THE HONEST TRUTH: REFLECTION ON THE JOURNEY

Twice, I have died for a few minutes in an operating table that the first thing the doctor blurted out to my waiting husband was, "Good news, you became a widower today, but now you aren't!"  I have lost a child, I lost pregnancies, and as a result, I also lost some essential parts of my body, which sometimes makes me feel like I am half a woman.  Innocent statements like, "why don't you have more children? I'll pray you'll bear a girl," makes you feel a bit insecure and sad.   I have lost my dad in a very traumatic way because I cannot shake the feeling that my lack of CPR skills may have been the thing that killed him, not to mention that my own mother, in her grief of suddenly losing her husband to cardiac arrest told me what a waste putting me through college was when I could not even use it to save my dad.  I have lost opportunities; I have had a difficult life early on, but one of the most difficult times by far, was the psychology of being separated from family specially from my differently-abled child (who was used to having me there all his waking hours, and then not having me there, going sad, then angry, then uncaring about my absence in his life,) and undergoing a study program with only half a brain.

In the first place, I really did not want to come here and study. In fact, I was seriously considering hanging up my translation ministry hat to take my buy-and-sell business seriously.  I told God, maybe twenty two years of volunteer full-time ministry work was enough, I now need to be thinking about my 'future' and my son's future.  But I remember a few years back, after I rebelled and told God I've had enough of ministry and went ahead and enrolled in Law School, that was the day I nearly died.  You'd say, "No, that is not how God works!" But you do not know half of the story.

After working in the translation ministry a year from the day I left the auspices of college until one day before I have had to fly here, it seemed to be the next logical thing to do.  Everything seemed to line themselves up telling me it was time to take a break from my 2-decades of ministry life, and do something related but new.  I have been to graduate school for two and half a year within that 22-year period, the first year, as a single young lady still green in the ears in the BT ministry, and as a newlywed during the second year.  But that was in country, and it only takes a bus ride and a few hours to get back home.  Compared to this study that I just finished,  I would not say that that study was easy, but it was something I enjoyed so much because I was at a prime age of 25 and 27, and my brain cells were still working at full capacity, that it was most definitely a stroll in the park, brisk it may have been, but a walk in the park, nonetheless.

So what was different this time?  What made it such a challenging journey for me?  With the benefit of a 20/20 hindsight, I think that I embarked on a journey that asked a lot of me, after years  and years of sustained burnout, and the fact that I also brought work with me.  Nobody asked me to be Wonder Woman, and work while I was doing something that required all of my focus, but one has a family and needs to make a living, right? So I guess it was poor planning on my part, but I felt like that has been my life since I sort of become independent at age 11.

So let us talk about burnout. A burnout needs a corresponding vacation, rest and recreation, recharging, you name it.  But what did I do? I forged ahead and registered in a program that was absolutely intensive, that you finish a whole semester course in three weeks of 4.5-hour days,  three times a week of classes, in a language you barely know, but are required to learn fast,  comprehend and speak.  Even in my younger years, I quit my MDiv program due to a compromised health,  and here I came, mentally spent, emotionally unprepared, psychologically compromised,  and expected myself to breeze through something just like I did in most of my studies in the past.  Well, I did not breeze through anything. It was a grueling 10-months in the sense that no matter how I wanted to exert more effort, I could not.  My mind just tells me over and over again, "This is what I am able to do right now, beyond that, you are on your own." Linguistic concepts that I can figure out in my sleep 15 years ago, became a game of hide-and-seek in my head. Because while I understood it in class, my mind just won't retain anything new.  I was lucky if I get two hours of sleep everyday under normal circumstances, so I had to pump myself with red liquids, white and blue pills to get a decent 4-hour of sleep but always wakes up with a hair-splitting headache the next morning, that everyday with enough sleep the night before is a practice of surviving pain and not go under.  But I soldiered on because giving up was out of the question.  I once continued going to work while  a 5-inch surgical wound in my belly refuses to knit together as it should have months before. I say this not with pride but with shame at the stupidity of it all.

Burnout. Nothing is left in you but the ashes of what you once called service.  The joy is sucked out of everything.  But you go through the motions because stopping will make you realize that you have a problem. And realizing that you have a problem will force you to try and come up with a solution.  But coming up with a solution will require you to search deeper into your soul and take stock of who you have been, what you have become, and who and what else you want to be.  Burnout makes you ungrateful. Burnout leaves your heart for dead. Burnout makes you see nothing but the dark clouds instead of the rainbows and their silver linings. You don't see potential friends, you only see strangers who would make demands of your time and want a piece of you.  Burnout makes you blind to everything good. Even when you see the good, you are too skeptical and cynical to even acknowledge good for what it is.

Burnout makes one horribly jaded. I can remember a time when I believed all my losses and traumas were the things that make me effective in my work. I used to think that I was able to capture the heart of Job when I put it into my language because I have gone through incredible losses in my life, and wrestled with God through it all.  I used to believe that I was able to capture the tone of the Psalmist's imprecations because I have been treated unfairly a few times in my life. I used to subscribe to the belief that everything happens for a reason. Now, as I helplessly watch as my memories and my mind go ( I have a hard time remembering what I hear a few minutes ago, wholesale inability to remember what happened to me yesterday), headaches that makes one a monster the next moment after being kind the moment before, inability to sleep like a normal person, trying to cope with the demands of everyday life just like everybody else, I noticed in myself an automatic cynicism that in order to combat it, or at least hide it,  I tend to force myself to pretend a lot or just retreat in my shell and not give an inch as to what I am thinking. 

AND YET, IF I AM HONEST, I WILL HAVE TO ADMIT, THAT EVEN IN THE MIDST OF MY BURNOUT STATE,  THE GOD I SERVED HONORED MY HONESTY, AND MY DESPERATE CRY FOR HELP, EVEN AS I ASK HIM AT TIMES, IF HE IS TRULY THERE, IF I HAVE NOT WASTED HALF OF MY LIFE THINKING I WAS DOING HIS BIDDING IN MY LIFE, TO SERVE HIM BY SERVING MY PEOPLE, WHEN MAYBE HE DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. EVEN AS I ONLY GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS BECAUSE I KNOW NOTHING ELSE, AND I DO NOT WANT TO DISAPPOINT THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR TRUST IN ME, HE STILL KEEPS TAKING ME BY THE HAND, PUSHING ME, PULLING ME, WAITING PATIENTLY FOR ME, AS I, IN MY WEAKNESS, TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO ABOUT MYSELF.  I KEEP TELLING HIM, "I AM TIRED, I DO NOT HAVE THE ENERGY TO DO MORE THAN THIS RIGHT NOW, YOU'LL NEED TO CARRY ME THROUGH THIS WITHOUT ME EXERTING ANY MORE EFFORT."  SO HE DID. Maybe I could have done better if I was at least 90% if not 101%, BUT THE POINT IS, HE DID, AND I CANNOT DENY THAT FACT. WHATEVER ACCOMPLISHMENT OR FINISHED WORK I WAS ACCORDED, THERE WAS NOT MUCH OF ME THERE. IT WAS TOTALLY HIS MIRACLE, BECAUSE HONEST TO GOODNESS, I DID NOTHING BUT SHOW UP,  with an addled brain, an unreliable memory, a what-am-I-doing-here-when-I-am-planning-to-change-career-anyway ATTITUDE. HE REASSURED ME, HE'LL KEEP SHOWING UP EVEN DURING THE TIMES WHEN I AM SO ABSENT IN HEART AND MIND.

IN SPITE OF MYSELF, HE KEPT ME CURIOUS, HE KEPT ME FASCINATED ABOUT THIS PLACE, ABOUT HIMSELF, ABOUT HIS WORDS RELATIVE TO THIS PLACE AND ITS HISTORY.  HE KEPT ME PHYSICALLY HEALTHY AS I CAN BE, AND HE GAVE ME PEOPLE WHO INSPIRED ME JUST BY THEIR BEING YOUNG, ּBECAUSE I SEE MY ONCE YOUNG, HOPEFUL AND NOT JADED and NOT CYNICAL SELF IN THEM; SOME BY BEING PUSHY, SOME BY BEING KIND, SOME BY BEING FRIENDLY TO ME, SOME BY BEING DEPENDENT ON ME, AND SOME DEPENDABLE PEOPLE WHO TRY TO DRAW ME OUT OF MY DEEP SHELL. ALL THESE, GOD ORCHESTRATED SO THAT EVEN AS I TRY TO NAVIGATE AWAY FROM THE ASHES THAT WAS MY SERVICE, STILL HE WAS ABLE TO MAKE MY LIFE INTO A PLAYABLE MELODY THAT HE COULD USE TO BLESS PEOPLE, WHEN THEY HEAR OF MY STORY, WHEN THEY READ THE WORK I HAVE DONE.

SO AGAIN, MY HEART BELONGS TO YOU, MY LORD AND MY SAVIOUR. I KNOW I COULD BE DIFFICULT, AND I HAVE BEEN AND CONTINUE TO BE,  YET I AM ASSURED OF YOUR LOVE, AND THAT YOU ARE STILL WORKING ON ME.  THANK YOU FOR KEEPING MY HEART, IN SPITE OF ALL MY DOUBTS, MY STRAYING, MY DISOBEDIENCE, MY UNHEALED WOUNDS.

Now, I can honestly say, "LORD, I AM READY! LET'S GO AGAIN!" :-)  But after a vacation of maybe a month or so.. ;)

mY Synapses...