Home.

Living in Guatemala, I spend a lot of time subconsciously trying to figure out which culture of the many that surround me I should "be," and possibly even more time making myself decide where to call home. 

As a bridge-builder at heart, I want to be able to cross over completely and BE chapina.  I've chosen to live here for the time being and I want this world to make sense and feel like home.  I want to pull out a flawless accent and witty vernacular and prove that I'm one of "us," that I "get it."  I don't like being different, in the other-than and apart-from sense of the word; it makes me feel discounted. 

However, the part of me that did in fact grow up entirely a US citizen and spent all-but-the-entirety of my developing years in one town and one small sub-culture of close-knit people who all speak with the same accent of our common language is still fairly certain that life would be immensely more comfortable there.  But somehow, to embrace that, I have to leave this behind, and to embrace this, I have to forsake that. Right?

Here I sit, asking constantly if I should sacrifice all the old and join myself to the new (and how long would that really take?) while all the while I fully realize that I'll never erase 22 years spent in another world, and if that were ever God's plan, I wouldn't have been born there in the first place!  

I've convinced myself that I have to be one thing or the other.  It's as though every time a piece of gringo shows up (which, let's be honest, is preeetty often), it overwhelmingly discounts all the little pieces of chapina that I've worked so hard to learn.  The tiniest piece of my not-so-former self can make me feel like I've failed at something that God has never asked of me to begin with. 

Slowly, I'm learning that to love someone doesn't mean I have to become them. 

Yes, Jesus became human.  But he never quit being God.  Not even for a second.  And just for good measure, you couldn't really make a case for him fitting in as a normal human while he walked this green earth any more than you could make a case for Renae Wolf fitting in as a normal Guatemalan in San Lucas.  But did Jesus ever love us!  He brought to bear every ounce of who he was, and sacrificed, and understood even when he was misunderstood, and loved us! 

Can I tell you how comforting that is??  This life can be done.

My prayer is no longer that God would "make me a Guatemalan," or even that he would make me a "not American" (more on that here).  My prayer is that the Master of culture-crossing and the Creator of my heart would speak to me every day the Truth of who I am.  I want to learn the ins and outs of my home culture as God's daughter and a citizen of Heaven who is desperately longing for Home.  

"But we are citizens of heaven, exiles on earth waiting eagerly for a Liberator, our Lord Jesus the Anointed, to come and transform these humble, earthly bodies into the form of His glorious body by the same power that brings all things under His control." 

- Paul, to the Philippians

How big would the box have to be?

Traveling outside of your home country has a way of opening your mind.  Living outside of your home country has a way of messing with it.  

Little did I know that the day I flew out of MSP for GUA, I'd essentially traded in my personal identity for a laundry list of "All Americans do/say/are ________ ."  To nearly every person I meet, I am a 180 cm blonde gringa with a crazy accent and no prayer of ever looking like I belong here.  Almost conclusively.  As such, there are several more assumptions that can pretty easily be made about what kind of person I am, what I like and dislike, and whether or not we could ever understand each other and be friends.  Some may very well line up with reality, but some are FAR, far from the truth, and only the most open of hearts will ever stick around long enough to tell the difference.  

I can't tell you how many people have walked away satisfied with a rather odd idea of who I am or what I'm doing here.  ( Nor could I tell you how many times I've done the same thing to someone else who seemed to fit into one of my pre-fab boxes! )  

I don't want to be lumped in with everyone else who has the same color hair as I do.  I don't love it that people I haven't met will assume that I don't make any sense just because I have blue eyes.  I miss the identity that used to be based on who I really was... so I start to do some really strange things -- Just to distance myself from "them" with whom I have been inescapably lumped.  I start to do things that don't make sense.  Like speaking Spanish to English speakers.  Or not claiming to be an American during grouping activities.  Or ignoring foreign visitors who probably need a friendly face. Or any number of other awkward things I've done that just don't deserve to be mentioned, but were equally as unnecessary! 

And it's not because I hate my country!  I just can't handle the us / them wall that goes up around me when I choose the English-speaking side of the room, and there's this atomic-strength pulse inside of me that really badly wants to prove that I'm not just an American.  ¡Muchá, I'm a person!  A woman, a sister, a thinker, a listener, a musician, a snarky jokester, a daughter, a mentor, a learner, an explorer, a sinner and a Christ-follower.  And YES, a long-time resident of the great state of Minnesota, a German/Irish/Welsh/Whoknowswhatelse European (see what I did there?), and an American.  ALL of those things and more.  And I'm not the same as everyone else from any given one of the groups I've come from. 

I am learning what it feels like to be in the minority.  I live a golden life by any standard, and it's still not easy.  Prejudice comes in many shapes and sizes; it is at best annoying and at worst painfully degrading.  Let's be careful with our boxes, friends.  I have yet to meet a person who fits really well inside of one.  

Some of the amazing girls from church who have gone a long way to explore my "box" and make me feel like family.  ¡Las quiero mucho!