Although the storm is raging yet
beneath each spire or minaret
behold the world, the glorious world
has not been destroyed
{a verse from Theodor Storm’s “October Lied”}
This seemed a fitting entry for such a post.
Stephen and I started going to see a counselor in Chiang Mai in July of last year. We went up once a month and had two sessions.
She was really a great counselor, and it was helpful that she lived overseas and understood some of those dynamics. She helped us to process things within our work, our marriage, our family, & the community.
And while it was helpful, I felt like I often broke even. Traveling up to Chiang Mai, which involves interrupting our lives and leaving some of my favorite kiddos to take a six hour bus ride into a big city. It is quite expensive to visit and eat out many meals; we invade other people’s homes, borrow their cars or motorbikes, and generally feel like a burden. This was stressful to me in particular. So while we gained ground with the counselor, the trip itself was stress enough to cause me to lose ground, so I broke even.
One thing I really struggled with was to express to the counselor about our community. To call them “neighbors” just doesn’t really cut it. To call them “friends” is just too simplified, since you imagine us having dinner together around a table or going to coffee to talk; not putting puzzles together and going to the hospital in the middle of the night and sorting through each others’ garbage. I just wished she would come down and live life with us for a day and get a glimpse into what it really meant and what the struggles really are. I wished we could talk in our own home–surrounded by photographs of family miles and miles away, the sound of kids shouting our names at the door, and with our bag from work (and all that represents) sitting on the floor. In our own space, where I felt raw, rather than in a clean room in a city that I feel like a stranger in, where I’d go have a delicious meal afterward and see a movie.
That isn’t my reality, and sometimes it was hard to remember reality from there.
Enter my current position: I could still use some counseling. Both of us probably could, really. I could use someone besides my husband–the one person who will really understand this statement–who knows the feeling in your stomach when your friend asks you for your trash as a gift. Or knows that sweet little girl that comes to our house every single night and looked at me like I was absolutely crazy when I asked if she was sad when her dad left. Or hears the yelling outside while we try to eat dinner and go to sleep. Or understands the decisions at hand when we look at the photographs on the wall and see the photos of sonograms for new nieces and nephews on the way; and then try yet again to to peel ourselves off the floor and make our jobs work.
Here are my two ideas, and I’m actually putting them out there as a request: maybe you know people. First, we thought about a counselor over Skype or FaceTime or any other technology-of-choice. Maybe there is someone who’d be willing to meet with me regularly to talk these things through.
The second idea I just came up with laying in bed tonight, and I think it’s my favorite. Maybe there is someone who would come to see us to do intensive counseling for a brief amount of time. Maybe they could come for a week or two; they could sleep here and eat meals with us and play with the kids. They could sweat in the sun and have tanaka powder smeared on their clothes at kid-hug-height. They could see into our lives here and help us sort out the gaps between the photographs on the wall and the truths in Scripture and the questions at work and the faces at the front door.
These are my ideas. I’ve been praying in this direction–I’m not sure for what exactly–but it seems right to put this out into the void and see what God does, looking for an opportunity to say, “Once again, things went according to man’s confusion and God’s providence.” (Bonhoeffer, p.455)
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