Reasons to love, not hate

One fine fall day back in 1994 I received my mission call. When I read the words, "You are hereby called to labor in the Japan Okayama Mission," I did what any rational, practical, deep-thinking 20 year old would do.

I burst into tears.

In fact, I was quite inconsolable for about two hours. Now you may be asking, Why? Where was your faith, woman? What's your deal? I know, I know. I shoulda shaped up. But I cried for all that time, truthfully, because I could read between the lines of those words in that letter. And the in-between-the-lines-stuff basically said, "the next eighteen months of your life are about to be very, very hard."

I knew enough about Japan and missionary work to know the following: I would spend most of my time tracting and street contacting in hot humid weather to people whose language I couldn't speak and who really, quite frankly, were not interested even one iota in the message I wanted to share.

Here's how it ended: I was right and I was wrong. The next 18 months of my life were hard. Incredibly hard. I did spend a lot of time street contacting and I never ever loved that part of it. But I did learn to love Japan. I did find that my heart belonged there. I learned to speak their language, both literally and figuratively. And, every day of my life has been blessed, immeasurably, because I went and served that mission.

Fast forward 13 years.

One fine fall day back in 2006, my then-fiance showed up at my door looking a little wide-eyed and uncertain. "They called," Trent said, speaking of the Upstate NY law firm he had visited six weeks previous. The law firm whose offer we didn't think would come. The law firm Trent toured just to see what his options were, should he ever become a corporate attorney. The law firm we both had essentially written off. "They called," he said again. "They just made me an offer. It's a great offer." Oh my.

After a lot of talking, a lot of praying, and a little thing called a wedding, we took that offer and moved out here. At the time, I never would have thought to juxtapose my mission and my life here in New York. The two events are dissimilar in many ways, the most important dis-similarity being that I chose to live here and I didn't choose much about where I ended up on that mission.

However, after one particularly frustrating chain of events here in Upstate, Trent commented as he mopped up my tears, "You know, honey, it's kinda like you've been called to Japan again. You just didn't know it this time."

I was quite struck by the truthfulness of that statement. What Trent meant is, sometimes life out here is so foreign and confusing to the Utah girl inside of me that I feel like I'm living in a foreign country, only nobody looks Asian and everyone (well, most everyone) speaks English. The differences between here and Utah are as vast as the differences between the USA and Japan; the caveat is that these differences are more subtle. If you don't know to watch for them, they can hit you hard between the eyes.

Now I'm all for diversity--in theory--but sometimes I like things the way I like 'em, you know? I like to think my way is the right way. And life here is often very different than my way. In anger and frustration, I find myself creating a mental list of animosity. I call it Things That Make Me Mad About New York. On the list are things like:

--I'm mad that it's bone-chilling cold here on April 20th.
--I'm mad that it gets dark at 3:45 in December
--I'm mad that there are no hairdressers that seem to understand how to do blonde highlights all the way to the root
--I'm mad that there is no Cafe Rio out here
--I'm mad that Lillian doesn't know her grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles
--I'm mad that public education is a beauracratic mess
--I'm mad that taxes are so high

The list goes on.

In a fit of all this madness I listed all these reasons to Trent a couple of days ago. Ever patient and kind, he let me vent. It felt cathartic for awhile. But then it just felt...yucky. And negative. And I didn't feel better for all that venting.

As he heard me winding down, he gently prodded, "You know, I love how the leaves blow in the wind in our front yard."

"Yeah." I sniffed. "I like how you can see them, so rich and verdant (I used that in the sentence, I swear), right out of our bedroom window.

"I love the Fingerlakes," he added. "And I love the Adirondacks. And I love the people in our ward."

"I love all the festivals," I said....

And I love the grocery store
And I love our friends we've met here
And I love our giant back yard
And I love how charming the village is
And I love how nice it has been to start out our life together so far away from home
And I love our house
And I love you
And...I love that we live here.

The list went on and on and on.

All the reasons to love outweighed the reasons to hate. It's been a huge learning experience, to be sure, living here. There is much left for us to learn.

I found my heart in Japan when I opened myself up to the possibility of loving it, even when it was all so different from what I knew, from what I had thought was the right way.

So it is with life here.