Thannnnnksgiving.

Well it's 8:33 on thanksgiving. Johnny is packing for Hawaii. He's taking me to Hawaii for my Birthday. It feels very surreal. It probably won't be real until we step out of the plane, into the heat, smiling ear to ear as we watching the palm trees sway in the balmy breeze. Then I will think. "I'm not going home."

Presently I'm apply for grad school with the University of Washington's Social Work Program...working at the Boys and Girls Club and thinking about selling my soul to Starbucks for another part time job. Johnny's a youth pastor at a local Naz church and I've been helping him out with the teens. It feels right to be involved in a youth group. It feels like my little warm niche. I'll probably be moving in the spring and thoughts of roommates/houses/rents/apartments pass through my head from time to time.

This time last year I was eating Thanksgiving Dinner at one of our American friend's apartments in Brasil. It feels like forever/yesterday.

In many ways life feels like it is starting to align and make sense again. I see around me a small life being carved out for me in Seattle and it's encouraging and exciting. I do miss being abroad but my program would offer an overseas practicum working with youth empowerment, sex trafficking, or violence in race relations....It sounds ideal.

The boys and girls club is really fulfilling. Yesterday was my birthday and I spent the day teaching kindergartners how to ice skate and picking up the mess of kids who'd bit it on the ice. It was perfect.

A trip to the dentist

I have not written in forever and a day. I guess honestly because I haven't had much good to write about....but that has changed. After listening to a sermon last week that was completely relevant to where I am, I have realized once again that God is good. That He is faithful. That He loves me. That He has not forgotten me. That He is right along side me. That I have not been abandoned.

All that had been lost in the fog of my own self-pity, poor choices, poor perspective, depression, and loneliness....and all THAT had come from my lack of prayer and quiet time with the Lord. I had lost myself, because I had lost sight of the thing that brings my life purpose, my relationship with the Lord. Regardless of wither I feel it, He has been here. This time has been intentional and God will redeem it to do a good work in me. It may not be what I think I want...or easy...or fun. But it will be beautiful and beneficial....kinda like going to the dentist.

Praise God for His faithfulness....for his love...for his patience....

Godfather-esk

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of rightness, of fitting, of finding a space where things connect from all these crazy stages of my life...all these lessons I've learned.

I think coming back to the States with a blank slate in many ways has been both a blessing and a curse. It allows a lot of freedom to shape what I want the next phase of my life to look like, but in freedom there's a heaping pile of ambiguity. For me ambiguity often lends towards stress, fear and well...ulcers.

I guess this journey is paved with obedient steps taken in hues of vague transition. You process through a lot of questions and options in an attempt to find that little place you can sit and fit in wearing a bright smile and a small name tag written in black letters reading "Hello my name is Rightness." The further I get away from Brasil the more I realize how sweet, rare, and valuable that feeling of belonging felt during my time there. I'm starting to realize just how important it was.

I also find myself uncontrollably pulled by a gravitational force towards concrete objects from my time there. I want to print off pictures and frame them in my apartment...I want to wear my earrings I got at the hippie fair day after day......I want to listen to my mix Cd's, even though they're all in Portuguese and I can only understand words here and there...I feel more certain about Portuguese classes.... I'm scared that those faces will fade away as time carries on. That my memories will fade and the physical space will be one that also saturates my heart and thoughts.

About a week after I came back from Brasil, on a dark and rainy night, I lost my mother's ring. I had dinner with my dad....got a call from my brother to hang out with him....got in his car...and walked to a restaurant...somewhere in the span of that time frame it slipped off my finger. A ring I had worn for almost three years. At first I panicked, then I calmed myself with the lie that "it would turn up somewhere," but as time passed the reality that it wasn't going to turn up sunk in. It's been over a month...I'm still ringless. Honestly, it's constantly on my mind. I feel it's absence when an icy breeze brushes against my hand and the space that use to be protected is exposed.....when I put on my winter gloves...when I brush my hair behind my ear....when I see the small tan line that Brasil's summer left on my finger.

I realize confining experiences or people to material things, mere trinkets, is confining compared to the reality of everything a personality and experience encompasses. I realize they are bigger than what they leave behind. But when you have nothing left but memories and a ring maybe you become a bit desperate/scared and began to latch on to physical tangible reminders to keep them in the present.

So you latched onto a ring, a ring your mother wore every day of her life. A ring she bought at the fair that came to town once a year when she was barely a teenager. She told you she eyed it the year before and saved up for the whole year to buy it. A ring that she wore on her pinky finger her entire life that you never really cared for, it was too "The Godfather-esk" for your taste. Yet taste is irrelevant, it was her, a part of her story, your mother. A ring you put on your finger from where it laid on her night stand after the paramedics had taken off all her jewelery before they removed her body from the house. You sat on her empty bed in the stillness of a spring afternoon with the weight of her absence heavy on your heart. You lifted her gold Godfather-esk pinky ring from the nightstand and slide it around your own pinky finger, clutching your hand into a fist around it, and around your heart...that ring now apart of you...

Or memories and a pair of green acai earrings you bought for five Reais at the hippie fair. You were with Heather and Jen blocks from Ipanema beach on a hot Brasilian summer afternoon. You were coming down from a near panic attack/nervous breakdown due to your inability to make small decisions while trying to pick out a piece of art for your dad for Christmas....and how you loved acai and eating it in the slums. You'd pay one Real for it from the round jolly acai guy, who by mere weeks into your time had your acai order down pat. You'd eat it among the busyness of your small community, as little kids played soccer in the streets and mothers bought their groceries. You'd walk home with Jen, talking about life and inhaling it and yet trying so hard to pace yourself so you could stretch out your enjoyment.

Those trinkets help to keep your beloved, those faces, those relationships, those people, that person apart of your day to day...your present reality. They are a monument or memorial to rightness and love, to calling and purpose...they bring comfort to the space in your heart that aches with the loss of not being able to be present with that in which you love. To the physical or spatial reality that betrays your heart. But also a hopeful testament of God's faithfulness and leading through both the darkest of nights and the brightest of mornings...towards a place of "rightness."

Illumination

....Sigh.....
Greetings my small blogger world out there. I hope everyone is home for Christmas and that the weather outside isn't too frightful on all your silent nights as you go tell it on the mountain that grandma got run over my a reindeer.

Well I'm back in the States, my plane touched down Sunday. This last week has been ridiculously amazing, but also sorta a whirlwind.

I haven't had any nervous breakdowns to report and I have only really cried once to date, last night, when I was talking with a dear friend about Sarah on the phone, as I laid in my bed at 8:30pm, sick with a sinus/ear infection and exhausted from my body adjusting to a a 6 hour time change. I guess that was America's way of saying "Welcome back." But actually it's been good being held up in bed these last few days. It's given me some time to relax, rest, and process. I have a sinking suspicion that the more time I'm away from Rio, from Sarah, from the kids that live on the streets, from Jacara, from my home, the more it sinks in that "yeah....I'm really here and not there", the more I settle into life here, the harder it will be. I think the implications for my future from the time I spent in Rio will become clearer as well.

People ask me "Soooo...how was Brasil?" And I don't feel overwhelmed by that question. I've been really lucky to have everyone in my life be really interested and engaged in my experience in Brasil.

The general gist is this; that God moved in very unexpected amazing ways. That my time there was nothing like I envisioned in my head, (it never is) and yet in it's joy, frustrations, laughter, tears and hugs it was hands down the greatest experience of my life. The things that I thought were going to be difficult, seeing the living conditions of the poor, learning these kids stories of horrific violence and mistreatment, of living among injustice and the reckless use of violence ended up not being so hard because in each of their beautiful faces I saw Christ. In all the oppression, injustice, and violence I understood better our God of justice and mercy. I feel like through that time God solidified without a shadow of a doubt my call to the poor, the hurting, those that morn, to the orphan, to justice, and compassion. I thought maybe that time would give some clarification to a specific location or continent that I would want to plug into long term but at the present moment I can't say that it has. I did realize during my time, that the poor know no country, no ethnicticity, no race. I was often reminded of the homeless community in Seattle as I walked the streets of Rio and saw the eleven year old boys sleeping on cardboard boxes. I was also amazed by how much the Lord moved in terms of me personally, my character, my own hang ups and faults. I learned to work on extending grace to others in their imperfections, and through that process I learned to grab a hold more tightly to grace myself in my own hang ups and imperfections as I stumble through living and loving people.

"So....now what?" Is probably the next question I get, and that my friend is a great question. Well.....hum.....yeah that's a great question. I'm looking for apartments and jobs....?... I plan on going to a million weddings this summer as all of those that I love get married off. I'm attempting to pace myself and keep my pointless, useless, ridiculous stressing out to a minimum and just take it day by day and watch as God opens and leads me into this next chapter, the way He always does.

This morning is a perfect picture of where I'm at right now in life. I went to bed at 8:30 last night, b/c I was tired and sick. Which was sorta foolish b/c I woke up this morning at 5:30. I tried to make myself go back to sleep, tried to fight having to function so early, I forced myself to lay in bed till at least 6:30, b/c what respectable person gets up at 5:30 besides my father. It was pitch black outside and the world felt quiet and still. Now it's 8:30 and the day has slowly bloomed into daylight. That's basically where I'm at, impatiently tossing and turning in my bed wanting time to go faster so I can figure stuff out, so the light will illuminate the darkness, so there will be clarification, and definition. Yet when I let it be what it is, wake up, embrace it, make a few eggs, eat some toast with jelly, watch some music videos, and enjoy the darkness....When I emerge from my basement cave and my cover cocoon and look out onto the water and mountains with its pretty lights beaming from all the houses around Seattle as people begin their days....When I enjoy the quiet, the still, the undefined, the solitude, the darkness, the unknown, and take in the beauty of it all....I find God sitting with me in the quiet and I realize it's going to be ok....and together we watch the sun ever so slowly peak out from behind the mountains, illuminating the dark, and beginning a new day.

Thanks-a-what?

Well, in Brasil they don´t celebrate Thanksgiving.

I know, sorta an obvious statement, but honestly not something my ethnocentric mind readily assume back in August. Nor, did I give a whole lot of thought to how being away from my family on T-day would effect me.

The world kept on spinning here. The stores were open, the favela got raided by police, we went to our book discussion.....we went to our Portuguese class. My world with its people, colors, movement, and noise....still spun as if nothing was unique or special about this day.

And I won´t drag on about all the people and things I miss about home. And I won´t go on a long beautiful list of all the things I am out of this world thankful for. I will at the risk of overspiritualizing and sounding very clique and lame tell a short snapshot of how God showed himself on my very debbie-downer thanksgiving.

Jen and I were walking back from Jenna´s house and our book discussion. It was around 5-ish and the sun had began it´s descent. It was still bright and warm outside, but everything glowed with warm yellow tones. We were in no rush to be anywhere or do anything, but I was lost in my thoughts. I thought to myself,

"These guys are missing out! They don´t even know it´s Thanksgiving! Today is a day to celebrate with people you love, laughing, eating, and having no place to go or nothing to do but enjoy the moments together...and eat good food made by people who love you. I think Brasilians would LOVE thanksgiving. I think it would fit in so well with the values and life of favela living."

Then I smiled because as I walked through the favelas and saw the people´s big loud round faces laughing and shouting....mother´s fingers wrapped around the small hands of their little children guiding them through the busyness...I realized they do celebrate Thanksgiving here...daily...as a part of their culture and lifestyle.

Then I smiled even more because God moved in my heart in that moment and gently shifted my perspective. THEN I thought to myself;

"This is what everyday should feel like. Like I have an amazing and beautiful secret that makes this day we´re living in special and unique. To live with a heightened sense of urgency and understanding of the power there is in that knowledge. He is a God who transforms every day into a day of Thanksgiving. Thanks for what He´s done for us in His suffering and death. Thanks for the opportunity through that act to live radically transformed lives. Lives full of excitement, joy, comfort, energy, hope, love, peace, strength, courage, assurance, grace, and acceptance. Not just on November 22, but everyday."

God turned my feelings of alienation in a strange land into a joy that day by reminding me of the beauty of life, lived under the warm yellow tones of His love and for that, my friend, I am thankful.

There is no such thing as time when you´re crying...

I´m not doing well. At all. Yesterday I felt exhausted, over-schedualed, and heavy-burdened with a lot of stuff going on in my head. It was the last hour of Timonas and I wondered outside to see what the kids were up to. As I descended the concrete stairs outside I heard the familiar wailing of the greatest little girl in the world, Sarah. She was in a corner, with a bunch of older boys and there was a lot of commotion. I still don´t know exactly what happened, but I think she got pushed down for whatever reason. Tears were streaming down her face and she wore a lonely, lost, hopeless expression. As she made eye contact with me and shyly dragged her little body ever so slowly and steadily to my direction my heart ached because she looked the way I felt inside. She curled up on my lap and wrapped her arms around my stomach, snuggling up to me as she choked on her sobs. Her head was so close to mine and I could visibly see the lice and their eggs in her hair, but I didn´t care... at all. Her sticky body close against mine felt like the most comforting thing I´ve felt in a really long time. I held her close as I gently rocked her body and began to sing some of my favorite songs to her. We sat there on the last concrete step and watched other kids jump rope for who knows how long. There is no such thing as time when you´re crying. I don´t think she could or will ever realize how much that meant to me. How deeply God moved through her little weak body on my lap. How much I needed that. As I held her close and just let her cry, I too felt God draw close to me.

I´ve learned in this time that the more I open up my brokenness and wear my humanity on my sleeve the more authentic, rich, and poignant my love is to those around me. It´s easy to love people from a safe distance, but they never really know you. I don´t think it´s really an authenic love. I don´t think that´s really loving someone if it´s not saturated into the fabric of who you are, as well. Loving is not a service but an experience. And as I struggle in that, in loving...and I come face to face...time and time...oh wait..and TIME again with all my short-comings;...my frustration..my exhaustion....my annoyance...my isolation...my fear...my apathy....my insecurities...my cynicism...I realize just how much I am the one in need of grace, love and comfort. I´ve also come to realize that loving is a receiving as much as it´s a giving. It´s hard for me to let people care for me. It´s would typically be hard for me to sob on a roof top to Will and Heather. I would wake up the next morning feeling stupid and exposed. Yet surprisingly enough, when I woke up this morning and met Heather in her eyes I saw there a deeper more authentic connection because I let her see my brokenness.

This time here has been really hard. There has been mounds and mounds of amazing beautiful moments as well, but I´m not going to lie, it´s been a struggle. As I wade through this and turn each new corner, I have found ANOTHER mountain to climb and another host of things to work through, or adjust to. I think I just feel at the bottom of the barrel right now completely weary and broken.

The last two nights I´ve found myself sobbing on the roof of our house. I wish I could have some beautiful profound thing to say in regards to all that, but I don´t. I laid there for who knows how long. There is no such thing as time when you´re crying. It could have been five minutes. It could have been fifty. Two nights ago, after I got all the tears out that were there for that night, after I took a deep breathe and laid motionless in the calm, something good did happen. I felt God there. I felt Him soothingly brush across my face with the night´s cold air. I realized even in my messy, broken, pain God is present. Just like he was for Sarah and I as we held each other, comforting us. When she´s hurting, I´m hurting. Just like when I´m hurting, God´s hurting. The beautiful thing was Sarah was holding onto me just as much as I was holding onto her.

Rain, Airports and Hot Chocolate

Today it rained cats and dogs....all....day.....long. Late last night, I woke up in a haze startled by the stark crisp evening the previous day´s heat had burned off into.
That was the beginning of the 24 hours of straight up rain, or as Christian Slater refers to it as, "Hard Rain." All...day...long.

We went to the airport today. Which was pretty surreal. It was the same place that just three months ago, I arrived, groggy, bright-eyed, and excited about what would lay ahead. It was the same place I met jenna and ben for the firt time, took my first death-defying cab ride by a brasilian driver, to my first look at a favelea and what would be my home for the next four months. It´s also the same place where I will be headed that fateful day in about a month, to hug these strangers, that have become my friends, that have become my family. I will hold them tight and cry. I will watch their little bodies disapear behind doorways, and my heart will break with the possibility that maybe...just maybe....we might never see each other again. This same airport will be the gateway in which I return to the States and into the arms of excitment, possibility, and transition.

The rain continued the rest of the day. The earth pounded with it´s purification. We contemplated not going to the streets, but the idea of not going for another week (last week will and I didn´t go for some logistical reasons) hurt my heart. I missed my friends. I´m going to miss my friends, cats and dogs falling out of the sky or not, I wanted to be with my friends.

So we end up going to the streets. I´ve been reading this book called Compassion, by Henri Nouwen. I really adore Henri Nouwen, a dear friend of mine always read a lot of Nouwen...and now I understand why. A lot of what he´s been wrestling with in the confines of those pages are brought to life in my life day to day. Compassion he writes is not something that flows naturally out of you, but something you develop as you take on the character of Christ. The idea of it being hard, a struggle, not natural, and a process of development within your heart. I find so many times in those moments when God calls me to give, to love, to show compassion, to serve and yet my flesh wants to hold white-knuckled onto control, and when I submit and follow Christ, that´s when life reveals a crisper, deeper, richer beauty...the beauty of God´s face shining through in such a vivid way...in the eyes of a new friend with his kind spirit, gentle way and warm eyes as the water splashes around us under a freeway on-ramp during our game of uno....the laughter we share as my friends mimic a fake wedding and a honeymoon in New York City with the craziest guy I´ve met in a long while....in the steam that rises from the hot chocolate on a cold, wet, day....and the laughter of a conversation with one of my dear, dear, dear friends about his upcoming birthday and what I plan on getting him, in the sparkle in a girl´s eye as i tell her that her name is beautiful as it´s portuguese pronunciation rolls off my lips and flutters away into the damp air....the rain never stopped, all day, it´s tapping providing a gentle percuasion as though it was the beat of God´s heart....