The Note

So yesterday was a bad day.

No specific circumstance, just me coming to exhaustion. I won’t go into it other than as I walked back to my dorm last night, through the bustling streets of Xiamen, I prayed, “God. I know I’m not alone. Send me a sign. Something.”

So, last night I went to bed early. Here’s a quick shout out to my roommate who was really good about being quiet.

I get up today, make some oatmeal and coffee, as I have for the last year or so, and am poking through emails and news. I start talking to one of the Business Concentration girls on MSN. The six business concentration peeps are now interning full time with companies over here. Two of the girls are required to use MSN at work to communicate between workers. And friends.

So, we’re talking, and she says, “Did you get the note outside your door?” Now, initially, I thought it was from her, but she went on to say, “Someone gave notes to everyone. And M&Ms!” Remembering my prayer last night, I replied, “Interesting.”

So I grab the note on my way to painting class and forget about it until I’m in my room for lunch. I pull it out, read the note. Encouragement, yes. From the note, I surmised who wrote it… It made me smile and laugh and be overall encouraged. I’m reading along, “…I just wanted to encourage you because I’ve seen your amazing people skills--“

Wait, what?

If I were to take a self-assessment test right now, I would rate my people skills as fairly low. In fact, the ONE thing I have struggled with the most and been challenged on the most in China has been my people skills. During my internship, this was something we worked on. I have felt that I’ve grown in this area. However, I’ve had plenty of opportunities that could be used to illustrate the poor use of people skills. I’ve even burned a few bridges, pissed a few people off. Now, I can’t remember if I mentioned struggling with this to this person or not, but I have a feeling I did.

Now, I know some responses to this will likely be proving me wrong, and I do appreciate your encouragements, but please understand that things have been different here. For close to five months, none of you have seen me, interacted with me (unless of course you’re reading this from China, which I’m almost certain is not the case). Things over here are different, personal faults and weaknesses are more exposed.

We all have our moments.

But the moral of all this isn’t about me, but about how God is continually faithful. To quote a book I was given at the end of my internship, “If God calls, he enables.”

Those M&Ms were good, too…