Day 15: Could I start over again?

The gift of community,- past, present and future.

Will you bear with me while I let my thoughts seep randomly onto the page for a moment?  In the last 10 months, I've had to consider more than once the possibility that we might have to leave Bolivia and it's especially present in my mind at the moment.  Like with a lot of things, my desire to keep mental tranquility outweighs my desire to really contemplate something for very long, so blogging can be a helpful way to force myself to dwell a little longer on an unpleasant topic. 

Bolivia is my home.  We've lived here as singles and as a married couple for 16 years.  We started our family here.  We buried a child here.  We've experienced all the ups and downs any normal young family goes through, surrounded by a beautiful missionary and church community that can remember our hard days and the good days.  We've been part of starting a church and seeing it grow and thrive.  We've built a house.  We've mastered how to pay bills and where to buy meat and how to do things in a bank and how to drive and all the stuff that new people struggle with that we hardly think about anymore.  This makes me feel good.  It makes me feel safe.  It takes away a certain amount of unwanted stress.  I feel kinda bad that this is one of the reasons I don't want to leave here- it's comfortable.  As a missionary and an American living outside of my own culture, comfort has become an evil word.  Americans are too comfortable and don't understand the plight of the poor.  American Christians are even more wayward by being comfortable and not sacrificing for the needs of millions who live without the things we take for granted.  At least, this is my perception of things and has some truth to it.  So, I feel a certain amount of guilt for being an American and a missionary who is- gasp!- comfortable!  Scotty told me that we've put in a lot of years to earn a certain level of comfort.  Now, I'm not talking material comforts- although that plays into this scenario, too.  I'm talking the comfort that those of you who have ever lived overseas understand that involves knowing a place so radically different so well that it no longer feels so foreign.  That feeling makes me happy.  Do I put too much stock in that feeling? 

There is some pride in all of this, if I'm honest with myself.  I like knowing things.  I like speaking Spanish fluently.  I like having the answer to newer foreigners questions.  I like feeling like the things that might shock or surprise them aren't surprising to me.  But, again, it's one of those things that makes the idea of long-term life here viable.  I still have plenty of questions I ask my Bolivian friends.  Do you think it's OK that the gymnastics program is run this way?  What doctor do you take your kids to?  Should I pay that extra fee or not? 

So, I guess in all this, I'm wondering if I could do it again.  Live the crucible of getting to know a new set of people in a new culture with new norms.  I could say that my level of comfort probably didn't kick in until a good 10 years were under my belt.  Can I do another decade of hard-core learning?  Would it take that long this time?  I'm not as young, not as naive, not as prideful (I hope) as I was.  Will God ask us to uproot, because the truth is, we are so very planted here.  Time will tell.