Not to Do but to Become

From a translation of a Jean Vanier's The Broken Body by my friend from Japanese into English:

When we follow the call of God and leave our family, our culture, and our lifestyle, and head to an unknown land as Abraham did, we will find people who are broken, different from us, and will experience a time of loss and suffering.

It is not easy to let go of your security and enter into a different world. Especially when it is full of pain.

That is why there is temptation to avoid confronting that pain, and in order to cover that feeling of loneliness and insecurity, we try to do many things. We try to be useful, to gain good reputations, to feel that we are needed, and we try to self-sacrificially do things.

But it is important to take our time, and to not hurry. There are many different forms of culture shock. So we must be patient and be gentle towards ourselves. We must never forget that rather than having come to do something, we have come to become someone.