Give Me Grace.

I woke up this morning with a strange, overwhelming urge to write. It’s a strange urge for me to have, simply because I’ve never had it before. I don’t often write, I believe because I’ve never been good at organization—especially when it comes to the plethora of thoughts running through my brain that seem impossible to pin down to paper. But I think I might possibly have reached a point where the surplus of thoughts can no longer remain in my brain and are instead being forced to find a way to overflow out before my head simply explodes. And so, the stampeding thoughts have woken me up with a desire to write, thus creating this blog.

If you’re wondering what the cause of my near-thought-explosion is, I cannot sum it up easily for you. But it started last January when I exited my safe world of Bible College and chose to study abroad in the Middle East where I experienced the most challenging, thought-provoking, best months of my life. And now it’s over. It’s over in the sense that I am home in America where it is assumed to be over. But in reality, the semester hasn’t ended for me. All the questions and ideas and memories flood my mind daily here, in a place surprisingly foreign. My surroundings of West Virginia didn’t change, but I have. And this is my attempt-my quest-to find out how.

As I mentioned before, organization of thoughts has never been a strength for me. It’s like a chef trying to describe the food that he makes. He can’t describe it in one sentence because all the foods are so different from one another. If he were to write a short and sweet summary of his cakes, pastries, sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. all together, it would contain only shallow adjectives that deny the specific uniqueness and depth with which he could describe each one. I too have decided that the only way I can process these thoughts is to take one idea at a time (even as overwhelming a task as that seems). It could be a long process. If you haven’t noticed, I have yet to begin one topic and I’ve already written three paragraphs. But it’s a quest I am going to take, and I invite you to join me on it because I would be appreciative and welcoming of any thoughts to add to the discussion. I can’t get too far on my own. Philippians 2:12 says to, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I am saved, yet I continue to work out my salvation, questioning and probing my faith on a journey to make it transparent and real. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.”

I feel like the most appropriate thought to begin with when starting such a blog is the idea of humility. If I didn’t understand humility before I left for Egypt, I sure came back with a much greater understanding of the concept. Humility was introduced to me upon my first full day in Cairo. All of sudden, I was completely out of my element. I was the foreigner in the store who didn’t know the language and couldn’t communicate what she wanted to buy; I was the girl who had never ridden in any type of public transportation before, even when the drivers spoke English. When I stayed with a lovely Muslim family for a week, I felt like a child in every way. I was being taught my alphabet and basic words. Every meal was prepared for me, and my hand was always held while crossing the street. I was dependent. I was the minority in my appearance, and for the first time—my faith. To the Muslim-dominated society, I as a Christian was backwards. Truth be told, had I been born in Egypt and not mid-west America, I more than likely would be a Muslim like my “sisters” that I lived with. Though I wanted to at first, I couldn’t deny that culture had played a large part in how I viewed the world, my faith, and God. So who was God really? How does my faith matter? And how can truth be separated out from culture? Those are questions that haunted me and demanded from me a foundation of humility—a willingness to admit that in reality, I know squat. As part of the MESP program, we were confronted with several issues and then presented with speakers on both sides. I quickly learned that reasonable people can reasonably disagree, making valid arguments on both sides. Ideas I used to find ridiculous are now sensible to me—even if I still disagree. I understand that experiences I have had lead me to believe certain things, and as everyone has different life experiences, everyone’s filter through which they see the world is different. Recognizing this, I understand the possibility that I’m wrong. There’s a possibility that everything I’ve ever been taught is wrong. But there’s also the possibility that most of it is true. And so with humility comes the recognition of my gigantic need for grace, grace, and more grace. God, give me grace.