Embracing the trials.

An excerpt written from my journal a few years ago while I was in Arusha, Tanzania:

June 2010.

I'm sitting here twiddling these Maasai bracelets in my hand.

All I had to do was walk into the market, choose my favorite colors and designs, haggle with the penniless Maasai grandmothers so I'd pay a few less pesas, and in a matter of minutes I walked out with these new pieces of jewelry dangling off my wrist. Only to throw them in with the rest of my large assortment of fashion accessories a few days later.

But now, I'm looking at these bracelets again.  Actually looking. And I find that these hand-made ornaments combine the extravagance and simplicity of that culture: an intelligible color scheme of interchanging green and yellow, yet with beads so tiny it must have taken hours and hours of patience to string them onto this plastic fishing string.

And all I had to do was walk into the market, pay for what I wanted, and walk away.  Something doesn't sit right with me, but I can't explain what...

Well, Iana from two years ago, the current you had an epiphany today. Let me tell you why you weren't sitting pretty that night in TZ as you sat with those pretty bracelets.

Life is a process.  Things usually don't just happen and are over. You are so used to seeing the finished product of something that you fail to realize the painstaking process it took to get to the end.  Being raised in America, it's so easy for us to buy hand-made things without appreciating how much time into making them. The effort, the thought, the creativity. These Maasai women must look at their finished products with beaming pride because they knew how hard it was to create that beautiful bracelet.

And in your thoughtlessness, you have robbed them that joy by focusing on whatever we can lay our gluttonous hands on. Without recognizing how meticulous and deliberate the creating was, you cannot fully enjoy the creation.  More importantly, without the ability to enjoy the creation, you have neglected to acknowledge its creator as well.

Life is a process. You, 19-year-old Iana, are not done.  But in your eagerness to grasp the finished you, you have denied yourself the beauty in realizing what it took to get you to that point. You are in such a hurry to get through life's trials so that you can show off the new and learned you, that you deprive yourself of seeing the exquisiteness of the trials themselves. Instead of looking at what you're going through - actually looking - it's so easy for you to throw these memories into the pile of your forgotten junk. And without recognizing the painstaking process behind creating the extravagant you that is to come, you cannot fully adore the Creator who is getting you to that point.

So, freshman Iana, here is our brother Paul's call for us as we continue looking:

Continue to work our your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and act in order to fulfill his good purpose. 

- Philippians 2:12-13