So here I am in the States. A great country. My home. And I’ve never felt more disconnected or pathetic. You would think moving back to a land where you can understand the language and the culture, life would be easier. But I’m not sure we all realize how much we balance in our lives: expectations, pressures, varying cultures dependent on work place, state, circle of friends as well as maintaining and establishing relationships, job, and any service work. And I don’t know how to do it.

I don’t know how to balance it all. I can’t even figure out the overall expectations I should be trying to meet and the pressures are trying desperately to grind me into the ground. I don’t know how to establish or maintain a circle of friends. I don’t know how to truly live in this country any more. I know how to exist, but not live.

I’ve gone from being a confident, self-aware woman, to one who wants to change almost everything about her. My hair needs help. My face, well that would take a lot of work to make it anywhere near beautiful. I need to lose weight. I need new clothes. I need… to change because who I am doesn’t meet the expectations of this country for pretty, let alone beautiful. Yet I know that changing my hair, my face, my body or my wardrobe won’t make me satisfied. Because I will never be enough here. I will never be pretty enough, strong enough, smart enough, friendly enough…

I’m a shy woman who doesn’t need nor want a large circle of friends, but I’ve realized as I sit in a new state with a new job that I don’t even know how to go about finding friends. The last 3 years friends were built in with the team and students – the people you live with, work with, eat with, and hang with. But that doesn’t work here. To make friends here, I have to find some way to get out – leave my nice apartment and throw myself into already formed circles and hope one of them will pick me up as they roll on by. How insanely terrifying. Add to that I know I need help with some things, like trying to buy a car. But I don’t have anyone to help me, no one I know well enough to ask them to take time out of their busy lives, away from their formulate circles, and check out some cars at different lots to see if I can get a decent deal. And then, what if there isn’t any decent deal for me. Then the person has just wasted hours with me and we having nothing to show for it.

And we wonder why there are so many hermits in this world. If you don’t move with an already established circle (like a spouse or good friend), you’re on your own to find this community God encourages. But most communities are more intimidating than welcoming and people do not strive for rejection.

Maybe I’m tired and trying to ignore my life of constant upheaval or I’m just being overly dramatic, but I’m scared. Truly scared. And my fear wants me to run back to China where I don’t have to figure everything out. I can be happily ignorant. I can be excused my faux pas because, hey, I’m a foreigner, I don’t know what I should do. I can revel in the fact that I’m beautiful with my pasty white skin and light coloured eyes. I can play around with clothes and people just toss it up to the eccentrics of a foreigner. There’s not the disdain or indifference I feel like I battle here. I’m one of the crowd now and I should act like it… I just don’t know how to act, think, or feel in this crowd. I’m lost here surrounded by hundreds and thousands of people who don’t take the time to understand or even notice.

And I wonder what the purpose of this is. Is it to learn to rely on God even in America? Or to form a community (could I get some pointers on where to start)? Is it to keep the same amidst the chaos of a different culture? Or is it to change again into… something? And I hold to the truth that God is in control, that He has a plan, and all things work towards good (for those who love Him). I am clinging to this desperate unseen hope that, yes, even this has a purpose that will, in the end, bring even more glory to his name. I just hope I don’t totally screw up too many times before the purpose is revealed… but that might be a lot to ask when my feelings are so contradictory to what I know must be true. Because it’s my feelings leaving me weary and melancholy. It’s my feelings breaking down the mental walls of protection with whispers of worries and fears, and I’m not getting all of them captive. And all I want to do is hide in my little apartment and sleep. Maybe it’ll be better when I wake.

It is almost like I've fallen off the face of the earth I've been gone so long. But now I'm in Colorado trying to get settled in - new state, new city, new job... new everything. And it's kind of overwhelming.

Add the long wait for my stuff and my struggle with the altitude and I'm wondering what I'm doing here. I came by faith and I'll stay by faith, but I have a continued sense of waitng. Always waiting. Waiting for a new job. Waiting for a place to live. Waiting to train for a job. Waiting to move. Waiting to get here. Waiting.

I had some crazy illusion that the feeling of waiting would end and I'd finally have this settled, at home feeling. But I haven't found it yet. I still feel like I'm waiting, and not just for my stuff. For something else, something I can't define.

Perhaps I'm just dealing with discontentment or false expectations of what things would be like and how I'd feel. Everything has changed and I'm not sure how to feel about it or even deal with a lot of it. I want to feel content and you think I would since I came here at God's direction, but not yet.

I'm hoping after my stuff comes in and my body adjusts to this altitude, I'll start to feel settled, at home, and start to figure out why I've been called to return to the states. There is a reason that might be months or years to be clear, but I guess I just need some sort of confirmation that this is right. I don't know what that would be yet, but God can help with this and I'll just hold to the truth of the situation even while my feelings contradict. Truth is in God, not my feelings. But I look foward to when my feelings match the truth.