Off Balance.

As much as I would really like to jump up in the morning enthusiastic and eager to be awake, full up on oomph, and confident that I can make it through the day without feeling like I have been flattened by a steam-roller….I have found these things to be anything but the case.
            Everyone had “warned” me that my months abroad were going to be the hardest of my life and I did believe them to a certain extent. However truthfully, there is no way that the any of the many meetings I sat through, the “How to Be a Missionary” classes, or any words of wisdom could have ever prepared me enough for what I actually face here in Cambodia every day.

This week concludes month one of actual teaching. As much as I would like to look back on this month with confidence in what I’ve “accomplished”…in retrospect I feel as though all of my efforts and “methods” (if you can even call them methods) were executed in every inaccurate way. 

                 Before leaving home the most repeated rule or guideline given by professors, education majors, and previous SM’s was as so ….”Whatever you do, do NOT smile for the first few couple months of teaching. The kids will lose respect.” I remember questioning whether that was a joke. There was no way I planned on keeping a straight face for more than a couple of hours much less a couple of months. Even IF I tried to hold off from smiling, I probably could not last half an hour….I just think the kids are too cute… and how much fun is being stern anyways? Needless to say I did not follow that rule.

My students make everything worth it

              As I look back over the month however, perhaps all of my efforts to be the “FUN” and happy teacher are exactly what have caused me to leave school every day barely standing.  Last week I mentioned the level of control I had over my classroom as being near to nothing and one of the other teachers questioned whether or not I was being “too much of a friend” and “too little of a teacher” making the students lose respect for me. Maybe I was not being serious enough. This was not said to me in a condescending matter of any sort, but I have to admit that I left the conversation a little insulted. I AM barely a year older than some of my students....HOW do I become “less of a friend and more of a teacher” to them? Someone please tell me HOW I am hypothetically able to do that having next to no training in educating others. Maybe all I want is a magic rule, some secret proverb, that tells me HOW I am supposed to find balance.

Finding balance between Cambodia and home, between being a teacher (which I literally am faking till I make it) and a friend to my students, between something as trivial but so challenging as knowing when I can smile and when I need to hold back….is more trying than I could have ever imagined.

            Balance is something that I have continually struggled with throughout my 20 years of life. What is more important today…studies or sleep… how much thought and energy, or maybe how little, should I or AM I going to put into this? How much do I consume, or do I even not? Can I sleep in all day or do I pull myself get out of bed? Do I need to make myself exercise right now….how much is too much…when do I let my body rest? How long do I hold on….when do I need to let go? What’s more important Amber…what’s MOST important? I usually have found answers to these nagging questions by trial and error…mostly resulting in error. So, balancing my “regular” life is hard. Balancing my “regular” life with my Cambodia life is a great deal, in many ways, harder than I ever could have imagined.

         I really have always been the type that openly welcomes a challenge and possibly even masochistically enjoys it….but even so, this experience is drawing out a whole new side of me; a side that is aware of it’s complete incompetence and inability. Although typically I try to take on everything about life independently and unaided…I am beginning to realize there is absolutely no possible way to take on this year as a student missionary, that is in such desperate need of balance, alone. Although I came here to Cambodia to serve others, I can feel God pulling at MY own heart, chiseling it in the midst of all of the chaos.

Let go, Amber. Let go.

So here I am God, admitting my insufficiency, and letting go for You.
           
Please guide me through this.

                        Please guide me through this.