Fighting Fears

So, I have to confess, amidst the feelings of excitement about flying off to Ghana for a quarter of the year, I have been experiencing my share of anxiety. Of course when people ask if I am feeling nervous or excited about the trip, I respond yes to both. However, in all honesty, lately it has been mostly nervous. But, so as not to risk looking like a wimp I usually do not expand on this sentiment, but keep it to myself.

My biggest fear so far is not the sweltering heat. It is not the risk of getting malaria or some other taxing illness. It isn't my cultural or lingual incompetence. It's not even a fear of sleeping in a strange bed, in a tiny village, in a foreign country. All of these things are enough to singularly make one nervous, but I have experienced them in some degree in Peru or Japan and know that they can be survived and overcome.

My number one biggest fear is maintaining courage and emotional health as I exist in an isolation I have never really known for an extended time period. I am a social person by nature, I love my friends and family and the daily interactions I share with them. This is part of the reason I love anthropology - I am thrilled and fascinated by the bonds that can be forged and perpetuated through human relationships. In Ghana, I will have one American roommate with whom to relate. I am confident I will love the Ghanaians in the village, and will strive to create meaningful relationships with them. However, for my own selfish purposes I will not have constant communication with friends and family who share my culture and context and can comfort me in the ways I am most familiar with. This loss will be compounded by the fact that I live in the year 2012, and have a quite possibly unhealthy dependency on things like my texting and Facebook.

Recently, I was blessed to receive some needed comfort to help assuage my fears to some degree. My friend Lindsay and I were out to dinner and had some time to talk about things. Lindsay recently returned from a Spanish speaking mission to New Mexico, where she spent a lot of her time in El Paso, Texas very near the Mexican-American border. She commented that with my lack of means of communication and with such a culturally immersive experience I was sort of headed into a mini-mission situation. Realizing that Lindsay could probably identify with some of the fears I have about isolation because of her mission, I expressed how nervous I was. She began to describe some of her mission experiences and related that there were times when she was basically forced to her knees because the one person she could turn to was the Savior. She went on to explain that when all of the layers are stripped away - the sources I would usually turn to in a time of need (friends, family, or even other superficial means of escape) - all that is left is God.

After talking to Lindsay, I felt a comfort I had not really felt before. I could almost physically feel my anxiety lessening. I am still pretty scared, but I know that God will not leave me in complete isolation. I am excited for an opportunity that will challenge me, and even my current lifestyle. I hope to grow closer to my Savior, and build a more familiar and reliant relationship with Him while in Ghana.