Sunday, April 24, 2005

Finishing up our tour

So as we are finishing up our tour here in Australia I have to say I'm feeling all sorts of things. I am so excited to see friends and family. I'm so ready for that. At the same time I'm wound up inside about leaving. I mean, we stay so busy here, it's like I've been here but I haven't in so many ways. Don't get me wrong, we have been so fortunate to be able to see so much of Australia. And our contact Peter Eckermann did a good job of giving us some time to actually be visitors instead of missionaries. But it's not the same as being here with no set agenda, no set responsibilities. We breezed through some great cities. But it's so much more than just that. It's also experiencing a myriad of short-term relationships with people who you feel could be your friend from down the street. I find myself feeling like I whipped through my experiences. With what we do it becomes challenging sometimes to be 100% present mentally all the time. You're tired, worn, mentally and physically. You become good at just starting up conversations, mingling, doing the songs, doing the puppet shows...what's that?, you want me to talk about how the Australian tree frog relates to God in about 5 minutes from now...okay (nothing that strange but still!); you become good at doing all that without the task needing all your focus. I can't tell you how many people I asked, "What's your name" only to realize 5 min later that I didn't really even bother to process the answer and I'm going to need to ask them again and make a strong effort to retain it. It's not a phenomenon specific to me either. Sometimes you need to allow a small percentage of your focus to be elsewhere in order to survive. It blocks you from really taking in everything completely. I'm going to be mentally processing this entire year long after it is over and think, "I was there, I did that...didn't feel like anything out of the ordinary...it didn't feel like it sounds..." because at the time, it just feels like life. Ordinary, plain, every-day, life. It's messed up in a lot of ways. We've been told over and over by our team director Sunitha (she is so great) that Team life is NOT natural.

There's another mental process at work as well. I've gotten comfortable in some of the places I've stayed. I've gotten comfortable with some of the people. I could live here, I could live in Seattle, I could live a lot of places. Realizing that opens that door in my brain about how much there is in the world to experience, how many livestyles there are available to me, how much more there is than Rockford...how much more there is than my life. Now I "knew" this before this all started...but now I know it. It's different. I don't think I'll have as much anxiety about approaching a stranger who is so different from me, I'll have been on the other side of all sorts of wierd interactions made wierd by queer moods...unexplainable moods. Ironically, the reverse is true. I appreciate my family and friends now more than ever. I will relish the small things in my life that are made so beautiful when deprived of them. I love my life. More so, I've begun to love the valleys in life more than I did before. They are a gift, to be accepted with graciousness.

So what do I do now? I wrote in an email to a friend: I don't know if this year is a break from my life, or if the upcoming week off will be a break from my life. See the conundrum? What do I do about it? Just live through it I suppose. Try to be mentally present, 100%,as much as possible, in every moment. Yep, I reckon that's about all there is to be done with it.

in Christ,
jason

4 Comments:

Blogger Shawn said...

Jason, I know what you mean about not being totally present all the time. Eventually, no matter how different your surroundings are, you end up just doing the tasks you need to do and your brain is pretty much the same, thinking about the same stuff, even though its processing totally different material. It's really exhausting to be thinking all the time, "This is a life-changing opportunity. Take it all in. Remember all of it. You may never get to do something like this again," or maybe it just takes a mental stamina that I don't have.

Is the difference between "knowing" and KNOWING that you speak of kind of like when Wesley Snipes tells Woody Harrelson in White Men Can't Jump that he can "listen" to Jimi Hendrix, but he can't HEAR Jimi Hendrix?

What are your plans for the coming year? Grad School? More missionary work? Working? A year off?

9:03 AM  
Blogger drew said...

hi jason.

this is the unofficial co-chair of the b.p. please get in contact with me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss important matters.

p.s. i heart you.

12:59 PM  
Blogger Paul said...

Yeah Jason when you get home give me a call to, not that I'm in charge of anything, but I'd like to figure it out (the bachelor party). And to talk to you. Biznitch.

12:42 PM  
Blogger Paul said...

J-Rod, what's with not sending the bachelor party pictures to everyone before you left. Never make "drunken" promises. Also, what happened to those pictures of New Years at Marcus'. I like to look at pictures and laugh.

4:48 PM  

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