He's not finished with me yet...

I knew this Thanksgiving break in Canada would be a blur. I knew that I’d struggle to remember what I did yesterday and certainly where I was. You see, visiting four friends in eight days and being in five different cities can be quite the whirlwind. I kind of expected to switch into my default “go” mindset and go… go and love people, go and listen to friends, go and see their worlds, go and reminisce memories and create new ones… go, go, go.

And while I have been “going” quite non-stop, I’ve also been blessed with time to “stay” and slow down. I’ve noticed that being away from Illinois and my friends there and my surroundings that have become so familiar, has allowed me engage my semester from a distance and actually process what I’ve been learning… what God has been teaching me this semester. So far, I’ve been able to pinpoint three main things.

1) Once again, I’ve seen a lack of joy in my life. I can look back on this semester and see where I’ve failed to be content. Oh, and I’ve realized that it’s quite easy to justify. “It’s been a really hard semester,” I explain. That simple sentence does bring a rush of emotions, because quite honestly, it has been a rough semester. But even as the words are out my mouth, I am convicted by the complacency that dangerously allows me to slip into a pity party. I’m reminded of a friend’s blog… he admitted that pity was easier to feel than grief—that it’s easier to wallow in pity than allow Jesus to sit through our pain with us. Oh, how those words resonate so clearly with the state of my heart. I’ve struggled to find my joy in Christ, choosing to look back at “the good ol’ days” or urging myself to plan and anticipate “the days to come.” I’ve been so eager to fast-forward OR rewind, that I’ve failed to see God bidding me to sit… to be still. Because when he does beckon me to join him in stillness, I’m reluctant to sit through sadness… I rather sink in pity… because grief feels so weak, so crippling, and I hate feeling so weak.

But when I listen to the still small voice rushing through me as a comforting whisper, I must release my grip on this senseless and selfish pity. Like Paul, I have to cling to the secret… knowing that I can be content in wealth and in want because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

2) I’ve noticed my reluctance to “settle down” or to “put roots in.” I blame it on my third culture kid (TCK) complex, but really, knowing its laziness and fear. I don’t bloom where I’m planted, simply because I don’t like where I’ve been planted or because I don’t feel… planted.  I came to the United States telling myself that I’d only be here long enough to get a degree and then before the ink had dried on the diploma I’d be boarding my first plane going anywhere… outside of America. I told myself that I didn’t have anything against the United States, per se; I just preferred to live elsewhere. But I’ve learned that what I thought I knew about myself just isn’t correct. God has revealed prejudices and a tendency to judge in me. I’ve been reluctant to invest in certain friendships that may take more work because I don’t think I’ll be here much longer. I withhold love and friendship, because I’m scared of another person leaving me… or because I don’t want to see the look on their faces when I leave. And I try to downplay this fact by blaming my TCK upbringing… after all, how constant could I even expect friendships to be?

Yet, I was on a retreat recently and was having a conversation about this topic with someone I had only met one other time. He stopped and said, “Viv, you have to live and love like you’ll be here forever.” My mind instantly rejected that thought. I’ve never thought I’d be anywhere forever. My thoughts swirled… Like I’ll be “here” forever. This current “here,” however, turned out to be America… Illinois… Champaign-Urbana. Did I fear growing attached to this place that I’ve spent the last year and a half at? Was I refraining from too many ties to make it easier to pick up and go at the first sight of a tassel and diploma? Am I hesitant to feel “home” in America, stubbornly clinging to Colombia?

I sense the necessity to finally let myself settle. Instead of fighting the feeling of “home” in America, I need to embrace it. I can’t spend my energy fighting attachment.

3) God has forced me to release my fierce grip on my dreams and passions… he’s asked me to give him my deepest desires to work with the poor overseas, and let him reshape them. He’s asked me to let him shape my understanding of poverty and to re-imagine my role in this massive, beautiful, divine plan of redemption and justice.

When I lived and served in Colombia, I struggled to come to terms with God’s goodness and mercy when I saw the poor surrounding me. This frustration and confusion often would motivate me to go and be with the poor. I’d go on all of our school’s service days, I looked forward to service trips and would fit loving the poor—both through time and resources—into my schedule. It was there, in those moments when I wondered if I’d come home with lice or knowing that I’d have to throw those clothes away, that I knew God was working. I could see it because I could feel it. I could touch the kids he hugged. I could kiss the children who were fatherless, yet had a heavenly Father. I was able to be the hands and feet of Jesus with my own hands and feet. Did I still question God’s justice? Absolutely. But somehow, it was more “bearable” being able to channel my questions into action.

However, living in the USA has removed me miles away from that lifestyle… a lifetime away. I’ve cried through videos and movies displaying the world’s most vulnerable. I fight the urge to pick up and go daily. I struggle to be still when God seems to be so still. I cry out and ask God where his justice is… I ask him to reveal his goodness to them because He’s certainly poured it out on me. And I feel powerless. I know that poverty exists in America—trust me, I know this. But I’m so removed from it… it isn’t as near to me when I’m in Champaign-Urbana as when I was in Colombia. And I fear that when I’m not busy loving and serving the poor, I’m losing my passion and becoming cold and indifferent.

Instead, I’ve found that instead of calling me to busily pour out my life, time and resources in this season, God has been asking me to sit still… Behold his majesty and sit still in total surrender.

Even as I write this post, thoughts rush through my heart… wondering who will happen to stumble upon this page and who will sit still and read through the entirety of this novel-like post. I feel slightly uneasy, but I know that when I’m learning something, I must share it. Dear friends, if you read this, please continue to lift me up in prayers… and thank God that he isn’t quite finished with me yet :).

Cities and Change

The swift walking, the sound of traffic, the blaring sirens… ahh, I was definitely in a city. I walked through Toronto with Naomi and simply let my senses take in the sounds and smells of a city. I smiled as I heard a dozen different languages; my heart felt heavy as we walked past the homeless. I really do love cities. They’re busy and crowded and the traffic is awful and they’re dirty and everyone hates city drivers… but I still love cities. I loved watching Naomi navigate through the streets of Toronto, refusing to wait at stoplights for the walk signal, grabbing my hand and forcing me to run even as the hand blinked orange. It was so clear she loved cities… maybe even more than I did.

We were hungry and in search of a Thai restaurant, because she was determined to have me try one of her favorite dishes. We wandered into Chinatown, our hopes high that we’d find a restaurant that sold Thai food. Sure enough, we finally found one. Over dinner I laughed and smiled… cherishing this time with my dear friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year and a half. Our conversation was sprinkled with memories from Africa… had it really been two and a half years since we had travelled to Uganda with Teen Missions when we met? I laughed, knowing that our friendship had been forged through the most challenging trip of my life and endured because of the bonds that were formed that rough summer when Cami and I met Naomi.

I sometimes still have trouble formulating why Africa was so pivotal in my life… I struggle to articulate what was so difficult about that summer and how it changed me. Reminiscing with Naomi only reminded me that it had changed me and that it was difficult, but again, I was at loss as to exactly how and what had changed. And sometimes, my heart still hurts because of that summer… I find that I still grieve and mourn because of the way that pain shaped my heart…

And when it hurts, I am reminded of Lilia, my dear friend and mentor. I remember crying in her room in the weeks that followed my return from Africa. I was angry and unsure of where my anger was directed. I was disappointed and frustrated. I wanted people to stop asking, “How was Africa?” but more importantly, I wanted to be able to say, “It was so amazing!” But it wasn’t amazing… and Lilia reminded me that missions and ministry weren’t always “amazing.” She sat me down and drew out a spiral on the black board. The center was Africa, frozen in the summer of 2009. The spiral was the imprint of Africa on my life. As I lived my life, I would travel from the center of this spiral, outward. And each time I hit one of the spiral lines, I would mourn and hurt, and I would heal and move on… And each time the spiral lines were farther and farther apart… but they never disappeared altogether.

That summer—summer of 2009—squeezed my heart and stretched me and hurt me and grew me. Melinda, my discipler here in Champaign, reminded me that this is how we ought to live our lives. If it doesn’t change us… if it doesn’t shape us and leave a lasting imprint on our hearts… why do we do it? The things that matter are the things that change us. And those most special people are the ones who make it impossible to be the same again.

Beloved, God Still Feels

Perhaps one of the questions I ask God most frequently is, "Why?" I see the pain and suffering around me and in the world and my heart tightens. I feel nauseous and I don't understand how I can literally be curled up in a blanket as I write this, comforted by the the beautiful Christmas lights and know that millions are cold, hungry, sick and dying... knowing that women are being raped, men are being tortured, children are starving and all of creation is groaning. Do we exist in parallel universes? Sometimes I wonder... we might as well. How can it be so drastically different, yet confined to the same planet?

Last week I read an ethnography about slums in Brazil... and how mothers are literally put into situations where they have to choose which child to starve to death. The systems and structures that are in place force her to make these decisions; the death of hundreds of children can be traced to selective neglect. The anthropologist (Scheper-Hughes) wrote about her first encounter with a child who was wasting away. As a survival instinct, the mother chose to let him starve, lest he literally suck the life out of her withered body. Scheper-Hughes swooped in and took the child under her own wing. She nursed him back to life and watched his hair grow, his eyes gain life and skin look healthier. When she succeeded in convincing the mother that he was worth investing resources into, the mother finally took him back. He became her favorite son, only to die from gang violence as a teenager. The entire article was depressing. Class the next week was very similar. Our professor Tomi shared other stories from her own fieldwork in the slums of Brazil. She recalls a time when she was robbed at knifepoint and her aggressor apologized, "I'm sorry, but I need this money more than you do." She remembered when a mother begged Tomi to take her baby, recognizing that she'd never be able to give own daughter the kind of life Tomi would be capable of providing.

I struggled through that week of class. I breathed a sigh of relief when the week was over only to come into class the next week and watch a horrifying documentary about the violence against women in Ciudad de Juarez, Mexico. In a span of less than 20 years, over 400 women were abducted, abused, tortured, raped and murdered in Juarez. The families of the victims clamored for justice, but found none from the government. Instead, the government itself was often responsible for acts of violence as well. Family members would desperately pull together neighbors and friends as they went out into the desert looking for a corpse. Time after time, they'd come back empty handed only to have the authorities find a skeleton the next day. Mothers refused to believe that their daughters who had disappeared only weeks before would already be reduced to a bag of bones. Dozens of women later and by the end of the documentary, justice had still not come. My heart ached.

During these two weeks of depressing and painful anthropology classes, I found out about two neighborhoods in Colombia that are in need of your prayers. The first is Ciudad Bolivar, a barrio alto of Bogota. It lays to the south of Bogota, nestled in the mountains. Living conditions are less than acceptable and the poverty and violence statistics are through the roof! Our school has partnered with a beautiful ministry there, Forjadores de Aguilas, to help bring justice and healing to this neighborhood. I honestly have not been to Ciudad Bolivar since 10th grade, but have beautiful memories from the kids there :) However, recently a new wave of violence has swept through the city. Women are raped, men are senselessly killed and children are orphaned. I haven't been able to get much information about what exactly is going on or for how long it has been going because the press is silent. When I find out more information, I will certainly update you guys :).

The other neighborhood is Barrio Egipto. If you've been following my blog, then you certainly know plenty about it. If you haven't been, however, feel free to check out this post to get some background information. I must admit that much of the ministry going on with the Fundacion Buena Semilla inside the neighborhood had fallen into the background for me. I prayed for it occasionally and read the updates, but other than that, I kind of had forgotten about the situation to a great extent. However, my mom reminded me how I need to KEEP PRAYING for this neighborhood. One of the six gang members who was involved with robbing the GEBC team was stabbed to death a couple of weeks ago.  He appears in this video next to Elias. Please, watch that video! It tells you ways you can partner with this incredible ministry to continue bringing light into Barrio Egipto. Though much has happened in the last six months within that neighborhood, greater things are yet to come... I have to believe that.

During my devotions this week I was comforted by the fact that God feels. He hurts and is grieved when his creation suffers. It's easy for me to shake my fist at God and point to the suffering all around me and ask, "Where are you?" It's easy for me to judge his justice and question his goodness. It's easy to do that. It's hard to believe in God's compassion sometimes. So many times I cry out to God and ask why this is happening to "them"-- forgetting that he knows each one by name. One of my Beth Moore Bible studies concluded by saying, "Beloved, God still feels."

And that... that is overwhelming.

Beloved, God still feels.

The Game of Life

I happened to be on a retreat this weekend with InterVarsity. On Friday night during the first track session we were asked to make a board game... like the Game of Life... but we had to make it be our own lives. I was intrigued and excited about this, but I found out that once I started getting short strips of paper to make my little "stepping stone" pieces, I wasn't sure what to write.

Our instructions were to make sure we included milestones or events that had spiritually shaped us in one way or another. I wasn't sure where to begin, so I ended up writing, "Birth in Colombia." Now, at first glance, that doesn't seem terribly significant. But in the last year and a half, I've come to realize how extremely significant that small fact has been. It has shaped who I am and how my heart loves; my dreams and passions are deeply rooted in the experiences I've had growing up in Colombia. I continued writing and I scribbled out several places: "Cienaga," "Amazons," "Africa," and "Medeba." One word encompassed so much... so many memories were trapped in those simple letters. No other word could describe what those places meant. I wrote down experiences: "Creative Outreach," "SSLT," "furlough" and others... How to explain Creative Outreach and the profound impact it had on me and the way I viewed poverty, service and sacrifice? How do I explain SSLT and the critical influence it had in my life and the development of my spiritual disciplines?

But as I wrote and pasted these board game pieces on my piece of paper I, my thoughts drifted to how odd it was to reduce your life to a bunch of words on paper. Trying to pinpoint those critical moments and then figuring out what to write was so odd. One or two words could not possibly do justice to the change that "tile" was responsible for in me.

I sighed and wrote my final tile piece: "Hello, America."

Oh, hello America... hello.
Life in America for the last year and a half has deeply, deeply molded my heart. I've seen a new America that I had never known-- that I could not know from summer visits and a semester-long furlough. I've been immersed-- or submerged-- in American college culture. I've learned to swim through that... or at least how to keep afloat.

And though I wrote "hello," I often feel that I still have yet to fully... enter.

I have struggled to adapt to life in America, longed for home more than I thought possible and have never felt so out of place before. My heart has been deeply shaped by where I grew up and the people who surrounded me. My ears still perk up when I hear Spanish spoke around me and I can't stop laughing when I'm confronted with Latin humor. I love it and I miss it. And coming here has been harder than I could have ever anticipated. I've always thought I was pretty adaptable and flexible, but my inability to "adapt" to life here has caught me off guard and left me scrambling to figure out how to live here. I've had to cling to Jesus in ways I've never had to before, trusting in his goodness and faithfulness through every season. My heart has been broken time and time again for the pain, sin and brokenness that I see all around me. I've been stretched to step out of my comfort zone day in and day out. My eyes have been opened to the least and the lost.

Oh, yes... Hello, America.

Study Abroad

I finally opened my study abroad application. I've been putting off for a while now because I was unsure of exactly what program I wanted to apply to! But I finally decided I just had to choose one and go with it :) I've been contemplating this program in Alexandria, Egypt for a while, so I finally settled on it. The school I'm applying to is called the Middlebury School of Languages. Apparently, this school has different branches around the world and is known for it's incredible language classes. You can read more about the program here. Upon arrival I'll have to sign a "Language Pledge" that commits me to only using Arabic for communication (except corresponding back home) for the duration of my time. CRAZY :) Well, I do want to learn Arabic!!

I'm applying for the Fall 2012 term and also hope to apply to a program in Kenya for Spring 2013 :) I cannot wait :)

It's crazy to think that a year from now, I could be finishing up a semester in ALEXANDRIA!!!