Uncomfortable

Adjective: "causing or feeling unease or awkwardness".

Here are a list of things that make me uncomfortable:

Unequal numbers of people seated on opposite sides of a table.
Scary cartoon animals (see Aladdin and The Lion King for relevant examples).
Orange pith. Seriously.
Overly couple-y couples.
When lots of people are talking about me.

The latter has been particularly relevant, recently, as I've been informing people that I'm leaving London in March to embark on a new adventure; leading a team of volunteers in Rwanda. The decision was one that I grappled with for some time, but even now, perfectly happy that I've done the right thing, I still feel uncomfortable.

Our British culture expects that most adults will have the same ambitions which usually revolve around having a stable job, enough money to survive (and ideally a bit extra for safety), and somewhere pleasant and safe to live. So that I've decided to run away from career progression to volunteer halfway across the world is not a comfortable decision in the eyes of the society I'm part of.

Even personally, there are moments (many of them) where I wonder what on EARTH I'm doing. For so many months I've been praising God for the blessings in front of me, and enjoying gratefully the communities I'm part of. The work friends who make me love my job so much; the church friends who make serving a pleasure; the old friends living in the same city as me that mean I'm able to enjoy food and deep chat on a regular basis. To leave behind this lifestyle for a while seems ridiculous and strange.

But in the middle of these many "What on EARTH" moments,  God seems to stop me in my tracks and remind me that being comfortable isn't the reason I became a Christian. And if I'm serious about the stuff I believe in, I should be serious about taking action too. And I've found that in this season of blessings, I've relied more on myself than on God.

It's not about running halfway across the world - that's one way to take action but there are many others. In fact, I wondered about embarking on other adventures that I'd find closer to home and those challenges actually looked harder - more uncomfortable - than leaving altogether.

But I think there's something in the idea of sacrificing something of our comfort, money, time, career progression (and it's different for everyone) that helps us to recognise the things that are important. And for Christians, to remind us that we shouldn't be self-sufficient; that's not what we were created to be.

This running away thing -  it's an opportunity to grow my leadership skills and to mentor others. To shine out the passion I've developed for justice in a different medium to writing; to speaking, to being in community. And developing cross-cultural links with humans in another country and seeing how our lives are similar and different.

So adventure is on the cards; this is probably the biggest and scariest one yet. But being uncomfortable is, to me, a necessary way to see how I might grow.