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July 21, 2006

Fool For You

I love my job; I always have. I work with great people and I enjoy what I do and I never dread coming here. (Not like I did when I was at the Brand, anyway, and I will feel sick to my stomach every Sunday night.) But the past few days it just feels sort of... pointless. What am I doing here?

I really didn't expect to feel this way upon my return. In the team training guide we got when we were selected for the trip, there is a whole section on returning home. When I first read through it, it seemed strange to me that there would be an entire section on reacclimating from a trip that only lasts seven days. It talked about depression and indifference from friends and family and how to deal with those things, and also about how it's common to experience culture shock coming back to the States. So far, I've been hit with it all.

My friend Autumn sent me an e-mail today that said that she went to North Point's mission page and watched a video from Vox Domini, the partner church we were visiting, and she said it made her so sad and wonder why we weren't still there. As I stumbled around Publix the other night, aghast at it all, I thought the same thing. As I got my paycheck today and realized that I bring home more in two weeks than the average Romanian makes in a year, I wondered the same thing.

I don't know where to start. I don't know how to summarize my heart change, my life change, the things I saw and experienced in a trite paragraph for a stupid blog. Not everyone in my life back here cares about what happened to me over the past week, and it has been a real eye-opener, the folks who are interested and those who are not. So when asked, I simply say it was great and a wonderful experience and if they ask more, I'll tell them. Otherwise, I leave it at that.

On Monday night our team from NPCC and the Romanian volunteers we'd worked with all week gathered in Vox's little fellowship hall (that we'd totally remade with several coats of paint) and we talked about the week, reflecting and sharing our thoughts and feelings. We then shared Communion and worshiped in both English and Romanian and to say it was emotional isn't doing that moment any justice. Gelu, the senior pastor, made the point that while we can hope to see each other again we probably won't, "not this side of heaven." And hearing that made me so sad - to think you can fall in love with people and invest in their lives and never see the fruit of it, it's not what we're accustomed to as people and certainly not as Americans. We like to see the (instant) fruit of our labors. But that's not why we went - we went just to plant seeds and to build relationships and wherever God chooses to take our efforts, that's up to Him.

As we were saying goodbye the Romanians kept thanking us and I wanted to tell them to stop - that it was our privilege. That I feel like I didn't even do anything and I feel more served by them than vice versa.

Romania is a country of contradictions - horse-drawn wagons and mobile phones; enormous modern malls where no one shops; luxury cars driving down torn-up roads. But her people have so much heart and they are so hungry.

Growing up in a country where we thank God in our pledge and on our money it is unfathomable to think that someone could not have heard of Him. (Though I know those people exist here too.) But in Romania, where a profession of faith was punishable by DEATH, not even two decades ago, they don't take our God for granted. Rodica, the pastor's wife, took us into central Timisoara on Saturday and told us the Revolution Story, and their first-hand account. On Dec. 25, 1989, when Cecescu and his wife were killed, Christmas Carols played on the once-government-controlled national radio, and Rodica said it was the first time in her life that she sang carols outside her home. They were free.

"I could search for all eternity Lord and find that there is none like you." - Garden Song, Watermark

Freedom is something I have always had, always known. And though I was once in metaphorical bondage to my sins, I was never actually in bondage. I was never controlled by someone who starved me, physically and spiritually.

"The message every politician knows - when we are fed with nothing, we'll believe it, and then do as we are told." - Wings of the Morning, Caedmon's Call

But despite the fear and the bondage and the control, God was still very much alive in Romania. There were underground churches and movements and despite knowing they could be jailed or killed, they spoke the Truth. It's one thing to learn about Communism in school and read about the bread lines and the secret police. It's quite another to have someone stand in front of you and tell you that they were followed, that they were watched and yet they plowed ahead. Gelu figured out a way to make photocopies in Jell-O so that his fellow college students could hear that God was not, in fact, dead. Photocopies in Jell-O, because you couldn't buy a Xerox or fax machine. You would raise a flag, raise an eyebrow - they would come after you.

Before we took Communion on Monday night, Gelu reminded us that this moment - that the past week we'd shared together - was only possible because Jesus was broken for us. We were only there because of Him and all of our work and all of our best laid plans would have been for naught had it not been for the ultimate sacrifice. He did all of that, just so I could go to another country and see with my own eyes that it's not all about me. That I'm not the only one who loves Him and that Americans don't have the market on spirituality. I knew that anyway, in my head anyway, but I didn't fully understand it, not like I do today.

"You made me free, that's proof enough for me," - Fool, Nicole Nordeman

Posted by hannah at 02:53 PM