Single and Living Overseas

"Wow, you girls have been here 3 years, that is to be admired! That's so amazing, I don't know if I could imagine being here by myself like that..."
…………..

…Says a friend's husband to my roommate and I. He was graciously helping us with our Apple products yesterday. Two cracked screens, a fried hard drive, and a new phone. We've had it over our eyeballs with dishonest computer and phone distributers here and I'm on phone #4 in one year- NOT because I've broken, lost, or water damaged them all. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of dealing in broken Chinese with some 30-something year old dude who sees Laowei (foreigner) and wants to make a few extra bucks off them. I am at their mercy. I can only hope and believe when they tell me I'm getting a real HTC….or Samsung….or the other phone that I don't remember it's brand name…only to have it stop working 3 months later. But yesterday, mercy came to us- in the form of a friend's husband who graciously spent his entire afternoon going up and down low floor and high floor elevators, stairs in between, up and down, and different buildings, to help us get to the right people. Honest people. All the while coming back to, "I just think it's really amazing that you girls can do this, it's just so amazing." 

A couple hours pass and one screen is on order, the other one being replaced, no new phone, and decisions about how data from a hard drive should be extracted. Jim starts talking about how when one thing happens, it seems to cause a domino effect. "It's just one thing after another, you know?" He then went on to tell us how the week he was in Macau on business, everything seemed to go wrong at home and his wife was left to deal with it and how badly he felt he wasn't there to take care of it for her.  As he talks, I remember: This guy is American, grew up in Taiwan, speaks fluent Chinese, first came to China the year I was born, and moved here with his family a decade ago, and he still thinks living here is a challenge. The challenges I try so hard to shrug off as everyday inconveniences he classifies as straight up frustrating challenges. Suddenly I feel so much better for the amount of stress I carry sometimes. Trying to find a new apartment, looking for a good, real phone, the electric bill coming in way higher than it should, the washing machine breaking, rust in the tub, humidity making it virtually impossible to dry clothes, the faucet shooting water out of the kitchen sink and soaking both operator and kitchen. Stress. The stress I wake up to on a daily basis. The stress that has me curled up in a ball on my bed some evenings, just trying to escape life overseas…and then he says it, "I just wish I was there when it happened to take care of it, but I can deal with some of it when I get back." When it hits me, not in a discontented, envious, or malicious sort of way, but it hits me, "She gets someone to take care of all this stuff with and for her. She has someone coming back who will provide and protect her from the wiles of cultural differences. She gets someone who will call the landlord to fix the dryer she gets, or decide what to do about the dog when it gets a growth on it's ear. She has that security, that convenience. And again, almost a relief floods me. If married couples, one growing up in Taiwan, and one in South America, consider these circumstances challenging, how much more challenging is it to a single, not-yet-fluent-in-Chinese American, grown-in-America girl? I'm told I'm not a normal overseas-American and that I adapt and assimilate well, but there are some things where you just can't take the America out of the girl!

I feel sad, yet slightly triumphant about the whole ordeal. On the crowded bus home, I try to text a friend about a friend who might be able to get me a new phone and my phone, of course, decides to give me, yet another, Failed message. I retype, condense, resend- crossing my fingers that it will decide to send. I feel battered and worn. It's been a long day, apartment shopping in the morning, Computer City in the afternoon, and buying train tickets in the middle. We can't even buy train tickets without some ordeal! It's a pizza kind of night. Pizza and a movie. Then sleep. 

I'm allowed to feel this way, I tell myself, I'm allowed to feel battered by the day, the stares, the comments, the questions. I begin to process, to wonder why I never felt allowed to let reality sink in quite as it had that day. Defense mechanism, I think, Defense for survival. If I allowed myself to think of just how many frustrating things happen in the space of a day, I'd go crazy. I don't mean get-stuck-at-a-red-light kind of frustrating. I'm talking a couple of men try to talk to you in Chinese at the bus stop and when you refuse to talk back, they begin talking about you and how you don't understand what they're saying and you're a foreigner, blah, blah, blah…I'm talking, the guy assures you that you are buying a real Samsung Galaxy for ALL that money only to realize a few months later you got another lemon. I'm talking it's an ordeal to get the light bulb in the kitchen fixed, or the stove to light when you have company coming for dinner…trying to leave your apartment complex and getting hit by the bicycle built for 2 (or 3 or 4) because there are too many people on the street and literally none of them know how to ride or control a big bike like that. But they laugh because it's funny, cause they're tourists and it's not every day one gets to hit a laowei with a bicycle built for 2, 3, or 4.

But where is grace now? I do a double take and realize I'm retreating. Retreating inside my fortress and slamming the gate shut. Safety, I just need to take cover. Block out all the noise, the stares, the lies, the disrespect. But didn't I just realize and commit to breaking down those walls of protection? How am I supposed to protect myself of life outside my front door if I'm tearing down those walls? How am I supposed to survive, without a protecter and provider of my own in China? I hear it, I hear it creeping in over me. I hear the words, I'm your Protector, Joanna. I provide every good and perfect thing for you. I want you to run to me, my child, like a little girl battered and bruised, run to me and seek shelter and safety. It does not please me to see you pained like this and as a father does not rest until his daughter is avenged, so I will not rest. I will take you and dry your eyes and clean your wounds, but run to me small child of Mine, run to me and I will engulf you with my love and rest.

Shelter, shelter in Jesus. Safety in my Father. Is this what it means to live "safe" with walls down? It doesn't mean we don't get hurt, but it means He binds up our wounds (Psalm 147:3) So then how should I look at this challenge smeared life? So so differently than I have been. It's like I have to relearn how to live, how to walk out the front door- forget that, how to walk into my bathroom which has had a new distinct smell every time I walk in from my new wonderful upstairs neighbors (Granted, the day it smelled like peppermints were all over the place I didn't mind so much.). This is a new way of life and I'm so unfamiliar with it. How do I live with walls down? No more wall of complaint. No more wall of fear. No more wall of hurt. No more wall of frustration. No more wall of singleness. Crash! No more walls! I feel exposed…and scared. I fear that if I do not protect myself that nobody will. I'm afraid I will walk out into this Labor day holiday on the rainy beach and be flattened by a local fish deliverer who could care less whether I was dead or alive. I might vanish, I might be abused- and badly. Fear, hands rugged from building the walls begin to appear out of no where and start repairing the wall. Aiyo! Frustration, these hands appear too- it's like mutiny of my heart! How do I control them? How do I say to them "Enough is enough! Leave the walls down!" A glimmer of hope as I look up and see the deep, fresh green of trees six stories below. The Little Things, I tell myself, it's the little things in life. The gifts. This is where everything starts to come together. We've been reading a book called 1,000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp and it's all about one word: Eucharisteo. Remembering to see all as an act of grace and give thanks.

But how do I see the student lying to my face and defending themselves in Chinese to their teachers who dismiss it and move on as eucharisteo? I wonder. How do I see the tourists invading my introvert bubble as eucharisteo? How do I knock down the walls and demolish them so well that I can finally see clearly through the eyes of Jesus…the eyes of Grace? This is a complete cleansing, a revamping of total way of life, no, total way of thinking. This is a heart and mind renovation. An eye renovation. Once I can give thanks for the challenge, the frustration, those walls can no longer be built. Once I follow my Shepherd to shelter from the storm, the wall of fear for protection can no longer be repaired. The old walls come down and are burned and I can experience the freedom of this life that God has so abundantly given me. I can run and dance and sing in the green pastures because I see them for what they are, and I see the valley of the shadow of death for what it is, just a moment. Just a moment in exchange for the eternal joy- the ultimate purpose in life- Life with the Father.