signs of aging

My roommates and I were having a conversation about prayer, and I was reminded of my nightly childhood prayer:

Dear God, thank you for this day. I pray that I won't have any nightmares, and that you will help us find a cure for aids and cancer. I love you a WHOLE bunch. Amen.

Oh the prayer of innocence.

It seems that as I have gotten older, a more common prayer that I have heard and can more often relate to goes a little more like this:

Dear God, thank you for another day. Please help me to not have dreams about men(/women), and protect me and my loved ones from aids and cancer. I am trying to love you. Please help me to love you more. Amen.

If only we could be like children again, more afraid of the boogie man than singleness, more aware of the needs of others than our own mortality, and more in love with our God than ourselves.

do you ever feel like you are in the wrong place?

that is how i feel at this very moment.

there are a couple ways to address this problem:

1) self pity party. i don't suggest this. it doesn't get you anywhere, except more upset.

2) go somewhere else. this could be a good idea, but make sure you first know why you are currently in the wrong place. you don't want to drag the problem with you.

3) pray. i do believe this is the best option, but its tough. you are still in the wrong place and you usually feel like you aren't going anywhere. but the more you pray, the more you trust, and the more you let go, the more you can see Him preparing a great place for you.

The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row, it seems farther than ever before...

I have been listening to a lot of Death Cab for Cutie recently. Not a lot of songs, but a few songs over and over and over again. One song in particular is Death Cab's Transatlanticism. I have to admit that I have recently fallen in love with this song. Deeply in love. And I believe I have fallen so hard because it expresses something that I feel deep within my soul.

My life has been somewhat discombobulated, and this past year (starting around December '06) I've been slowly but surely going through the process of re-combobulating - if there is such a thing. I could probably go into a lot of detail about that, and hopefully will expand on my combobulations in later posts, but for now I'm going to keep it simple.

The point is I've been trying to bring my life together. I've been trying to find a focus point, a backbone, a rhythm, a sort of sanity or consistency between the roles of my life. My life is not complicated compared to most, but it felt and still feels broken, incomplete and at times contradicting. I believe these diagnoses are typical and true for most people, but I have finally gotten to a point where I long to be completed, centered, and healed - a process which could very well take the rest of my life and never finish. Fortunately, I knew exactly where to begin the process: Jesus.

The only way to be complete is to be completed, and I have no doubt that the only way to be completed is through Jesus. So what does that mean for me? I have been a "Christian" most of my life, and I have dedicated my life to following Jesus for almost 10 years now, but I still feel incomplete. Realizing the tension of not yet being completed by my God that completes, it became clear to me that I had to dig deeper. And this is where Death Cab for Cutie comes in.

While listening to Transatlanticism, I became aware of the way I resonated with the tones of separation and distance. I completely understood the idea of an ocean spilling across the earth, and separating me from what I am longing for. And then came the chorus of "I need you so much closer, I need you so much closer, I need you so much closer..." I closed my eyes as I listened to this chorus, and this what I saw:

I saw a hand being offered to me.
I took it, and was guided into a world.
It was the exact same world that we live in.
I saw the courtyard of my apartment complex.
I saw my neighbors.
I saw the beauty of life,
and I saw the pain.

But this world was different.
It was complete.
It was more real, more solid, more beautiful.
The colors were piercingly radiant.
Pain was still there, but it didn't matter.
The pain had purpose, and there was a clear end.
Contentment could be felt simply by breathing.
And everyone's eyes shined with hope.

This is what I saw when thinking to myself, "I need you so much closer." What I saw was my life with God present. I saw His kingdom reigning in my world. I saw the life for which I am longing.

This is a hard picture to translate to reality, because I don't think I am actually going to see the world in different colors, but I finally understand what the end result of my re-combobulation will feel like. It will transform my perception of the world. And the only way that will happen is if I step into God's kingdom.

And now back to the title of this blog. I have no clue how to step in, and this kingdom seems very very far away, even farther than before. But I think that is a good thing. At least I'm on the right planet, and I finally understand that I need to start rowing. The realization that I have to start rowing is what makes this vision feel so far from reality. My whole life I've been happy on my little island, but now I clearly see where I need to be, and that place is somewhere else entirely.

Seeing as this post is incredibly long and i've been sitting on this couch at this coffee shop for a very long time, I'll pause here, but expect more. If you have any thoughts or you want me to go more in depth on something specific, please post a comment!

an easter reflection

Now that I have spent a good 30 minutes trying to come up with the words to correctly express my reflections of this Easter, and now that I have hit the delete and backspace keys several, several times... I have found that I have no words that can accurately present to you my feelings of awe, amazement, grief, confusion, anger, gratefulness, and joy when I think of Jesus at Easter.

More than ever, I feel as though I helped place him on that cross. I feel as if I took a nail and drove it into His feet, or spat at him as he walked toward his death. More than ever this past year, I have struggled to follow Jesus. There have been times this year where I simply didn't want to follow him. I didn't doubt his existence, I was just tired and wanted out. I wished that I didn't know him, that I didn't know his words, and that I didn't know what he was asking of me. I didn't want to give him my life. I put him on the cross.

And now, more than ever, I desperately long for Jesus. I had hated him, but he loved me. I left him there, suffering, bleeding, dying. But he forgave me. I had NO CLUE what I was doing, but that didn't matter. He died for me. And on that glorious day we call Easter, He came back for me.

The funny thing is I struggled to follow Jesus because I stubbornly didn't want to give up any part of my life that I liked. He could have the stuff I didn't like, but otherwise I didn't want to change. I didn't want to feel convicted. I was willing to follow Jesus as long as I could also do whatever I wanted. I didn't want to sacrifice any part of my life to follow him. Hmm... I didn't want to give my life to him, even though he already gave his life to me.

So I stand in humility, and I stand in awe. I am humbled by Jesus' persistant and abundant love. I am in awe of his willingness to die for those who don't even know they are killing him. And I am grateful. More than ever, I am grateful for that day 2000 years ago when Jesus proved that nothing, not even the pain of death, could keep him away.

February

So if you didn't notice, I didn't write much in February. And I know some of you are dying to know what happened while I was gone, so here it is.


A lot happened in February, and the funny part is that I can't talk about a majority of it because of confidentiality laws and simple respect for a family's privacy. But I can talk about what I learned - and what I am still learning - from my experience.

I need Jesus.

I've always known that I need Jesus. My life has always been better when He is in it, when I bring Him into my life, but I realized this need in a new way, or maybe a way I once new but completely forgot.

I have always turned to Jesus for joy. If I'm sad, depressed, angry, upset, sick, tired, neutral, or even happy or content, I turn to Jesus to bring me true joy or to make it complete. I thank Him, I praise Him, I love Him. And this, I think, is great. Receiving joy from my relationship with Jesus has been a huge part of my life that I am very greatful for.

But many times, maybe more often then I would like to admit, there is a time to mourn.

I ran into one of these times of mourning and sadness when the *event that I can't talk about* began to unfold.

And I almost ran right past it.

I'd get up, complain about being tired, eat breakfast, go to work, realize again how great work is, read or walk during my lunch break, work some more, try to be more helpful in the office and grow friendships with my coworkers, go to the gym, listen to my music, eat a big dinner, relax a bit, laugh some, read the news, maybe read some more of my book, or watch some LOST, maybe pray with my roommates, then go to bed with the hope that I would be rested enough for the next day.

It was always when I went to bed that I would realize that I hadn't taken the time to think about the family that was struggling. I hadn't taken time to let their situation affect me, upset me, move me. I hadn't felt love for them in the way that I thought I loved them.

This lasted maybe two or three days, and then I sunk like a rock. I'm still not quite sure what happened, but a lot of things came tumbling down. While realizing that I couldn't feel pain for the family, I realized a lot of pain within myself. The worst of it was that nothing horrible had happened. The family, while going through hard times, was still relatively okay - everyone was alive and as healthy as they were when I met them. My life was going really well too. I spent a lot of quality time with my friends, I had a really good review at work, my family was doing well, and life was "good" according to any outsider's perspective. I thought that I should be content, able to love and pray for the family with the hope that it would get better. Instead, I was a mess.

And this is when I realized I needed Jesus. If I was going to try and mourn and grieve, and feel the pain of suffering all by myself, I was going to die.

I am way too mortal to carry such a heavy burden.

Finding myself completely depressed, I started praying longer and harder than I have in a long time. I don't think I said much. I just asked Jesus to help me. Sometimes I would tell Him that this grief was too difficult. Sometimes I would decide that it wasn't worth the effort. The weight of the package wasn't worth what was inside. I would think about what it would be like if I stopped trying to follow this god that was allowing me to cry so much.

I probably wouldn't cry as much...

But I wouldn't be content as often either...


And then I made it to the other side. I decided to stick it through with Jesus, and the weight/wait was worth it. The last time I had felt that depressed, I tried to ride it out without God's help and it took me about 6 months. This time took me about 3 weeks. I have also been able to better express my love for the family and for others. I have been able to pray more deeply, to love more unconditionally, and to be sad and upset without being depressed and unhelpful. Of course, I have a long way to go and a lot of ways to improve, but its a start.

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And now I am to the part that I am still learning.

I guess I am learning how to be aware of when it is time to mourn, when it is time to celebrate, and when it is time to be somewhere in the middle, and how my relationship with Jesus fits into ALL of that. It's a really basic idea, but it is easy to forget.

My friend Aaron (hi aaron!) gave me a fresh perspective on joy and sorrow when he described to me two types of people:

There are those who see sadness as genuine. Wanting to be genuine, they look for sadness. I guess you could call them pessimists. Even when something is going well, they find something wrong with it. They might say something like "It could be better if this weren't like that."

There are those who see happiness as genuine. Wanting to be genuine, they look for happiness. Optimists. Even when something goes wrong, they say "Well at least its okay because this is like that."

They are both trying to have a true, clear perspective on life, but half the time they are running right past it. Neither of those people are grasping the fullness of life; the life that, according to my experience in February, God wants us to have.

Homeless

"Home" is a concept that I have a hard time understanding.

My parents and I moved every two or three years when I was growing up, and I LOVED it. We never moved far - always an hour drive this way or that way, but I was excited every time to have a new place to call "home." "Homesick" is another term I don't understand.

When I left on summer trips, when I went to college, when I studied in Australia for a semester, when I traveled this summer, I didn't get "homesick." Ask my parents. They never knew if I was alive or dead because I never called them and I never even thought about home.

I always thought that my love to move and my ability to not miss home showed that I adapt well to new places and situations. I thought it meant that I was flexible and comfortable in a variety of environments...

But then I went to Central City Community Church of the Nazarene. The service was incredible. It was one of the best services I have been to in a long time. "A piece of heaven," said my housemate Erin. Why was it so good? I have to give the pastor props, because his sermon was off-the-charts amazing. But I have heard some #1 hits before and they didn't always leave me feeling like I just walked through heaven's doors.

As I sat among the church congregation, I tried to figure out what made these people and this place so wonderful.

Then it hit me. The majority of the people that attend this church are homeless. The strangest realization for me was that I felt like I was one of them, struggling and hoping for the same things as them. At first I was almost angry with myself. My life is so easy compared to theirs. How could I be so ignorant to flippantly feel like I related with their struggles? How could I say that I felt like these men and women who have no place of their own were my family? I couldn't tell them that I understood what they were going through. I hated telling them I lived in Pasadena when they asked where I stayed. If one of them asked me for money on a street corner, I might not even give it to them. So how could I, albeit slightly ironically, feel like this place was "home-sweet-home" and these people were my family?Then it hit me again.

Praising God with this congregation was sweet to my soul because we all understood something crucial:

This life is not "home."

We agreed together that we know what "home" is supposed to be like, and this life was not it. We were longing together for something better, something perfect. We wanted not only the best for ourselves, but the best for each other. And we all knew where to look for it. We knew we could find a home in God, and that is where we put our hearts, capturing the idea that "home is where the heart is."

As I sat with the my brothers and sisters in Christ, praying for peace, asking for justice, hoping for breakthrough, committing to persevere through pain and temptation, I realized that this is what I had been looking for every time I moved when I was little. Being with a community that understood where "home" is is what I had been longing for. I was never homesick because there was no home to miss - I hadn't found it yet.

So I guess I can officially say that I am homesick. I desire a home the way a home should be. I am sick for a place where no one is in need, no one is in pain, and no one is left behind. I want to live in shalom, a place of peace. Who doesn't?

And as I write this, I realize that I am homesick for Africa (Ghana in particular) because of the community I found there. I found men and women greatly affected by and unsettled with the circumstances of an unjust world. They strive for something better, and live with the hope, faith, and understanding that the best home of all is discovered within a life that is committed to following Jesus.

For my friends in Ghana and the Central City church, the pain of every-day life in a broken world is sometimes too hard to bear, but they continue on with smiles on their faces because they know exactly where home is and what home is not. Life is hard, and they don't always smile, but they know where to find joy, where to find satisfaction, and where to find the comfort of a true home.

May God bless them and give them relief as they endure suffering that I will never fully understand and as we long and pray together for the home of peace and joy that God has promised us.

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...

the women at the salon

I start my new job tomorrow.

In 8.5 hours to be exact.

And I can't sleep.

I think its the caffeine I had earlier today.


When I was in Kumasi, Ghana....
I had to get my hair braided. I wanted 100 little ones. There were about 5 salons along the street where I was living and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. My Ghanaian friend, Lydia, took me to the nearest salon and told the women what I wanted. Lots of little braids. They were amused. A red-headed white girl wanted to be like the Ghanaian women.

It was a slighlty awkward situation, but totally worth it. One of the women had gone to school through 4th grade so she knew about as much English as I know Spanish. She was excited to work with my strange hair and practice her English with me. She was extatic when I told her my Ghanaian "day name" was Akosua (pronounced Akossia, meaning I was born on a Sunday). Another woman came in who knew quite a lot of English and was extremely eager to show off her language abilities. Of course some of the kids came over to watch me get my hair braided. One of them was so scared of me that when she saw my face she started crying. They ended up having to take her home. haha.

This all happened in the first 45 minutes or so.

It took them 4 hours. four.

And most of the time there were at least three women simultaneously working on my hair.

After the excitement caused by a white girl being in the salon wore off they all started talking to each other in Twi (the local language). I became a fly on the wall, my head being pulled and tugged in all directions, my hair all over the place, my butt going numb. I just sat there watching them interact, making jokes (some most likely about me), discussing some seemingly boring things, some other clearly important things, and some random stuff. The kids kept running in and out, sometimes trying to convince the crying girl to come back. (That story ends happily: she became my friend.)

I think 5 women total worked on my hair. The total cost: 30,000 cedi, also known as $3.33.

5 women. 4 hours. 3 dollars.

I could almost not bare giving them so little. I was able to squeeze in a 10,000 cedi/$1 tip. Giving them more than that would have been insulting.

Spending those 4 hours watching them made me want to know them. I wanted to know what they were talking about, why they were laughing, why they were getting excited, why they sounded disappointed. I wanted to understand them. All I could do was give them 4 dollars.

I took some pictures with them. And I said "medase pa" ("thank you very much") over and over again. I said hello to them afterwards every time I walked by the salon. They were always there - every day - doing someone's hair.

Its 12am here which means its, I think, 9am in Ghana. You know what that means? They are probably in the salon right now: waiting for a customer, working on someone's hair, or talking about something really funny in Twi.

I start my job tomorrow, or today I guess. It took me about 6 weeks to find it and all I could find was a part-time position. But I am making way way way more than $3 every four hours. And I don't have to hope for business. I just have to fill in my time card. I even get to work where I want to work. In fact I was extremely picky when I looked for my job. Not only that, but I get to use the degree I was fortunate enough to obtain.

I miss those women in the hair salon and I pray that God blesses them with more business than they can handle this week.

I pray that I remember them when I begin to be ungrateful about my job, because I know I eventually will. I pray that I'll think about the time when I was sitting on their floor with my numb butt, watching them live their extremely difficult lives with hope, joy and love. I pray that I will think about the woman who had to leave school in the fourth grade to start working and supporting her family.

I pray that I will work joyfully for them just as they did for me.