Don't be a Fly

*Disclaimer: My faith in God is the big topic of this post so if that's not your jam, then feel free to move on. I promise I wont get offended. 

It had been two and a half months since I first stepped foot in Kosovo, and the hardships were only increasing. I find that I have a constant struggle as a Peace Corps member to balance my family and friends back home with my work here. I want to be present and available for my friends back home so that they know that I think about them and that I love them, but I also want to be able to show my counterparts and supervisors here that I mean business and I am here 100%. Regardless, the balance-act that is my life right now has proven to be exhausting. It is draining me emotionally, spiritually, and in the general productive sense. I felt as if I was unable to be present in all the areas of my life. I was scared that I was going to be too busy fixating on my friends back home or my spiritual life to be able to perform at work. Or conversely, I was afraid that me concentrating on work too much would pull away from my relationships and or my spiritual life.

My fears were realized. First I became too focused on my American life, that I lost interest in my work. Then I overcompensated in my work, and my relationships began to dwindle. In order to be able to be present for both work and home I momentarily put my spiritual life on hold. 

This was rock bottom for me, where I had vowed to try to maintain my relationship with God even in a place where I wasn't able to practice in the general sense, I had given it up for the other parts in my life. At this moment I needed to do something.

Lists

Often times when my life starts spiraling out of control, an exercise that I do to bring it back is what I call a "Control List." I take a sheet of paper and I split in half, and one side I write "control", and on the other side I write "no control." I then proceed to write everything I am worrying about and I separate it into whether or not I can control it or I cannot. Then I look at the things that I cannot control, and I try my hardest to forget about them. I do so by putting effort in the things that I do have control over. Through doing this I realized that if I give up my spirituality, I lose in everything. It is the basis for my being and without my foundation I fall apart. I am convinced that if I can be better about my relationship with God I can do better with everything else.

So What do I do?

My entire life I have struggled with practicing my faith at home by myself. I have always placed value on having a place for me to come and be with people who believe the same things as I do. This is not to say that such places are bad, but being able to connect with God on a personal level is supremely important for what I believe theologically. Reading the Bible and praying never did it for me because the experiential aspect of my faith never made sense to me. My walk with God has always been an intellectual one—debating about small indifferent aspects to my religion that don't have an impact on the core of my beliefs. My faith has never been about relationship, and in its most basic form, faith in God is a relationship. 

I was lost for ideas because I was getting nothing out of my daily devotional, however a few things have changed recently.

Divine Reading

The first was I discovered a thing called Lectio Divina. This is an old Benedictine practice that has four steps:

1. Praying/Relaxing
1. Usually in this step I set aside some time to relax and breath, and invite God to work with me through whatever passage I am going to read. I just try to get into the mindset that I am about to dive into the word
2. Reading
1. I usually pick out ten to fifteen verses that I will read. I then read them four to five times each time trying to pick up things that I didn't notice the first time
3. Meditating
1. I find a phrase or word that really sticks with me and for a few minutes I close my eyes and think about, repeat, say the phrase or word and what the impact it has on my life and my faith.
4. Praying
1. I then pray about my day and how this reading impacted me. 

This practice has really made a difference because it forces me to not just read the Bible passively. I am also not looking at the Bible as a text book. I am not focusing on the minutia of the text but rather really trying to get meaning out of it particularly for my life.

Sensors, Bells, and Funny Hats

The second thing that happened to me was I got to talk to someone about my faith openly. On a cultural field trip with Peace Corps I had the fortune of going to an Orthodox Monastery here in Kosovo. There I met a monk who was from America. I figured that if anyone would be able to talk to me about my struggles with my faith it would be a person who has devoted a large portion of his life being in

A monastery here in Kosovo

relationship with God. Also, if anyone was going to help me develop an experiential relationship with Christ it would be a person who believes in the strict importance of said relationship.

Over lunch I was fortunate enough to sit next to him, and after a few small introductions I asked him how I should approach my at home personal practice especially in a place where I don't speak the language and most people don't believe what I do. He thought for a bit and smiled and he said, "I have three things for you:" and he preceded to list them and explain them.

Number 1: Jesus is everywhere.

He looked at me and said " Jesus is everywhere, and he doesn't just speak English." He laughed and said that if you truly believe that when you are at home and you are reading the bible there is a living God who is there with you and wants to have a relationship with you, then you will learn to have a better experience with God in your personal practice.

Number 2: Read your Bible every day

He told me that often times we don't read the Bible because we don't feel that we are getting things out of it, but it is like a muscle that you have to train. If I force myself to read the Bible everyday I will start to notice things that I had never notice before. He said to me that if I was feeling down just read one verse a few times, but the spiritual act of reading everyday changes the way I see the bible.

Number 3: Bring Everything to Jesus

The third thing he told me that everyday I need to take all my crap—my Joys, my pains, my sorrows, everything—and lay them in front of Jesus, and just tell him "Here, help me." I guess there is a weird aspect to doing this because we try to be humble with our requests, but Jesus has explicitly given us permission to just dump our crap on him, and he will receive it and help us through it.

Get to the Fly Astrit

I thanked him and told him that that really meant a lot to me and he said Serbians have a great phrase for what I am going through and he said he would translate it for me. He said "Christians are bees, not flies"

He explained that as Christians we have to be like bees. Bees go around flower to flower getting sweet stuff from each flower, and if there is no nectar in that flower then you just get up and go to the next one. You don't give up and get mad because you didn't find any in that flower. So like bees I can't base my faith on one flower, I have to keep going and trying to collect nectar so that I can make sweet honey.

When I asked him about the flies, he simply said. "Bees look for flowers, Flies look for s**t. Don't be a fly" 

I can't give up my faith. It is the most important aspect of my being. Now that I am in the middle of my teaching practicum, I am confident that by keeping my faith, and trying to strengthen my relationship with God, I will make good honey.