Paradox

We just returned from our month-long training in Colorado on Saturday. Wow! It was such a busy, insightful, exciting and challenging month! The last two weeks of the training focused on cultural acquisition, conflict styles, stress, and rest, among other topics.

One of my favorite concepts that we discussed was the idea of thinking and talking in paradox. Meaning, allowing things to be equally good and hard at the same time. Typically I focus so much on the positive that I like to ignore and not even give much acknowledgement to the negative. What this does, however, is undermine the pain and force me to push it off to deal with at another time. I am learning that it is such much healthier to allow myself to feel the good and the bad at the same time. So, here are my currently paradoxical thoughts that I am dealing with...

I am so excited about the friendships that we made at MTI with incredible people going all over the world. It was extremely hard to leave those new friendships- knowing that we understood each other so well, but don't all get to live life together in the future.

We are really looking forward to applying everything that we have learned this past month to life in South Sudan. It will be really great to start ministry again and get to know a new culture. At the same time, going to a new culture means leaving an old one. We are beginning our goodbyes and long process of packing and it is very difficult. It is painful to leave our friends and families and the thought of adjusting to a new culture sounds exhausting.

Thinking in paradox is hard (for me at least) because you have to acknowledge the negative, but it is good because it causes you to be honest with how you are really doing.

That's all I have the brain capacity to come up with at the moment, but I am trying to think of more :). I know this new way of processing will bring freedom to be more honest and direct with how I am feeling. Praise the Lord for new insights!