成

成 (chéng).

It is a word that means, “to become.” As in, he and she have become good friends. That pear has become a Thanksgiving pie. My nose has become snotty. And the like.

It is a word I have been pondering, a word that has etched itself in my mind grooves since my mandarin exam yesterday morning.

To become indicates a process. A journey of the heart or mind or body or pear from one sort of thing to another sort of thing. It might be painful or painless, it might be soft or hard, long or short, noticed or ignored. But it is a process, this 成.

For me right now, 成 involves a heart movement from one sort of thing to another sort of thing. It involves questions and anger and doubts and concerns and riddles and jokes for God, or perhaps for people’s definitions of God, and it involves these forty days of Lent and relearning how to not just think about God and use Him as vocabulary, but to talk with Him. Sit in His lap and thank Him for taste buds. I would have much less details in my posts if not for taste buds.

成 also involves teaching 8^th graders journalism at an international school in Shanghai every Tuesday. And reading books like Beatrice and Virgil, books that seem to be about one thing but are really about something else. It involves one of my roommates writing Isaiah 43:1-3 in red Sharpie on my back the night before my RA interview. 成 involves scary things, and rejection, and finding bits of me that I don’t really like, and Skyping my mom late at night crying, to confess that I might not agree anymore with some things I grew up believing. 成 involves realizing that she loves me anyway.

It is an interesting word, an interesting idea. To become. And that is what I am, here, now, in China. I am become. My heart is become. My mind is become. My hair is growing longer, it is become.

I will respect the process, knowing that God has let me become.