I am less than a week away from leaving my family and my home in Tennessee to begin the first leg of my trip to Tokyo. It is normally my habit to spend a lot of time thinking about the things I'm going to write before I post them here, but I don't feel like I can do that this time. I've been struggling to update because for the last month I've been trying to avoid the thoughts necessary to produce something that even passes as coherent work.
I've been bungee jumping once in my life. I love the memory and I loved the reasons I had to do it (it's a fun story and I can tell anyone who wants to know about it), but actually doing the thing is a different beast entirely. It was one of those crane style bungee jumps, so I had to climb a ton of stairs to get to the top, and I remember nearly running up the first 4 or 5 flights because I was so excited to jump, but as I started getting higher, closer to the end of the stairs, I started feeling a little more heavy, a little less anxious to get to the top and a little more to get back to the bottom. At the first step of the last flight of stairs the real doubts started coming; I kept seeing images of cords splitting, of knots slipping, I couldn't help but imagine the ground rushing towards me and not being able to stop. At a certain point I had to pretty much turn my brain off and use my eyes as cameras, nothing more than tools to record a memory that I could hold onto later, because if I tried to interpret what I was seeing myself do I wouldn't have been able to do it.
Obviously, bungee jumping is not something that is directly correspondent to moving to Japan, while I have similar feelings and I'm coping with fear in a similar way, they are very different things and the fears I have about moving to Japan are very different from the ones I had about free falling from the top of a metal crane. There are a lot of things to be afraid of, from a more outside perspective:
I've never truly lived alone before, and in Japan I will very much be alone. The house I'm renting a room in has space for other tenants, but there's no telling when people will live with me or for how long. What kind of dangers are there in living independently?
I don't know Japanese. I've been learning, but I'm pretty sure my eighteen month old nephew speaks better than I can in Japanese (and he's just now saying "bye-bye" consistently). Languages are hard to learn, especially if they are as different as Japanese from English.
I don't know what my diet will look like. I don't know what kinds of foods will be available or how expensive food is. I mean, I have an idea, but it's hard to realize this sort of thing until it's happening or has happened.
I've never taught English before. What if I can't hack it? What if I'm a bad teacher?
Even if I recognize these things as real, though, they don't really scare me. What really scares me is the ever present, most daunting fear of all:
What if I'm not good enough for this?
What I mean is, what if I'm not right for this? What if I'm not supposed to do this? What if I'm wrong about all of this? What if I'm a disappointment? What if God doesn't want to use me the way I want him to?
These fears are the hardest to combat, these can't be settled with planning, with reasoning or through any other natural mental or emotional process. These are the sort of spiritual questions that have to be dealt with in an unnatural manner. I've never really understood why Jacob had to wrestle an Angel at Peniel, but I've also never really had to question it. Please understand here that I believe that God is searchable and that discernment is important in faith. I don't mean that I've never questioned why Jacob had to wrestle an angel, I mean that I've never questioned it's necessity. I know that may seem like a strange and somewhat paradoxical thought process, that is, to be clueless and understanding simultaneously, but that is, I think, the only possible state when it comes to most things, but especially when it comes to theology. It's finding the right balance of the two sides that becomes the biggest struggle, though, and right now I'm on the more helpless side of that stick.
I'm at the last flight of stairs now. I've had enough reason, enough confirmation, encouragement, reassurances to make it this far. I'm to the point where all I can see is the cord breaking, no matter how irrational the thought is. I know it won't, but. But what if it does?
I used to have this sort of mantra when I was younger and cared much less about rationale. I used to say it to myself for practice, just to remember it, whether I needed to hear it or not: "If you're afraid to do a thing; eff it. Do it anyway." Later, to sort of hone in on what I was really getting at with that mantra I started reciting 2 Timothy 1:7. Power/Strength, Love and Sound Mind/Self Control are the ingredients for courage, the thing I fear I lack the most, and so wrestle for the most ardently.
Right now I'm running on the fumes from all of the events of the past year that have led up to what's happening in the next week combined with a steady stream of reminding myself of the spirit God has given me. I know it's enough to get to the top of the stairs, and enough that I'll be able to jump off, eyes open, watching the pavement rush to meet me only to gently bounce back up and safely disengage, fear subsided.
I just wish that I could close my eyes and imagine that cord without it snapping under pressure. So pray for me!
