I don't think I've made it clear to everyone that I recently got the chance to go on an adventure in Great Britain. My group had been planning for about a year and we thought we were pretty well prepared (You can check out the previous installments here first and here second to see how that went). Travel is great because it's full of new experiences, sights and adventures. It can also be full of exhaustion, confusion and short tempers. In my pursuit of an adventure to find God in my everyday I discovered some things about myself in the testing ground that the trip became that I was pretty ashamed of. So what do you do when you discover unpleasant things about yourself when you're supposed to be having an adventure?
My hubby and I went to Great Britain back in our second year of marriage with a friend. It was an amazing opportunity and I really enjoyed myself. We had a great time. Here's the thing, our travel companion thought I had the worst time ever. Why? I was overweight and generally unhappy. It was my normal at the time. I was getting used to having a chronic illness and getting used to being a wife.
Complaint was a normal part of my language. I have since been called out for complaining which made me aware of what I thought was "sharing" and was really the symptom of a heart problem. That first time to Great Britain was full of great memories but it was a great lesson afterward as I got feedback from my friend. It made me aware of the attitudes I wear.
This latest adventure to Great Britain was like a mirror of the first time. I watched as my travel companion struggled and a completely unexpected thing happened. I was impatient. I am appalled to admit it. Even now I feel ashamed of myself. My previous esperience should have prompted me to greater understanding and compassion. Instead, I kept trying to make things better with more planning, adjustments to the schedule, and trying to interact less with my companions. The truth is, how I do things isn't how my companions did things. While this led to further frustration, it didn't have too. Once misunderstanding took root, every word seemed to have the potential to be hurtful. I tried to fix it by talking less which ended up coming across as passive aggressive and sulky. I hate those words. They are ugly words and I hate imagining myself wearing them.
People wear all kinds of weird stuff when they go on vacation. Stuff they would never wear at home. Plaid beanies, Hawaiian shirts, lederhosen. It seems we also wear our dirty laundry. The secret things we say in the privacy of our minds that we dismiss at home because we can easily brush them aside. In our safe places, in our familiar, we indulge in them like pieces of chocolate because we can be alone. We don't have to constantly be on our best behavior. On a trip, or outside our comfort zones, or during times of exhaustion and pain, there is no where to hide. Those things we think in the privacy of our mind become an internal snide commentary that makes its way onto our face and out of our mouths.
During the course of any adventure it is always wise to be aware of tensions and to ask yourself:
- Is my behavior adding to or subtracting from the experience we are having?
- What lingering dark place in your heart came out of your mouth in a moment of weakness?
- What am I going to do about it?
For Biblical and practical reasons the first thing you need to do about it is confess it to God and then go and apologize to your companions. Getting it resolved gives everyone the best chance to reset and get on with having a great time. Once that is done, I find it very useful to write it down and talk to God about it in detail. While the immediate weakness of exhaustion and stress will go away, the underlying issue that it exposed is something you want to bring to the Light.
Discovering unpleasant things about yourself on an adventure gives you the gift of insight. The opportunity to bring those things before the Lord, confess them, and ask Him to weed them out of your thought closet (to borrow a turn of phrase from Jennifer Rothschild). It's hard, and it's ugly, but I can't think of a better memento to bring back from any vacation.
I hope my travel companions will look back on this adventure and forget the tensions, spats, pain and frustrations. I hope they will remember the adventure for the exciting and new experience it was. Either way, I know I'm praising God for using the adventure to teach me more about Him and who He wants me to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment