Waiting

I once thought that, too.... Wait a minute... Really? Am I not supposed to think that? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?... Hello. What a wake-up call. Waiting is so hard for me. Call me Madame Precipitancy.










Since February 1, there is not an ounce of physical productivity I could hand to anyone to show for my time over the last 3 months. We collected local stories for the cultural handbook at the end of January. We did print certificates and pictures of our story-collecting weekend and deliver them to the men, along with CDs of the stories (those CDs were the bane of my existence for 2 months—I could NOT figure out how to make a CD that would work on their players here), but other than that, nothing.

After the workshop, our plan was to transcribe the stories with people in our village. However, they said the stories had too much of the national language mixed in and that it was weird to hear men telling the stories—“Grandmas are the ones who tell stories” they said. So, plan modified. We would ask the older ladies in our village if they could help us by retelling the stories using the cultural experts’ recordings as a resource. With each request, we were denied—“I am not a good story teller;” or “I am not good enough in the local language;” or “Your neighbor needs to do it.”

We call our next-door-neighbor “Grandma Charley.” She is a middle-aged-woman, twelve years a widow, who adopted us as her own daughters from the day she met us, and we love her dearly. She has 6 grandchildren with another on the way. After listening to some of the recordings, Grandma Charley said, “These are good stories. I didn’t know all the details before. I’ll help you with them, but I’m busy right now.” It has been 3 months. After asking and poking and trying other people, we are always directed back to this woman, and here we sit, obstructed by her busy schedule. Today she left the island for her son’s wedding....

I feel like I’ve been on a very steep learning curve. Most days I feel I am tumbling backwards. Character work is so much harder than physical labor. A couple months ago, a friend sent me a questionnaire that included the question, What do you fear most?. I have given it a lot of thought since then, and have come to the conclusion that one of the things I most fear (if not the most) is man's disapproval. God’s disapproval probably seems like it ought to concern me more, but—depending on the day—I have a fair amount of security in that arena, knowing His Word says I am accepted because of the work of His Son. While I say that, I must admit I am concurrently dealing with the question, Do I really believe that God is pleased with me? I can’t really distinguish lines between who I am trying to please/who I am trying to please more—God, or man? All I know is that these questions are ever before me as of late. I pray I am making progress in understanding and believing God more--even if He is the only one who can see it.