Seeing Myself, Six Months Ago

I found the blog of one of the Hands On girls who went to Senegal the semester after me.  I got to live with her for a week in November, and I will always remember that one night when Liz and I had already gone to bed, she freaked out by Melanie's sudden appearance in the doorway and threw herself on us, butt in the air.  Liz laughingly pointed out that she had incapacitated any of us from defending ourselves, but she was unapologetic in her flail.

Jesse is obviously a cool person.  Her blog kind of breaks my heart, because she is dealing with all the emotions I was six months ago.  Who am I kidding?  They were still a big deal a couple months ago, and even today her words were quickly sending me back to American culture shock.

That is, until I started writing comments on her posts, trying to be encouraging.  And I started writing awesome things that I didn't even know I knew until I wrote them!  I love when that happens.  One thing I wrote was this:

"God has a bigger heart for the nations than we could ever have, so trust that He'll send us where we're most needed."

And ugh.  Apparently I know that, but I need to internalize it.  Also I need to constantly remind myself that America is one of the nations he has a heart for.  Whether I am in Peoria or Senegal or Mongolia or Japan or Antarctica....God has put me here, there, and everywhere for a reason.  I can't waste time moaning about how I'd rather be somewhere else.  I have to trust that He knows my passions and will take me to new and exciting countries when the time is right.

That is very smart and encouraging!  But I realized something else from reading her blog.  Jesse talked about loving teaching people about God for the first time.  And that is it!  That is why I am so easily discontented here at Woodland!

I mean, I love teaching the junior high girls and mentoring them as they start in their true realization of what following Jesus means.  And I love leading the college Bible study, getting into books of the Bible that none of us are very familiar with, seeing God's love throughout all of history.

But there is a huge difference between teaching someone who has already heard it, and teaching someone who never knew that Jesus not only died but rose to life again.  People who grow up in church are so easily jaded.  I am so easily jaded!  God sending rain to flood the whole earth but saving one family and all the adorable animals because He wasn't ready to give up just yet?  That is AWESOME.  But I react with a blase sense of been there, seen the flannelgraph.

I'm grateful that I was raised in the church.  I fully believe that spending the first twenty years of my life saturated in the stories of God prepared me to serve Him at a young age.  But it's hard to teach people who are where I was....a little interested, but more concerned with their hair or their boyfriends or their lack of boyfriends.

Give me people who ignore those stories or obviously change the subject any day.  At least then I knew I was making progress.  And granted, my attempts at talking about Jesus in Senegal were sporadic and chaotic at best.  But I miss the feeling that I was doing something important, that I was telling Lamba and Mame Codou and Bigue things they might not hear from anyone else.

I guess this just puts me back to where I've been:  confident that God is using me here, but ready to go back to the front lines whenever He thinks I'm ready.  Which, granted, might be awhile (re: evangelizing chaos, above).

Melengo

In high school, I signed up for a Compassion child on behalf of the youth group.  People said they would help me, so I made a box and set it out so people could donate some money throughout the month.  Only...most of the time no one did, and I was footing the bill.  Funny how $32 seemed like so much at the time.

I ended up canceling my sponsorship, which was slightly traumatizing.  But I got over it quickly, because the girl had never written to me, and I never really got the sense that she was a real person.

BUT for the past year or more, I've been writing back and forth to Melengo, my new sponsored child from Tanzania.  He makes my heart melt, and then he cracks me up.  I just got a letter from him today with a picture of him studiously bending over a notebook.  In his letter, he said, "He says, he is happy for the way you love him.  He says, he also loves you and others as how Jesus loved him."  And on the back he drew a picture of a medicine cabinet!  HAHAHA.  With a bottle of magnesium and some peeling plaster labeled as such.

I love this kid.  I'm so glad I can give him the money he needs to go to school even though I've never met him and probably never will.  It's people like him that truly make me excited for heaven.  Sure it would be nice to see the people I know for eternity, but I can live this life with them.  I can't wait to spend eternity meeting people I only wrote letters with, or only heard about, or never knew existed at all!

Until then, Melengo.

Old Friend

I had lunch with Michelle yesterday.  She was one of my first school friends, and we stayed friendly through senior year.  Obviously we were not BFFs because we've been living in our hometown for nine months now, and this is the first time we have hung out.

And it was so nice!  She brought healthy stuff, and we sat on the floor of my office, talking and eating.  She is so similar to me.  We share the same childhood--the way we were/are spoiled, the way education was always easy, the way life didn't quite turn out as perfectly as our cookie cutter suburban upbringing promised.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, because my Woodland friends all have nearly perfect families that they love nearly all the time and hang out with for fun.

It was a relief to talk to someone who is living with her parents for the free rent, but who is deeply unsettled by it.  We commiserated about our privileged white girl pain the way I just can't with anyone else.

WONDERFUL.

We're hoping to make it a weekly thing.  I need someone who understands me, the me that I don't like to share with other people.

My M.O.

Say there are two good things.  Like Chicago and Istanbul.  I love both of these cities!  But more people will probably choose to go to Chicago than Istanbul, so automatically, I proclaim my love of Istanbul loud and proud.  It doesn't lessen my love of Chicago.  But you probably won't hear me talk about it much.

What I mean is, I root for the underdog.  Whether the giant is good or bad, I want more people to pay attention to the little guy.

This habit tends to get me in trouble, because people think I am talking in black and white.  Not so!

When I say people should sell all their stuff, I know this is not the only way to please God.  I can even think of two families who use their wealth to serve God.  But!  Most people want to be wealthy.  Not many people are pursuing a life of poverty, and so that is the good side that I am backing.

When I say people should be missionaries overseas, I know this is not the only way to expand God's kingdom.  But it is far more common for people to stay in America than to go to the largely unreached and desperately needy world.  So I talk about overseas missions, because I want to tip the balance a little.

When I say I love other countries more than America, I'm not saying America is bad.  There are some wonderful things about this country!  But most people love America, and a lot of them diss other countries by default (America is the best=everyone else is inferior).  So even though America is lovely in many ways, I will stand behind Greece and Turkey and Senegal and Germany and say that I love them more.

I've always gone for the weird and unique.  Doesn't mean the normal is bad.  I just want more people to be outliers.  Unfortunately, my underdog thinking and my tendency to hyperbolize can get me in trouble.  Hopefully no longer, since I have explained myself!

But probably that is not the case.  Sharing thoughts with the interwebs is pretty much asking for people to disagree with you.  I guess I'm asking for it.

I Don't Fit Into Peoria

I went to the Monahan's last week, and we spent two hours listening to their 70s rock music and 90s Christian music.  Then I went to the Wineinger's this week, and we sang country songs.

None of these things are exactly me, even though I had a hilarious time both nights.

I want people to like Mumford and Sons!  And Fun!  And Freelance Whales!  And Ingrid Michaelson!  I want to dance around to Mika and La Roux!

And most of all, I want to watch Buffy with someone who will analyze and cry and laugh and make intellectual comments on the feminism and the philosophy and the relationships.  I watched a bunch of Buffy fanvids, and had no one to share them with.  Where is Whitney or Liz?  Sad day.

Now I understand why people make their friends on the interwebs.  But I am too shy.

Threads and Connections and Theology?

Life is such a weird thing.  I live my day, and everything I do affects everyone around me.  Everything they do affects me.  My choices open or close future possibilities.  I am responsible for my actions, but maybe I would react differently if certain things had or had not happened.  And everyone else is responsible for their actions, but if I'd been kinder or more patient or had simply paid attention, maybe they would act differently.

I think in heaven we will get to see the string of our life, and how it gets tangled up in others, or how tangling it might have helped someone else.  I think we'll see all the different possible endings.  Actually, I don't think these things will happen; I just hope so.  I want to look at my life and say, "Yeah, I could have done that or should have said this, but overall, I did okay."

Sometimes I wonder how important my relationship with God is.  It's been a week since I worked on memorizing Scripture.  I've prayed here and read random Scripture there, but nothing intentional or devoted.  It doesn't seem like a big deal, until I wonder, what if talking to God last night would have caused me to say something to this person, who would have been encouraged to do this, which winds up affecting someone I don't even know?  Or what if I learned the next section of James, and it applied to my day, and I had the right attitude instead of the wrong one?

I wonder how many bad things I could avoid, or how many good things I could find, if only I maintained a consistent and continuous relationship with the God who teaches me how to be good.

Mumford and Sons is my favorite group, because their lyrics tend to fly out of the stereo and get stuck in my soul.  One of the first to smack me upside the head was this:  "If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won."

I can seek after God when I am soaring with joy or am crippled with depression.  But when I don't care, when I think it doesn't matter--that is when I miss out.  And who knows how many other people miss out as a result?

Am I Weird?

It has come to my attention that I am not good at planning.  This was something of a shock, because I've always thought I was detail-oriented and a small thinker, and also very organized.  The process of my world being rocked started several months ago when I talked to Chris on the phone.

We were only close for maybe a month, but he is the sort of person who sees into your soul and then talks about it like everything is very obvious.  So I told him about working at the library, and how I enjoyed planning programs (see, the planning!).  But he said, "That makes sense.  You're good at ideas."  And I was all, "OMGWTF?  I need to hang up and think about what you just said."

I have always wanted to be an idea person!  But never ever have I considered myself one.  I thought Chris was just losing his touch.

Then I went to Senegal in November with some very planning-oriented women.  And they kept saying things like, "I know you think this will just work, but really we should weigh the bags twenty times."  And compared to their over-planning, I realized that yes, I do assume that things will fall into place without much forethought.

But the kicker came when my junior high girls decided to do a craft sale to raise money for a missionary family.  I came up with the broad plans, and was ready to settle back and enjoy the ride.  Then someone said, "Should we put something in the bulletin?"

"Oh.  Yeah, that would be good."

"How about asking people to donate stuff?"

"...That makes sense."

"And maybe there should be posters so people know about it?"

"Yes.  Posters are good."

And that's when I knew:  I don't plan things!  I am not the person who gets things done!  I am the person who starts things.  WHAT?!  This changes everything I've ever thought about myself.  The truth is that I have been lucky enough throughout my life to be surrounded by people who pick up my idea and make it happen, or remind of what needs to be done to make it happen.  On my own, I would be a sad little girl sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of papers with awesome, unfinished ideas written on them.

Epilogue

In my defense, I do plan for some things.  They just tend to be weird things that no one cares about.

When I found out I was going to Senegal, I immediately knew I had to grow out my bangs.  I mean, screw spiritual preparation or buying necessary supplies.  I had to grow out my bangs!  That was obviously the most important thing in which I could invest my time.

Yesterday and today, I restarted p90x.  One reason for this makes sense.  I want to be strong when I go to Mongolia so I can do stuff and not die.  But the main reason is this:  I have always said I want to marry someone younger than me. (Because women live, on average, five years longer than men.  If I marry someone five years younger than me, there is a better chance we could die at the same time!  You know, ignoring all those early death possibilities.)  Only recently did it hit me that....I am aging.  And if I really am going to marry someone younger than me, I don't want to be all flabby and lazy.  So obviously, the way to plan for marriage is p90x.

My powers of planning are saved for the very important things in life, as you can plainly see.