Would I choose comfort or discomfort?
Musings on Unforming & Re-forming, Praying to be disturbed & unsettled, and a general season of weighty emotions & pondering.
Over the last few years, I have used the 24/7 Prayer App for my daily Lectio. This week, the Prayer of Approach at the beginning of the devotional caught my attention a little more than usual. This is what the prayer says:
God of justice and mercy, as I open my heart to You now, comfort me where I am unsettled and unsettle me where I am comfortable. Challenge me and change me, disturb me and rearrange me, not for my own sake but for the sake of those who are hurting and helpless, ostracised and oppressed. Amen.
Usually, I look forward to getting into a mindset of focus and stillness and practising God's presence. It helps me feel centered, but this prayer, in which I ask God to unsettle, challenge, change, and disturb me, left me slightly disoriented and confused.
I couldn’t help but think and ask God, haven’t I been pushed out of my comfort zone enough? Have I not been stretched and challenged sufficiently? What more rearranging and disturbance does my life and soul need?
It took me a few days to understand where some of these feelings of discomfort were coming from. I was angry with God. I was angry because I felt that most of my life had been about being challenged and unsettled, yet I was still saying a prayer asking him to unsettle me. In October 2024, I will celebrate the completion of 20 years of life in the United States. Twenty years might not seem like a very long time, but to a 46-year-old, it’s almost half of her life.
Saying this prayer repeatedly for the last week took me down memory lane, allowing me to reflect on my life in the previous two decades. It made me see the seasons of life that I had never imagined experiencing.
As a young woman of 23, there was a pattern to life that I was familiar with and I expected. I knew what life would be like in Chennai, India. I knew what was expected of me, knew the people around me and had a community with friends and family. There was almost a formulaic existence that I could’ve lived.
I’m not saying I would have gotten it right had we stayed in India, but at least I would have been familiar with the place. I would’ve known where our family would’ve gone to church and where my children would’ve gone to school. I would’ve known how to run the home as a homemaker and the places in the community where I would have found my place. I would have been home, and my life might have been, dare I say it, easy.
Instead, at 26, I was in a new country and culture, trying to make sense of everything. For the first time, I was a person of color, and my culture was foreign. From being a confident young woman, I felt reduced to a scared and anxious teenager.
I needed to survive because I had no other option. I had chosen to leave my comfort zone and step into the unfamiliar.
So it’s hard for me to say a prayer asking God to disturb and rearrange me!
I don’t want to be disturbed.
I don’t want to be rearranged.
My life has been a collection of rearrangements and challenges for almost its entirety. I’m finally starting to make sense of who I am in God‘s grand scheme of things, of my strengths and weaknesses, of my personality's quirkiness, of loving the way that God has wired me, and of using the gift that He has given me to be a source of encouragement and a blessing to those around me.
I don’t want to be challenged.
However, I can’t get away from the last few months of wrestling over multiple issues that I will hopefully be able to process in future writing. I feel called to carry the burdens of others who have been hurt and to grieve with those who have felt dismissed. I feel called to live in this strange space in between, And I don’t always want to.
Recently, I read Cindy S. Lee’s book Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation.
While Lee speaks of the cyclical need for our Spiritual orientation using time, memories, and uncertainty, she also speaks of the experience of our Formation with our need for language, rest, work, and being a part of the collective.
I agree with her, but I wondered how much my formation had changed as I read the book. Multiple cultural shifts have occurred in people, places, languages, communities, and life experiences. While every human experience changes, as Christ's followers, we often have to fine-tune our hearts and minds to listen to the changes in and around our lives.
We sometimes don’t look or listen hard enough to the world around us. I would not have looked at the world around me had I always lived in the city or country I grew up in. Moving away caused me to look outward first and inward second, which impacted me then and today. There is a constant shift and change as our orientation to God becomes more cyclical rather than linear.
Without going into every detail of the book, Lee says, “ In a cyclical orientation to the spiritual life, there is no finish line. There are no steps or stages. The healing work of unforming and re-forming requires a spiritual posture that enables us to look back and hold the past, no matter how difficult or shameful.”
Reading this made me realize that unforming and re-forming become natural to those constantly living in the liminal space. I could walk away and pick one side; that would be easy. I am not sure. Maybe those who know me see me as someone who has picked one side. Somedays, I have clarity on that; other days, I am confused. But living with the tension is often like a familiar friend! You know them, and they know you …so you co-exist.
I’ve often felt the deep frustration of having to be a bridge builder for most of my life. I didn’t ask to be one. I don’t want to be the one who tries to normalize what it means to be an immigrant, a person of color, or a foreigner in a majority culture!
I want others to take responsibility, do the hard work, understand history, have deep conversations, and experience diverse cultures beyond just the clothing or food. Yes, learning about other cultures through food is great, but we need more than that. We need relationships, and we need to make choices that allow us to experience diversity in different areas of our lives. Those choices could be where we send our children to school or college, where we live, or the places we visit.
I have often wondered what my life would look like had we lived in a city instead of a suburb. I cannot change the past, but I can make different choices moving forward. I can help my children think about such issues as they grow and leave the nest. I can choose to ask God to rearrange my life and unsettle me. It won’t be the easiest prayer, but He will be there with me.
The foreigner or the stranger will always make accommodations to assimilate into the majority culture. That is their normal. But if we are to unform and re-form, we all need to do the hard work of letting go of what has been normative for us for generations and be willing to enter the discomfort.
I don’t quite know what that will look like. If I had to guess, it would look different for every individual. It will be weird and strange and disturb our normalcy and comfort, but it might be worth it.
Over the last two decades, I have been thankful for my life in this country. The people in my life are precious, and I am grateful for how God has woven my life. We have gleaned many blessings from life in America. Freedom of thought and speech come to my mind right away. Most people I have encountered have been willing to do the hard work of understanding, but often, the changes come from a top-down manner. We have systemic issues, which we try to fix systemically.
But we need intimacy and depth in our relationships to unform and re-form. If we pursue diversity because it is the norm, we need those relationships to flourish. If we treat it as something on our checklist, then we won’t ever reach a deeper level of understanding.
In her chapter on Uncertainty, Lee says, “Ultimately we look for a God who is safe and predictable, because we want our lives to be safe and predictable.”1
Sadly, safety & predictability do not have much impact on forming and shaping us to be what God wants us to be.
So, I continue to walk down that path. There are days when I’m scared to pray and ask God to let me be willing to be disturbed and rearranged for the sake of others! It is truly a crazy and hard ask!
But perhaps that is what He is calling me to do this season. So, I take the next best step.
In my head, I often wonder what it would be like to ask the people around me, the ones whose faces are so familiar, the ones I love so dearly, how they would get out of their comfort zone.
In what way would they ask God to disturb them and rearrange them? I have these conversations in my head or in front of a mirror, but I never dare ask someone straight to their face! They would run away from me!
When we moved here, we braved the unknown to make it normal. But if I could go back, what would my choices be?
Would I choose safety for my children at a smaller school? Would I long for my child to be a big fish in a small pond or help him learn to swim better than a small fish in a big pond? Would I choose the comfort of a parochial school or the enormity of public schools? Would I encourage my children to try a different or out-of-state college, or would I choose a familiar pathway for surety of their success?
And as an immigrant, many of us would choose safe schools for our children! Ones that would ensure their success. But it's worth asking: can we ever step out of our comfort zone? And if not, what is stopping us?
These questions persist because of the current season of my life. There is no correct answer to some of these questions. They are meant to provoke a line of thought that we may not always consider.
And I hope you will consider some of them.
Changing churches was a huge risk for us. We left the familiar and stepped into the wholly unfamiliar. I could have stayed back. Many of our loved ones did, and they are doing fine! Did I need all the extra pain, doubt, and questions by trying something new that disturbed and unsettled me?
Maybe I did, or maybe not. One thing is sure: the uncertainty, lack of predictability, and challenges changed me. They caused me to rethink my formation and work on some unforming and reforming. They caused me to run headlong into my Lord’s arms and weep—weep for myself, for others, for the heaviness and the days when the weight seems too much to bear.
I am thankful He carries my yoke and eases my burdens.
So, I want to challenge you today to consider a complex question. Consider your choices and the reasons behind them. Dig a little deeper and ask God to unsettle and disturb you, and trust that He will be with you as you walk that journey for yourself or others.
Books I am reading this month:
Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
The Practice of the Presence of God—Being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Brother Lawrence—This is my third time reading this book. I cannot seem to get over Brother Lawrence's life, and I hope to process my thoughts in a future post.
Needled to Death by Maggie Sefton - This summer, I have promised myself that I will read more fiction, and a good murder always cheers me up!
What I am watching this Summer:
I am obsessed with BritBox and rewatching an old favourite - As Time Goes by - Judi Dench & Geoffrey Palmer - a story about a couple who lost touch with each other during the Korean War and reconnected 40 years later. It is sweet, funny, and endearing.
I am also watching The Bletchley Circle, a mystery drama set after World War 2 about four codebreakers who solve murders. Free on Amazon Prime.