I have now crossed into my sixth month in my new home! As I am reflecting on my time so far, in all of my preparation and in all of my study, nothing could have prepared for how much I have had to forgive others
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying this from a place of pride, but a place of honesty. Living as a foreign person in a foreign place carries a lot of burden and responsibility with it: you represent your entire home country without realizing it, and there is also this expectation that you either must know everything or absolutely nothing about the country you live in now; it feels as though there is no in-between life when it comes to the expectations of others. But I have been noticing that this fuels my anger and frustration for things that I don’t fully understand. When I make mistakes in language or in the street, people can be aggressive, and I have now become aggressive in return. If people see me in the street and shout ugly things at me because of what I look like, I get mad. When I can’t remember the word for something, and the person I am talking to gives up on me and speaks English in a condescending way, I get frustrated. Sometimes, these responses are culturally appropriate, but I haven’t figured out the what/where/when/why/how part. Living in this part of the world requires a certain amount of toughness, but what do I do when living like Jesus does not correlate to what I understand about the culture now? How do I live like Jesus with the knowledge that these things make me want to punch something (or someone)?
Matthew 6:14 states that “if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.” And so I try to live. Even though I want justice for myself, and I want to be able to show people that I am not a dumb foreigner living here, I respond to a call greater than my own image here.
Forgiveness is a discipline to be practiced daily. My friend here told me that she has to wake up every morning with the knowledge that people are going to frustrate her and hurt her today, but she has a call to make the conscious decision to forgive them, even with the knowledge that where God has put her today puts her at risk for being hurt. I want to follow Christ in that- to wake up being ready and able to forgive others when they hurt me, to forgive the culture when it misunderstands me, and to forgive people so that they can sense the love of the Creator in me. Forgiveness is a discipline to be practiced daily.