Trains and Change

Japanese women wear heels almost everywhere, and I wanted to give it a try. .. Well, by the end of my 5-hour trip my feet were experiencing death by blisters, and a guy was giving out free tissue packets on the street, and I made good use of his gift...
... and when I got off the train, I promptly removed my shoes of death, and biked home in bare feet. :-) ...Oops?

This is my busiest station, and generally once on the train, there's more people standing than sitting - and I'm usually one of them.
(Different train than mentioned above.)
With the amount of people I see asleep on the train - both sitting, and standing - I am convinced the Japanese have the ability to fall asleep absolutely anywhere - and they do it, too.


I kill a lot of time.

Seconds ago as my train came to a stop, I could hear the distinct ringing of the Danjiri drums. Subconsciously my foot began tap-tapping to the beat, and it brought excitement to my heart. Here I am, in busy, rapid-paced Japan, and it sounds like I’m in the middle of some distant tribal dance. The Danjiri festival has arrived in Osaka, and as the excitement is growing among my students, I can’t help but have some of it rub off on me. [The Festival will come to my city in a couple weeks, and I'll tell you all about it then.]

Lately I’ve been learning some pretty incredible - incredibly basic - things about my life. Things are different here - I’ve seen the growth that’s resulted from change, and the fear that’s come and gone with it. A lot of my time is spent on trains, and as I encounter so many new people, I’m learning how to trust, and I’m learning how to be skeptical when the time is right. Most people are just looking for a chance to talk to this young, smiley foreigner - even though they know very well that I have no clue what they’re saying - while others are just happy to have the chance to practice their english. I’ve gotta say, I quite love taking the train.

But you know, there’s a whole lot more to my life here than being a tourist. I spend time with real people, who have real lives full of pain, hope and every other feeling us Canadians seem to have. Go figure. And as I’ve been seeing that beyond my appearance - and I’m even beginning to blend in a bit - that we’re not so different after all, I've begun to feel a little insignificant. Japan has become a reality to me, and it's kind of a weird reality to face. I haven’t just popped in for a pleasant visit, but I’m here to live, and work, and eat, and clean, and do laundry, and just take part in all the normalcy’s of everyday life. - The honeymoon's over, as they say.
And so here I sit; It’s been nearly a month, and this is now, “life as I know it”. I was so looking forward to getting the chance to "really live" in some faraway land, and well.. here I am. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty great here, and I feel very blessed to be having this experience. But it seems that somewhere along the way I had forgotten that no matter the location of your suitcase, life is life. And life can be a pain. Change can be hard, and well, pretty much everything on this island has been a "change" for me.

Yesterday as I was concluding an email, I re-read all that I had written and realized that a lot of what I had said, was for me. Here's part of it:

“Keep your head up, you've only got a couple weeks left to fight the mundane and the normalcy that for now serves as your life, and then you will hop on a plane and nothing will ever be the same again. Funny how that works, isn't it? You leave things behind, and they change. And you change, and God grows you deeper and stronger and when you return, change is no longer scary, but good. So satisfyingly good. ‘Therefore He does not easily despair of others, but looks beyond sinfulness, willfulness, and stupidity, to the might of unchanging love.’
And then, I guess not everything is meant to change. ”

I proceeded to end my email there, with a smiley and my name.

Basically in all this, I'm just trying to say, that life isn't always what we thought it was going to be. Changes come and go, and it's a good thing! I've had quite a few changes in my life over the years, and my excursion to the Land of the Rising Sun took a lot of its birth from a desire to, for once, have my say in some of those changes. I wanted to put a pin on a map, that said "I lived in Japan for a year, and I grew up while I was there. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I, was in control, of that part of my life." ..yeah well, "eat your words, Susan. Eat them all up."

But like I said to my friend, (Which, by the way, I stole from a book) - "‘Therefore He does not easily despair of others, but looks beyond sinfulness, willfulness, and stupidity, to the might of unchanging love." - That's me, through and through. And it's okay, because I will always desire control over each phase of my life - that began with dear old Adam - and at the end of each struggle for control, God will still be God - and He will still have the unfathomable ability, and desire, even, to love this girl. I'm sinful, I'm willful, and often stupid. But, I am His. And well, that kind of cancels everything else out. All that really matters, is that I am in Christ, and He is in me, and we're walking through these difficult, much needed, often under-appreciated changes that inevitably, will, come.

So life will continue. I will get on and off many trains, see many new faces, do a lot more laundry, and make my way through a whole lot of changes yet to come. And at the end of every day, I can rejoice and be glad, because, as my good friend Robin Mark once said, "All my changes come from Him, He who never changes." As I said in my email, change will always happen, but some things just aren't meant to change. And luckily for us, God's love for us silly humans is one of those things.
Amen to that.

[The book I quoted is called "The Green Letters" by Miles J. Stanford, and the Robin Mark quote is from his song "All Is Well" from his Year of Grace album. I highly recommend them both. :) ]