It has become hard to write recently.
How do I write about something that my heart has yet to work out? That still makes my head spin? It keeps me awake at night, a constant string of thoughts bouncing around in my mind, much like the ping pong game that never ends.
Before I moved to Costa Rica and then to Nicaragua, they told me about culture shock. They told me about how tired I would be all the time. They told me about how making decisions would suddenly become difficult. They told me about how my capacity to complete everything on my to-do list in one day suddenly would become impossible because some days, just going to the bank or the grocery store can take hours. They told me about the decrease of real, everyday community. They told me about the cultural differences: that being late is normal, that rice and beans is for breakfast, that men will stare, that shorts just aren't worn in public (no matter how hot it gets).
I feel as though I was fully prepared for all these things and more. And after a 10 month stint of language school in Costa Rica, where most of my transitioning consisted of laughing off the tiredness and indecisiveness and counting every mistake made as an adventure, I felt even more prepared for Nicaragua.
But was I wasn't expecting, what I wasn't prepared for, what hits me everyday like a ton of bricks is the questions. The questions that have rocked me to the core of who I am and what I think. The questions that before now, I was never allowed to think about. Or never needed to think about. Or never wanted to think about. Or some mixture of all of those.
Questions about myself, my faith, my theology, my God suddenly become popping up left and right as I began to experience life in Nicaragua. As I began to experience a new world beyond the sweet little Southern city I lived for 23 years of my life. Some days it feels like everything I thought I had figured out is wrong. And it is terrifying. So when the questions first began to come, I stuffed them down (knowingly and unknowingly) - I didn't want to think about them. But they kept coming and they keep coming and I am still unsure with what to do with them or where to turn with them.
Still, I am learning to lean into the questions. To let them come, to let myself ponder them. I am learning that questioning and doubting and being unsure are not the antithesis of faith. In fact, they may be the portal that opens the doors for a deepened faith, a wider view of God's kingdom and a sweeter taste of the grace of Jesus.
I recently read a book about "the questions". This is what the author writes, in her conclusion:
"And yet slowly I'm learning to love the questions...and slowly I am learning to live the questions, to follow the teachings of a radical rabbi [Jesus]
, to live in an upside-down kingdom in which kings are humbled and servants exalted, to look for God in the eyes of the orphan and the widow, the homeless and the imprisoned, the poor and the sick. My hope is that if I am patient, the questions themselves will dissolve into meaning, the answers won't matter so much anymore, and perhaps it will all make sense to me on some distant ordinary day."
This is my hope and this is my prayer - that the questions would keep coming. That I would not shun them away in fear but that I would let them enter in, stay a while and keep my faith alive. That I would know and believe that the hope is not in the answers -
hope is found in the questions themselves.
