Culture Shock #239/Santification Lesson #13,494

I've taken a taxi from my apartment to church almost every Sunday since I moved in with Roommate. I still take the little paper with the name of the area of town where the church is written on it in case the taxi driver doesn't understand me. Which happens every Sunday. I hop in the taxi, try saying the area, realize he doesn't understand me, show him the paper, realize he does understand that, and off we go.

In the same direction, every single week.

I've been enough times now that I know the way. And thus...I know when the taxi driver is going the right way and when he isn't. Why would he not go the right way? To earn a little extra money.

He clicks the meter on, then he proceeds to size me up. The color of my hair, the color of my eyes, the fact that my clothes are entirely different than what local women wear, and my terrible accented pitiful Arabic is sized up to mean I don't know my way around. I must especially not know my way around since I had to have someone write on a piece of paper for me where I want to go. In short...I can be taken for a ride.

So when Mr. Taxi Driver took a left today when he wasn't supposed to take a left, I breathed a deep sigh. More turns, and all of sudden we'd made a huge circle and I knew we were not headed in the direction of church. Furthermore, I knew he was taking me the longest, round a bout way to get me to church, just to make an extra buck.

Irritation. I wanted to say, "Look, I'm no idiot. I know the way, and you're going the long way just to make some extra money, and I won't pay it. I'll pay you the amount I always pay to the taxi drivers who go the direct route. You'll lose the extra buck you're trying to earn because you tried to take advantage of me simply because I'm a foreigner."

Culture shock comes, for me at least, most often in the circumstances where I can't do something I normally would know how to do/say and can't because of cultural/language inabilities. I get all frustrated. It just bubbles up and I want to say through gritted teeth, "I'm not an idiot!" Yet I feel like one.

But God wants me to grow through the culture shock and so He doesn't leave me seething in the back of the taxi. As I sat back there scrolling through the words I know in Arabic to see if I could string enough of them together to say "I know you're going the wrong way to make some extra money off of me," the Spirit gently whispered to my heart.

"You're not being quick to forgive. Furthermore, you're being stingy. What's one extra dinar to you?"

Here I was, having this man drive me to church, and I'm trying to figure out how to tell him off for cheating me out of one dinar, (about 70 cents).

Thank goodness for grace. Infinite grace for infinite lessons in sanctification through infinite experiences of culture shock. May His grace help grow me to be quick to forgive, less stingy, more giving, and well... can I ask for His grace to help my accent to improve so that I don't get taken the long way by taxi drivers?