I just got home from six weeks of training in the mountains of North Carolina. It was a beautiful time of getting to know lots of other people with similar callings, going all over the world, and I think I learned as much about myself as I did about the people I met. God revealed to me how much I need him, how there are so many things that I still struggle with even as I depart that only He could ever help me overcome.
As I was driving back home (it seems God always hits me with these profound encounters with Him when it's just him and me in the car), I was on a four-lane highway, in the dark. I knew there were most likely deer around and did not want to hit them, so I turned on my brights, but I wasn't sure if that was proper etiquette on a divided four-lane road. I had no idea how I was being perceived by the other drivers, whether my lights were bothering them or not.. and I realized that it will be the same way in the Middle East. Culturally, I'll be in over my head, hoping that my learned behaviors from twenty-two years of living in America are not blinding (and not in the pleasant, city-on-a-hill kinda way) to the people around me. It'll take time and the discernment that only the Spirit can give for me to adjust and start to give off a light that draws people to Him rather than driving them away.
It's only dependence on Him and a desire for Him to become greater and me to become less that will lead to success in ministry as I look to leaving for the field at the end of this month.