My Journey: Living in Community, Loneliness, & the Lord

I
realized that I have shared so many stories about what God is doing here in
Candelaria and through our ministry, but have shared very little about my own
journey with the Lord here. It’s mostly because these things don’t fit into
neat little one day or one moment stories. For me, it’s so difficult to put
into words the complex things that the Lord is doing in my heart, but I’m going
to try to be more intentional about sharing how the Lord is moving is my life.
So, from now on, whenever you see a blog starting with “My Journey” it will be
something that the Lord is working in my heart personally.

Over
the last couple of months, I have been fighting this growing feeling of
loneliness. I have been trying to figure out exactly what it is. I know that I
started my time here in Nicaragua with a really strong community of other
American missionaries doing life and ministry together. I loved having them
here and it was hard to watch as slowly almost all of them returned to the
States.

[All these are pictures of my community in Nica from February-June 2010]

However,
this nagging sense of being alone was about more than just my American friends
returning home. I looked around me and what I was feeling wasn’t true and honestly
didn’t even make sense. How do you feel alone in a culture that is so much more
community-oriented than any place I have ever lived? How do I feel lonely in a
place where I love and am loved so deeply? And yet the loneliness persisted.

One afternoon yet another person stormed off angry and no longer talking to me as I stood in silence wondering, “What just happened?” Suddenly it clicked. The loneliness wasn’t about actually being alone. It wasn’t about feeling neglected or unloved. It was the feeling that no one understood me. The truth is that cultural differences run deep. Culture affects everything that you say and do. I spend so much of my time here thinking “I have no idea what just happened.” or realizing that people aren’t hearing the same things in my words that I am intending. Then you pile on the language barriers as I try to explain complex feelings, ideas, or cultural differences in a second language where I still have the vocabulary of an elementary school student. The majority of the time I just feel misunderstood.

This last month or so I have just been struggling personally. I know that it is the result of entering a new phase of culture shock where I am past the honeymoon phase and am realizing just how deep the cultural barriers run and how little I still understand about how to function within my new culture. It’s been a really tough experience, but the Lord is really meeting and sustaining me in amazing and incredibly precious ways….

I love how Jesus know how much I can be stretched and when I need a break. He has been providing me with the perfect combination of really pushing me to rely on Him in new ways (to allow Him to fulfill needs that had been filled through community) and then knowing when my heart just needs an actual hug or a glimpse of true community. He has met these needs in so many ways!

In August the Lord helped to ease my transition by bringing some amazing short-term teams that really enouraged and ministered to me. He allowed me to build some long-lasting friendships with one of the teams that has resulted in skype prayer dates and tons of support and encouragement. They have really been such a blessing to my heart! Also, Ashley (one of my former community members) returned for a short visit in August. Being able to share my heart with her, pray for our youth here, and dive into ministry together was an incredible blessing! It really helped to ease my transition (returning to Nica after a visit home without my original community here). I know that these relationships were gifts from the Lord (pictured below).

When my heart started feeling that familiar ache of loneliness and real longing for a community that really understands my heart, the Lord provided another gift for my heart. He gave me a weekend of diving back into my World Race community. I was able to travel to Phoenix, AZ where Krystle (my World Race sister) was getting married. Six of us girls flew in from all over the US (and Nicaragua!) to celebrate with Krystle and Kevin. I was able to have 4 days of living in this amazing community of women again (pictured below). We told stories of all that the Lord has been doing in our lives, laughed nonstop, had tons of coffee dates, danced, and prayed for one another. It was just what my heart needed.

The Lord has also been ministering me in really beautiful ways here in Candelaria too. One night I was just having a really bad day. I was feeling like no one really understands me. All of the sudden one of my little brothers here comes up and says, “I know that face. You’re going to cry. What’s wrong?” Another of my brothers says, “Lisa what’s wrong? You need to talk about it.” The two of them sat down with me and just listened as I talked and cried. They weren’t punks as usual- joking around and giving me a hard time. They were really understanding and compassionate. Then they started to offer me advice. The really beautiful thing is that all of this advice was from things that Diego and I had been teaching the youth. It was so encouraging to see them not only remembering the things we have been teaching, but also to internalize and really connect with those truths. The next day I had a long talk with one of my best friends here and she explained more of the culture to me, prayed with me, and helped me to understand how to move through this culture better. One of my sweet little teenage girls showed so much maturity and growth to talk to me about something she had said that inadvertently hurt my feelings. We were able to talk together with really open communication (which is a totally new concept for my teenagers) and prayed together. It was such an incredible moment to realize that although my relationships and communication have been so difficult in a new culture, that despite the difficulties and misunderstandings my teenagers are learning to communicate in healthier ways and we are developing more stable relationships.

Yes, these last couple of months have been incredibly difficult for a super extroverted person to learn to function without the same level of community, but the Lord has been so faithful. I am learning to discover a deeper intimacy with the Lord and am seeing Him faithfully meet every need both through His own Spirit and through people that He is placing in my life. It’s tough, but beautiful.