Automatic Doors {Reverse Culture Shock}

I  continue to be amazed at how reverse culture shock continues to hit me at the most strangest, inconvenient times possible.  I get to this point where I am think I am doing ‘good’ and that I am ‘long over it’ and then WHAM it hits and I lose all motivation to continue on doing the simple task that I was doing in that moment.

 

Walking through automatic doors that open, is just one example of this. The other day, I found myself quickly running over to the store to pick up something as basic as milk, for the next day.  As I got to the doors, the sensors picked up movement and opened.  For a split second, I found myself frozen, with a sudden urge to ‘run’ as far away as possible from all things North America. “Automatic doors.  Really Nikki? I’ve been home double the amount of time that I was gone this past and its automatic doors that get to me?” As I entered through the doors and into the grocery store, I had to take a moment to pause and observe the scene before me.  Lineups were long and there was this steady ‘beeping’ noise of things being scanned through the till.  People were busy getting what they needed, barley taking time to stop and truly greet one another.  Employees were working to re stock shelves, being careful not to get in the customers way.  Before I knew it, I was back outside the store, with my paid for groceries in two plastics bags hanging down from myside, exiting through those same automatic doors that I walked in a short 5 minutes ago.  When I got home I wrestled with why that simple task of getting a few groceries, was bothering me as much as it did.  After all, its groceries.  Food.  We all need it to survive. It’s a basic human right….  

…It’s a basic human right that MANY people in this world do not have…

What took me 5 minutes here to complete, literally took me half a day (and sometimes a full day) in Zambia to complete. “Runs” to the local grocery store in Zambia, were often followed by adventures to the local market for fresh produce.  Have you heard the expression of “feeling like a fish out of water”?  To be completely out of place, in a very awkward manner and completely unsure of what is going on around you?  That’s what it is like being the only white person in an African market.  As strange as it may sound, I miss it.  I really miss it!  Yes, it wasn’t necessarily always ‘safe’ but that was part of the experience and adventure.  Perhaps the longing for that sort of adventure, is where my reverse culture shock is starting to come in. I realized that it was not just the automatic doors that made me want to ‘run’ earlier.  It was the continually realization of how convenient everything is here, of how fast everything happens, how selfish our society is and how life just seems to ‘pass us by’ with really no purpose or drive behind it.

After an evening of venting about the struggle of reverse culture shock to a close friend of mine, she replied to me with this, “Sounds like someone whose heart is tied living on two different continents.  I hear you.  I don’t understand the struggle but I hear the struggle. 

BAM!!

   

She may not understand the struggle, but she can hear the struggle going on inside of me. Sometimes perspective is needed and her next comment, helped place that perspective into a little bit more of a focus with one simple word. Balance.  “You know, I think we were onto something with that whole ‘balance’ thing.  Living in the tension of the two.  That’s where we’re called sometimes”.   

Living in the tension of the two.  I may not like it.  Some days I even hate it.  But for now, God has called me too it. 

I take comfort in knowing that, whether I am shopping at the local IGA or ‘feeling like a fish out of water’ in an African market, God is God.  He remains the same and He never changes.  He is constant, He is GOOD and His love truly never fails.