Cross-Cultural Stress and COVID-19
Cross-Cultural Stress and COVID-19:
How Working from Home is Like Moving to the Mission Field
Andy Johnson
Have you either said or heard things like this lately?
Why am I so tired tonight? It’s only 8:30, and I haven’t done anything today!!
Why does my neck hurt so much?
Why are you so grouchy so fast these days?
For those of us who have been on the field or those of you who are currently serving there, this should sound eerily familiar. Why? It all comes back to one definition.
Cross-cultural stress: having to get your needs met in new ways.
When we moved to Burkina Faso to be missionaries, we boarded a plane in north Texas, passed a weird 36 hours or so in transit, and landed at night in a place called Ouagadougou (really – it’s an actual city). We woke up to find that:
Businesses moved at a different pace and maintained new-to-us hours;
We desperately needed to learn new ways to communicate;
The worship options available to us were new and unfamiliar (and even a little unfulfilling);
We didn’t even know how to shop for groceries!
Is any of this ringing a bell?
Friends, we all woke up one morning recently, and the world had shifted. We woke up in a coronavirus pandemic (really – it’s an actual thing). We now do our own business from home, and all others maintain new hours. We are all scrambling for language learning lessons on using Zoom effectively. Our churches meet online, and it feels unfamiliar (and a little unfulfilling). We agonize over when and how to make the next grocery shopping trip and are inventing all kinds of new recipes to avoid going out again.
We have all - no matter where we live - woken up to cross-cultural stress. Missionaries, you all understand what I’m talking about. One of the quickest lessons you learn (or should learn) is that whenever you’ve experienced a sudden change in culture, the distance between ‘normal’ and ‘completely-and-totally-freaked-out-leave-me-alone!!!’ is a lot shorter than it used to be. This helps explain why I am somehow more stressed out even though I now commute upstairs rather than 45 minutes each way. I’ve made a short video that explains some of why this happens that you can watch here.
When a missionary first arrives on the field, no one expects them to ‘get’ everything yet. There’s an anticipated period of learning and adjustment. During that season, wise sending churches or agencies expect things like survival, learning, and spiritual growth from those they’ve sent. They aren’t anticipating great effectiveness in ministry – yet. Everything the new missionary learns about their new way of life will make their later ministry more excellent…down the line. In the meantime, during the entry phase, virtually every bit of life takes twice as much energy (physical, emotional, and spiritual) to get half as much done.
We need to treat ourselves, our families, our coworkers, and everyone else that we encounter (from a distance of 6’, of course) as if we were a wise sending church. We should expect things like survival (and taking the time necessary to ensure it), learning (which is time- and energy-consuming), and spiritual growth (which seems to happen best during hardship). We should not expect to get the same amount of things done as before. Simply because you can squeeze the same amount of things onto your calendar as you did before COVID-19 does not mean you should.
In other words, instead of stumbling all over ourselves to be (or look like we’re being) as effective as usual, we should be more grace-full – toward ourselves, our families, and everyone else. We could all learn from our brothers and sisters around the world who choose to center their lives not around task but around relationship. Measure the value of your days right now not by how much you get done but by the people with whom you manage to be fully present. When you do so, I think you’ll discover that you are not only more effective in caring for others, but that the interaction is good for your own soul as well.
Maintaining regular contact with actual humans will help you keep your own humanity throughout this crisis. Do not withdraw; reach out. And I’ll go ahead and mention this here – a lot of what we do at MRN is to provide pastoral care, to be the informed-but-distanced listener. Please reach out to us about ways we can serve you, your church, or your missionaries.
In truth, though, no one should forever be ‘stuck’ in just managing their cross-cultural stress. We all need to make progress. I have three suggestions for eventually beginning to do more than just survive.
First, do what you can do. Control the things you can control, and let go of those you cannot. You cannot control:
The actions of others;
How long COVID-19 will last;
How much toilet paper is available;
Who gets sick and who doesn’t.
You can control:
Your own attitude;
Just how much you let the news cycle or social media dominate your thoughts;
How you practice social distancing;
What kinds of new and fun things you try out at home;
How much time you carve out to be at peace, at rest, with God, and with your family.
Second, remember that in a crisis, facts are your friends. It might feel like everything is up in the air, like uncertainty is now the only certainty. Frankly, that’s not true. The enemy would have you believe that, just because the economy is not the same yesterday, today, and forever, Jesus isn’t either. Remember – our enemy is a liar.
So, what then is true? What are the facts? Here are a few that haven’t changed:
God never changes.
God reigns.
God was not caught off guard or surprised by COVID-19.
God will work through this.
God will use this to glorify His name and to bring some from darkness into light.
During this time as in all others, inputs matter. Cling to truths like these rather than to the lies the enemy would have you believe, and you will navigate this crisis successfully and come out on the far side with a richer, refined-by-COVID-19 faith.
Third, mourn your losses; celebrate new opportunities. Here are four useful questions you can walk through to keep moving forward in your journey toward thriving:
What have I lost? And what does that loss mean to me?
What has not changed?
What resources do I have to help me in this time?
What options and new possibilities are now open to me?*
I have to laugh when I think of some of the coping mechanisms I employed to survive my early days of life in Burkina Faso (I won’t go into any details, but let’s just say one memorable day involved pretending we weren’t home, seven episodes of a tv show - before binge watching was a thing - and an entire log of pepperoni…). Hopefully, with a certain measure of understanding, a whole lot of grace, and God’s help, we can navigate this world-wide foray into cross-cultural stress in a healthier fashion. *These kinds of questions are regularly used to help people process transition. In this format, they came from Jonathan Trotter’s FB page.