puzzle pieces

For the last two weeks I have been wrestling with an idea that I haven't been able to put into words. I was going to ignore the massive blurry image floating in my mind and instead write about the spirit of giving during the Christmast season. My plan to ignore didn't work, and you are going to have to think about the spirit of giving without me. Fortunately, though, I think I may have found some words to explain my latest internal struggle.

I am nowhere near conquering the struggle. I have no conclusion to present. I might not even be near the climax of the conflict. But I wanted to share with you my thoughts.

My thoughts begin with a woman in the slums of Manila in the Philippines. Like all of her neighbors do, I will call her Nanay, which is Tagalog for Mother. Nanay was my host mom when I stayed in Manila in September, '06. Her house is one room, with a curtain separating the living room/dining room from the bedroom. Four of her children, one of her grandchildren, and her grandchild's father live with her in that tiny house, and the dining room table folds up at night to make more sleeping space. She makes a "living" by selling food from 9 pm to 4 am every night. She cooks the food on a small coal stove that sits on the ground and holds a large bowl similar in shape to a wok. The stove sometimes makes flames a foot high, threatening to burn the shelves next to it. When she isn't cooking or selling food, she is going to the market, working at the nearby prison, or helping the church next door with their ministries. Sometimes she gets to sleep. When I was there in September, she was also cooking lunch and dinner for me and a friend every other day.

Her life is hard, but she is one of the most joyful and content women I have ever met. Don't get me wrong, I have seen happier people, and Nanay has had a life full of pain, but she is amazingly grateful for what little she has and she is full of joy. The church once tried to give her money for a new stove, which would help her cook faster, make better food, and protect her home from possiblly burning down. She took the money, bought food and blankets, and gave it all to the people in the nearby prison. She was happy with her broken stove and she wanted to help others who had less than herself. She is truely content with her life and excited to give joyfully to others.

I am leaving too much of Nanay's story out right now, but in interest of time I am moving on. I will hopefully write more about her and you will just have to trust me right now that this woman is amazing. Meeting, talking with, and learning to love Nanay has completely changed my life. My collision with her has left me feeling broken and small.

Here is where the massive, blurry image begins to come into focus:



In my mind's eye I see the lives of everyone in the world, past, present, and future, coming together as a gigantic, intricate, beautiful puzzle. When I look at Nanay's life, I see a small but complex and priceless puzzle piece. I see a piece that fills a very tiny space, but reveals an amazing image of true joy and selflesness. Her puzzle piece is one that finally puts the image together. Nanay's life is one that truely impacts the lives of those around her, completing a beautiful picture, and revealing that beauty to the beholder (the beholder being me in this case, and maybe you).

Then I think of my life, and a million questions ensue. What puzzle piece am I now? What piece do I want to be? What picture do I want to reveal? What space does God want me to fill? Do all these questions point to the same piece? Or are the answers to these questions in conflict, pulling me in different directions, breaking me apart, and turning me into several microscopic, useless pieces, filling holes that reveal nothing more than a spec of dust or the anxiety of the pursuit of happiness?

In essence: who am I, who do I want to be, and who does God want me to be? And are these three the same?

I am 100% sure that the answers to these questions are different.

I don't expect to resolve this problem any time soon, but I wanted to share with you the tension that I am experiencing.

Where do I fit in the puzzle? What responsibilities do I hold in my hands? What pictures could I reveal to the beholder? What beautiful images does God want to reveal through me? Do I want to be like Nanay and bear those complex, painful, and amazing images with joy and selflesness? Do I want to bear it at all?

I want to scream "yes, yes I will bear it." But do I mean it? What does it look like for a white, single, american woman with a car, an apartment, a job, a lot of friends, and a great family to "bear it," to reveal God's beautiful images?

Currently, I have no clue.

I'm feeling reflective, so its time for a story

There once was a little girl who had no clue what her future would hold.

She wanted to grow up and be the next Amy Grant. (Now give her a break, she was just a little girl.) Deciding that show-biz wasn't the life for her, she knew she had to choose something else. She liked the ocean, so she thought that maybe she would be a marine biologist. She liked school, so maybe she would be a teacher.

In the third grade she got glasses. (Yes, she was young for glasses, but oh well. Not everyone has perfect vision.) Every time she went to the eye doctor, she wanted to know why. "Why is he making me watch the tip of that pen? Why is he writing something down? Why does changing the lenses and saying 'one, or two? two or three? two or four?' help him know what perscription I need?" So she decided to become an optometrist. She told her optometrist the news, and he said there was no money in it. He told her "you should become an eye surgeon, they make more money." After considering his advice for a while, she decided to become a laser-eye surgeon. And when it came time to apply to colleges, she applied for all the pre-med programs in the state. She got into almost all of them.

She picked her college and her major, but she was nervous. "Am I doing this because I want to, or because I decided in sixth grade that I would?" Early spring semester of her senior year of highschool, her grandpa wound up in the hospital with heart problems. While sitting in the ICU with him, she kept staring at the medical machines. That night she realized she didn't want to be a doctor. She didn't want to do laser-eye surgery because of the eyes, but because of the lasers. She liked the machinery. She needed to be an engineer.

So at the last minute she chose a different school and a different major. She began her engineering experience having no clue what she would do with it. Maybe she would do bio-medical engineering. Maybe she would work with planes. Maybe she would become an astronaut. After struggling through 2 years of general courses and lower level engineering classes, she doubted her choice. Engineering was hard and it wasn't personal. She didn't like doing math all the time and testing this and analyzing that. The summer after her sophomore year, however, she came across the idea of civil engineering and transportation. She had been living in a city where they had actually made one-way roads in order to keep the traffic away from the low-class, run-down areas. That bothered her and she wanted to change it, so she decided to become a transportation engineer.

Two years later she graduated from college. She went to a far-away country for a month, where her world was turned around and flipped upside down. She fell in love with it. She fell in love with the people, the place, the weather, the culture, and the life. And they didn't have running water. That was stupid. It was raining every other day and they had pipes, but they didn't have running water. She decided that she could fix that problem, that she could figure out how to get the water to the people. And once again she changed her mind: she would do water engineering.

So fourteen years and 11 careers later, this girl went from wanting to be the next Amy Grant, to wanting to work with water.

The next battle was finding a job. In her four years of college, she had taken only one water course, which unfortunately had nothing to do with the water engineering she was interested in. She went from one civil consulting company to the next, not finding a place that fit her desires or a place that fit their needs. She again began to doubt, but this time she started to doubt all of her choices. Did she pick the wrong college? Did she pick the wrong major? Should she have just decided to be a missionary? She could have just moved to that country that she loved and stayed there forever.

And then she found it. She found the job that she never could have dreamed of. She does master planning in infrastructure. She looks at a city, looks at where the people are and how much water they need, and then looks at how much water there is and where it is stored, and figures out the best way to get the water to the people.

And here's the best part:

The country she fell in love with is in Africa. The company she works with helps support a non-profit agency called Water for People, which does work in Africa. They help people build and maintain water systems. They help people get water. To top it all off, a woman in her office is on the board for Water for People and is working with them in India this month. She is taking extended time off from the company to work with Water for People, and the company had no qualms about her leaving for so long. Her job is waiting for her when she comes back.

So the story ends with this:

There is a slightly older girl who still has no clue what her future holds, but she is extremely excited to find out.

to be continued...

a little advice:

My friend, who shall remain nameless, has been extremely busy and consequently very tired. One night he dreamt that he was eating an extremely yummy and very chewy piece of food. He started to wake up and realized that he was actually chewing something, so he reached in his mouth and pulled out an earplug! It was the middle of the night and he drowsily rolled over and fell back to sleep, not worrying about the fact that he was chewing on his earplug. But in the morning when he woke up, he looked down at the plug and discovered that there was only half of it left.

YUCKY!

I feel an obligation to stick with the theme of my blog, so....

what should we remember and how should we adjust accordingly?

remember:
- this story and try to avoid repeating it
- to not go to bed hungry
- to stay rested and avoid crazy dreams

adjust by:
- maybe duct taping your mouth if you wear earplugs?
- or maybe duct taping your ears...

at least make sure that they are in tight.

sweet dreams! :)