Frustrated. No, utterly discouraged. This is how I had arrived to our usual weekly meeting, ironically, at a Starbucks.
I was in a real funk.
The stresses of the past 18 months had compounded to the point where I was starting to wonder if we had made a huge mistake moving to Portugal. It was more than the usual cultural differences, constant language mistakes, or loneliness. No, it was the aire of hopelessness and utter uselessness starting to take hold.
I had done this all before (minus the language part) having lived and worked in Ireland. Why was I feeling this way now?
"I should be a pro. I should know what to expect." I mused to my colleague, in broken Portuguese.
Instead the horrible feelings overwhelming me that Wednesday afternoon were clouding my vision and straining my resolve. How could I possibly reconcile the great mis-matched differences between my American culture and that of the Portuguese? How could I ever learn the language
well enough to serve effectively? Would I ever be able to bridge that gap despite being so different?
I was beginning to believe the lie that our decision was hopelessly idealistic, a fools errand of the gravest kind.
Moreover and even more disturbing was the nagging fear that we had lashed our then 18 month old daughter to the mast of
a sinking, broken country. Could we provide her with enough opportunities to set her up for a successful life or would her future be dimmed because of our decision? Had I driven a wedge that would one day turn into a unbridgeable cultural gulf between our daughter and us? What had we done?
Portugal is the poorest country in Western Europe. It is also the least educated, and that has emerged as a painful liability in its gathering economic crisis. -WSJ.com
I paused to take a sip of my coffee, lost in my doubts and fears. My colleague appeared to be pondering my comments and hesitated before responding in Portuguese:
"São grande diferenças entre as nossas cultures, sem duvida."
(Without a doubt, there are huge differences between our two cultures.)
"But," he continued, "we are not trying to meld our two cultures. This isn't about mixing the American culture and the Portuguese culture together or trying to find some common ground between them. This is about creating and living out a
new type of culture, a Christian culture that only God, through his church, can create."
His words rang in my head as if I had been standing inside a clock tower bell at noon time. How had I missed one of the greatest powers available on planet earth? How had I been so foolish and so timid?
Jesus didn't die to combine different cultures together. He didn't die so that we would play nice. He died so that we would die to our selves, our prejudices, and to our cultural cruft. He died so that the sinful cultural baggage we've collected during our tenure on this earth would be reborn, refined and renewed. He died to
create a reborn culture:
"For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace…So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord." Ephesians 2:14-21
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Six months have passed since that afternoon at Starbucks and I still reflect on our conversation almost every day. It has been a profound lesson, probably the most important lesson I've learned so far as an immigrant. What had become an almost impenetrable fog of doubt was pierced by the light of gospel clarity.
We're
all immigrants, this world is
not our home and my task is not to become more Portuguese and less American… but more like Christ. Never-mind the irony of having learned that lesson while sitting in an American coffee shop from my Portuguese friend.
Obrigado mano, abraço.
