Growing Up Part 2

Being on exchange is an incredibly rewarding experience, if only for learning how to grow up! In the past three months that I've spent here in Spain, I have been stretched, challenged and have grown up an incredible amount. I looked through my diary and saw just how much I have written the words "growing up", "challenged" (because challenges comes with growing up!" and "mature"...

"This week has been good, but I've felt a little lost... I feel like I'm crossing the bridge between being a child and an adult, and I can't decide which one I want to be! So many times I have been challenged to do the 'grown up' thing, but a lot of the time I just want to be the child, to be cared and nurtured for and not have to worry about things like money, kids running across the road, how my Spanish is improving. Sometimes I wish it was a little easier... but if it were easier, it wouldn't be exchange, and I wouldn't be on the bridge between childhood and adulthood..."

"I told myself I had a choice. That I could either be controlled by my anger and hurt, or I ould let myself enjoy and embrace the day. So I decided to enjoy the day. And I did."

"I'm looking out of the window at the clouds, marvelling in their unique shapes, and the way the light adds depth, and totally just makes them peices of art. I feel a little bit like Jasmine from Alladin. God is taking me on a magic carpet ride to see the beautiful and different culture, landscape and life of Spain. I'm seeing a 'whole new world'. And on this ride, I am learning from my creator just what it is to be human. I'm sitting in the car, feeling like I'm the only person in the world, away from my family and friends... I feel like I've been stripped bare, the only thing familiar to me being God. It's not been and easy journey, and I've had to look at myself and tell myself to learn and grow and strengthen in a way that I wouldn't be able to if I was still at home with Mum and Dad."

"I've felt extremely challenged and inspired this week. I've felt challenged as to how I want to raise my children, as to how I want to live my life, what values I want to have a priorities in my life. I feel like I am so old - since when do I start think about raising kids and things like that? I must be getting older..."

[On an article I read on influential women in the world - Michelle Obama, Mrs Gates and Queen Rania of Jordan.] "One of their common factors they all held was for their passion for human rights, equality, and using their passion for these subjects, their positions and influences in society to make an impact. Ah, I felt as if the artivles were written just for me. I felt like jumping out of my seat there and then and joining arms with them to bring justice to people and their situations. being here in Spain, when I've ever told people what I'm studying next year, they;be all been extremely surprised. And everytime I tell them that that's what I'm studying, they tell me that you can't study that at university, and that Development Studies and Culture Change is not an option for a career. But they always tell me that they wished that they could/could have studied something like that. It makes me so happy to have been brought up in Australia, and in the generation that I'm in. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" saying rings incredibly true to me in so many circumstances - I'm so glad that I've been raised by the family I'm part of, having ahd the values and faith I have instilled in me from a young age. I feel so incredibly blessed to come here to Spain, if only for that reason, to see how blessed I am in Australia."

"I think before I left for this year of exchange, I thought, 'Well, I'm 18, I've finished school, I can drive, I've had a steady job for almost four years, I'm grown up. This year I'll definitely grow and learn more about myself, grow in my faith, in Spanish, but I'm already an adult.' But coming here, I've realised that in only three months, I've grown up A LOT. When I left home, I still relied on my parents, my friends, church, my support system for everything. They filled my every need, and I was comfortbale. So, of course, I felt all grown up. But, here in Spain, there have been so many things I've had to grow up about, and 'parent' myself with."

These past couple of weeks have been particularly eye opening and challenging, as I have been frustrated with lots of things, constantly feeling down, stretched, tired, and wanting to have my Mum and Dad with me to tell me it'll be alright. Dad sent me this email of a devotional he received, just after I had talked to them about how stressed I had been:

“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” Hebrews 10: 35-36

Do you sometimes get discouraged? You’ve worked and prayed for so long and nothing much seems to be happening. Frankly, you’re fed up with waiting. I know the feeling. One day as I was looking at a promise highlighted in my Bible, I grumbled, “Lord Jesus, you gave me that promise years ago and nothing has happened yet.”

Then a cheerful thought came to me, you’re that much closer to the answer then.

All God’s heroes experienced long waiting periods. Abraham went through thirteen years of silence before the fulfillment of a promise from God. His son Isaac waited twenty years for Rebecca to have children. Moses’ vision of delivering his people from Egyptian bondage lay buried forty years in the desert. And I could go on. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not of displeasure. Wait periods give us an opportunity to grow our faith.

Faith knows of a certainty that God has His moment and in that precise given time everything yields to his will.

If faith comes to a closed gate, she is not disheartened; faith waits without until God touches the lock and it flies open.

Faith knows some Jerichos need to be compassed about seven times before the victory comes. Kathryn Kuhlman

The race is not always to the swift but to those who keep running. They are the ones who receive the prize.

It was exactly what I needed to hear, and made me so grateful, that although my parents may not be with me physically, God is with me always.

That's not to say that because I'm in Spain, my parents don't support me in any way, because they do - they are incredibly supportive, and without their emails, skype talks, love packages in the mail, I don't think I'd survive! But, being in Spain, being separated physically by them, has challenged me incredibly to look at myself and ask myself, 'Who am I going to be today?' I've had to grow up and tell myself that I am going to experience this journey 100%. I'm going to make sure I leave not looking back wishing I'd done more.

Frustration and that small thing called Spanish.

Something I really struggle with is frustration.

This week has been a week of trying to figure out what I've been feeling, and why I've been feeling a little bit like a roller coaster. Most of the time I feel so happy, being where I am. Like I wrote in the blog I posted yesterday, I am so excited. So many things bring such joy into my life, but so many things brings disappointment, anger and frustration. Normally I complain to Mum about it, or think about it for half an hour and then get distracted by the next crazy, fun thing in the life of an exchange student. But I think it's about time that I sit up and look at why I feel these emotions, and try to deal with the problems.

"I guess I haven't written anything in my diary because I felt like I didn't have anything to say.... except that I have everything to say. I know that in 10 years time I am going to look back on these past couple of days wondering what I did and how I felt. And I won't be able to remember. I feel a little bit like a puppy. I am getting so distracted. One moment I'm feeling so excited about something new that I've understood, and then the next I'm sad because I feel like I don't understand anything. And it's not just understanding. It's speaking. My understanding of the language is light-years ahead of my speaking. I want to speak Spanish. I do. Desperately. But I just get so scared. Not even scared really. It's just that English is easier to use. I need to get out of that mindset now. Right now. Spanish, here I come. Look out. Laura Konemann is coming!"

I often write in this blog about how exchange is hard, and then go on to say how good it is. Often, the things that exchange so hard, are things that I can't talk about on a public blog.

But, I want to write about these frustrations. I often feel like I'm getting whiplash from the emotions I experience. I feel so incredible blessed to be here in Spain, and I absolutely love it, but with every good thing, there is also the downsides. I get so frustrated and disappointed in my lack of Spanish. I know that I have improved so much from when I first arrived in Spain, but I honestly hoped and thought that I would be soaring along right now. I thought that conversations would be easy, that I would be able to communicate all that I want, and that I'd be actively participating in class by now. I know now, that that was an unrealistic expectation for most exchange students learning another language. But, I also know, that if I applied myself more, I would be further along in my language skills. I can understand so much more than I can communicate, and that just pretty much breaks my heart, that I can't yet express how I'm feeling, or reply back straight away. At home, I speak English with the kids, to help them learn English. This brings me great joy, seeing them improve a little each day, but with that the biggest frustration that the people I spend the most time with, and the people I talk to most, I have to speak English with them.

Everyday I understand a little more. I love understanding, but it also comes with its drawbacks. In school, there is one teacher who stands against everything that I am: English speaking, and faith. I am an English speaker. I am a Christian. Every lesson without fail she tells her class how much she dislikes these two things, which gets me extremely frustrated. My class doesn't like it either, but they say they have to put up with it. I get so... exhausted. Exhausted of trying so hard to understand, only to feel like what she is saying is directed personally to me. Exhausted of understanding everything except the key point. And although I'm understanding some things, most of the time I'm clueless. Especially if the question or statement is directed at me. I'm so sick of being the idiot!

I don't like not understanding, and I don't like it even more when people remind me every single time I don't understand a word or sentence. So often I feel like a failure because I don't apply myself as much as I should, and that I've been here for 11 weeks, and still don't understand a lot. I look at other people's exchanges, and get incredibly jealous of their language skills or their lives, when deep down I know that they are struggling with the exact same things as I am.

This year (so far!) has been a great year of growth for me, as I have learnt to trust and depend on God so much. As I've said in past posts, my family and friends and familiar and safe place is not here in Spain. But God is. And I feel like God has placed me where I am, with the difficulties I have, for a reason. But it doesn't make it any easier. Something that I have greatly struggled with is comfort. Comfort means, "To soothe in time of affliction or distress." I have realised these past couple of weeks, that I have put my comfort in English. Mum told me about how people often put their comfort in other things like food, sport, language instead of God. For me, this past week has been a week of true realisation that I have put my comfort in English instead of God. Things that I think I can control. And, this isn't the way it should be. I use English instead of Spanish because it is easy. I know English. I don't have to be afraid of getting things wrong, or not knowing what to say. I fall back on English too much, so that I leave no space for me to fall and make those language mistakes so I can pick myself up again and learn how to say it properly. I have put my comfort in English instead of God. I have soothed myself, relieved myself of my frustrations (at least I thought I had!) by using English. But, instead of feeling soothed, I feel frustrated. Frustrated at myself, my situation, and the fact that I can't speak Spanish.

This, this post, is me telling the world that I need to put my comfort in God. I need God's unfailing love to be the warm blanket that makes me feel better, for it to soothe my distresses, relieve the pain. English, food, sport, these things can't take away the frustrations or my problems. The only thing that can is God. Instead of trusting in Him properly, stepping forward on this scary thing called exchange, I've run and hidden under a table, excusing myself from getting my hands dirty, telling myself that it's "too scary" or "too hard". I didn't come on exchange expecting it to be easy. I didn't come on exchange to back out or run away from the hard times. I came on exchange to confront these aspects of life that I struggle with, to challenge myself beyond compare. I came on exchange to learn Spanish, experience a culture and gather enough knowledge and memories and experiences to last the rest of my life.

This is me, telling you all publicly that this is my aim of exchange. I don't want to return from exchange full of 'what-ifs'. What if I had learnt Spanish fluently? What if I had tried that dish? What if I had invited myself to that party? I want to let myself fall into the comfort of God's love and spread my wings and truly fly. God has amazing things planned for the rest of this year, and I need to trust in Him and let Him guide me through that.

So what I ask for is prayer. Prayer that I will follow through on what I am saying. Prayer that I will lean on God and have His unfailing love be my comfort. Prayer that I will praise the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.

The following bible verses are some that have been really eye opening to me, and have given me great comfort over the last day or two. I encourage you to look at your own lives, and see where you have been finding comfort. You may be surprised. I was.

May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. - Psalm 19:76

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. - 2 Corinthians 1:2-4

I love those who love Me, and those who seek Me early and diligently shall find Me. - (Proverbs 8:17) (Sent to me from another exchanger, Vic - http://stepsandslow.blogspot.com/ )

P.S. After writing all this, I'm still loving my time here, and being encouraged greatly by all that I'm learning and being challenged in.