curhat

Yesterday afternoon, I walked up to my colleague’s classroom to pray with her and another colleague like we usually do weekly.  The three of us have felt really burdened this year to pray about things in our school that are struggles in other workplaces as well: gossip, compromise, broken families (among our students and colleagues), people who don’t know Christ, just to name a few. 

Mostly it’s just straight praying for 30 minutes and then it’s back to work.  But yesterday, one of the girls and I ended up sharing from our hearts.  She said, “Curhat! You know what it means?”  It’s one of those terms that I hear often but don’t use enough and forget it.  One thing that we do here is blend words together and shorten them to make new words that mean the same thing.  She explained that it’s the blend of curuhan hati, or sharing/pouring out your heart. 

She was sharing about how her three brothers, all younger than her, were in relationships but then her younger brother (the oldest of the three boys) just broke up with his girlfriend.  She told her parents not to jodohin (matchmake) him with anyone so that they wouldn’t say yes on the outside to his parents but no in his heart to them (so that’s a new word that I learned). 

She was also sharing about how her parents were asking if it was all right if her brother married before she did in the church where they serve.  The typical marriage age in Jakarta is around 24-26 (even younger in some circles!  My colleagues say that many of the cleaners in our school marry as young as 16 until 19!) and my colleague is around my age (which is older than the marriage expiration date here!) She said that she was jojoba (jomblo-jomblo dan bahagia, or “single and happy”) and it was strange that her parents kept asking her about this. 

Then she was saying, “I don’t know berapa lama…how long I’ll have to wait.  Maybe this is the time I should start fasting and praying about it.”

We ended up sharing about our experiences in relationships, and one thing that came up was the confession of sin.  I shared with her about a struggle that I have had since I was the age of my small kindies, and she was shocked because she shared the same one with me.  It was one I swore I’d go to my grave never telling anyone. 

I love Indonesia because it’s the first place where I have really allowed myself to be honest with that particular struggle: that I would lie to cover it up, because I was afraid if people knew, they would turn and run in the other direction - or worse, judge me first and say, “that’s disgusting,” and then run away.  It’s kind of ironic that I could do this in Asia, which is all about saving face.  And with that colleague, it was the first time that she’d ever been honest about that struggle with anyone. 

There is something really freeing about confession.  Being honest requires vulnerability, humility, courage… the thing is, if we are these things with others, it’s so easy to say, “I’m not here to judge,” but we do judge!  And we hurt one another by it.  The thing that is so amazing about Jesus is that he is the only perfect, righteous judge, and even though he knows our “dark side,” and all of those things that we try to hide, in him there is no condemnation and through him there is the forgiveness of sins!  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) Covering up my sin only made it worse and I got more trapped.  “Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24)

Lastly, I can’t remember where I heard a cover of this Kelly Clarkson song recently but it’s been in my head.  So I’m posting the original music video from Miss Clarkson herself, because what she says is true:

Jesus loves us perfectly, even with our dark sides.  Amazing things to think about in light of being curhat