“Blessed be the name of God forever & ever, to whom belong wisdom & might. He changes times & seasons […] He reveals deep & hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, & the light dwells in him.”
—Daniel 2:20 – 22
“Dig deep down deep & there’s still more”
—Jana Alayra
As previously mentioned on this blog, I travel a lot. Or, at least, I used to before moving to South East Asia.
I knew going into this that my 2 – 3 year commitment here would be the longest time in the last decade that I’ve stayed in one place, but as my 4th month in-country begins to end the mindset is having to shift.
For most of the last 6 years, my routine has been fairly similar: College August through December, a month at home (about 1,337 miles from college), then college again January til May. I’d usually travel during the summers, but even when I didn’t that was still only 3 or 4 months at home before I left again for college.
In other words, for most of the last 6 years, the 4-month mark is about when I’d be planning to head home—whether that meant to my mom’s house or my home-away-from-home at university. But at this 4-month mark my time here is only just begun, & it feels weird.
Usually at 4 months I’ve gotten back into the college or summer routine & I need to prepare to exit it well. For me, that often looks a little bit like coasting on neutral. That is, I don’t take on new projects, I don’t invest in a brand-new relationship or seek out more ways to get involved when I need to be preparing for finals or planning my return road trip.
But here at 4 months I feel like I’ve barely done anything. Yes, I have a pretty comfortable routine of language class & a few extra-curricular activities, but I don’t have any close local friends & spend the vast majority of my time alone either sleeping or studying. This is somewhat expected—I didn’t make any close friends my first semester of university either, only found a few candidates that became close friends later.
It’s not so much that I need to change gears as it is I need to change the way I change gears, if that makes sense. I’m used to driving my life like a manual transmission car with a gear for home, a gear for college &c.—moving into neutral as I transition between them. But now I’m like an electrically-driven drill: just delving deeper into one place continuously, limited only by the strength of my mettle & my connection to my power supply.
I guess that means I better make sure to keep that connection to the Power secure & settle in to see how deep The Craftsman takes me. It’s often kind of hard to see what’s being made when you’re the tip of a drill deep down in the hole, but I’ve seen some of the stuff He’s made before & it’s pretty awesome—I feel privileged to get to be a part of this new creation.