We want to be wise. We want to have a good marriage, to be effective in our work, to be producers and not simply consumers. We want to love each other well, love our families well, then join a community and love them well, too. We want to have fun, rest, and celebrate things; but we also want to live simply, live on a little, and be efficient.

There is so much to learn.

And recently, we’ve been learning our limits. The limits of being young, the limits of not having been married very long, and the limits of having very few life experiences to guide us.

We’re also learning our freedoms. The freedoms of not having children, and thus having the evenings to spend however we want, and the weekends, too!  The freedoms of living in a very, very low-cost area of the world; the freedoms of having different cultures and adventures that we’ve never known right outside of our door.

And recently, we’ve been realizing this is too much. We’ve been pushing ourselves too hard for our limits and not embracing our freedoms, leaving us strained as individuals and placing strain on our marriage, work relationships, and even in our relationships with the neighbors.

Our change of roles within Partners was a gift from God. Our travel, after-hours work, and stress level has decreased. We’re thankful for that.

But we also made another change this week. I’ll be working just four days a week now, and Fridays will be my day to go to the market, clean the house, and do some cooking. After working Monday to Friday, we found that weekends often filled up quickly: making dinner takes most of your evenings, and since we do still eat dinner on Friday, that evening is out. By the time you make a market run, try to chop some vegetables to freeze, and make bagels or bread for the week, Saturdays go too quickly.  And there’s a few more meals in there that have to be made, and its already Sunday with church and gearing ourselves up for Monday.

We decided this might free up our weekends to actually be weekends, and for us really to embrace that it’s just us. We can sleep in; we can read or watch movies; we can explore the wonderful world of Mae Sot!

I felt sort of bad initially. With Partners, it didn’t seem such a big deal: we’re really on one work permit, where Stephen works and I’m “the wife” at home.  Having both of us contributing to the office is just a bonus!  But with Stephen, it seemed mean to have just four days to work while he worked five.

I told him this, to which he replied, “Oh. Well, I felt mean to send you home to cook and clean all day while I just had to go to work!”

And so it works for us.  We’re learning: learning how to equip ourselves to be in a better place personally; learning to give ourselves grace; learning to be more effective; learning to love better and live fuller.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly
and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Everyone promised the first year would be hard.

It was.

But I have to say I expected a little more out of the second year.

Perhaps I was too optimistic or too naive or something of the sort, but it’s still been a struggle. I still miss my family so very often. I still ache for more community here than we have. I’m burning to speak all three languages that would really make life easier and more productive, while I eek out a sentence in the first one.

I still want to be a good wife and learn to honor Stephen. I want to seize the day in front of us, whether its loving on a little neighbor friend, researching for my next development class, or just resting.  I’m still sorting out how to balance our lives, spend money wisely, and live healthily.

Oh, and I’m working on not over-analyzing.

I suppose I could blame it on living in another country. I think I could also blame a little on simply being young, and having so many things to learn and experience about being a wife, being a friend, and loving the Lord.

Either way, I have had this verse resounding in my mind this weekend.

I love the straight-forward simplicity of it. Not that any bit of this is easy or simple, but it at least appears so when stated in three direct actions.

Act justly.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly.

I can simply repeat this to myself as I sort out what it means in living life from this moment to the next.

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I came across this story on a blog where a woman was teaching her kids the idea of justice.

“…I made up a story about our young friend [with special needs] Jacob. I told the kids to imagine they were sitting on the porch and at the end of our driveway Jacob had been riding his bike. It’s the same shiny one he rode over to show us the day he got it for his tenth birthday last month. And, then, I told them to imagine that some older boys came up and made a bet with Jacob that if he didn’t score a basketball shot, they would get his bike. And Jacob, not really understanding the bet, agreed. And he missed the shot, to which my kids indignantly said, ‘But, he couldn’t make a shot, anyway. That’s not fair.’

…I told them to imagine that from their view from the porch, they watched as the group of older boys took Jacob’s bike from his pudgy hands. And Jacob tried to grab the handlebars of his beloved blue bike, but the boys were stronger and there were more of them. And then Jacob started to yell at them, but they couldn’t understand what he was saying, so they just laughed.

And my kids had wide eyes, and the spoons stopped moving for a minute.

And then I told them what their father and I expected of our kids, should they be witness to an injustice like the one with Jacob and his bike:

I told them to get off the porch.

I told them that it didn’t matter if they got in a fight, it didn’t matter if they didn’t know what they were going to do when they got face-to-face with the bullies at the end of the driveway.  I said that I didn’t care even if they mess it up and throw a punch too soon. I just want them off the porch.

Even if they’re scared to death.

Even if there’s no way they can win.

Even if the bullies end up driving the bike away and all they are left with is a crying Jacob and a bloody nose.

I told my kids that fighting for justice, standing up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves, getting of the porch, is always the right thing.

And the results are secondary. And maybe even unimportant.

Because even if Jacob lost his bike that day, he would have known he wasn’t alone in the fight for it.

And I remember catching eyes with my husband across the table, remember how the words for my kids became the reminder we still need.

Because, in our corner of this world, it feels like the bullies are winning.

And our getting off the porch isn’t changing much, isn’t changing anything, except that it is costing us more than we wanted to give. Doubt looms large and the bruises run deep. And the older boys are so many, and so very strong.”

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I love that she points out, “…he would have known he wasn’t alone in the fight.”
I feel like that is so much of our lives alongside the Burmese and Karen. If anything, we are contributing very little to their extremely capable community. Instead, we simply offer the reminder that they aren’t alone; that they are not forgotten.

Our small contributions do seem to cost much more than they are worth at times and more than I wanted to give. Some days, and perhaps many in the last week, the doubt does loom large.

Help us do justly.

Help us love mercy.

Help us walk humbly with You, God.

Yuh Meh Oo came running into our gate for a hug today. Her black tank top had just two words on it: Wow…White.

Stephen will be returning to Mae Sot very soon.

And I’m very excited for him to show his face, speak his mind, and be back by my side.

I went to play tennis with a friend after work tonight.

I’ve never played before, really, except for freshman year when Stephen and I gave it a go, really just so we had another reason to spend time together. We knew nothing.

Tonight, it was so fun.

I can’t say I have much natural aptitude, but I’m willing to run for it and put in the effort. I suppose I’m really quite horrible; I only managed to beat her at 3 of the 20 or so sets we played. Either way I came home loving it and hoping she’ll put up with my pathetic skills so that we can play again.

Side note: I’m currently having very vivid deja vu and wondering if I’ve actually already played tennis with her since I’ve been here, and perhaps blogged about it similarly? I’m genuinely not sure now if perhaps I have played before.

Either way, it made me appreciate having summer all year here. You do sweat all the time, I guess; but you can also swim, play tennis, cycle and run outside any time you want!

So I have recently acquired a new role with Partners.

It’s a little overwhelming; one of those situations where I’m not sure I’m truly qualified, or that I’m pretty sure I’m not.

It’s amazing how differently degrees are viewed in different cultures. In America, telling someone you have a political science degree means nothing, particularly without a Masters. Most people don’t even really understand it and ask if I’m hoping to become a politician.

But here, a political science degree means I know everything on politics. I can teach politics, right?  I can write curriculum and teach a six month course, right? I can write policy for the new government in formation, right?

I have a four-day course that begins in fifteen days. I need to write curriculum for said course in enough time to have it translated, and then have things to actually say in addition to this curriculum, and fill four eight hour days.

This has been a little overwhelming. I’m reading a lot, asking questions to people smarter than me, and praying.

I was actually doing alright until the other day when Stephen, who never seems to reach a breaking point, said, “I’m stressed. We can’t do all this. And really, I’m not stressed for me; I’m stressed for you. How are you going to have time to do all this?”

I started thinking maybe I should be a little more stressed.

As of this weekend, I’m also writing a policy, with a deadline before the aforementioned course.

It takes great concentration for me to understand policies that I read.  The concept of writing something I don’t understand seems ambitious.

And so with this task in particular, I’m totally faking it. Admittedly.

Stephen left with a team today to travel south on the border and stay for five days.

I must say, this has been the loneliest city by far, but it got considerably lonelier since he left it this afternoon.

I’ve been wondering recently how many things I’ll regret posting on this blog.

How many times will I look back and think: Did I really think that?  Or even worse, Did I really have the nerve to say that? What a foolish twenty-something I was! Or maybe I’ll look back and think how rude this came across, or how arrogant that portrayed me; how wishy-washy it all sounded.

I’m probably all of these things and more. And you should most definitely take all of this with a grain of salt.

That said, here’s comes more commentary, likely still without conclusion and containing many of the aforementioned faults.

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I think the hardest thing I have had to wrestle with in coming to Thailand is grace: receiving it, giving it, resting in it.

I love pleasing people. I want them to think I made the right decision; that I did a good job; that the food tasted great.  But the reality is, it’s never right for everyone.

Here are just a few examples I’ve encountered.

We live in a two-bedroom concrete house in Mae Sot. It has a kitchen with mediocre but limited resources. We do have electricity and water inside our house. We do have a squatty potty, and a sometimes-hot shower. We have a comfortable bed for this country, but awful for the West. The house came furnished with poor quality furniture, which we are slowly replacing by purchasing things we like and are good enough quality to withstand daily use.

To our neighbors, we are extravagant. We eat extravagantly–noodles, vegetables, and milk!  We have running water inside of our home, have air con in one room, and even shower behind closed doors.

To the Partners staff within Mae Sot, it varies. Some think its insane to have an electric bill as high as $22; others think it’s ridiculous I won’t purchase chocolate chips because they are too expensive, and compassionately buy some for Stephen on occasion.  To other Partners staff, we live in a hole, and it’s ridiculous that we wouldn’t replace that squatty potty with a proper Western sitter!

And then you have our friends and family from the West–some who can’t understand why we would live in this neighborhood; others who can’t believe we have a two-bedroom place.

Or take just last week: Stephen & I went to Chiang Mai for a few days vacation. We stayed at a guesthouse costing $16 per night. It worked for us.

Some thought it extravagant that we would get a guesthouse. Another asked, “You came for vacation and stayed where?!”

I know its true around the world, but I find it more apparent here. Everyone will not be pleased.

Instead, I am learning to be confident in each decision we make.

May we pray, may we think it through, may we do the best we can to have pure motives, wise steps, and love in all we do. And then, may we go forward with confidence: confidence that God is good, that he loves us, that we tried.

And ultimately, that His grace is sufficient for the fact that the best I have to offer is mere rags.

…I think there’s a step further to this, though.

I want to extend this grace to others.

I know how discouraging other’s judgments are. I know when I feel insufficient, foolish, wasteful, cheap, or frivolous.

And I know that can be particularly painful when I’ve invested myself in that decision by praying, analyzing, and wrestling; or maybe when I’m just trying to stay afloat.

And I simply wish they’d extend grace to me: grace that I tried, and that I’m just a kid!  Grace that this might be hard, or maybe they don’t know the whole picture; grace that I might be wrong, but they probably have been before, too.

And in order to hope for this grace from others, I think I should begin by giving it. I don’t know what its like in their shoes. I don’t know what they’ve been through this week, year, or lifetime; I don’t know what God has been doing in them and through them. Maybe, just maybe, they have really prayed and wrestled, too; maybe they are just doing the best they can, trying to keep their head above water.

We’re not so different, really. We all live in a fallen world, and we’re all aching and hoping for glorious redemption.

So that’s all, really–I’m just learning.

I’m learning to rest confidently in God’s grace. And I’m in the very early stages of attempting, oh-so-simply attempting, to give grace as I wish to receive it.