No Apologies, No Regrets

It's been a while since I've really felt the sting of believing differently than others, of living on the sidelines. Sidelines meaning outside what popular, modern day culture believes. It's uncomfortable, and it's lonely, but I will not be wavered. I cannot be wavered. And I will not apologize.

Unwanted

They tell us over and over in class and in our field placements not to let our own personal feelings get in the way of our service to the client. Do not project beliefs onto the client, do not counter-transfer feelings onto the client... all that technical jargon... I'm impressed that I've kept it under wraps this far. I was seriously tested yesterday, though, when a situation came up between a mother and son. I won't give details, but let's just say the mother's lack of concern was incredibly difficult to hear about and watch. Thankfully the situation was handled quickly, but for a little while my heart was breaking for him.

The hard part was knowing how normal the experience was in his world. He knows his mom doesn't want him. As I sit here and think about that, I can't wrap my mind around how that must feel, and I definitely can't wrap my heart around it. I feel so protective of these kids, and when I think about putting myself in some of their shoes, I feel paralyzed... I wouldn't survive a day, let alone 12, 14, 16 years. I cannot fathom what it feels like to not be loved by my parents. I got everything I needed and then some, and I never questioned their love for me.

I realize I'm trying to figure out what use this stark contrast of experiences might serve in my field placement. I can't understand what he thinks and feels when he thinks about his mom. But can I take what I know and have learned from my parents and use that to serve these kids well? Will that make a difference?

The Loner

My best friend and I had one of those conversations the other day where you see yourself as you really are, and you're not exactly happy with what you see. She and I have been through a lot together. She's seen the best and the worst in me and hasn't walked away. She's earned the right to be brutally honest with me, especially when I don't want to listen.

In a nutshell, she's worried about me. I've got a set of pretty good defense mechanisms that I use without even realizing it, and a lot of times it keeps me from community and I miss out on some pretty fantastic people. My rationale? If I am a loner by choice, at least I know it's because I chose it and not because they didn't respond to my efforts. So many times I've put myself out there for people, only to be met with... well, nothing. I'm very much an introvert, so I have to purposefully put myself out there to get to know people. I get tired of trying after so many times of being let down. In the end, I'm at risk of not trying at all.

I don't know how to fix something like this. I'm pretty selective about who I let in. If you ask me questions, I'm more than happy to answer, I just don't offer it without the asking. Does that make me unapproachable? Not knowing how to move past this doesn't mean don't try... I just don't know where to begin. I try to imagine what I'd say to one of my kids...

"Just because you're unsure of yourself doesn't mean take yourself out of the game. Take it step by step, day by day, interaction by interaction, person by person. And in time you'll get there, one relationship at a time."

I feel something in me churning to be better, do better. To love more, love bigger. To not be afraid of vulnerability. All the "what-ifs" keep clouding my mind.

"What's the worst that could happen? You don't become friends with that person, maybe your feelings get hurt from the rejection. But you pick yourself up and you dust yourself off, because tomorrow is a new day, and with each of these new experiences, you are becoming a new person. A stronger person."

Its time I take my own advice.

Resilience

So I'm a couple months into my last year of grad school. It's been a pretty crazy ride. I've been put in situations I never thought I'd be in. My beliefs have been challenged on every level possible, and I've questioned more of myself than I knew there was. But it's the questioning... and the not being afraid of the questioning, that has made me grow.

This past week was the hardest yet at my internship. I'm placed at a youth crisis center. We focus on runaways and homeless kids ages 7-17, with smaller programs to help kids aging out of foster care. It's a seriously amazing program, but that's not what I want to talk about right now. I want to talk about the kids. The soldiers. The fighters. The ones that get dealt the hard hand in life for no reason at all, and they're left on their own to pick up the pieces. I met some girls this past week, 5 girls from 13-16. I'm pretty sure if I were to look up resilience in the dictionary right now, their pictures would be beside it. Abused by parents, looked over, not as preferred as the younger sister. Beaten by the boyfriend. Taken advantage of by someone almost 3 times her age.

Blamed.

                                                            Despised.

                             Rejected.

Broken
                Into
                          Pieces.


                                     They have to be hard so the world doesn't kill them.

                  Invisible so they can be

                                                                      SAFE.

On Tuesday I had to ask one of them if she really meant it when she told me she had wanted to jump off a bridge before. "Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt anyone else? Do you have plans for either?"

I try to put myself in these girls shoes, no matter how long its been since I was their age. I try to imagine what it would feel like to truly know and feel like "my mother loves my little sister more than me"... "Why don't my parents want me? Why don't they love me? What did I do wrong...?"

            "Why?"


I had the chance to speak truth over the two most difficult girls before the week was over.

                                       As she walked out the door, more than likely to go back to her abuser boyfriend, I looked at her and said, "We can't make you stay here. It's your choice to go if that's what you want. But please, please know... we care about you here. We all care about you... and you know where to find us."
                 As she sat in front of me with tears streaming down her face pleading for the love and approval of her mother, yet feeling such strong disdain and anger for the abuse, I was able to tell her what I saw when I looked past the frustration. "You are strong. You're a survivor. You lived this and you made it through. And whether or not you see it, you are stronger because of it, in a way that no one else will be because they have not walked in your shoes. You will  make it through this and you will be okay. You will.
                                          Because you are strong.
                                                                                   You are resilient."

Raw

My parents got a divorce a couple months ago after being married for 37 years. They were my "go-to" marriage, my role models. I knew marriage could work because they'd had hard times and had worked through it.

And yet here we are...

How do you grieve the loss of what you always believed something to be? I, personally, have no idea...

So under the rug it goes. Or maybe on top, and I roll up the rug and put it in the attic. Out of sight, out of mind, out of my heart. And yet, as things always do, it caught up to me. The rug rolled itself right over to that pull down ladder, which fell open... on my head, and my heart.

The hard part is that I understand why they got a divorce. I get it. It makes total sense to me, and I'm not angry at them. But I am angry. I'm hurting. I don't know how to grieve.

So many defenses have kicked in. I don't want to deal with it. Not that it'll make it go away, cause it won't. But I cannot make my heart understand the logic in my head. And maybe one of the worst things about all this is how disillusioned I've become. Cynical, jaded. For now, I refuse to go through what they went through. I'd rather be single than put myself in a situation where I'd end up getting a divorce. (As my therapist said, "Wouldn't we all?" Isn't that just a given? If we knew the outcome of everything, we would choose not to go through most of life for fear of hurt.)

My point is this... I know in my head that I am not my parents. I know my experiences are not and will not be the same as theirs. But try telling that to my heart right now.

I went to my therapist a couple days ago for the first time in almost a year. I didn't resolve anything, and now instead of not feeling anything, I feel raw and vulnerable... As if someone's ripped the bandaid off the gaping wound to flush it out, dry it out. I know healing takes time. Time and pain. This is just a pain that doesn't go away. Even in the best and happiest of moods, it lingers in the background whispering to my insecurities and cynicism.

But as healing also goes, however, I know with time the pain will lessen. It won't go away, I'll just become accustomed to it.

I try to be honest with what's going on in my life in hopes of helping others... if I can share my experiences and struggles, maybe someone out there will see they're not alone. That being said, I also need to say that not everything is so difficult. Yes, life is seriously hard, especially right now. But there are so many good things as well. Tonight I reconnected with old college friends via Skype. They live in El Salvador, and I haven't seen them in over 6 years.

It's such a comforting thing to be able to pour out your heart to someone without fear of judgement, rebuke, or rejection. Sometimes it takes more bravery to let people in instead of running away and keeping your guard up. I'm an expert runner... I have many years experience keeping people at a distance and keeping a mask on. But it's tiring, and these days it gets old quickly.

I still know better than to give the truly honest answer to people that ask how I am and don't really care to know, but I'm less afraid than I used to be about being genuine.

So in the midst of some of the hardest times I've ever been through, I find it seriously comforting to admit I cannot do it on my own and to ask for help, knowing I won't be turned away.

The Power of Contentment

Ever since I moved out on my own, states away from my family, I've only had jobs as a barista, server, or kitchen assistant. You know, the ones for which I spend four years in college studying Spanish. Sometimes it's been really hard to make ends meet and get bills paid on time. My church has been amazing and has helped me through most of those times, and so through these past few years I have learned about grace and receiving with thankfulness despite my strong desire to be self-sufficient and pay back the money. However, according to my pastor, grace is grace and mercy is mercy and they cannot be paid back. They are gifts freely given, undeserved, yet unconditional. Each act of mercy from my church is truly humbling and reminds me over and over how Christ called us to care for one another.

Currently I'm a server at a small Mexican restaurant, the best in town. I now understand what it feels like to live off tips. Living off others' generosity is a really difficult thing sometimes. When the restaurant is slow, I don't take home much tip money and I become anxious. How will I pay my bills? How will I pay rent? How will I put gas in my car or buy Luna's food? And the knots in my stomach and back grow larger as worry creates more worry and the endless cycle begins.

I realized the other night that it's really just a matter of perspective. I can either look at it as slow business, bad tips or job security in a lousy economy. People have to eat, and people like Mexican. So as long as I do my job well, I will have work and some sort of paycheck, no matter how small.

My prayer has changed from "Lord let them leave me at least 20% or more" to "please help me to be content with where you have placed me and what you provide for me." It's not an easy request. It's so much easier to worry and be anxious, but we were commanded not to be. "Do not be anxious and worry for nothing."

I have noticed a small shift in perspective. Although I still hope for big, fat tips, I hope more for the peace of mind that He will provide. It's a daily battle because the bills and deadlines are still there. But so is He.

The Gangbanger and the White Girl

I sat down across from him and took in his weary eyes. His face seemed different than before, as if it weren't trying so hard to hide what lay just beneath the surface. He seemed more childlike, not so hardened from years in the streets, years without a father, years with a mother that didn't really see what was right in front of her face. Today, he actually looked like the 17 year old that he is.
I will never in a million years forget that kid... the one that opened my eyes to life as a second generation gang member. The one who would be just as afraid to walk a day in my shoes as I would be to walk a day in his. We had absolutely nothing in common, maybe except fear of the other. Yet somehow managed to find common ground on which we could stand and bridge the gap between us: our skin color, age, gender, culture, education, background, future.

He's the one that really began tearing down my misconceptions and wrong perceptions of those we so often label as thugs, thieves, liars, miscreants, good-for-nothings, gangbangers, losers, murderers, waste of space. We look at them and want to run.. RUN... in the opposite direction. If I'd met him in the streets instead of in jail, I probably would have. But since I was supposed to "help" him, here we were... with him believing it was a waste of time and me praying to God that I could say anything, demonstrate anything, communicate anything that might pierce that hardened heart and wall of armor... when in reality it was mine that needed to be pierced....because underneath I saw a child that grew up before it was his time. He simply saw what was his childhood in the hood. I saw a child that witnessed life taken away before his had even begun. He saw the cycle of life. People live, people die. I saw someone that learned to hate the police for taking his father before he ever had a chance to learn that the police are "supposed to protect us". He saw the reality that police are just as human and flawed as the rest of us; they just get to hide behind a badge and call it law. I saw a future with prison. He saw a future of just being alive. What I saw as a threat to society, he saw as survival. The drug dealing was a way to provide for his family. A kid trying to raise a kid.  ...but clearly my perceptions were better because they didn't land me in prison.   ...or was it just a different kind of prison?

Over the next 9 months, I found my mind untangling itself from its tightly wound, knotted ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice, living and surviving... and I found myself unable to say I'd live any differently had I walked 17 years in his shoes.
That's the thing about labels. They write people off before we ever give them a chance to show us who they are. They cheapen the image of God in us. They lie about who we were, who we are, and who we will be... and worse, they sabatoge hope.

Had I listened to the lies and believed the labels, I never would have given ear to the old, wise soul inside a teenage gangbanger's body. I never would have questioned him, weighing his words between truth and lies in order to learn the real truth of who he was. Not the gangbanger, but the person. Had I not allowed him to test me, my sincerity, my intentions, my belief in a better future for him... allowing him to weigh me between authenticity and hypocricy, he would not have understood that not all white people are hypocrites and believe themselves to be"saviors of the poor". Had I listened to the labels, both our walls of misunderstanding and misconception would not have begun to crumble.

Yeah, we found our common ground and understanding... We're both just two broken people doing our best to make life the best it possibly can be. We just have different methods.

I just hope and pray to God I become half the social worker that he is gangbanger.

The Deconstruction of My Hardened Heart

I'm tired of pretending everything's okay when it's not.

Life is not easy. Frankly, it's f'ing hard and anyone who says differently is in denial. I'm tired of pretending I've got it all together when I don't. The truth is that the older I get, the less I understand and the more broken I feel.

Tonight a friend of mine asked me about my experience with depression... how long I've dealt with it, how have I coped, how have I gotten better? She's seeking for hope, and she needs to know it can get better. Only someone who has dealt with depression understands the despair that comes with it, the battle for sanity that takes place in your mind every moment of every day... the fear that things will never change.

I haven't felt that kind of despair for a little while, but I remember like it was yesterday. During my "dark days" I would go to the bathroom at work multiple times a day to let out the tears and brokenness that plagued my mind and heart. The weight was unbearable, and it was all I could do to make it from one hour to the next. Sometimes when life weighs so heavily on you, it's all you can do to take it minute by minute, second by second, because thinking ahead even to the afternoon or evening is too overwhelming.

I want to be honest about my experiences with depression because I feel like it's still so taboo, especially in the Christian circles. I never told anyone at my church that i grew up in about my depression or that I went on meds because I knew they would judge me and tell me I wasn't walking with God the way I needed to be. Everything was a spiritual problem and it was up to me to fix it. I no longer understood the meaning of joy or hope, and somehow I knew it was more than something I could fix. It wasn't a spiritual problem. It was something that's been passed down through my family, and I just so happen to be the one to deal with it more than the rest. I say all this because I believe so many people out there deal with depression and anxiety and believe it's something wrong with them or a spiritual problem. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But it's something that needs to be brought out in the open and talked about, because once the thoughts are put into words and those words are said outloud, they lose their power.

The last couple of years have held some crazy painful experiences, and I honestly have no idea if I've dealt with them or not. I do know, however, they've left me hardened and braced for the next huge secret to come out, the skeleton in the closet that was buried under years of bad advice, bad decisions, and promises to never tell. My heart feels so hard. I doubt a million times a minute, and I have little faith that these trials serve a purpose. However, another friend of mine believes they do, and it's good to be reminded of that, especially if I have difficulty believing it myself. Sometimes all we need is someone else to believe in us. I don't want to be hardened forever, but honestly, I'm afraid of what God will do to soften my heart again... What will he take away this time? What will he ask me to give up? What new trial will bring me to my knees before him? I honestly don't know if I can take anything else.

Give Me Your Glue

I think it really began four years ago in Kenya when I realized I was wrong for trying to trade a street kid bread for his glue. I thought I was doing the right thing by taking it away, after all, what does an uneducated street kid know? However, as he walked away with bread in his hand and his glue in mine, I realized my own ignorance. The bread would be gone in less than 5 minutes, and it wouldn't be enough to satisfy him. He would have more glue in probably less than 30 minutes. So really, what was the point of taking it away?

The point, I think, was to make myself feel okay about giving him bread. Heaven forbid he ever expect handouts from someone, especially a white tourist. Heaven forbid I ever give him food just because he's hungry. I knew pretty quickly that I was wrong. Jesus' love for me never came with conditions, so why should I set conditions on this homeless child?

There's something about coming face to face with the "beast inside myself", as Donald Miller so aptly describes, that makes me beyond ashamed of myself. For the first time in my life I was exposed to white priveledge, which was uncomfortable enough, but also the reality that I really did believe I knew better. Seriously? What the hell do I know about survival? I've never lived on the streets a day in my life, so how could I pretend to know better? In the end, I kept the bottle of glue to remind me of the look in the boy's eyes as he hid the glue in his shirt and told me it was "his health". His health, meaning it satisfies him. It keeps him warm at night. It curbs the hunger pains. It keeps reality at bay so he doesn't feel the pang of survival.

My perspective changed each time I came into contact with the street boys in Kapsabet. One boy Collins especially had a hand in the change. I was collecting bottle caps for a school project, and I told him if he helped me collect some I would buy him something to eat. He quickly picked up a few bottle caps off the ground, so I took him to our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant. He ordered some chapati and orange Fanta. As I paid for the food, my team member asked if we should ask for his glue. I told her she could try if she wanted. She knelt down in front of him and asked for his glue, her hand held out. He shook his head and hid the glue in his shirt. "Give me your glue. No glue, no bread." Again he shook his head. People were beginning to watch. Again, "no glue, no bread!" Collins looked at me with panic in his eyes, and I knew he was ready to bolt. And the words just came out.. "It's okay. Don't worry about it. Keep your glue," I said, knowing full well I had just embarrassed my teammate upfront of everyone. His face relaxed and he continued eating. People continued to stare. My teammate stormed out. I felt bad for making her look bad, but I knew at that moment in time, Collins needed to experience unconditional love more than she needed to save face.
"Come to Me all who are weary, and I will give you rest." Or in this case, bread and orange Fanta. I felt like God had just shown me what he does for me every day. He never says "Gloria, come to me and I'll give you rest... but only if you leave your pride at the door. Only if you leave your judgement at the door... Only if you give me your glue."

¿De Qué Me Sirve La Vida? / What Good Is Life to Me?

Estoy a punto de emprender un viaje con rumbo hacia lo desconocido
I'm about to embark on a journey with a course into the unknown.

no se si algún día vuelva a verte, no es fácil aceptar haber perdido.
I don't know if I will ever see you again. To have lost is not easy to accept.

Por más que suplique no me abandones, dijiste no soy yo es el destino
However much I may beg, do not leave me. You said it's not me, it's fate

Y entonces entendí que aunque te amaba, tenia que elegir otro camino.
And then i understood that even though I loved you, I had to choose another way

De que me sirve la vida si eres lo que yo pido,
What good is life to me if you are what I need?

los recuerdos no me alcanzan pero me mantienen vivo
The memories aren't enough for me, but they keep me alive

De que me sirve la vida si no la vivo contigo
What good is life to me if I do not live through it with you?

de que me sirve la esperanza si es lo ultimo que muere
What good is hope to me if it's the last thing to die?

y sin ti ya la he perdido.
And without you I have already lost it.

Escucha bien amor lo que te digo, pues creo no habrá otra ocasión
Listen to me carefully, my love, for I do not think there will be another chance

para decirte que no me arrepiento de haberte entregado el corazón.
to tell you that I'm not sorry for having given you my heart.

De que me sirve la vida si eres lo que yo pido,
What good is life to me if you are what I need?

los recuerdos no me alcanzan pero me mantienen vivo
The memories aren't enough for me but they keep me alive

De que me sirve la vida
What good is life to me

de que me sirve la esperanza si es lo ultimo que muere
What good is hope to me if its the last thing to die?

y sin ti ya la he perdido.
And without you I have already lost it.

It's Been a Long Time Coming...

It's been a pensive night, as they all are when I sit down to think through writing. I've had a song running through my head for days now that pretty much sums up this past year. I'm not gonna lie, it's been a tough one. Really tough. Things that I never thought would happen in a million years happened. They happened to me, to my family, and it sent me reeling. I think it sent all of us reeling.

What do you do with dreams when they come crashing down around you?  I definitely don't know, so honestly, I haven't done anything. It used to be that whenever I didn't know how to deal with something, I would shut down. So its a sign of growth for me that instead of shutting down, I can fully admit that I just don't know. I don't know how to deal with everything that's happened over the past year, so I just keep going day by day. Wake up. Do the day. Go to bed. Wake up. Do the day. Go to bed. Sometimes that's all you can do. But after a while, a little bit of light starts to shine back through. Wake up. Notice the way the sunrise lights the clouds and the sky, and the city skyline looks breathtaking. Do the day. Go to bed. Even when life is trudgery, eventually our step will become a little more firm.

I can't say what's gone on this past year, but I can say that if I were to be totally, one hundred percent honest, I'd have to say that I've stopped talking to God. I might throw out a quick one-liner prayer for someone if its something really important, but other than that, it's been silent. You see, I've been left pretty disillusioned by life and the way things have turned out. Dreams that I once had, dreams that I was sure God had given me, all crashed down around me. I think I've been sitting there for a really long time just staring at the pieces, not even necessarily trying to sweep them up or wishing that I could glue them back together. I knew that those dreams had to change because they were making me discontent with where I was in the moment. "If only I could move back overseas to work with street kids, then I would be fulfilling God's purpose for my life." "I don't belong here. I never have. The only time I've ever felt at home was when I lived overseas." All these thoughts that had been running through my mind for ten long years left me in the deepest depression I've ever been in. I'd come to accept my depression as something that I'd deal with for the rest of my life, but it had never been like this before. I was so afraid that it would feel like that for the rest of my life... just so dark and hopeless. I had no idea what hope even was. It was such a foreign concept to me, like asking me to describe the Middle East or Asia or Russia when I've never been there. Hope was for people lucky enough to hear God, but not for me. He'd led me on with the promise of mission work overseas.

I don't exactly remember when those black days started getting lighter. It was such a gradual thing. Laughing a little bit more, smiling at quirky roommates, and eventually feeling free to be stupid-crazy goofy and totally not caring. What a freedom to be known as you really are! One day I turned around and I wasn't afraid of being by myself anymore. I could handle being alone in the house. I could cope with the thoughts inside my head and the weight in my heart. I can't tell you the day that the load got lighter, but it did. And even though I still wasn't speaking to God and definitely couldn't hear him or feel him, I saw that he was still taking care of me. I found strong, solid people in my church that I could be blatantly honest with, I could tell them that I didn't want to talk to God, and they weren't phased. They didn't condemn me, they didn't try to tell me it would get better. (There's something so infuriating about someone telling you that it's gonna get better when they haven't even really listened to what's been going on. It's a patronizing pat on the hand.) Most of the time, all we really need is for someone to listen, to accept us where we are in that single moment and to love us just the same, someone to sit there in the darkness with us for as long as it takes to see the daylight again.

July 8, 2009

These kinds of trips never turn out how we think they will. All along, I asked for clarity, and when I received none, I became more confused than ever. I asked questions, prayed, read... hoping that the Lord would speak to me through something or someone about the future he desires for me... and yet nothing. No words, no whispers, no epiphanies. Only silence. So I started to wait. Watch, wait and pray out of a new desire and desperation to simply please Him.

Two weeks passed by, slowly then quickly, and it felt as though nothing really had been accomplished in His name or for His name, our real purpose seemingly forgotten. New friends and old friends came and went. No words, no whispers. Only the same quiet desperation not to go home the same as I came.

And then it was there as I rode through the garbage-ridden streets of Eastleigh trying to comprehend how my friends walked each day to find the unloved, the broken and friendless. How do they sort through all the noise, confusion and despair to find one shred of hope amidst the poverty? How to keep hope alive when all around you lies death and decay?

Then the realization hit me... here in this place where hope quickly dies lies a power greater than any man, any collapsed economy, any change of political power... and these people had not forgotten the basic life lesson I so often ignore - to depend on our God Most High... for every breath, every bread, every waking and sleeping. In His name, dry bones breathe again and the crippled walk and the blind see. Oh that this wretched, blind soul would see once again and never more forget that to die is gain and that to suffer for His name is to truly live! Oh that my impoverished soul were as rich as the poorest beggar on the street whose only hope is realized in Him.

I walked through the door into the front courtyard to see a small fragile woman rise up and come towards me, her face flushed with excitement. The last time I'd seen her, she was sharing a twin size hospital bed in the national hospital and refusing surgery, death only 2 weeks away. I had cried as I held her that day, knowing that I'd never see this stranger again. Yet she lived despite her injuries, and here she stood in front of me 1 1/2 years later... healthy, working, caring for her children, and treating me as though 2 years ago I'd given her the greatest gift ever when I'd only visited her once in the hospital. There was a gratefulness I'd never seen before, especially for an act so small. I was humbled by this small fragile woman, who in all her poverty was richer than I because she knew and daily lived out the blessings of the Lord.

How dare I live as if my Lord doesn't see me. How dare I take him for granted. How dare I forget His protection over me... because if He cares enough to save one street woman from Eastleigh, surely he can save me too. Yet she in her low earthly state, is far richer than I, for she truly knows the value of her life and the love of her Savior. Oh to live life in such a way that every breath be counted a blessing and every encounter a divine appointment to share the love of Christ. Oh to have the joy of the healed street woman who will never know earthly comfort but eagerly awaits the arms of her Savior.

May 1, 2007

I can't eat, sleep, drive, or move a finger without seeing their faces. They fill my thoughts and dreams; they haunt me. Their gaunt figures, their dirty hands and feet, their eyes crying out "Do you see me?". Potbelly children run the streets with no shoes or shirt. Men and women and children lay dying in their beds from AIDS and malaria. Maybe they'll eat today, maybe not. No one really knows for certain. The women that are able wake up very early in the morning to be the first to draw water so that its cleaner. Once everyone starts getting their water, the filth will be stirred up and it won't be as clean. She will then walk around 2 miles back home, carrying a 20 gallon jug on her head. She may do this as many as six times a day. The children are taught to fetch water when they are as young as five years old. When they turn six, they are taken into the fields and taught to farm. When they are seven, they are able to work on their own, perfectly capable of farming and drawing water. You may ask why? People in Africa do not know who will die first or when they will die. The children cannot be dependent on their parents to keep them alive when the parents aren't able to keep themselves alive. Because of the high rate of deaths, each person must be able to take care of themselves, no matter if they are 5 or 50.

Thoughts From Years Past

Pre-Kenya 2007

Lonliness has been a lifelong companion in some form or fashion, some times worse than others, and sometimes I've strangely prefered it to being surrounded by people. I think now is one of those times. Getting ready to leave has been incredibly difficult and had I known how hard the road would have been before ever getting out of the country, I don't know if I would have chosen to go this way.

I have never been so scared in my life of what tomorrow holds as I am now. And the thing is that there's no one around to talk to. Summer sends people in every opposite direction and its like we all temporarily lose contact with eachother. Not my favorite thing in the world. And so here I am, homeless, working a part time job that doesn't cover what I need it to, and an unearthly desire to just pack it up and leave.

I tried explaining to a friend of mine the other day why I don't want to be here in the States, and he just could not understand. It's like something engrained in the very fiber of who I am... this great country may be my country, my home, ..but its not where I belong. Truth be told, I belong in heaven, so I forsee a constant battle between this land and me. But the only thing that has eased the ache to go home is when I get to give up thinking about myself and all that entails to spend my time in service of another.

Surrender

Thursday, February 17, 2011

My roommate asked me the other day why I didn't keep up with my blog, and so I find myself logging in tonight to check where I left off. This is what I found saved in the drafts folder from november 2010.

"I'm not gonna lie... I've had a time of it lately. Let's just say that life at 29 years of age is not what I had hoped it would be, and it's left me somewhat resentful. I have a feeling everybody at some point has a moment of clarity when they realize that they're exactly where they want to be or they aren't. And I'm not. Don't get me wrong, there are so many things that I have to be thankful for. I just find myself forgetting to be thankful.

See, I always imagined I'd be back overseas by now, doing work with street children or the poor... not working at a bakery. A few months ago, my expectations, hopes, dreams, etc. all came crashing down around me. I keep poking at them with my toe, hoping there's still some life there, but I know I cannot revive them on my own. And instead of hoping that the Lord is working things out in His own time and way, I question Him. I think this is the first time I've really, truly had difficulty with God. I mean, there are always ups and downs, but I am struggling to believe He has my best interests at heart and I feel resentful. Didn't He call me so long ago to do mission work? If so, then why am I still here? It's too easy for me to get stuck here. It's too easy to let it sit and fester, too easy to ignore the truths I know about God."

I find that so many things change in the course of 4 months. What once used to be a festering resentfulness for not being back oversees has turned into a sort of clarity about what I really want to do with my life. At some point during these past 4 months, I have come to realize that my life's mission is truly to serve victims of human trafficking. I even have begun to wonder if the whole purpose of my family going to Latin America so many years ago was to introduce me to the horror that is child prostitution. Those experiences from 10 years ago have formed and shaped my life in a way I never knew possible. Now here I am in the middle of applying to grad school and hoping to study social work so that I can be of some real use to these victims. And for the first time in over 10 years, I have realized that if I can spend my life working with victims of human trafficking, then I will be okay living in the states. That's a huge deal for me. HUGE. I don't fit this culture. I don't long for the American Dream of the cute house with the white picket fence, etc... I've seen too much poverty to be able to live the typical American life. I hate the materialism of our society and wish that we as a culture realized how important it is to live in community with others. Oh, the list goes on and on.

Although I didn't know it at the time, my crumbled world took a change for the better when my old roommate found me sobbing in my bedroom last September. I was in the middle of, at the time, the most critical decision I had to make, and I did not want to make it. Anna called me out in the most gentle yet no b.s. way possible. She said I had spent so long wanting to be back overseas that I wasn't living the life right in front of me. She said that I longed so much to be back with my friends overseas that I wasn't connecting or communing with the ones right here. ......Bottom line? I was wasting my life away wishing for something that was out of my control. I made my decision right then and there, and although it broke my heart and took months to come back from, healing did come. Peace did come. And along with that came a renewed purpose to seek out people and life right here in front of me.

There's an old poem that I heard about a long time ago that I think just about sums it up:

A Peace that Cometh after Sorrow

Jessie Rose Gates

There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,

Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;

A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,

But calmly on a tempest that it stilled.

A peace that lives not now in joy's excesses,

Nor in the happy life of love secure;

But in the unerring strength the heart possesses,

Of conflicts won while learning to endure.

A peace there is, in sacrifice secluded,

A life subdued, from will and passion free;

Tis not the peace that over Eden brooded,

But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.

So I guess the thing I'm slowly, oh so very slowly, learning right now is to surrender my desires over and over.... and over and over and over again to the Lord. Because when it comes down to it, I wouldn't be happy overseas saving the world if its not where He has for me to be. And if its His plan for me to stay here in this land that I wish I loved more, then okay. I surrender. Someone once made the analogy of what a "living sacrifice" looks like... When we place ourselves onto the altar of God, it hurts. Bad. So we crawl back off. But then we realize what we have to do and crawl back on.... its this idea of crawling back and placing ourselves back on the altar over and over and over again that struck me. Continual sacrifice. Continual surrender.

Not my will, but Yours, oh Lord.

Learning to Say I'm Sorry

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

I got into a fight with my roommate the other day (love you, Anna) and have since found myself lost in thought about what it really means to be sorry. I remember thinking about this when I was in Kenya back in 2007, and this fight just brought old thoughts up again. Living in such close quarters like we did in Sang'alo with a rat burrowing in random nooks, no running water, no electricity and donkeys and pigeons for alarm clocks tended to bring out the worst in us, things in us we didn't know were there. Some days anything could send us over the edge. Simple misunderstandings would escalate into huge fights. I remember a couple times thinking and worrying that my friendship with one of the girls would never be the same after we got home.

There's something in me, and I think in all of us, that feels justified, almost entitled, in our "rightness" or reasons. It's one thing to apologize if the other person knows their also in the wrong and also says they're sorry... but what if they don't? Or worse yet, what if they do know they're wrong but still don't apologize? The pride in me swells up and I feel that pride, that entitlement and justification saying "well, if they don't apologize, I'm not going to." But at the end of the day, its my heart at risk of growing bitter by my unwillingness.

See, I think that if I can learn to say I'm sorry whether I'm right or not, whether the other person is right or not, not only will that put my pride in its place, but it does some sort of "soul stretching" that is much needed. What good does it do to sit there and stew inside and just let the problem fester? There was one specific instance in Kenya that I remember feeling extremely justified in my behavior and feeling very hurt by this other person's attitude towards me. I was so upset that I was willing to leave for Nairobi, sooner than intended, on a bus by myself (which would have been complete lunacy on my part). But after a good talking-to by my dear friend, I realized that right or not, justified or not, I had to apologize for the good of the team. I couldn't go to Nairobi by myself during election season, and I couldn't leave the situation like that, especially because it would have brought a sort of dishonor on the tribe we stayed with for having let me go in that manner. I learned that my actions (or in-actions) affect everybody around me, even if they're not directly involved.

Donald Miller put it so beautifully in Blue Like Jazz when he said,  


"I think every conscious person, every person that is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has      a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."  


...This needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest...  I see it and I feel it so acutely sometimes and I'm embarrassed to know that its there. Aren't I supposed to be able to tame it and keep it in its cage by now? You'd think that after so long we'd learn how to manage that part of our nature.  But I think the real pain comes from the truth that it makes me see about myself. I have a needy beast living in my chest and no matter how old I am or how much life I've lived or how many lessons I learn about communication, that beast at some point or another will find a way to growl its complaints and be ungrateful or angry. I can learn how to keep it in check, but after living in Kenya for 4 months I saw that there are some things that will happen just because the world doesn't revolve around me and I'll find that my reaction may not be up to par.


So maybe its about recognizing when I need to say I'm sorry, to shove, kick, drag that thing back into its cage, tell it to shut up, and say what needs to be said. I'm sorry. Don't expect an apology, don't expect to be justified, just let go of the pride swelling in my chest and be wrong. I might see the anger or pride flare up a few times before its completely quelled, but a very smart person once said that its easier to act our way into feelings than feel our way into actions. I have a feeling maybe he or she had to say they were sorry quite a bit...

Awkwardly Innapropriate

Friday, February 26, 2010

Awkwardly Inappropriate

Sometimes I think I'm the only one that attracts the kind of person that doesn't know what a filter is. For example, the other day at work I was spot cleaning the glass cases and tables, etc. and a man walks by me to refill his coffee. I'd seen him around before with is 3 kids, the oldest of which comes in all the time on her own. (I'm guessing they're mid-teens, 8 or 9, and 7-ish..?) As he walks past me, he makes a comment about how he likes my nose piercing. (I have one of those tiny studs that's so small it looks like a spec of glitter.)  He asks the usual questions any middle age, married man with 3 children asks: "Did it hurt?", "Do guys ever get their noses pierced?", "Is that part of your nose cartilage?", etc.  So I try to politely carry on an awkward conversation about nose piercing with this middle age, married man with 3 children, and soon his 2 younger kids come up. He turns to them and asks nonchalantly, "Hey, how do you think I'd look with my nose pierced? Maybe a hoop or something?" to which the kids immediately and vehemently shake their heads and discourage the outrageous idea. The dad then presses the issue further by asking the youngest if he thought he should get a tattoo. The little boy very candidly replies, "No way! Mom would kill you!" The dad replies, without hesitation "What does it matter? She's divorcing me anyway." My jaw drops and eyes widen... He turns to me to confirm, "Well, she is!"

(And on that note... looks like there's a smudge on that table ...way over there...  that I've got to clean. Right now.)

Just Breathe

In an effort to consolidate, I'm getting rid of a blog I started at the end of last year and will be keeping this one going. I have reposted the posts from the other blog onto this one. They are old, but hopefully still relevant.

******************

Sunday, January 10, 2010

It's a new year, people say, and a new me... Although I learned a long time ago that any resolution worth making and not breaking is probably something I should be doing anyway.

I brought in the new year asleep in my bed with my dog as fireworks mixed with gunshots (not to fear - I don't) and I rolled over on my other side moaning about how long people would shoot off firecrackers and how early I had to wake up the next morning.

I very rarely wake up early enough to really see and appreciate the sunrise, but when I do, I'm thankful for it. There's something about the stillness of the early morning and the crisp coolness of the dawn that makes me shiver with excitement and hope and, in a sense, peace. The world is still dreary and hasn't had a chance to taint the day.  I wish we could live in serene moments like that. I think the world would be a much kinder place, much more patient, if we all learned to appreciate the sunrise. I think if we all stopped for just three minutes, long enough to take a deep breath, long enough to realize that if the sun can keep rising and setting despite our cynicism, despite our irritability, impatience, deadlines, meetings and our lists of somewhat managed mass chaos... maybe then we might realize that the world does not revolve around us, despite what it may sometimes feel, and that our problems really aren't as big as they seem, and that for better or worse, tomorrow will come and we will have a chance to begin again.

I, for one, rather love the idea of a clean slate.

There's a Peace That Cometh After Sorrow

There's a peace that cometh after sorrow
Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon to-morrow,
but calmly on a tempest that is stilled.

A peace which lives not now in joy's excesses,
Nor in the happy life of love secure;
But in the unerring strength the heart possesses
Of conflicts won while learning to endure.

A peace there is, in sacrifice secluded;
A life subdued, from will and passion free;
'Tis not the peace which over Eden brooded,
But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.

by Jessie Rose Gates