Working on a new project...

Xaris and Shalom

Because what I need is a new blog, right?  :)

Deciduous trees (or rather: Maybe spring is coming, after all)

You'd think that I, being from Pennsylvania,wouldn't have been all that surprised when we hit a patch of black ice and skidded all over the road, despite it being nearly the end of March.

I was, though.

But today, back in Indiana, the weather is beautiful.

I'm hoping that it's here to stay this time, no more snow or black ice for another seven months or so.

Pride in prayer

So she prayed, Lord, give me patience.  She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it.  The right prayer would have been, Lord, my brother treats me like a hostile stranger, my father seems to have put me aside, I feel I have no place here in what I thought would be my refuge, I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.  But it cost her tears to think her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding -- for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven's sake.

from Home, by Marilynne Robinson

I read this and thought, yes, I do this too.  Pray for things that will allow me to keep my pride intact rather than being honest with God.

End of February (finally)

The torte was good.  The satisfaction of winning the bid was fun.  Having friends to share it with was the best.  

DC filtered by China

This January was the first year I've been to the March for Life since I went to China, to study and then to teach.  I can't always see how living there has changed my perspective, but being in DC for a protest type event made it a bit hard to miss.

See, I had two gut level reactions at the march.  One is pretty much what you might expect -- a sick disgust mingled with heart wrenching grief that this is even a thing.  That my country, my first world superpower homeland, is legally okay with having millions of its citizens killed.  That's the reaction that you'd predict, right?  It's what I expected to feel, and I did.

But then there was this other reaction.

The one I didn't expect.

The one that was a mixture of joy, hope, patriotism, and thankfulness for the freedom that we do have.

See, I've been to Tiananmen Square a few times.

I think I have a pretty decent (okay, overactive) imagination, but my imagination is strained to the breaking point to picture half a million Chinese citizens marching into Tiananmen Square to protest anything and that happening peacefully.  (Don't get me wrong.  I love China.  It's a whole different ball game, though.)

But you know what?  I can picture half a million Americans marching through the nation's capitol to protest abortion with perfect clarity, because I've seen it.

And so -- so I found a hope that I wasn't expecting when I was in DC last month.  Hope not only in the sense of Well ultimately God is good, but hope in the sense that, Wow, we still have a lot of freedoms as American citizens.  I have a lot of freedoms.  There's an element of challenge, there, to be sure, and hopefully some encouragement.  There is a lot to complain about with the US, and a lot to pray about and work to change.  And we're blessed with a lot of freedoms to do exactly that.  Be thankful for them.  Use them wisely.

#WhyWeMarch

That was the trending hashtag on twitter for the 2015 March for Life in Washington DC.  I'd been there a few times before, but it was the first time for my two youngest siblings.  Why we march.  There are a thousand reasons, and there's one reason.  It was a good tag, I think.

I could give a lot of reasons for why the whole abortion/pro-life issue is one that I will get passionately heated about, but when I thought about that tag?  Let me be honest:  my mind can't really process the concept that tens of millions of babies have been killed on purpose in my own country since 1973.

What I can grasp is looking at my four younger siblings and thinking, This so easily could not have been.  All four of them, adopted.  All four of them unique with their own talents and quirks and stories.  All four of them used by God to shape me into who I am today.  They're my cohorts in trouble, fun, and life, my closest and longest friendships.

The fight for life happens on a national level but also a myriad of more personal levels.  It happens in marches in the nation's capitol and in adoption and foster-parenting and courageous decisions of birthparents, in education and in treating humans with dignity, in treating miscarriages like tragedies, in everything that goes into honoring God by how we treat other humans at every point in life.

My four sibs?

They're why I march.

There are a lot of words in my heart on this subject, but I think a lot of them would just be noise, especially in a public place online.  If you want to have a conversation, I'm glad to talk about my family and experiences.  Just shoot me a message.

Tracing Thoughts

July 25, 2013
Beijing

Tomorrow I leave China.  Again.

I keep thinking of the blog post title from the Blazing Center -- Going, Not Knowing...  

And how all of life is a going without knowing, but leaving China particularly feels that way.  Because something in my heart whispers Maybe Simon is right, maybe you'll never come back.  I don't know if it's truth of things to come or just a fear...

March 10, 2014
bus to Chicago

...mostly I cried because it hurts to not have a home.  There are plenty of places that I'm welcome.  Plenty of people who gladly open their homes and lives and hearts to me.  But my family and my church are in two different places and I'm in still another -- and I feel splintered, fragmented...

I'm wishing for something that cannot be, for the clock to turn back.

December 2, 2014
Btown

I am so very bad at staying.  18 years in my hometown and then it's like I was suddenly cut loos to be carried by the wind...

The thought is haunting me right now.  #China2016?

December 4, 2014
Btown

So many reasons on my heart about China.

December 10, 2014
Btown

There really are so many reasons why I want to go back.  I miss teaching.  I miss my students.  I miss the community of ELIC.  I miss China.

There are so many reasons why I don't want to go.  Family and friends, the thought of more goodbyes and distance.  The things I've already grown to love in Btown; mostly people...

I still miss Geneva so much, the friends there, the sidewalks and trees and professors and classes.  I've been profoundly blessed... how do I hold all this with an open hand and not grow hardened in the letting go?

December 16, 2014
Btown

--if home seems suddenly sacred and seductive--

But where is home for me?  ... All of [these places] are places where I've encountered You and gotten to know Your people.  All of them, each in their turn, seduces me with memories and impressions... It kind of breaks my heart to think of how many places have been home to me these past seven years...

Truth be known, I've been blessed and grown in all of them.  I can't yet say that there is nothing I'd change -- but there is little that I'd alter.  Littler still when I think of my own fallibility...

January 3, 2015
Btown

...And yet... to be honest -- the thought of staying scares me, brings me near to tears.  Both with fear and because it seems like too much.  This must be a gift meant for someone else, surely.  To come to a point where really being so healed could be a real thing -- I did not think this would happen.  That maybe the brokenness within my family, the pain of loving China and leaving, loving Geneva and graduating, loving and moving away from so many good places and people -- from quizzing, from OPC youth camp, from Faith, from Seneca, from western PA -- that that could maybe fade, leaving a dull ache and a heart full of bitter memories?

I don't think that I even know how to hope for such a thing

I've been so afraid that my wyrd was to be Frodo, cut with this wound that could never heal enough to allow him to live in this world -- 

and yeah, there's a hubris in that.  A sort of sick self pitying, as if others don't also live with deeply cut wounds in their heart...

--that I couldn't imagine coming to a place of being Sam.

But isn't Frodo a bit platonistic, and Sam more redeemed in the end?  Sam is able to love his ground, to tend the earth.  And we are indeed a part of Your creation, rooted in a certain place and time.  As we ought to be...

"I shan't call it the end, till we've cleaned up the mess," said Sam gloomily.  "And that'll take a lot of time and work."

Sam, not Frodo, is the one who lives in the tension.  Touched by the other world, the memories real and really a part of him...

But the story ends not with him sailing away.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon last in the West.  There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.  Beside him stood Merry and Pippin, and they were silent.
At last the three companions turned away, and never again looking back they rode slowly homewards; and they spoke no word to one another until they came back to the Shire, but each had great comfort in his friends on the long grey road.
At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went.  But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more.  And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.  And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath.  "Well, I'm back," he said. 

And Mumford and Sons' song Sister hits me as if it was written to me.  It stings sharply.  So I sit here crying.  Because I have loved deeply in so many places, and to say: No, really... this, here, is where I'm supposed to be; not in China now.  And I truly don't know when or even if -- that HURTS.

There's a chip on your shoulder, girl
And by God it'll make you fall
If you let it take a part of your soul
I've seen the love in your brother's eyes
And the love in your mother's cries
Sister, don't test the ones you love
Sister, don't let go
Sister, don't let go of us
Cause your roots will rot away
And your fruit, it won't grow
Your bark will wear thin, body hollow...
Don't test the ones you love
It'll only tear us down
If you want to feel alive
Then learn to love your ground
Well, love your ground.

...

It was last night -- I can just about lay a finger on the pulse of that time, certain as when I knew that the swine flu virus had struck me between floors of McKee, as when I knew in Guizhou all of a sudden that I loved my group and China was exactly where I was meant to be at that moment -- when I knew that Bloomington is exactly where I should be now, and that I don't even want to imagine my life having played out differently than it has.  The people I know now, the job I'm doing -- watching Unbroken, playing euchre with Maggie and Natalie and Jason -- it is right and it adds a fullness and a richness.

Those words -- I'm supposed to be here, now -- shock me with how difficult they are to write.  How they bring me to tears.  

You are so good, and I can't pretend to know Your plan or to guess at what path You are leading me on, but I am fully confident that You are good and so it, also, will ultimately be good.

~~~~

And the words that have been echoing in my heart and mind throughout the past month are from a pop song, crazily enough, from Home by Phillip Phillips.

I'm content with that.  Not every minute of every day, but much more at peace with being here, feeling like it is home, than I have felt in a long, long time.

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble -- it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you're not alone
'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home.

2015 Guidelines

I know.  It's been a while.

My schedule was eaten by NaNoWriMo, and then I got to the end of the month and well over the word count, but the novel is still a work in progress.  I've appreciated the process of writing though; it's always a good platform for me to work out issues that I'm wrestling with, and it feels safer to do it in fictional stories.  So this one deals with consequences of keeping secrets, forgiveness, and family relationships as the kids grow up.

Also shape-shifting, which fortunately isn't something that I have to deal with.

Anyway, then came December and much schedule craziness and many MANY hours at Crumble (which really is a good thing) and apartment shenanigans.  But now I've had a few days off (in a solid chunk!) and everything is moved back into my apartment and I have my own room.  It's glorious.

Also it's the start of a new year.  ^_^  And since Janeen has written a start of year post, I'm feeling extra motivation to do the same.

Here's my list of some structures for this year.  More guidelines than rules, as a certain bunch of pirates would say.  :)  (And they're in no particular order, as a warning.)

Work out.  I particularly like the 7-minute workout (which there are great apps for, if you're an app person.)  And by "like" I mean that I at least consider and sometimes even do it.

Pay cash.  When it's possible.  It's a good way for me to not spend money impulsively.

Say no.  Because... I am so much happier when I say no to commitments, and it frees me to be committed to the activities and people that I really want to be spending time and energy on.

Be still.  I need to intentionally take time to reflect and be in communion with God consistently.

Give thanks.  For specific things.  ALL THE TIME!

Short accounts.  Because my life is just less overwhelming when there isn't a backlog of emails, emotions, or chores.

Be learning.  I'm a great student in an academic setting, but it's disgustingly easy to get really lazy and let skills I spent years learning atrophy.  So I'm working on getting back to reading some Hebrew and Koine more consistently.

Call home.  Given how much time I spend walking, I recently realized that it's smart to use that time to call my family.  And then we can all communicate and happy things like that.

Write daily.  Journaling, story writing, blogging... I know I need to do it, but again, it's easier to be lazy some days.  And then I regret it.

Read broadly.  I like to challenge myself to not get stuck in the rut of just reading one genre.  To know all (or... mostly all...) the parts of the library and be switching it up; it's an important part of learning.

Rest intentionally.  Because gahhhhk, it's easier to stay up late and do nothing or to keep worrying about something when I should be resting.  But it ain't healthy!  This goes along with the next one...

Late productivity.  And this is one that I need to make a RULE.  If I'm going to stay up late, I need to be doing productive things.  i.e. not surfing facebook or buzzfeed.  Really doing things.  If I don't have energy to be accomplishing necessary tasks or being creative, I should be in bed.

Breathe deeply.  I've gotten better at breathing since when I was first born... but not much.

Laugh often.  Because laughing makes life better.  And makes memories.

Words for the year:  Rhythm.  Commitment.  Wisdom.

And finally, a link that I stumbled across by accident but is making me quite happy: the Frozen soundtrack in Spanish!