When you become bicultural. (And not by birth.)

Now, I know we have only been in an Indian culture for a little over four months, but is it fair enough to say that we feel a little more Indian everyday? (And feel it even more when you return to your heart culture.)

We landed a little over a week ago back on American soil, and, honestly, we have new gut reactions to do things. Turning out onto an empty road in a car sends quick panic signals to our brain to figure out which side of the road is the appropriate one to drive on. My first thought when I hold my glass under the tap and then take a drink is that I’m going to be sick the next day.

As we stay here, we find more things that are so different from our new culture. Everything feels so opposite here. Water is dependable. There are so many wide-open spaces. There is rhyme and reason to the roads. People don’t stare at you for long periods of time. There are churches—very large ones—on every corner. The streets are clean. The only animals we see wandering around are occasional deer. We see a lot more defined parts of ladies’ bodies. Guys and girls touch. The language we hear is not unintelligible background noise. There’s no such thing as bargaining. People generally don’t cut you in line when you only leave a foot of space. Fruit and veggies can just be rinsed under a faucet.

All these things were normal to us once, but now there is a new normal. And it comes from a culture situated in the opposite hemisphere. We cannot even fathom what even one more year will do to our cultural ties.

Many people have asked us, “Does it feel really weird to be back?” And at first the answer was: Yes. But after the first day or two, the answer became, “The weirdest part of being back is that it doesn’t feel weird to be back.” We have found ourselves slipping not only back into more American clothes but also our former way of living. We hope that we are able to slide back into our Asian culture just as easily. But isn’t that a strange thing? Feeling like two opposing cultures are both your own? Does anyone else share these feelings?

We remember that Jesus was bicultural too, being both fully a member of heaven and a member of this earth. Our experiences give us a small taste of what Jesus must have felt like when He came to this earth, being naturally from a different way of life, yet fitting into this world because that was what He was made to do. And then going back to His homeland, taking with Him the memories of this earth and the life He shared on it. It fills me with joy that He did and that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Our prayer is that we are also able to bless the people in this new culture that we have stepped in to, even as it changes us in the process. May He use us to magnify His name in all that we do as a bicultural family.

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Man Shall Not Live On Bread Alone...

What does fasting look like in our day and age? Have you ever fasted? From what? Food, media, people? In the past few weeks, I’ve felt like God was calling me to fast. I have fasted from food only once before, one year ago, and it was for several days with a community of people.

BUT, Let me be honest. The first time I fasted in this country, it did not go over very well. I was tired, HUNGRY, weak, and kind of out of it. I intended to drink only water and juice all day and to break fast in the morning. But as the day progressed, my stomach groaned louder, and my head began to spin more, I gave into the temptation to eat and had a late dinner.

Do I say this with a defeatist attitude? Of course not! Through the struggle for control over my mind and body, I learned some valuable lessons and drew into the Lord even more.

1.     Food is made for the body and not the body for food. If you have ever tried to fast from food, was one of the first struggles you faced fighting your urge to eat a certain food for emotional reasons? Did it feel like eating just one thing would make you feel happier and more emotionally at rest? Let me tell you, I was genuinely surprised that this was going to be an issue. Praise Him, by the end of the day, I found that food no longer controlled my emotions. Drinking a cup of coffee, eating my favorite snack, starting the meal out with a good breakfast no longer set the tone of my mood for the day.

2.     God intended to challenge us to a dependence on Him when He modeled His 40 days of fasting in the desert. I would challenge you to consider fasting from food, for often we depend more on food for strength rather than the Lord. Didn’t Jesus say in Matthew 4, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Do you think Jesus only fasted from media, people, certain coffee shops, FB, and whatnot? Maybe there’s some truth in the challenge and difficulty of fasting from food. During my day of fasting, I found myself calling out to Him a whole lot more than normal. Times when before I would not even think His name.

3.     Culture can sometimes get in the way of fasting. With our Western (especially Southern) culture’s dependence on mealtime as social time and meal time as a good highlight to look forward (and back) to during your day, it makes skipping a lunch a little more challenging. While this is not always bad, it does throw a kink into someone’s “normal day” while fasting. I have no insight into this fasting from food feeling, but to say that prayer time with the Lord becomes a lot more real and social when you replace mealtime with it.

4.     You will probably want to quit a million times. The evil one doesn’t really want us to walk in the footsteps of our Lord, and our bodies are trained to expect food at certain times of the day. That’s all I have to say on that. If you’ve fasted before, you know what I mean.

5.     Fasting is a journey. After my first difficult experience with fasting a month ago, I felt like God revealed to me (in no exact words), “Rachel, this experience is just the beginning of your time with fasting. There’s more I want to show you in this discipline.” I learned failing one time is not the end of the road. God does not see your unmet goal as a roadblock but a pothole (probably not even that).

There are so many reasons people will fast: to hear God for more discernment, to know God better through following what He did, to spend more time with God, to break bad habits, to mourn for tragic events, to humble themselves, as an act of repentance, or to take part in religious culture. If you are interested in knowing more about Biblical fasting and what this food fast stuff is all about, check out Celebration of Disciplines by Richard Foster who encourages taking baby steps into fasting, first fasting from 2 meals, then increasing the number of meals on a week by week basis.

To bring it all back around. I’ve been fasting from lunch every Sunday, praying and asking the Lord for His sovereignty to reign over a certain situation. It has been a time of remembering my dependence on the Lord and growing my faith in Him. At first it was good, then fasting became a means to an end. Never fun to realize that, but super helpful of the Spirit to set us straight when we turn our well-intended devotions into self-fulfilling acts. Again, Fasting is a journey. At this point, I think it’s time for me to explore a new area of food fasting. I’m looking forward to how this journey will play out.

Is there anyone who wants to join me on this journey of fasting once a week? If so, let me know. I’d love to hear how it goes for you and why you chose to fast. It is always great to learn from one another.

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Have you ever fasted? If so, how did it go? Any tips or advice? If you have not fasted, what has been your reason not to fast?

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6 adjustments one makes in the first 24 hours of moving to a foreign country

1. Stoplights are optional.

As we rode in a taxi from the airport to our apartment at two in the morning, we watched our driver float between lanes, most of the time preferring to straddle the car on the dotted lines. Then as we pulled up to a stoplight and sat there for about a minute, another car came zooming past us through the stoplight. That’s when our driver decided the stoplight was no longer useful. So sure enough, we pulled right through it too.

2. Tapwater is no good.

We’ve been living with our friends, who have been so awesome and been teaching us all we need to know about living here. After traveling for over 24 hours, one tends to feel pretty dirty and longs to brush one’s teeth. So upon arrival, we quickly find out that sink water is good for almost nothing. Including brushing your teeth. This means, every time we want to brush our teeth or wash our hands, a cup of purified water must be used to get the job done. Anyone used a water bottle to brush your teeth? Maybe you can agree with me that it’s a little strange.

3. There’s no such thing as a shower stall.

Another thing to adjust to is showering. In America, you step into a tub, close the shower curtain or door, and you are basically in a little room. Here, imagine, walking into a bathroom, and the sink is on the right wall. Take another step and there is a shower head sticking out from the same wall. Another step and there’s a shower curtain blocking the toilet that sits at the end of the narrow room. With a drain in the floor underneath the sink, this means that your shower takes place in the middle of the bathroom. Also another interesting experience.

4. Ditches have two purposes: Water drainage and urinals.

Within one hour of walking down the streets on the first day, we pass markets and streets full of people out and about doing there business. LITERALLY. We saw at least five men using the bathroom on the side of the street. Talk about awkward. (But I think only for us evidently.)

5. Electricity is a luxury.

With all of the power outages recently, we were so thankful to move into an apartment that had A.C. Unfortunately, we lost power 3-4 times in one day. Fortunately, we never lost it for more than thirty minutes. Unfortunately, this will become normal.

6. There are no such things as sidewalks.

Lastly, we discovered upon our first walk through the market that a (dirt) street that is a smidge wider than a one lane road is a sidewalk, urinal, water drainage ditch, front of a market, and a driving area for both directions of traffic, full of cars, trucks, bicycles, and motorbikes. (Granted, I think this was a smaller market area, and it was the only one we have seen so far. So crossing my fingers, maybe we will discover a sidewalk somewhere else?)

All together, needless to say, it’s going to be an interesting few months adjusting to huge changes in our lifestyle. He is good and faithful and is with us every step up of the way, so we put our hope in that. And our hope in that one day all of this will seem a little more normal than it does right now.

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Taking It All In: A "5 Sense" Tour of Houston

As we prepare to leave Houston, I look back at some of the pictures of our experiences here. Wanna take a quick tour of Houston with me?

Normally when you go to a baseball game, you dress to sweat. So did we, and boy were we surprised when we stepped into an INDOOR baseball stadium, air-conditioned and everything! It was the best and most surprising FEELING at a baseball game. We had a fun time with our team and a few interns.

Visiting with good Iraqi friends, we always come away with full bellies of TASTY biryani.

Standing on top of a parking garage looking out over the complexes in our neighborhood, praying for the people who live there, we look directly below us to SEE a Burmese refugee trying to crawl underneath the fence. As we watch her path and direction, she walks along the sewage drainage area looking for who knows what? Maybe a fish for dinner? Or plants to use as herbs?

Every Monday, we HEAR repetition of "1/3 cup, 1/3 cup,” as we partnered with Houston Refuge to serve refugees in the area as English teachers. One of our interns, Meghann, led the classes fantastically.

After listening to and observing a Hindu Aarti ceremony, we walk into the gift shop and SMELL India immediately, with all of it’s tasty treasures awaiting us, that are blessed by the gods.

I hope that you've enjoyed getting a "sense" of what life has been like here in Houston!

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A Plea For Modesty

Through our different experiences with people of all different cultures and religions, I have decided that Christians in America have really missed the mark when it comes to modesty and holding the purity of women as a priority. I feel like American Christianity sometimes even looks down on radical modesty (think the Mennonites).  

This is something we have learned to really value in lots of other cultures and religions that we get to spend time with, especially in the Muslim and Hindu people. One of my favorite stories is from a Muslim guy explaining the reason women are separated in the back of the room from the men in the Mosque. He asked the ladies if they would normally bend over with their booty in the air in front of a man. Of course they responded no. Then he told us that because of the bowing involved in prayer at the Mosque it would be very distracting to guys to see a room full of women bent over in front of them with their booties in the air. “Because men, we are men, and we will look.”

Again, sitting on one side of the room with the men at a Sikh temple, I realized how much easier it is to focus, and even if a guy did want to look at a lady, he would have to awkwardly turn his head to stare across the room at women who’s bodies and heads were completely covered. There was definitely no lusting in this Sikh house of worship.

What awesome commitments to get rid of the distraction of lust, by the men and the women. What if we as Christian men cared so much about the women in our lives, especially our wives, that we would want them to be completely covered from head to toe so that their husbands were the only ones that got to enjoy their beauty? Ladies, what if you believed that you were so beautiful that only one man should see how beautiful you are? Do you realize that the legs you flaunt, the chest you show, and every curve of your body that you reveal harms your brothers in Christ?

It breaks my heart to walk into churches and see so many women being terribly distracting to the thing that hopefully we have all come there to do, worship God. I think we have a lot to learn from our Hindu and Muslim brothers and sisters when it comes to showing respect to women’s bodies and our places of worship. How much more should we be respecting women’s bodies to show everyone how much Jesus respected women and their bodies?

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Hammers, Refugees, and Baby Rabbits: Picture Blogging One Year of Marriage

As Grayson and I are nearing our ONE YEAR wedding anniversary, it makes me think of the fun random things that we get to experience together. Here is a 12 month picture log of our first year together (including the five different houses the Luthers called home this year).

May: Wedding and Honeymooning in Seattle, WA

June: Hanging out on the square in Mountain View, AR for a family reunion

July: SOS trip to Memphis and Grayson’s last day as youth minister

Home #1:

August: Move to Clarkston; Home #2:

September: Playing a fun balloon trick on some good friends, Christian and Jess

October: our good friends and teammates get married in Virginia… meaning ROADTRIP!

November: We get to celebrate my parents' 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY on a cruise!

December: Met for team meetings in Texas!

January: We live in the Luther's home (aka: Home #3), THEN, 3 week ROADTRIP!

We met the "famous" Walmart bird lady!

February: Thai food and roses for my B’day!

March: We live in Home #4 (The Brock House) and celebrate a dear friend’s wedding at Mint, the Restaurant.

April: We find a hurt baby rabbit and try to nurse it back to help, eat lunch at the Capitol, catch a fish, celebrate a great friend’s new baby coming, and make a kite!

May: We move to Houston and move into Home #5 at the Falls (blue water and all)!

Looking back, we have had so much fun adventuring together, and I look forward to many more years adventuring with the one that I love.

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Seven Bed Sojourners

What makes you feel like you’re home? Your bed? Your kitchen? The old, comfy recliner where you take naps and watch TV? Or is it the smell?

We’ve been thinking about all these things as we’ve been moving around all over during this transition time. What we thought was going to be a short stay at each parents’ houses before we left for India has turned into sleeping in 7 different beds in 3 months. (Talk about messing up your sleep cycle).

The word “sojourners” has been bold-printed in mind for the last few weeks. Officially, this word means “to stay or reside temporarily.” Our journey to India has led us to be sojourners in our parents’, grandparents’, and friends’ homes.

I used to think I was really resilient and not superficial at all (what a good Christian I thought I was), but God started telling me something different right before our wedding. As Grayson and I were preparing to get married and made the decision to accept monetary gifts instead of a typical place settings (etc.) as gifts, believe it or not, I definitely had one or two good cry sessions. Some girls dream about their dress or their wedding venue or the honeymoon, but I always looked forward to holding that little Target gun in my hand and shooting all the neat house items I’d want to decorate my house with! Phase 1 of God tearing down idols in my heart.

Phase 2 came as we were traveling around visiting with people. I had read in a book that when one woman traveled with her family she always had a few homey items like some pictures and some cups that they took every where they went.  When we first started out moving everywhere, I had my candle, my decorative cloth, and a picture frame that I had in mind and carried them with us and pulled them out at every new bedroom.

However, as we traveled (with all our belongings now down to one car I might add), we gradually let go of more and more things. My (once) “go-to homey items” soon got ditched, and the bondage of materialism was broken even more.

I didn’t ask God to break this sin in my life, but as I’ve been seeking Him more and asking to know Him more, He points out bondage I’m still in that is keeping me from knowing Him more fully, and in His power, He breaks strongholds in my life.

Through our transition period as sojourners, the Lord is teaching me that my home is not here; there is another kingdom I am a part of and every time I try to live more and more in and dig my roots deeper and deeper into the kingdom of this world, the farther outside His will I find myself and the harder it is to be transformed by the renewing of my mind (Romans 12:1-2).

Though you may not find yourself as stuck in wanting stuff and finding joy in the things you have, maybe you struggle with another area of world-living (instead of kingdom-living). Which kingdom does your life reflect that you’re living in?

We can sometimes tell by the way we treat “stuff” and how dependent we are on it. We can see it in the use of our time, the stewardship of our finances, the things we talk about, etc.

Life has been hard always feeling like we don’t have a place to call our own, our own kitchen to cook meals, our own comfortable bed, but God, in His graciousness, has given us endurance and strength and made this time a lot easier than it could be.

We are grateful for the lessons we have learned through it so far: that eternally, this world is not our final destination, that there is a kingdom that we can live in now, that we are just in transition, living the life He has called us to and looking forward to our BETTER and FINAL bed, kitchen, and recliner.

Let’s not forget it.

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(Disclaimer: 1. I think that receiving wedding gifts is a beautiful time of marriage and family and friends supporting the new couple. 2. Though sojourning has provided lessons learned, I’m totally pumped to have a home to ourselves where we can fully function in the life God has called us to live. So promise, there’s no doggin’ from me on people who own homes. 3. I’m not really one to say whether there’s gonna be recliners in our new heaven and new earth, but it’d be nice right?)

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What Is FAITH?

   One of the things that the Lord has been teaching me as we are preparing to leave and patiently waiting on the Lord’s provision is about Faith. Most of us say we have Faith in something but the Lord has been revealing to me a much fuller understanding of the word. Much of it was summed up in the main verse from a church service a few weeks ago.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  

Hebrews 11:1

   As I have been meditating upon this verse it has brought together two facets of Faith. One of them is obedience to authority (most importantly Divine authority), the Lord has taught me a lot about this through John Bevere’s book, Under Cover. The other facet is God capturing our complete attention, the Lord has taught me a lot about this through A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God. Both of these have married this passage in Hebrews.

   The first thing that He began to teach me was that obedience to authority is of utmost importance to God. Throughout the Bible the faithfulness of people hinged upon whether they were obedient to the things that God called them to, and more importantly than that is their submission to the complete authority that God has in all of our lives. The whole chapter following to the verse above talks about Men (and Women) of Faith in the Bible, and in all of them it was because of obedience to the things God had called them to not just a belief in God. In the book Bevere also talks about the blessings for being obedient and also the serious consequences for being disobedient. We live in a culture where rebellion is celebrated, almost to the point where it is just expected. We must break this rebellious spirit in us if we are going to truly say we have faith in God.

   The other part of Faith that the Lord has been teaching me about is what Tozer calls “the gaze of the soul”. He says it is very similar to the story in Numbers 21 where the Israelites, after being bitten by poisonous snakes, must look to the bronze serpent that God told Moses to make to be saved. Tozer describes faith as a turning of the eyes of our soul from focusing on ourselves to focusing on God. “Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While looking at God we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance.”

   Now back to the definition of faith given in Hebrews. It seems to me that this definition perfectly sums up the two parts of Faith that I have been learning:

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for - Obedience and submission are being sure that the plan God has for us is the best one and walking in obedience to that plan knowing that God will bring it to fruition. What do any of us as Christians hope for besides to please our Heavenly Father? We can be sure of fulfilling our hopes if we are obedient to Him.

..and the certainty(or conviction) of things not seen. - As we set the gaze of our souls on the invisible God we become more and more intimately acquainted with Him that is unseen and reality of the spiritual world that is going on all around us. And the more that we focus on Him the more that we begin to realize that our God is far more than an idea or concept. He is far more real than you or I or anything we could see with these physical eyes.

   I know that this is only the beginning of the Lord teaching me about Faith, but as I continue to seek to walk out this new, fuller understanding of Faith, I am sure the Lord will continue to teach me more.

I will leave you with this challenge to walk these ideas out, also from the book of Hebrews:

..let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (OBEDIENCE),  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith (FOCUS), who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross (OBEDIENCE),  despising the shame , and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (FOCUS).

Hebrews 12:1-2

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Roadtrippin' Adventures

So Grayson and I have been traveling around Mississippi and Arkansas for the last several weeks. We love adventures! Hope y’all enjoy some of these pictures of our adventure.

We started out in Amory, MS (where Grayson was a youth minister for several years). Visiting with friends, baking half-baked cupcakes with some youth girls, playing some much-missed basketball with some of the youth guys, and seeing one of our old dogs made our trip there very enjoyable and encouraging.

Then we were on the road to Huntsville, AL to visit some great friends from college, see some relatives, and go see Lecrae and others at the Rock and Worship Roadshow.

We hit some pretty hard bumps in the road and couldn’t go to the concert. :(  During this time, the Lord taught us a lot about how our joys are only found in Him and about how the Lord is a redeeming God and that He wants to redeem all situations. Isn’t it so good to have a faithful and good God who finds joy in making all things new? Do any of you ever find yourselves putting your hope and faith in things or events or people to make life a little better or to make you feel better about terrible things that happen? I know that I had been thinking this way, because the Lord broke us that day. I know He did it so that He could teach us that our hope can only be found in Him and that He longs to be our Redeemer. #thecostofhumilityishigh

            Our next stop was Batesville, AR!

 

        Grayson grew up in Batesville until he was a junior in high school when his family moved to Hattiesburg.  It was super fun staying with his childhood babysitter and her adorable son!  We got an awesome chance to hang out with the youth and roast some marshmallows at a bonfire on a beautiful farm.

(ASIDE: While we were on the road, McDonald’s and Dairy Queen were some of our best WiFi buddies. --#coffeehousesareoverrated--While we were at one of the McDonald’s, we had the PRIVILEGE of meeting the famous Batesville Walmart Bird Lady--as she so dubbed herself haha. She introduced herself to us in McDonald’s and insisted that we take a picture and post it to Facebook. So Walmart Bird Lady, here’s your shout out!)

We LOVE adventures and road trips, but as many of you know, trips can really run you weary. We were so blessed with the opportunity to stay in a cabin for a few nights in Mountain View, Arkansas. We took many mountain dirt roads to stay in a beautiful cabin, walk mountain trails, and play in a creek. What a relaxing time with the Lord we had! The Lord really encouraged us and spoke to us while we stayed there. Thank you to the Rays and the Mays!

 

After staying there for a few days, we visited with Granny Freddie and had a great time visiting with some relatives in Mountain View. Anyone like cows? I got to feed cattle for the first time! 200 head of cattle that is. (Granted, Grayson did most of the scary parts) Doing some good manual labor and serving Granny was really enjoyable. Staying at Granny’s meant homemade breakfast every morning, fried pies, roasted pecans, and homemade pizza! Hungry anyone?
 

Now we are back in Madison, MS and so glad to be somewhere for longer than 5 days! We’re excited to see what the Lord has in store for us while we are here for a little while!

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