On Boxes and Why They Don't Work Here....Or Anywhere, Really

A wild "bajaj" ride from my most recent trip to Jakarta through hidden back alleys and crowded, dirty streets...on our way to Starbucks and the mall.  

I keep waiting for things to slow down, get less chaotic and hectic, reach some kind of equilibrium. More than 3 years into living in Indonesia and I'm finally learning that just won't happen. Not in this missionary life. We have some less-busy seasons.  But life here consists of far more crazy-busy seasons.  It's okay.  Because it is a good life and we love it.

There goes my "Living-Overseas-Is-A-More-Simple-Life" box.

Part of this crazy life means learning how to live in a ton of different worlds at once.  We're Americans - through and through - America is, and always will be, our home country.  I cannot wait to go there in a few months and to be able to really relax for the first time in years.   But Indonesia has worked its way into my heart.  It is also our home.  If I think about leaving, I feel this giant lump of sadness in the back of my throat, choking my breath. (No plans for a permanent move from Indonesia any time soon, by the way.)  I also miss Latin America with a deep, inexpressible kind of heartache.  Part of my heart lies there, where the Amazon meets the Andes.

So, forget the "I-Belong-HERE"  box.  Shreds.  It is in shreds.

Then there is the "I-Came-To-Help-The-Poor" box.  And the "I-Gave-Up-Luxuries" box. And the "I-Don't-Need-Any-Dress-Clothes" box.  And the "I-Can-Only-Have-So-Many-Friends" box. And the " I'm-An-Ordinary-White-Middle-Class-Gal" box.

Most days, I have no box for what I see or experience. We brush shoulders with the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor.  I see opulence and wealth in Jakarta, right next to abject poverty that takes my breath away.  But it's much closer to home than that.  I literally live smack-dab between two very different worlds - to the left is my neighbor with a swimming pool, expensive car with paid driver, and luxurious home.  I run into her most often at the nicer restaurants in town, at the movie theater, or in the mall, and we make the polite small talk of the well-to-do.  I like her a lot.  The neighbor to the right is living in a house that I fear will blow over in the next big storm.  She is my househelper and without her, how could I be here?  I love her.  And while I am far closer to the neighbor with the little wooden house on stilts, I feel equally called to develop a friendship with the one with the apparent perfect life, knowing she needs friendship and Jesus just as much as any other person.  Celebrities, malnourished children, government officials, ordinary day-workers, Christians, M*slims, those with plenty, those with nothing.  I see them all and I know them all.  And on some level, I understand them all.

Day-to-day living in Indonesia between (and in) so many drastically different worlds throws me off-balance. I'm always off-kilter as well as busy and geographically confused.

Boxes?  Huh.

I'm not real sure where I fit into the world's socio-economic scale, but I can say I understand Paul a little better when he says, "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." (Phillipians 4:12)  I know this verse is about being content whatever our circumstances, but I'm also discovering what Paul must have felt like ministering to the wealthy and influential at the same time he's ministering to the poor and lowly.  He's telling rulers what they should believe, while also reaching out to his fellow prison inmates.  He doesn't care where they've been, what they've done, how much they make.  Paul understands them - he's been in the world of the comfortable and in the world of the suffering. They all need the same thing - Jesus.  Desperately!

I used to think I was a missionary so that I could lift the poor out of their distress.  Not so.  I'm a Christian, a light in a dark world populated by people of every race, religion, and socio-economic status.  I'm meant to carry Jesus to ALL the world, to minister to the ones He loves and wants to lift out of sin.  (And, by the way, so are you.  Yes, you.  Right there in whatever world or worlds you find yourself in.)

Boxes.  God breaks out of them every time.