Google Buzz has been the impetus for this kid to finally troubleshoot how to import this blog over to the gmail account that I am currently using - in other words, the consolidation of my internet life. Not that anyone ever needed explanation or would have noticed the difference, other than the fact that until a few minutes ago, you realized that myyearinindonesia.blogspot.com no longer functioned. I've resurrected the blog to say that subsequent posts can be found at irisinindonesia.blogspot.com (oh and also, should you ever need help troubleshooting all things Google, their help pages are actually pretty helpful). For now, it's essentially the same look and feel of this blog - sorry for the inconvenience, but it makes everything so much easier since I was using an old gmail account...
Going on my third consecutive Valentine’s Day as a single person – and honestly, praise God! Tomorrow is a double whammy holiday: Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year.Chinese Indonesians are one significant minority group in Indonesia among hundreds of people groups. I don’t know much more than that, other than that the ancestors of some of these families came to Indonesia hundreds of years ago and have been here since.(And as a Filipino American living in Indonesia, I’m afraid I am not familiar with the story of Chinese New Year…eh, it happens). I guess living in Indonesia, this should be a post about Chinese New Year, as I’m sure the celebrations here would be somewhat different than those in the States (I have never experienced either, actually)
I can write on something more universal, which requires no knowledge of Mandarin or Bahasa Indonesia… Someone said to me the other day, “It must be hard for your boyfriend with you here in Indonesia…” I had to smile at her and say, “belum ada,” [literal translation: not yet exist] or ‘there isn’t one yet.’And you know, it’s a blessing to say that because I was reading over my journal from a year ago and was amazed to see how much I was still in mourning over my most recent relationship.I remember when I was thinking about how I would spend holidays, particularly Valentine’s Day.
On Sundays when we set up the Junior Chapel for church, Sam stands back at the mixer and plays this song by Shane & Shane called “Holiday.”It’s upbeat, with the guitars strumming a moderate tempo as a background to two voices harmonizing – fun to listen to early in the morning while placing chairs into rows for Sunday Celebration.I have to admit, I’m not very good with song lyrics if I’m just listening to them so I had to look up the words to “Holiday” yesterday because I had the song in my head and wanted to hear how it actually goes (need I say it was yet another impulse buy on iTunes?)
You are my Holiday / You are right in the middle of me / You are my Hideaway
I’m calling out your name / oh my Holiday/ You make my heart new / and I love You
What it is I’m trying to say / You are my favorite part of me
Funny because I didn’t even know the song was called “Holiday,” but it seems appropriate to write about especially since there are two holidays tomorrow, and one of them has to do with love and hearts and flowers.Or something like that.
We just finished up a sermon/lecture/talk series on relationships called The Boy Girl Thing last night here in Karawaci. We started with part 1 last Friday aimed at college students, and last Saturday was focused on single working adults.Yesterday was part 2 for the college students, with practical steps and principles to keep in mind when pursuing a relationship.Pastor Seth has been doing the talk back in Ann Arbor for the past 12 years, and I have to admit that for the four years of my undergraduate life at Harvest Mission Community Church, his words have gone in one ear and out of the other.Having heard each of the three messages before, I think it’s funny that I needed to come to Indonesia to really appreciate the truth of his words.
Some of you reading this might strongly disagree with the church talking about sex and relationships – but it's our way to discuss how to conduct our lives in a manner that is pleasing to God, and I want to encourage you to check out the sermons once they’re posted at our website as some food for thought.I know that if I had actually grasped some of these principles prior to getting into my various unhealthy relationships in college, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
Pastor Seth focused primarily on the concept of counterfeit love in part 1 last Friday, suggesting that, “when the real thing is the real thing, everyone else wants to copy it,” that our impressions of love have been distorted – or fake: “to conceal to make appear more attractive, interesting, valuable.Usually in order to deceive; counterfeit.” As I reflected on my relationships with the opposite sex over the years, I felt very sad in my heart when I grasped the epiphany that counterfeit love is much of what I have ever known to give to or receive from guys.I couldn’t accept parts of my heart and my life as they were and expected someone else to accept a me that I wanted to be but wasn’t actually.It has resulted in multiple unhealthy relationships with a foundation based on deception.I’m going to be a nerd and list out some of the principles that Pastor Seth shared upstairs portion of Planet Noodle, our restaurant venue that graciously opened its doors for us and worked with us to give a 20% discount to anyone who joined us for the talk.
1.) Fake love promises closeness but not necessarily commitment
2.)Fake love promises connectedness but not clarity
3.)Fake love promises certainty but lacks the comprehensiveness
4.)Fake love promises completeness but lacks the contentment
As I listened to him dictate those principles, it seemed as if he had outlined the whole course of my most previous relationship from beginning to end. I don’t really feel like elaborating right now, but thinking about these principles brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s words (spoken in deep, languid tones by Cate Blanchett at the beginning of the LOTR movie trilogy – haha) to mind: but they were all of them deceived.
It’s so easy to talk about true love and grasp at it and believe that we’ve found it – particularly in a romantic relationship.But for so many of us, our views of love relationships are so skewed.Because I didn't want people, particularly guys, to know me for who I really was, I defrauded guys into loving something that I was not, and was defrauded by loving the ideas I had of people and not actually the person. In doing so, I realize that I, like many other women, have fed the egos of men - and that in turn, I have defrauded men into feeding my insecurity and need for security, investing into relationships with love that was self-centered and self-serving.I do feel sorry that the other parties have had to endure that, but I am thankful for the experience to learn the hard way that I and so many others have been so deceived.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. I notice that people use 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 or the love passage as a cliché, and I mention it because if we really think about the words, love in its original design is actually manifested as a distortion just because we are sinful and broken people.
Fortunately, there is truth and an alternative to counterfeit love: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 1 John 3:16
A sinless man, the Son of God, who created and is love, seeing the sordidness of our souls – when most people would walk away at such vileness and brokenness, he took it upon himself.
While visiting a national school recently, I got to observe a chapel where the children sang the chorus to this song by Avalon:
We are the reason that he gave his life
We are the reason that he suffered and died
To a world that was lost, he gave all he could give
To show us the reason to live
It brought tears to my eyes, especially thinking of how I have defrauded people and been defrauded by counterfeit love - but that Jesus could still love somebody like that, that Jesus could still love me. He makes my heart new, and as I learn to accept this more and more everyday, I feel more free of the baggage from the past.
To wrap it all up, I wrote this because my heart breaks for people who experience the distortion of love in all of its forms. And also, no, I won’t be pining away as a single woman who isn’t getting any younger tomorrow.I will be spending the holidays with teammates who have become my family, and with the Lover of my Soul – Jesus, my Holiday. I hope that others of you, singles especially, can experience the same.
In my second year as a working single adult, I’m still relatively new to the workplace but I am already experiencing how difficult it is to maintain integrity and work with all of my heart “as if serving the Lord, not men” rather than just the man (although I have to say, I do appreciate my bosses Yonas and Jeffrey immensely and am grateful for the crash course in family business 101 – also known as working here). Often, I find myself having to create work for myself to keep my hands busy, which is great because it allows me to engage in my creative side while trying to learn more about how exactly this business operates. I mention that because over the past couple of months, it’s been really easy for me to get into this rut where I dread coming in to work because I feel like I just sit here for 8 hours and then go home, and come back and do it all over again. But I’m reminded of where I was two years ago, an almost graduate who along with my classmates faced the challenges of job searching with an economic downturn on the near horizon. I have a job, and I should be grateful for the opportunity to worship through my work.
“Iris, can you interview her? My English is not good…” I had just created for myself some more work - evaluating our customer service by our response to customer complaints (because according to the reports I've been translating this morning, the response has been zero, or my colleagues forget to record the responses. But anyway...) I turned around to face the speaker, a woman in my department. Standing next to her desk was a woman wearing skinny jeans and a white t-shirt with a brown mouse’s face on it, with black hair cropped close to her head. I’ve overheard two of my roommates who teach English here at our company interviewing women who want to work in Canada as caregivers, but have never given the interviews myself. “Do you have specific questions that you want me to ask her?” I asked my colleague, whose only response to continue to sit smiling at me. That was my cue to plunge right in with whatever questions I could think of off the top of my head: “What is your name? Where did you work? What did you do? Where did you learn English? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do there?”
Her name is Nina. I was trying to talk slowly but some of my questions elicited blank stares before an actual response. She worked in Malaysia for two years as a domestic worker, “cleaning the house, washing the car, feeding the dog…” and in Saudi Arabia for two years, as a caregiver for the elderly. “I learn English in Malaysia,” and she wants to go to Hong Kong through our company to work as an elderly caregiver again, like she has worked overseas before, to support her family. She has a husband, and a twelve-year-old daughter. “I want to work in Hong Kong for my family’s future.” I wasn’t able to ask her what she had in mind for her family’s future because at that point, another one of my colleagues was waiting to take her upstairs to Overseas Marketing for another interview.
I thought of her daughter. If Nina worked overseas in years consecutive to one another, her daughter might have been somewhere around 8 years old, or younger, when she first left to work overseas. I was thinking of how much Nina loves her family, and would do anything to spend more time with her husband and daughter – but she loves them so much to leave, to find work overseas and to work to support them. How does her daughter feel? I can imagine that she wants so much to spend time with her mother. Spend time cooking with her, watching tv together, maybe fighting together now that she’s older, and maybe just sitting and being with one another.
I write about this because I have been thinking a lot lately about family and how it functions, and about work. My parents moved to the United States before I was born, and I think I only know half of the struggles they faced while getting established in a new place, if that. My mother, a nurse, worked long hours at the hospital to support our family, and some of our extended family members. My father would work during the daytime and stay with me at home while my mother was working the evening shift. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap one day when I was 5, after lunch as she was preparing to leave for work. I had just eaten a chocolate fudgesicle, and sitting with her was the best thing in the world. And then she had to leave. I remember feeling so sad, and I heard her say the words, “but I have to go to work…” even though now I am more than certain that she would have given anything to take a day off and stay with me.
My father still works the second shift, at the power plant at Western Michigan University. Someone interviewed him for a newsletter at Western a while back, and he is the same person to everyone else as he says he is. He works, goes to church, loves working in the yard, and loves his wife and daughters. It’s been very difficult to live for part of my life with my father away in the evenings when my sister and I were at home doing our homework and practicing our instruments. Over the years, I have questioned why such a schedule and why such hours. I remember when he first got the job at Western after a period of unemployment in the mid-90’s. It was quite an adjustment at the time, and I remember how hard it was to think that it felt like I wouldn’t be able to see my father as often as before, or at least during my waking hours.
Coming here to Indonesia, I have a greater assurance that everything in our lives happens for a purpose. I hear many stories like Nina’s, working here at a human resources management company. And I told Nina’s story because it reminds me of the people on the other side of my own story – my parents. I’ve become somewhat embittered because of the lack of closure and understanding about why certain things in my life happened the way that they did. But I realize that everything in my life has happened for my good, that “all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose…” (Romans 8:28) Because things happened the way that they did, with parents working hours that I have disliked more or less and my limited perspective on those situations at the time, I understand much better the people filtering in and out of the Lokal Marketing department in search of jobs overseas.
I mention this because it has also been greatly challenging to have a heart of compassion for these people from all over Indonesia, with their educations and options so limited that they must find work overseas, and towards my colleagues. Things don’t work the way I think they should, as I am accustomed to in the American workplace; interpersonal interactions also do not function in the Western ways that I am used to. I realize that thinking this way has hardened my heart, as pride tends to do. This morning on the way to work, I was reading Matthew 27, which chronicles the crucifixion of Christ and I felt challenged at the thought, “For whom was it that Christ died?” in our morning meeting as I was staring at the faces of my colleagues, including the one who asked me to interview Nina shortly after that meeting. Makes me think of these words, “Oh kneel me down again here at Your feet, show me how much You love humility…” and how much I want that heart, especially as someone who is living here as opposed to just visiting.
And finally to wrap it up, I wrote this to reiterate the fact that I understand – or I understand better. Work was my parents’ way of expressing their love and challenges me to do the same. Also, today is my father’s birthday, and I wish so very much that I could celebrate it with him. Thanks Dad (and Marme) for your love. And if you’re not either of them and want to read a little bit more about my father from that newsletter I mentioned above, click here and see page 4. Happy Birthday, Dadipogi.
During our first few days and weeks in Indonesia, whenever someone would commit some cultural or social faux pas, some of us engaged in identifying the event by saying, “fail blog!” [I think Irene may have mentioned this in her own blog, but the first time she heard that phrase, she said, “You have a fail blog??”] It’s not an actual blog, by the way. But since I am writing in mine, and I just made the confession (or I guess it was almost a month ago) that I am awkward, here’s a follow up post for some levity – and an update of sorts (only because people like Richard Yamada say that I should post more. Yup, that’s the parenthetical shout-out to Richard. Thanks for mentioning that you check my blog as much as you do! And of course, thanks to all of the other readers too!)
“I’ve never seen Mr. Bean but you remind me so much of him,” he said. The speaker met all of us only four months ago, and yet he was speaking to what everyone else who has known me for longer has endured quietly. I think that morning, he was talking about the fact that I had flipped the spoon in my coffee out onto the saucer somehow, almost knocked over my water glass, and almost fallen over while getting out of my chair at our retreat last week. Besides my last post and grasping my emotional awkwardness, I have been very familiar with my physical awkwardness over the years – and to people who know me well, it makes perfect sense that I love the movie “The Princess Diaries” because the protagonist is just as awkward and ungainly as I am, and vice versa.
To illustrate, I’ll share what I wish was a well-scripted scene from a sitcom... I caught a stomach virus shortly before Christmas a couple of weeks ago, and was being extremely conscientious of taking my antibiotics before and after each meal. While endeavoring to unscrew the cap of my Powerade bottle of electrolytes in order to take my medicine, I managed to fling the cap into a small receptacle with pink votive oil which functioned as our table’s fly repellent. Initially I was going to leave the cap as it was, but decided that I should at least fish it out so the plastic didn’t melt into the oil. I did successfully take hold of said cap with my fingers – but watched it sail through the air into the remainder of my food. Shortly afterward, I also managed to fall out of my chair. Other than utter embarrassment at the time of occurrence, I guess one thing about coming to grips with my chronic klutziness is that I can laugh about the fact that these things are real life and I don’t make them up.
I can't blame the antibiotics for my cantankerous behavior because I had another episode of epic fail blogness this morning (although now that I think about it, I did just finish taking another round of antibiotics for yet another stomach bug. 'Tis the rainy season here, and infections are rampant!) I was preparing to sheath the tables in the junior chapel this morning with our own tablecloths, when I noticed that the table where we place refreshments had a hot water dispenser on it. Thinking it was empty and that it would be an easy move, I grabbed the two handles to move the dispenser to the ground. It actually was completely full of water, and even though it was very heavy and I knew that moving it by myself was probably biting off more than I could chew, I decided to plow ahead and move it to the ground out of sight. The cord to the dispenser was caught on the coffee maker next to me, and I found that I could not set the dispenser flat on the ground unless there was slack from the cord. I was inches/centimeters from the ground, trying desperately to balance the dispenser and also grab the cord so I could release my burden. When the cord was almost in my fingers, I felt the dispenser slip out of my hands and flip 90 degrees, spilling its contents. Fortunately, it was only water – but it was a lot of water, and it spread quickly under the tables and towards the door of the chapel. Very slippery and dangerous for people walking in and out during the morning!
We did manage to find two mops to at least soak up the damage, but no bucket with a contraption to squeeze out the water. Our kindhearted Pak, one of the head groundsmen at SPH, wiped up the water and wrung the mop with his hands with expert skill. One of my teammates took the other mop and also wrung the water out by hand. Since I love cleaning, I think ordinarily I would have felt the shame of being useless as a watcher. I felt humbled actually as I watched these two men wiping up the mess that I had made. It really reminded me of what Christ did when he died on the cross – that it was to make right my wrongs, to shed his perfect blood to justify me for all of the ways that I fall short. Those men didn’t need yet another thing to think about this morning, let alone clean up someone else’s mess, even if it was just water. I, being the judgmental person that I am, would probably let someone in my shoes know just how wrong they were to screw up that badly, and to keep reminding him or her of it. Instead, I heard the older Indonesian man who is probably my dad’s age saying, “nggak apa-apa,” [never mind] in response to my “ma’afkan kami,” [forgive us]. Humbling to think that all it takes to make right wrongs is to admit error, to confess sin, and to say, “Forgive me.” That Jesus was willing to clean up my mess, at no cost to me, but cost everything to Him when he died on the cross. Just some food for thought.
So it turns out that I actually love writing so much that I would rather wait a while and turn out a piece that is profound and well thought out – which is why I have neglected to post anything about Christmas or New Year’s or our recent January retreat and anything in between. Those were special times in my life thus far and definitely worthy of mention. I know it’s getting close to February and things like Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year (which happen to be on the same day this year!) and December happenings might not seems so relevant. We’ll see how I end up updating regarding those things. But for now, this is my attempt at fail blogging less…(e.g. posting more)
