I started writing an auto-biographical "piece" this summer about our first year here in China.  I had a lot of free time to work on this project and I was excited about the prospect of writing a short essay or (if things went really well) a book.  At first, the pages seemed to just roll by.  I wasn’t exactly working fast, but I felt inspired and excited AND I was getting something down on the page every day.

As I neared the end of the first chapter though (a long one primarily about what it really means to say goodbye to your previous life and culture) I hit The Wall.  This is not an uncommon occurrence for me whenever I attempt to write something BIG.  Perhaps I have an undiagnosed case of A.D.D. (i.e. attention deficit disorder) or maybe Herr Critic just can’t resist checking in on me when I’m in the authoring mood…who knows?  But at some point I ALWAYS find myself wanting to avoid my creative endeavor.  It usually starts very slowly and very subtly, but after a month or so I realize that I have been totally avoiding the "work" altogether.  It sits collecting dust in a cyberbin on my hard drive.

As much as I hate to admit it, the really-not-writing-a-story-once-started Culprit (my nemesis) had struck again.  My book that was supposed to have been written in a month really turned out to be nothing more than a 20-page essay written in a scattered week or two.  I am not really ashamed of this; life happens, but it was just difficult to understand what had derailed me so abruptly and without warning. 

Until recently this was one of those unexplained mysteries, but then thanks to an unrelated thought process I accidentally stumbled upon the answer:   My story had fallen victim to culture shock…

It sounds pretty weird I know.  How can a story or an essay or an autobiographical account not be written due to culture shock? 

Well, in Chapter 2 of my story (which I was quickly approaching on the written page) I knew on a very conscious level that I and my family would arrive in China (not even China–Singapore, Thailand, or some other exotic-sounding, hotel-infested region of southeast Asia.)  And I also knew (on a very subconscious level) that once my characters (i.e. ME and my Pacific Northwest beauties) arrived on this then-foreign soil–things were going to suddenly get very, very difficult.  I knew this would happen in the way that the writer knows where his character will go based on their specific personality and circumstance, but even more so I knew this would happen…because IT DID! 

It happened in real life.

You might ask things like:  What is so daunting about this proposition?  Why would I feel this fear about telling my own story?  After all, wasn’t the whole plan for so many years to leave the U.S. and head out to the far reaches of the globe?   We had achieved our goal–this was the moment of victory.  Right? Wasn’t saying goodbye to the familiar just as hard as saying hello to the foreign?

These are all good questions which makes them a little tricky to answer. 

Writing Chapter 1 (with all its shortcomings) was very difficult in many ways, but also very rewarding and heart-warming.  It reminded me of the ways I and my family were blessed and loved and sent out.  It is a good thing to live in community even when you are called to walk away from it for a while to form a new one.  Reliving those memories within the written word was like breathing in a cold, fresh, lung-full of air–it stung a little bit on the intake, but it was life-giving, invigorating.  So in many ways saying goodbye was hard to live and re-live, but not hard in the same way that saying hello was. 

Saying "hello" wasn’t even possible at first.  We didn’t know the word for it.

So if saying goodbye was like a breath of fresh, crisp air, landing in Singapore, in Thailand, in China, in Xining–well that would be more like being fully immersed in ice-cold water without the awareness that you were even going to be getting wet.  It took our breath away.  I don’t think I was ready for it (or could have been). 

On some days I still don’t think I’m ready for it…  I wake up, give myself a little pep talk about what I’m doing here, pray that perhaps classes have been canceled for the day due to a freak inland typhoon, come back to reality, kiss my wife on the cheek, and walk out my front door into the utter and complete unknown.  That’s how it feels anyway.  Each day’s forecast has a high probability for confusion, with a 90% chance of misunderstanding, and a likelihood of scattered frustration (with a few sunbreaks of joy thrown in just to keep you on your toes…)

I am not saying this is a full and complete picture.  It ISN’T.  I am also not claiming that there weren’t many wonderful things that happened to us in Chapter 2 and 3 and 4.  There WERE.  But I guess I’m just trying to pinpoint an underlying factor, a shell-shocked feeling, that pervades the story and our life here–even now.

Culture shock comes and goes like a migraine.  For me it can’t be boxed out on the calendar.  It finds its way into my weekly routines and hideouts.  It appears as quickly as it disappears–it is my constant companion.  That’s why, when faced with it, I found it increasingly difficult to document our experiences once we actually reached Asia (the hotels, the floods, the radiators, the concussions, the expats, the time zones, the emergency rooms, the villages, the dialects, the outages, the pizza famines, the poverty, the affluence, the neglect, the stress, the breaking, the packages, the responsibility, the tutors, the teachers, the loneliness, the crowds, the advice, the mafan, the opportunity, the children, the beggars, the airports, the exchange rates, the stares, the analysis, the chaos, the chopsticks, the laughter, the sickness, the hope, the fear, the King)  It all seemed to swirl and swoop in on me and I found (and I find) that survival still tends to be the mode I’m working from most.  I don’t know if that’s good or if that’s bad (at this point) but that is what it is.  I don’t say all this for sympathy.  I say this because I have learned that culture shock is bad for literature, but maybe good for character… (?)

I say that culture shock is good for character because I think that it reveals what we are at our most fundamental level.  Over the past 16 months or so I have witnessed the outer layers of this person others refer to as "Todd" (or Yeti!) pulled away like scales from a dragon’s back (Remember Eustace in, was it?  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader…)  It’s a pretty scary thing to stare at your naked self.  When I look in the mirror and I can’t see a career, a job title, a 401K, a self-reliant communicator, a problem-solver, a provider, a national citizen, a literate person, a person impervious to sickness, a rock for my family to rely on, a clearly defined forecaster,  etc., what am I actually looking at?  Who is there when all the masks have been discarded or torn away?

Thankfully, Christ is there behind all the other props and masks.  (Amazing that nothing can change that, but it is often hard to see him in all the flotsam and jetsam of self.)

But, in the mirror I recently noticed someone else was there, too.  There is a person who looks a lot like me, hiding in the deep woods, playing a game of capture the flag.  What exactly is he guarding amidst those evergreen trees…?

We’ll look at the answer to that question the next time.  (Ooooh, a cliff-hanger!)