A Thousand Sparkling Lights

I looked at the pictures someone had posted on Facebook, slowly clicking through the album. The food, the smiles, the camaraderie, the group photo at the end with everyone smiling big. Then I opened up a chat window to my mom and began to type.

Mom, do you think I'm not good enough of a missionary because I'm not doing Bible studies with dorm girls, bringing food bags to refugee families, or participating in the activities like today the women's ministries did a picnic for refugee women?

I've been here 2 years and 2 months today and I still don't speak Arabic; I don't have connections in the community; I don't have a 5-year evangelism plan; I don't even know how to talk about Jesus or give a Glow tract to someone in the taxi or bus or at the checkout. It's difficult, this world I live in that is a swirl of missionary with real-life. I work at a Christian university and attend the attached church and being single suddenly somehow means I'm asked to do a whole lot of things. Today it was a picnic, last week the church clerk, and tomorrow probably to teach the lesson study for the earliteens. It's not that I don't want to help; it's just that I'm starting to understand why one of my friends is on a church break right now. Burnout doesn't come only in the workplace; it can come in ministry also.

Perhaps the heaviest burden of guilt, though, comes from not feeling like I'm doing enough to be accepted. By whom, I'm still not sure. The older people, who will pat me on the shoulder and say Isn't she doing such a great work for the Lord? My peers, who will invite me to other social events since we've spent time together doing church activities. The university students who watch my behaviour as they model off what they see me do or not do. The one whose opinion I wish most to be positive of me but never know. Or the God Who, through church and culture and environment, has led me to believe, perhaps erroneously, that there is a great work to be done and I'm neglecting my part?

This is not a new topic for me. I struggle often with the tension inside that shames me into feeling not good enough. While I came out here as a missionary and continue to be under that umbrella, there is very little about me that feels like a bonafide missionary. That isn't what I want to be, anyhow. I just want to be me, living here, and adjusting to what it means to breathe in and out in the cycle of life. If my life makes any impact at all, I want it to be without my knowledge, so that I cannot claim any prideful part in it, but rather let it be natural and real. Not the requisite cookie-cutter set of expectations or a veneer of smiles that doesn't translate into the heart language.

Maybe this living between worlds thing is more than physical continents. Maybe it is also relevant to my purpose in life. I find myself caught between the expectation to be a 100% missionary and a 100% person living life here. I don't want to be a missionary. Maybe that's sacrilegious to say. But just like I hate living between identities, never knowing if I'm Dutch or Mauritian or Californian or Lebanese or Burkinabé, I hate not being able to claim a single identity for who I am.

I want to be a woman in her 30's living in Lebanon exploring life through music, nature, and food. A woman who loves to laugh, is excited to see the sun sink in the golden Mediterranean horizon, writes to understand herself and her world, is slightly obsessively overanalytical, and dreams of romance. A woman whose motto is people before tasks, values quality time without technology, and will drop everything to talk or listen. 

This is me.