We’ve lived abroad now for over 5 years, and it is quite amazing how much one can learn in such a short period of time. We are getting ready to attend a Resiliency Conference, designed to give us: space to process, an environment that will foster mutual sharing and learning, and to give us tools to work toward resiliency in our cross-cultural context. We have experienced our fair share of struggles and conflict already in this short period of time of serving abroad, but I love the journey of growth God has us on. I’ve seen how God continues to work in us not with the purpose of stopping with us, but in order to enable us to serve out of what is our healthiest place. On this idea of resiliency, recently I was reflecting on a part of a final paper I turned in for my most recent Ordination class, which was, to have true empathy means moving from being a “taker” to being a “giver”. I hope learning how to be resilient, helps me continue to learn how to move from being a taker to a giver, from surviving to thriving. In the beginning, I was under culture stress as I learned to navigate the new system around me. I recently saw “culture stress” defined this way: getting your needs met in new ways. The hard part of culture stress is that we are creatures of habit. We’ve learned to get our needs met in certain ways, in…
Source: Another's world from Scotts – Eurasia