be, whether that be a culture that speaks our language or communicates in a way we understand, or one in which our favorite foods are readily available. Because no one culture shocks over what they hated about their culture. They culture shock over the things they never really knew that they loved.

Awkward Sauce

So, recently I moved to Japan. I knew that I would need a lot of spiritual backup, so before I left I sent out a mass email asking people if they wanted to be on my prayer list. I got several dozen responses, which has been awesome. I am so blessed to know people are praying for me.

Here is the thing though: at the bottom of my heart, a lot of these updates are written for my church family in Wheaton. They are the group of people who have shown the most faith in who I am as a person, who have shown belief in my gifts and who echo what God has spoken over me, that He has great things for my life. They are also a group of people who believe in the radicalness of God's nature, that He can heal, that He can speak, that He is moving in the now. I don't write my emails for the doubters, I write them for the people who will stand with me in faith. I know Japan is a rough territory and that things move slowly. I also believe it doesn't have to be that way. I came over here believing God will do what he wants to do, and I haven't mentally limited him to inside or outside of my two year contract.

But, I also know there are people who believe that who go to other churches, so I include everyone who wants on the email.

I can't remember if I left them off because they aren't believers or if they didn't respond, but my paternal grandparents weren't on the original email list. My younger sister called me out on this a couple days ago after she visited them and realized they haven't heard from me. She was right. So I emailed my grandparents all five of the emails I'd written so far.

This morning I received an email from my mother letting me know that they had forwarded the emails to all of their kids and kids in law and a sister of theirs.

Um, okay. Well, actually one of those aunts was already getting my emails. The others, well, they aren't walking in faith so I didn't assume they wanted to know about my prayer requests.

The awkward part, though, is that that side of the family doesn't talk about religion. Probably because we are all at different places. The few times we do discuss it you can just feel the tension fill the room. But there's more. Even with my immediate family I don't discuss what I do in my church. And yeah, there are moments when it feels weird that my church family knows me as being super - prophetic and my immediate family doesn't know about it at all, but that is the way we function. You can't go up to someone and say, "Hey, I'm super prophetic! Can I pray over you?" It doesn't work that way. The backdoor ways kinda sorta work, butI still get looks that aren't mocking or quizzical, but are stony and uncomprehending.

So take emails that are written for those who believe I hear God and believe in what I am doing, and now pass them down the line. Nope, further, further, just a little bit more. Yep, there. See that aunt who I never see and don't correspond with and have never been close to because of the weird family dynamics? Yeah, that one, she is reading my impassioned prayers for the spiritual climate of Japan.

Maybe this was for the best. I wasn't ever going to have the words to tell them. I have a hard time coming out of the foxhole around my family and not delving into the coping mechanisms of just keeping my head down and trying not to get hit by the bullets whizzing back and forth. But maybe they needed to know. Yeah, my immediate family probably needed to know eventually, now that I've been walking in the prophetic for 7 years and experiencing it longer. And maybe those aunts and uncles and grandparents needed to know that I'm doing this for real reasons, that belief in God is something incredibly deep and personal to me, not just going to church on Sundays and posting a Jesus sticker on my car (which I don't do, by the way. I never wanted Him blamed for my bad driving). Maybe this is the way it was time to tell them, when in person conversations were never going to happen, when they know it isn't directed at them because it is a mass email forwarded by someone else. When it isn't crafted as a guilt trip or a "come to religion" speech.

It's just me, being real with my family, maybe for the first time.

I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face

In the musical My Fair Lady there is a song towards the end which Henry Higgins sings about Eliza Doolittle. He doesn't belt out his love in an incredibly romantic way, unlike Freddie who gives a beautiful tribute to the street where she lives. Higgins simply says, "I've grown accustomed to her face."

I always thought that was pretty weak sauce. Freddie might be a dolt but his affection was real. I never liked Henry Higgins much.

I still think Higgins is a jerk, but today I understand him better. I work at a junior-high in Japan. I've only been there a month. The Japanese are people who take time to warm up to a foreigner. It is only in the past week or so that I've begun to have some small relational victories.

There is some conjecture that in the next couple months I might be reassigned to another school. Today I was processing that, trying to figure out how I felt. Would I miss these kids? I haven't had conversations with most of them. I don't even know most of their names, because when I ask or overhear them, I can't remember these names I've never heard before.

But I would miss them. I stood in front of a class today and realized I've grown accustomed to their faces. I can't tell you their names, but I know them. There is 1-1 with the three boys lined up on the left. The girl in the front right with the cute pigtails. Momoka at the back of 1-2 whose face lights up when she talks to the girl in front of her, who is little sister of the captain of the table tennis club. In that same class is the girl who looks awkward but who I somehow know is good with her hands, just like I knew the schedule maker at my school spoke English. The boy at the front of the second row from the right who has had a stomach ache the past couple of days but who is one of the loudest students when it comes to English recitation. The boy at the front left corner of 3-1 who is a basketball jock, in every sense of the word. I would miss him too. Megumi, in the same class, who I am working with for speech competition. I would miss her. And of course little buddy, in the 2 class, who is in 8th grade but looks about 8, and was the first to interact with me on that very first day. Boy, I would miss him.

I don't know what all classes some of these kids are in, but I carry them in my heart. When I enter the room and they stand before me I smile. I have my favorite classes, but there is no class I am not glad to see. I pray for these kids as they do writing exercises. I have specific promises I pray over some of them. I wish it was linguistically possible, or culturally acceptable, to tell them some of what I believe God will do in their lives, some of the people I believe He says they are going to grow up to be.

In the most basic terms, I've grown accustomed to their faces, and I would miss them.

The Outsider Perspective

Today, if I'm not forgetting another instance, I got on a bike for only the second time in the past 10 years. The last time I did, 5 years ago, I believe, I knew I didn't have brakes and was super cautious. Ten years ago, in Amsterdam, my friend Jamin told me that he was sure angels were protecting me, so close did I come to death.

I'm a little scared of riding a bike. I know I'm not that good at it, and it goes pretty fast. But I'm also working on conquering irrational fears. Recently I got on a skateboard, something I really never thought I'd do again. It went quite well, so today when some friends suggested we go on a bike ride to a favorite spot of theirs, I decided to stop being a wuss and get on a bike.

It was going swimmingly. My legs are strong enough from running that I was able to keep up on the uphills and it was quite leisurely on the flat. Then came the down hill. Jay went speeding to the bottom, jokingly shouting, "no brakes." Travis, who stayed closer, was also picking up speed, so I decided to release the brake a little and go. That went well too, until suddenly, for no apparent reason, I began to lose control. Travis looked back just in time to see me in what he calls a death wobble.

It didn't last long, maybe two seconds, but in that time things flashed through our heads. I realized my bike was out of control and that I was going fast enough that falling off would mean something more than skinning a knee. Travis' brain got further. He comprehended how close I was to the guard rail and was already contemplating the contingency plan about whether to go get Jay, whether to stay with me, and when the ambulance should be called in the middle of this, as he was sure would be needed.

Then, before I even had time to pray, the wobble stopped, I regained control of my bike, and Travis gently suggested I utilize my brakes a little more. He slowed down too, so that my competitive juices would stop flowing.

I was a little scared by the experience, but no more scared than I was by the snake we saw later on. In fact, the snake I had longer to be scared by. The snake forced me to make a decision about whether to go by that area of the river. The snake forced me to overcome fear. The bike fear was so fast, and there was no decision to be made.

But Travis has a better grasp on the experience than I do. I think he was a lot more freaked out by it than I am. He saw what my bike was doing, he knew what the consequences would be, and he was more aware of how close I came to getting badly injured. He is the one who knows what happened today.

I can't help thinking other times are like that, that we are in far more danger than we think, and through something miraculous, we don't suffer the consequences.

To all those times when we are saved from danger, even if we don't know it, I say Thank you, Jesus, and Amen!

Eating Hamburgers with Chopsticks

Today part of the school lunch was a hamburger patty. There wasn`t a bun and the only utensil was chopsticks, so that is how I ate my hamburger.

As I did so, it struck me as a metaphor for life in Japan. I am expected to be American here, but in a Japanese way. I can`t be too American as it weirds people out. But I also can`t be too Japanese, because that weirds people out too. The most astonished looks I`ve gotten are when I laugh, as mine comes out rather boisterous ( I refuse to tone it down, but those explanations are for another post) or when I tell people I enjoy learning kanji or when I mention I don`t like coffee, or when I wore an ankle-length skirt to school. I`m either too American, or too Japanese, or not American enough, or something else entirely that leaves my friends and I puzzled as to an explanation.

So what do I do here? I eat hamburgers with chopsticks. I do American things in a Japanese way. And none of it is really either, but it is what is expected.