Scattered snippets, relationships and self.

I think my earliest memories of "the homeland" are when I was five and living in a village called Tawatana, on Makira Province, Solomon Islands. You're wondering, where is that? Well, the country itself is located on the Ring of Fire, South West Pacific and is part of a chain of islands inclusive of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Zealand -best described as, "go to the northern tip of Australia, then go about a thousand miles east and you'll hit the Sols."

Location acquired -that's where I first lived. I can remember following my "aunts" and "uncles", being carried by all my "cousins" and just, being a part of the tribe. I held my first knife and was peeling potatoes with my younger sister in that village. I had my first taste of the mouth-drying skin of the betelnut fruit and ate my first sea-worms there. They were my first family in Solomon Islands. But how do I explain that, the relationships, the growing up with strangers to the point where I call them, and consider them family, more so than I do my own here in America -how do I explain that? Relationships is everything there in islands. Friends aren't just friends -they're family. When I came to America, I struggled to learn the dynamics of friendships here, the culture may be mine by right of citizenship, but it's not what I grew up with. When I came to America, I was expected to call my real aunts and uncle, "aunt" and "uncle" but I found I almost couldn't. Those titles were ones I associated with people I actually knew, not these foreigners.

I've learned to adapt, but I still do struggle. I'm an adult, but my relational skills here, having not grown up here, are comparable to that of a child.

1 Corinthians 13:11-12, "11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

Maybe I am a child in the area of relationships here in America, but as the verse says, "for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror" -I'm completely out of my comfort zone, my natural habitat -who I am here, isn't who I've been for almost every year of my life up until I moved.  I can let you see me, who I am, but I ask for patience.  Patience to let me keep learning.  Patience to help me learn.  It's as if I have to build from the ground up.  Every part of who I am was left behind when I moved here.  I can't fully be myself because the culture here doesn't allow it, so whoever said "America is the land of freedom and liberty" -I think you need to revise that statement, or at least put a footnote along the lines of, "as long as what you're doing falls into acceptability of the Americans standards, expectations, rules etc."

I'm still learning and I have a long way to go.  "Now I know in part, then I shall know fully."  I hope the latter comes quickly...