Joy has a new blog!

Joy McCracken has a new blog!
For my latest musings about life after "coming out" and graduation, check out: http://bravebeginning.tumblr.com/

Peace to you all!
-Joy

It's Plastic: A Poem

Hi Friends,

I went to a beautiful place called Malibu Club over spring break. It's a several hour boat-ride outside of Vancouver, BC. Mountains, salt water, trees, snow and, best of all, no cell service or computer! While I was there I was reading Wendell Berry poetry and it inspired me to write some poetry of my own. This piece was also inspired by some awesome slam poetry done in my Inkling's class last quarter.

It's Plastic
This this that keeps me from being where I am.
From being still and being whole,
In once place with all things.

Plastic steals my mind as my heart wonders what is the time
Who has called or sent a note
A post on a wall of immaterial bricks
Built on the belief that plastic connects and fosters realness,
Though it is plastic that severs me from all that is real and here and now:

The cry of gulls
The rushing sound of waves and trees moving in a rhythm I cannot quite catch
The smell of wood stain and fresh-cut pine
Laughter around the corner of friend meeting friend.

Plastic tears me from contended existence as my mind yearns
To know all that has gone on in my absence
From a world which has no dirt or mud or trees
At least
Not mud I can cover my body in
Or trees I can wrap my arms around and let their worship and mine mingle together
In between our bodies of rushing waters and created souls and limbs

Reaching up
Reaching out towards sun and stars and beings alike and not
Surrounding us with their bodies of flesh, bones,
Blood and hands grasping always for what we do not know

For plastic
A cruel delight from which I have no flight,
For even in a place as this
Where it would seem plastic cannot touch
I find it beside me in my backpack
In my neighbors ears,
Tearing and severing and pulling us from here
From now
From anything that's real.

On to the fun parts!

Hello Friends,

I do apologize for not posting anything in the last month. Much has happened and school has delightfully taken over my life.

Right now I am sitting in my school dining hall, affectionately referred to as Gwinn. I took a final this morning and decided to celebrate with breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, fried potatoes... yum!

Today winter quarter will be over for me. The dreaded quarter I feared would be the death of me has actually come to a close. To my surprise and delight, I didn't die, the bottom never gave out, and I am in a space of much deeper freedom and joy than I thought was possible, especially so quickly after the many hard things of San Diego last fall.

This quarter has been a time to really feel my existence in the world for the first time. I noticed that people notice me, that I have an impact, that I am enjoyed by many people. In this noticing of my own existence I grew brave: I took more risks in friendships, new and old, I fought for myself in many situations, I recorded songs I had written and posted them to facebook, I submitted a tender, intimate piece of writing to a student art journal on campus, I shaved my legs(!), I had breakfast with my dad. This quarter I let myself explore who I was and if that really depended on boundaries I had set for myself before.

I shaved my legs, and not for any special reason. I had been thinking about it since returning to school and really wondering why I hated shaving. What did it come down to? I was afraid. I was afraid of fully living into my woman-ness and letting it be a celebrated, maybe even attractive, piece of me. Being a woman doesn't depend on whether you shave your legs or not, but I realized one of the deepest reasons I didn't shave was out of fear of truly being an attractive woman. When I shaved them, I didn't tell anyone for a while. I just wanted to let myself grow comfortable with relinquishing that part of my image, cause I gets that's what it was. Yesterday I worse a skirt without leggings for the first time since I shaved. I didn't feel a need to tell people I used to have really hairy legs, or to hide the fact that my legs were smooth and womanly looking. I just let it be how it was, and I rather enjoyed wearing a beautiful skirt and, instead of getting odd looks when people saw my legs, I was complimented on my skirt. I was simply me and there was no need to hide behind manly looking legs, it was ok to be a girl wearing a cute skirt.

Yes, I also had breakfast with my dad. It was such a delightful time of getting to be in his presence again. For four years I have avoided it out of fear, self-protection, and just not knowing how to hold all of the hurt that has happened along with all the desire within me to be loved by my dad. I found I didn't have to hold it all, because all of me is held by God. My heart is held together by the Lord so I didn't have to worry about holding the hurt and the desire at the same time, all I did was open myself up to be loved, and that is what happened. My dad loves me so deeply, and even though I have been hurt so deeply I find that doesn't mean I cannot also be loved by him. This was made possible because for four years God has been building a foundation under me of his radically immanent and transcendent love: a love so intimate it sees all of me, and so transcendent it can hold all of me without fear for itself. With this love as my foundation space was created in me to accept imperfect, broken love as it is. I didn't have to wait for my dad to become someone else, as I once thought would have to happen, instead I was brought to a place in which the man my dad IS can be enough for me.

I guess that is a snapshot of the incredible movement that has taken place within me this quarter, though, like an earthquake, it has been building for years. The bursting and movement seems to have taken place suddenly and all at once, but I know it has been possible because of the heart-wrenching work over the past several years. Now I get to do the fun part of it all!

Stay tuned next quarter for more learning and growing as I take more fun classes (Physics of Sound, the Gospels of Jesus, and Behavior Science Statistics!) and bask more often in the sunshine!

Blessings to you all,
Joy

Jean Vanier, Community and Brokenness

For the last four hours I have been researching for a group project on Jean Vanier (think French when you say that). It really shouldn’t have taken me four hours, but I was pulled into the beauty of his writings and, more importantly, his heart that was woven throughout every syllable.

Jean Vanier is the founder of l’Arche communities. These communities are simple houses in which people with mental handicaps and people without them live together as a family. The focus is not on “normal” people caring for the “abnormal,” but on creating a home, a community, a family in which people who are handicapped and people who aren’t live together. A part of it is that those who are more physically or intellectually abled are able to serve those who are handicapped in those areas, but a part of it is also that those who are physically or intellectually handicapped are able to reveal to those who aren’t the simplicity of loving someone and being loved in return, of wearing your heart on your sleeve and revealing your darkest and most broken parts, and especially of not judging a person by their abilities but rather looking at their heart.

While reading several books and articles tonight written by or about Jean Vanier I have been brought to tears again and again. This man has truly seen people in their most broken state and has understood the need for healing in the context of long-lasting relationships built on mutual trust and surrendering of oneself. My tears have come in parts when he touched on wounds in me that have yet to be healed, as well as desires in me that have yet to be filled, or even known very well. After four hours of being immersed in Vanier and l’Arche I am a messy mixture of exhaustion, joy, and a much deeper hunger for loving and being loved than I was aware of today.

Vanier talks about the deep hurts felt by people who are handicapped. The abandonment and rejection they have each experienced is immense and profound. Their brokenness is not in their bodies or minds but in their hearts. They have been left by parents, siblings, caretakers, friends etc. They have felt the weight of their own neediness and live in fear that it is too much for anyone to handle, that they are too much for anyone to truly love. They are unable, however, to hide this because they do not have the social awareness or ability to compartmentalize their emotional experiences from their bodies. Some call this a disability, tonight I long for that disability, however. Too much is hidden beneath set faces, social graces and the wall put up between what I feel and what I do or say. I wonder if I were able to say all that I wanted to say if I would find life more livable, or relationships truer, deeper and easier to work out? Are the social graces I have been taught more of a disability than the way people with handicaps often operate?

I hunger for a people I can share meals with. Where the intimacy of being around a table sharing food together is a daily occurrence. I hunger for a people who can know my daily life and I theirs, where we share our daily lives with one another. I yearn for a people to be known in, known for me with all my beauty and gifting and flaws and brokenness, where I will be loved for all these parts of myself. I long for a people where I don’t have to be parts of a self, where I can be whole and wholly loved and accepted. I yearn to know I am accepted. I even yearn for the mess of a community where people mess up and annoy each other, where you do have to work through the hardest things in life together and you can rest knowing you won’t be abandoned in the midst of the mess, that love and acceptance and care will continue in the midst of the mess. Is there such a place? Are there such people? That is the more correct question. If there are than how on earth do I find them?

I could probably write another 20 pages tonight on all I have reflected on in the last four hours. Alas, I am bound by time and an exhausted body tonight.

For your information, here are the books I read or skimmed about/by Jean Vanier.

By Jean Vanier: “From Brokenness to Community” “The Church and Disabled Persons” “Befriending the Stanger” and “Wilderness: Essays in Honour of Frances Young.”

About Jean Vanier: “Messy Love” By Micheal W. Higgins, and “The Miracle, The Message, the Story: Jean Vanier and l’Arche” by Kathryn Spink.

Also, l’Arches website: l'Arche USA

May Shalom visit your house tonight.
~Joy

Remembering my former life

Taking three theology classes is one of the best, and one of the worst, ideas I had about this quarter. The reasons for both are the same: my mind gets blown with new ways of thinking every class period. That means I have a mind-blowing experience 9 times a week: awesome and exhausting all at the same time.

Yesterday was an exceptionally exciting day as I learned a whole new vision of freedom and also a very different way to interpret the book of Hosea. I may write another blog to explain each of those, but what is more important than these radical new ideas, is the way I reacted to them.

I was excited and fully engaged. I could have spent hours just discussing these theories and ideas and just attempting to grasp their multi-faceted implications. I wanted, and needed, to digest them in the company of other students and professors because they were huge ideas that require long and thorough digestion. I was really excited to spend at least a class period on each of these, but was hoping we could spend a whole week of class on them. Can you see how excited I was? I was literally bouncing in my chair and furiously writing down almost everything the professor was saying. It was awesome.

The problem: as far as I could tell, no one else was half as interested as I was. I realized how apathetic students are towards learning. They are in the class to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school and into the world of fighting to make money. Maybe that is simplifying the life of an American college student a little too much, but then I wonder if it isn’t. Feel free to give me feedback, fellow students.

In my Hosea class the problem was also that no one, not even me, was willing to speak up and ask to go more in depth with this new, radical way to interpret Hosea. I am not sure anyone else thought it was possible, but I wanted to give them all the benefit of the doubt. Maybe others were just as excited as I was, they just felt outnumbered by the people who weren’t, or by our professor who did not give it much credence. Whatever the case, I was downright angry when he glossed over it, dismissing it as impossible, way too radical. Maybe he is right, but maybe he isn’t.

Most of my college life I have been an apathetic student, even in my last year of high school I was only doing the work to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school. Senior year we call it senioritis, but when I got to freshman year at college my senioritis was still with me, and it didn’t ever leave. Until I left and came back for my senior year, that is.

I love learning. I love discussing new ideas and challenging old thoughts with new, maybe impossible, thoughts. This quarter I love my classes not because they are easy or I can bullshit them, but because they challenge me to work harder, think deeper and go beyond the box of my former education. In Uganda this was encouraged and given lots of room to grow. Grades slowly faded in their importance and learning became the important thing; at least with some classes. Now, however, it is a fight for the grade, for the degree, for the job. It is all a fight. I don’t want to fight, I want to learn deeply and share that experience with other people. This is a problem when others do not share that desire. It’s hard to learn in a community when I am the only one in the community.

Though overall I felt discouraged by the end of the day, I am encouraged to catch a glimpse of the learner within me. To see this yearning for understanding, for learning beyond what gets me a decent grade, is beautiful, a side of myself I have not known within school since I was much younger. Now that I see it, however, I can see it was there all along. These past years of hating school I was still yearning to grow and learn and understand. That part of me was overwhelmed with having to grow and understand what the hell just happened in my family and in my life. Now that I have space and have experienced much healing I find learning within school is not only fun, but also it feeds my spirit and my brain!

How funny God is, that he took me far away from school, into a whole different mindset, in order to teach me how much I love school.

Shalom to you all!

Father, Can You Hear Me?

Sometimes my heart feels like it is full of all the pain my family feels. My one little heart seems to feel what everyone feels. Being blessed with the gift of empathy sometimes feels like a curse.
My family have gotten a backseat in this blog over the past several months. My life was overwhelmed with camp and California and going back to school

Yesterday, my littlest sister called me in tears. It took a few minutes of texting (cause first I got her tearful message) before I realized how much of an emergency was happening. She and the other two young siblings were going to work for my dad, helping him to move into a house he bought with the same woman he had an affair with. They are, obviously, still in an intimate relationship with each other. Well, this woman was also helping him to move on that day. No one my family wants to hang out with her. Most of us don’t even want to hang out with our dad. Kate was in tears because she was trapped, she had no warning of this. Protective older sister instincts took over and I had the urge to jump and in car and drive the 2.5 hours to pick her up. Instead I texted my mom that my dad was being a cuss word and her kids needed help. This worked better, cause my mom was closer.

I didn’t get much chance to process my feelings for myself about it all yesterday. I was fuming for the sake of my sisters; furious that my dad would decide such an idea was a good one. Those were feelings for them, for their situation. They were helpful because they propelled me into action, into helping my sister see she was worth rescuing, that her feelings are deeply important and she is worth protecting. I was so glad to be able to demonstrate that worth to her and to tell her in my actions how precious she is and that she should not be treated any other way.

This morning my feelings were for me. I was driving for church and found myself listening to my favorite cussing song, “Rootless Tree” by Damien Rice. The chorus is a satisfying string of F-words I can scream from the car. I was pissed and sad and outraged and would have liked to scream the F-word at him.

My dad is moving in with this woman and is either blind or choosing to ignore his children’s feelings. I guess he never asked us. Did he even think to? I guess I won’t speculate and project feelings or perceptions of mine onto him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Whatever the case, I feel like he is pushing himself away from us. My heart aches for my siblings, for my mom, and for me. It hurts like hell. It really does feel like I am losing him all over again because it feels like he is creating a new family for himself. I feel such sorrow for my younger siblings because they will have to navigate something so painful and difficult as they work to keep their dad in their life, but cannot handle having his lover in their life. That should not be asked of them. Do the sorrows of divorce ever end?

I keep listening to a song called Sorrow. It’s originally a Bad Religion song, but Jon Foreman did a cover of it that sits much deeper in my heart. The chorus says:

“There will be sorrow,
there will be sorrow,
There will be sorrow no more.”

I yearn for the day when there will be sorrow no more. When the horrors and pains of divorce will at last fade away. Today in church, however, the pastor suggested reconciliation might yet continue into heaven. Whatever we don’t reconcile here we may be asked to reconcile there. Before I went to the table with all my brothers and sisters in that church to receive communion I had to breath deeply and ask myself if I could receive communion with my dad next to me, or even with his lover serving it to me. If there was no willingness for that to happen I wasn’t sure I should take communion. Somewhere in me there was willingness, even hope, that one day we could move beyond the pain and sorrow into a communion with each other. I just hope that day isn’t today.

Maybe there will be no more sorrow because we will at least be able to reconcile with all the peoples of the earth. Maybe we will be able to wipe our souls clean of all the wrongs done to it, and all the shame for the wrongs we have done to others. I hope this is so.

Shalom to you all.

(also, here is the link to "Sorrow" sung by Jon Foreman. It's worth a listen.)

Week One

Friends,

A whole week of school has happened and I didn’t die! I didn’t really think I would, but at the same time I wondered if I might explode or something.

What has this week been? Like nothing I expected. When my plane landed in Seattle last Tuesday I had tears running down my face. Not from fear or dread or sorrow, no, these were tears of excitement and joy. After writing my last blog on that same airplane I was overwhelmed with the realization that I get a second chance at being a student, a second chance to love learning at an institution. The grace and mercy of this second chance brought me to tears and a new excitement about it rushed through my veins as my heart beat a little faster.

The excitement in many ways has lasted throughout the week. I love studying. I don’t know how that happened, but I get excited for the hours of studying I get to do every day. I also get excited to go to classes. For those who have followed my life you know this is beyond me. Last year ended with classes being a place of panic and fear. How did I get to this point? I guess I don’t really know. God has way bigger plans than I could have imagined, and also smaller. I had no idea my adventure to California was actually meant to lead me back to school. I had no idea God wanted to redeem school and my love of learning. I wonder what else I have no idea about.

I have also been living with men. Sometimes this is quite terrifying to me, but I also trust there is purpose in this so I am able to be patient within the tension of it. I don’t know yet how to be fully myself, fully comfortable at my home and I don’t know how to be bold in saying what needs to be different, but I know when one sit’s in tension growth inevitably happens.

In the midst if all this growth and excitement and joy I am also apprehensive and hesitant to really relax into it because for so long school has been hard and disaster has struck almost every quarter in some way or another. I find I don’t really know how to do school without impending doom. In some ways I miss it, which is really odd. The danger and excitement of having to just survive is thrilling even as it sucks the life out of me. Doing school when I can take the time to study, when I can sit through classes and just enjoy learning, when my life is actually stable feels abnormal. It’s not that I want disaster to strike, but I am confused by the lack of it and not sure how to just be in the stability right now.

That’s all for now, my friends. I am going to try and post weekly now so if I haven’t posted in a while feel free to get on my case about it.

Peace be in your weeks!

Hindsight is Awesome

I wrote this post on Tuesday on a flight between Dallas, TX and Seattle WA.

I’m on my way back to Seattle. School started today, but I was in Kansas with my Uganda friends. One week full of laughter and outrageous stories, deep conversations and deep people. It was a week of challenge, but also one so full of love and care. The love and care of these friends is like nothing I have ever experienced, except for the love of God. It definitely was not what I expected it to be. Then again, I am not sure what I expected it to be.
Having people digging into some of the hardest stories of the past year and having those same people share their own struggles and heartaches was beautiful, but not easy; it was good. I do not even have the words to reflect on the week yet, I think the experiences are too close.
What I do want to reflect on is going back to school. Today I was given some glorious insight into it all. The conclusion: God had a purpose in everything that happened the last 6 months.
I saw that last spring, when I was contemplating dropping out, I had grown apathetic towards learning and that apathy was quickly becoming bitterness. I could have pushed through school and finished by the end of this year, but it would have been with a hard and angry heart. I think God saw this and knew I needed rescue. He rescued me; he gave me the freedom to walk away and then invited me on an adventure. I am an adventure junkie, so of course I accepted the invitation. In the last 6 months I have gotten to live in different places near the ocean, to experience different communities and families, to be welcomed into a different family and loved so completely by them. I also studied. I ate up books by well known theologians like Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Tolkien and Eugene Peterson. I got to study at my own pace and decide what it was I wanted to get out of these books. Friends, I loved it. Today my friend reminded me of just how much I love to learn and study. I even wrote papers about what I read! God must have seen my heart turning hard and bitter and also known how much I love to learn and study, and he knew he had to do an intervention. He loves me too much to allow my heart to be hardened towards something I love. It took six months, but I got a glimpse of the journey today and received a new perspective of renewal and a second chance to really enjoy learning in the community of SPU.
I don’t think I could have received this joyous gift unless I had spent a week debriefing the hard stuff and allowing my IMME friends to love me. Without the background of love and a supportive community I think I would have hated admitting that I love learning so much and that I might be getting excited about school tomorrow.
This week I didn’t feel pressured to sound ok with what happened in San Diego. It was ok to be upset, to question God and his intentions, to wonder if hope was real and if happiness was possible. It was ok to sit in those hard questions and have no answers, because none of us had any. We were all wondering the same things; the last year has been hard for all of us. Knowing it wasn’t just me who asked these questions and doubts was healing and freeing. It gave me the freedom to look closer and listen to what they all had to say with an open heart. It allowed me to really hear and understand my friend today.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Sitting in classes again, reading over syllabi, knowing I will somehow accomplish every assignment listed; will I be panicked again? Will I remain excited to learn? Will my heart be flooded with apathy and bitterness? Somehow, I have hope within me. Maybe I will panic, maybe I will feel overwhelmed and terrified of all I have to do. My hope isn’t in me. My hope is in God. Today I got a hindsight view of the deep love he has for me and the creative ways he cares for my heart and heals my soul. I guess I am raising an Ebenezer tonight and proclaiming hope and love I cannot understand and choosing to trust God because till now he has cared for me, even when it didn’t look like he was.

Hope is Hard

Today I read a short passage from Henri Nouwen’s book, “Finding My Way Home.” I cannot do it justice in summary, so I will just write it out.

“I have found it very important to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. When I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.
“To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God mold us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear.

I also read John 16. This is a section of the gospel where Jesus is speaking frankly with his disciples regarding what is about to happen to him and to them. He says, “You will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” (John 16:20) He also says, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Hope is not something I grasp easily. Though I am often optimistic, cheerful and confident I easily turn to hopelessness. When I realized I had to leave San Diego all the hope I had came crashing down. It wasn’t hope in San Diego; it was hope that God has good plans for me. It seems like I would have learned by now good doesn’t mean easy and it certainly doesn’t mean I will get what I expect. Early on in the summer I wrote a blog talking about good not meaning easy. I didn’t expect San Diego to be easy, but I did expect it to work out and I expected God to have a plan for a job and a place to live and a people to love. When none of those expectations turned out to be true I felt like God had abandoned me and I felt like he never had a good plan for me in the first place. I also felt like Samwise Gamgee at the end of the Two Towers movie, “How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?” All the bad that has happened, all the hard stuff I have been through over the past several years was piled up in front of me and I could not see how anything could ever be good in the face of all the hard and bad I have suffered. I could not see hope at all.

This is still true, my friends. I still do not see hope. I would like to lie on the floor and kick and scream like a two year old having a tantrum because I am so frustrated at how life is going right now. When I read John 16:20 I felt like most people are rejoicing that I am going back to school. I often get responses of hope that I am choosing wisely and that finally I will stop wandering and drifting around the world. My soul, however, is in mourning. As hard as drifting and wandering is I find staying in the same place much harder. Surrendering myself back to school feels very much like death. I wish people would stop rejoicing over the choice I made and stop trying to convince me it was a good choice.

The Henri Nouwen passage reminded me that my future is not really mine, but it is God’s. It reminded me of the calling to surrender my whole life to him. Though I know I was following God to San Diego I see now that I filled it with my expectations and dreams and plans. God had asked me not to plan anything and to just go but I still planned, I couldn’t seem to help it. This might have been easier if I could have resisted the need to plan.

Giving up control, surrendering myself to wherever God leads me and choosing to hope that he does have good plans for me even when it appears that he doesn’t is one of the most frustrating things I have attempted. Right now I am doing it with my heart full of frustration and anger and confusion, yet I am still doing it, I think. God commands my future no matter what I do, it seems. I know it would be better to follow him with a cheerful and thankful heart and to rejoice in his provision, I just don’t the will in me to do that today. So I grumpily move towards his leading. Today I realize God didn’t ever say life would get easier or smoother or safer, instead he said our pain would become joy and though we suffer trials and tribulations in the world he had already overcome the world. Life won’t be easy, but it will be painful. I know God is able to turn that pain into joy but right now I am pissed that I cannot expect anything easy to come my way. Seems like a shitty deal to me.

One Year Ago

I was going through some writing I have done over the past year and I found this excerpt from my journal from one year ago. I wrote it during a day of fasting and silence on our debrief retreat.

12/13/09

Debrief, from your journal.

“Out of here! Out of here! Leave this place!

Don’t look back. Don’t contaminate yourselves with plunder.

Just leave, but leave clean. Purify yourselves

In the process of worship, carrying the holy vessels of God.

But you don’t have to be in a hurry.

You’re not running from anybody!

God is leading you out of here,

And the God of Israel is also your rear guard.”

Isaiah 52:11-12 (Message)

It is time to leave. It is time. I cannot stay here because it is time to leave. There is a time for everything. And now it is time to go. There is no use trying to hold on so tight to what is over. This semester is over. And with that the community I have been living in. and with that the friendships I have. Not over in the sense that I will never see or talk to them again. But now they must change. My friendship with BJ must change. We live in different states and cities and have very different lives. What it was, was good. So much healing of my heart happened as his brotherly care was lavished on me. I love his friendship and it has done for much in me.

But now that chapter is closing. But this is a good story, so the end of one good chapter means the beginning of another. And, as God and I are writing this book together, no chapter will be a waste. Each is full of beauty and brokenness and life and death, giving, taking, remaining, learning and loving.

This retreat, debrief weekend, is a process of worship. In that process I am being purified. I have taken on a slightly different appearance as my Maker is continually creating me. But the dust and the residue from the creation process, the particles of dirt that harden and blemish the sculpture, must be wiped off, blown away, washed off in a bath.

Worship is the holy bath and wind that remove what is not needed. As I worship my Maker I am purified for the journey home.

But there is no need to rush. I am not fleeing from danger. This is a beautiful process to be savored; chewed slowly and enjoyed fully. God, my Pappa, is leading me out and he has a slow pace. I can stop and rest here a while as I am purified. For my Pappa also comes behind, dusting off the picture to make the images clearer, and holding forces at bay that would seek to clutter the memories and harm the beauty that has been created. Pappa is watching out for me so I can rest here and take it slow, relishing this time even as it slips from me. Every passing moment brings me close to an inevitable departure. And I cannot control it, I have no mastery over the fourth dimension. But there is a time to let go, and this is it. This is the time. It is a horribly beautiful gift we have. We can let it go and move to the next phase of life.

“‘Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t, because they were holding onto something.’ ‘What are we holding onto, Sam?’ ‘That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.’”

I can hold onto my Pappa. He does let me hold his hand through life. I cannot hold into time, or these people, or anything except my Pappa. There is good in this world and it’s worth fighting for. But it cannot be fought for if I have both hands desperately clinging to a time they cannot hold. It can only be fought for by releasing what I cannot hold and grasping the hand that slowly leads me forward.~

A year later I am not sure I have let it go. How can four months have such a huge impact on a person? The impact is so huge that a year later I am still trying to figure out what happened and what I should do now. Everything has changed and then it changed again. It seems so simple in the words I wrote back then; just let go and follow God to the next chapter. I thought I did, but maybe it was a continuation of that chapter. I found myself thinking, a couple days ago, that maybe if I could go back to Uganda I would understand the past year a whole lot better and maybe I would even know what to do next. It feels like Uganda started it all, but I don't know what it is. Maybe in Uganda I can find it and understand it enough to know where I am going now. As I write that, however, I know I probably won't find it in Uganda. My task was to move forward. Have I done that? It doesn't really feel like it, especially as I prepare to go back to school in a couple weeks. It feels like I went in a circle. But hey, that's African time so maybe it was progress in a backwards sort of way?

I know you all were probably wanting more of an update on my life since I left San Diego. I tried to write one a couple of times today and I couldn't really begin to say how my life is right now. Instead I wrote about Uganda and what happened a year ago. Obviously I made it safely back to Yakima, WA. I will be returning to school the first week of January. Until then I am at my mom's house - home is what I call it, actually. I am grieving and it isn't pretty, therefore I didn't feel like I could post anything readable cause there were way to many F-words. Maybe in a year I will be able to look back at this time and tell people about it, but I still can't do that very well with Uganda so don't hold your breath.

Blessings, my friends.

When Africa Comes to Mind

Sometimes I get visions of Africa stuck in my brain. Tonight I saw a movie, The Last Three Days. A woman gets her face smashed with a fire extinguisher. It isn’t as gruesome as it sounds, at least it didn’t seem that way. As we drove home from the theatre, however, I couldn’t get pictures of Rwanda out of my head, specifically the church we visited where 10,000 people were slaughtered over three days. Our guide through that afternoon was a survivor of that event and he walked us through exactly what had happened those three days. My brain made pictures out of his words and I could see the church floor flooded with blood and bodies; broken, scattered bodies. That vision is stuck in my brain tonight.

All day I have been thinking about Africa. When I returned from my semester I thought I would never return, that I would never want to return. I left knowing living in Africa was not something I was made to do. I left knowing I was made for a quiet life back in the states: get married, raise kids, live on a farm in peace and quiet.

I seem to be made for bigger things, however. Not that being a wife and mother and running a farm is small, not by a long shot. What I mean is that I have an insatiable desire for adventure and risk. When I talk with God about where my life is going and what we are doing I tend to ask him where the next adventure is that he wants to take me on.

When I look at the pattern on my life I also see an astounding ability to step out in faith even when the risk great. In 4th grade I shared the gospel with my friend on a school bus; we prayed the prayer hastily, just before the bus got to her stop. In 7th grade I felt God calling me go to public school. My parents said no, but in 8th grade I felt the calling again. I was scared out of my mind cause I was such a shy kid, or I thought I was. I still did it, and I managed to make good friends and take even more risks in attempting to share the love of God with them. I messed up so many times doing it and hurt some of the deeply. I see, though, that I was doing what I felt God asking me to do.

I am bold in relationships with friends, perhaps too bold at times. If I feel strongly they need to hear something I will say it. Sometimes I don’t realize the risk of what I said until afterwards, when they are upset or shaken. I dropped out of school because I felt God give me the freedom to do it, and then I moved to San Diego because I heard God tell me that’s where he wanted me to go. Then, I didn’t plan a thing, or tried not to, because I felt like God didn’t want me to. All of these are bold moves, risky moves, foolish moves. All of these took a great deal of faith and trust and that same insatiable need for adventure. I fell hard when it didn’t work out as I thought it would and I didn’t want to ever follow God on an adventure again.

Today I thought about Africa; I thought about going there again, living there, even. I couldn’t help but desire another chance at something dangerous, risky, full of adventure and requiring of great faith and trust and hope. Yes, all of these require hope. I laughed at myself, wondering if I have a learning disability or something. Didn’t I just tell God last week I was done following him on these crazy adventures? Africa nearly killed me and San Diego broke my heart, yet I am already dreaming of the next big thing I get to do.

Friends, I don’t know if I am made for a quiet life on a farm in the country. I wish I were. I wish I could be content with a life of quiet, settled into a place and people, content to stay and allow people to find adventure at my house with goats and chickens and flowers. I wish I could avoid a life that took so much risk and so much trust I feel I may break at the strain. Look at what my life has been so far, though. Have I ever sought a quiet life? Have I ever been content to stay in one place for more than a couple months? Have I ever been able to tell God no when he opens a door or pulls my heartstrings towards an adventure?

In the movie Little Women the character Marmee tells her daughter, Jo, “You have so many extraordinary talents. How could you expect to lead a normal life?” How can I expect to lead a quiet, settled life when I rather crave unsettledness?

That life feels so scary, though. I fear loneliness and never having a place to belong. I fear if I surrendered to that life I would always be a wanderer and I would never know where I lived or whom I belonged with. I also desire deep roots and community I can count on. Would I be giving up on ever finding that by allowing my desire, and my talent, for going on risky adventures to take more of a lead?

I have found, however, that I grow deep roots so fast. It only took four months in Uganda to develop deep roots with those friends. I have friends all over the country from so many experiences that I somehow maintain contact with. Does one have to remain in one place in order to grow deep roots?

I still don’t know. I don’t know where I am going or what I am doing, except I leave next week to drive back to Seattle and to finish my college degree, the one I made up. Today my mom told me to stop planning, cause I was trying to plan my next summer already (including a possible trip to Uganda). She said I need to just give it a rest and let myself be settled for a moment before taking off again! I’m really bad at that. A few hours after talking with her I was looking at the Peace Corp website. Will I ever learn?

What Happened: Bring Joy Home

Hello Friends,

Those who make a habit of stalking me on Facebook already know, but for those who don’t, and those who do, I thought I would actually explain what happened as best as I can.

It has been a long week. It’s been a long 6 weeks, actually. Last week I had to face the hard question of what to do if nothing worked out down here. This week I answered that question.

I thought I was following God. I still think I was following God, actually. For whatever reason God brought to San Diego for just a short time, and that time is over. However, my heart feels quite broken about it all. God kept telling me not to plan, yet I see now I cannot help but plan, and I had so many plans for my life in San Diego. One by one those dreams died before my eyes. Things I thought were meant for me, places I thought I was supposed to go, people I thought God had given me to be with… all have been taken from me, or never given in the first place. I guess I cannot help but believe God’s hand is still in all of this and that he is working for my good, it just hurts like hell to have dreamed and hoped so much only to have those dreams and hopes killed as I stood on them. Maybe my hope should not be in good things, but in God?

I had to make fast decisions. I wanted to stay here, but I cannot make it work; the way is shut. Even as that door was slammed in my face, however, the door to go back to school in Seattle was flung wide open, though I barely tapped on it. The only door to walk through now is SPU, a college degree, living in Seattle. All the things I desired to be free of I am walking back into. For whatever reason, I am sure I do not understand it, school is where I have to be, and Seattle is where I have to do that. It’s too late to get in anywhere else, plus my degree only exists at SPU (that’s what I get for making it up).

I know I am returning a little wiser and a lot more patient, also quite humbled that the place I was s determined to leave is now where I am willingly going; pride could not follow me down that path. What else will come of this change in direction? I don’t know, and I don’t understand any of what has just happened to me. Really, I just don’t understand the past year of my life.

On a more practical note: I cannot actually get myself home cause I am out of money. It’s only $200-ish to get home in Jose, my van, so if you feel so inclined to send me $5 to pay for 1.5 gallons of gas (that gets me almost 40 miles!) I would so appreciate it. If just 40 people send me $5 I can make it home! You have two options for ways to donate, too! You can mail some money to this address:

Joy McCracken
231 Tibbling Rd
Selah, WA 98942

My mom will get the money to me from there.

OR

You can donate through Paypal!

Seriously doesn't get easier... and I am amazed at my technological abilities on that one.

Note: I am not sure if the donate button worked... you can also go to your own paypal account and select the send money option (or something like that) and simply enter my e-mail address (mccraj@spu.edu) and my name (Joy McCracken).

I’ll keep you all updated on the next phase of my life: SPU Round 2

Love,
Joy

One Month

I have been in San Diego a whole month now. When I was younger, like a month ago, one month seemed such a long time. So much can happen within a month. My whole life could be changed in one month. When first got here one month seemed like when I would finally find life settled again. I figured I would have a job, have some idea of their area I would live in and therefore be able to start building friendships and community, and that I would be able to support myself and not have to depend on other people for EVERYHING!

One month has passed. I am jobless, living even more on the graciousness of others, have no idea where to build community or friendships, and have no money. One month wasn’t a magical number. One month was just a series of weeks spent searching for jobs and aching for a place to call my own home.

I hit a wall yesterday. I know, I seem to hit a wall at least once a week. I guess this one looked much like the others, too. I asked God, again, what the Hell I am doing here, where the Hell he is, and if he really has any sort of plan for good things like he told me. I cried alone, cried to Deanna, cried to my mom, cried before I fell asleep. All day I was trying to figure out what plan B was. Then I realized, I didn’t have a plan B. I felt like God said don’t plan anything, so I didn’t, I just followed. Now I am realizing that I risked all I had, which wasn’t much compared to other people, for me it was all I had. I risked all the money I had and any sort of plan for myself I had had. I put everything on the line because my spirit heard God’s voice say, “San Diego.”

I don’t think I heard wrong. I don’t think God has left me here. I don’t think he forgot about me nor the good things he has for me. I just don’t know where he is or what he is doing. I don’t understand what the point is anymore.

Yesterday I had to ask myself the hard question. When do I have to call it quits, or at least time for a retreat? At some point I have to try something else, because I can’t continue like this for that much longer. I am not ready to call it quits today, though a part of me would love to be able to do that. Calling it quits doesn’t help much, though, because I no matter where I go I have the same problem.

Yesterday my mom told me she would pay for me to come home if I needed to. She also told me not to come home like a dog with my tail stuck between my legs. She said I have nothing to be ashamed of.

I feel ashamed though. I feel like everyone told me it wouldn’t work out, or that the job market was crappy and it would be really hard to find a job. This isn’t entirely true because I had lots of people encourage me and tell me to go for it. I think it is my own self telling me, “I told you so!” The ashamed part of me wants nothing to do with the brave and maybe foolish side, cause the ashamed part is super prideful.

I don’t need to feel ashamed about trying this, though. If I have to go home for a while and regroup that isn’t failing, right? I was being obedient to the Lord, giving him my whole life and doing my best to live it in surrender.

I have no neat conclusions, no fantastic revelations about the kind caring of God. I know he loves me, he cares deeply for me, he is kind and full of gentleness and that he loves my brave and willingly foolish spirit. I just don’t understand why it seems he has left me.

Help

Is not found in me, or in you, or in any magical remedy or spell or concoction. It is found in God. I forgot that.

Why did I leave school? Why did I say God could send me anywhere? What on earth was the original point? Obviously it wasn't farming.

When I was first back from Africa, after I had realized I was not suited to love African's very well, I asked God who I was suited to love. Who did he make me to love? My purpose was not in another country as I first thought, nor was it in school. I asked God to send me to the people he created me to love. He has given me a unique set of traits and gifts and weaknesses in order to bring him glory and to love him and to love a unique part of his creation. If that is the case, if I was sent here to love people, than why am I fighting so hard for my own security and success? Why am I so worried about making my life how I want it when that isn't what this is about?

My life will never be what I desire it to be until I am in the arms of my Lord, and until then what better way to spend my life than helping other people know what it is to be in the arms of God?

Today it was the love of Deanna that filled me just enough to be able to see the bigger picture. I still need love in this place, I still need people to care about how I am doing aside from jobs and housing. With the little bit I received today I could breathe again and see that I am fighting way to hard for this. I am trying way to hard to make this about what I want and what I need. Those are things God didn't ask me to carry, yet I have ripped them from his hands and insisted he wasn't doing a good enough job.

So what if I don't get a job or a place to live in the next month? That isn't the point. The point is love. That is the whole point of life, big picture and small picture. If all I learn from this is how to let God freaking love me no matter what the road looks like (even if it looks like there isn't a road) then it was worth it. Right?

Yesterday and today I think I lost it because I felt left in the lurch and as if no one loved me, not in a way that I wanted at least. I guess love doesn't always look how I want it to look. Sometimes it looks much different. The point isn't to get the love I want, it is to be open enough to receive all the love that is given to me. I am here for the continued romance between my Lord and I. I am also here because there are people all over this city God has created me with the special ability to love in a special way.

So fuck job searching. Obviously I will have to do some of that still, but that should not be all I do right now. My purpose is not job searching and making money, my purpose is love.

What It Means To Survive

After my freak out last weekend I have been better. I kicked my butt into gear and applied to nearly 40 jobs in about 4 days. My brain hurts just thinking about that: so many applications and hope going out with each one. I held it together for a while. Tonight I lost it again.

I guess reality is that I will lose it often. I think I did a really brave thing. I do those often, it seems, and I always wonder what has made me so brave and what drives me to make such big decisions and moves.

Being brave is usually praised and admired and celebrated. I am learning that bravery is a terrifying thing, though, and it gets me into situations I am not crazy about. Like being in San Diego searching frantically for a job and hoping I will be able to come up with enough money to cover my bills.

How do I survive this? How do I make it through such a huge leap when I cannot see if there is a bottom to land on?

Tonight I got frustrated and angry again. Not as much as I was last weekend, at least not yet. I realized that I had worked my butt off this week trying to find a job. Something may work out soon, or maybe nothing will work out. I hate knowing that I put in a whole week of nothing but job hunting and I may not get anything back from it.

Tonight I had no energy or desire to be with God. Every night since I was 12 I have spent time with the Lord. Well, most nights. On a night when I skip it I know there is something wrong. Tonight I avoided Him by talking with mom for an hour and then watching Grey’s Anatomy. Why? He gives me peace beyond understanding, joy that doesn’t depend on circumstances, and confidence that doesn’t make sense. Why avoid that?

I want to understand, I want to see why I have peace and I want material and monetary comforts. I am tired of living on faith and prayer tonight. I realized tonight that nothing I do makes things happen. Last week I waited, this week I made finding a job my full-time job. There haven’t been results from either of those strategies. There is nothing I can do to make this process easier, or faster, or even purposeful. Everything rests on God. He’s the one who came up with this crazy idea anyways, right? Tonight I hate that. I hate that I have no control. My whole life has been put into God’s hands and I wish so much I could take it back. I wish I could stop being brave and full of faith and confidence in God. I wish I could have chosen any one of the safe options presented to me over the spring and summer. They look so tempting from this vantage point.

I think I am frustrated with God and feel that there isn’t anything I can do to change anything. When he pleases a job will come my way. I know he is caring for me so well and I do not fear what will happen before then, not too much at least. I am just tired and bored and lonely. I long for something to do and people to do it with. I long for my life down here to really begin.

I keep hoping there is a cheat sheet or a short cut to take in this season. Maybe if I learn whatever lesson really quickly we can move on to the next part even faster. So I try and come up with lessons I should be learning: don’t listen to anyone but God, work really hard and God will meet you halfway, trust God even when you are upset and scared and it looks like he has abandoned you… what more do I need to learn?

This isn’t a strategy game; this is life with God and with humans and I just have to live it. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned, maybe there are many, or maybe this is just how it works. I really have no idea anymore. I do not know what I can do to make anything happen, and I do not know what the heck God is doing with me on this adventure. I don’t know anything. I have no power. I am completely dependant on God for everything and there are no tricks I can play on him to manipulate him into giving it to me early. So I don’t want to talk to him tonight. I don’t want to be with the God of the Universe even when I know he wants to be with me. I can control that one thing, it seems, and I am choosing to avoid him.

Truth is I don’t know how to survive this. I don’t know what my part is or how to make the process happen.

Being brave. Celebrate it, but don’t be naïve about its consequences. There is nothing easy about it nor does it come without sacrifice. I just hope there are also beautiful things on the horizon and that it is not far off.

Now What?

After waiting for a while the farm got back to me and wanted me to come for a visit. I leapt at the opportunity and my hopes soared high as I though, “This could be it!” I quickly made arrangements to spend a day and a night with them and then off I went in Jose towards the mountains east of San Diego, my heart all a flutter with excitement and hope and amazement at the adventure I am on.

When I got there it was beautiful; a secluded little town in the cracks of huge hills, the air smelling crisp and clean and fresh. The farm was small, the people welcoming and easy to talk with. It really felt perfect, until it didn’t. While it was perfect it was also not a place I could see myself living. The farm would be great; the people would be not so great. They are nice and kind, but they are who I would be with all the time, working and living and sleeping in all the same places. I sort of wish I could be ok with it, but I can’t. They aren’t people I would want to be my whole community. My friend Deanna helped me see that I need to be able to tell people my heart and talk about what God is doing in me all the time, and I don’t think I could with these people.

Crash. Explosion. Smoke and flames and ruins all around me. That’s what my heart felt as I realized I couldn’t do it. So much hope and excitement very suddenly smashed. I feel stupid you guys. I feel like I should be more flexible, or I should be able to make it work, or I should never have hoped so much in something that wasn’t guaranteed. Yesterday I got so made at God that I said the F-word to him. What the Hell is he doing with me anyways? How much more does he expect from me? Have I not already given Him all I have and more?

I so wanted to live away in the mountains and dig in the dirt and watch food grow out of the ground from a seed I stuck in there with my thumb. I wanted to never have to worry about what time it was or if I was being successful. I wanted the dreams I had as a girl to come true. The dreams of farming and loving people and working hard and being at peace with that… I wanted so badly to see them come to pass now, while I am so young, before I get stuck in a 9-5 job I don’t care about.

I know I said so many months ago that this journey would not be easy. Could it be my heart missed that memo? I want it to be easy. I wanted to arrive in San Diego and find a great job and place to live right away. I wanted to skip all this worry and stress and frantic job-hunting. I thought God would have it figured out for me. Now I feel stupid for having thought that.

I feel stupid and I feel foolish. Even in this period of waiting I applied to so many jobs and did my best to listen for the voice of God, but either I am deaf or He is silent. I keep thinking there is just one move I have to make, like in chess or any other strategy game, and if I make that move just right at just the right time I will magically win the game and own the whole board! I guess life isn’t a game, well, it sort of is, but I am not playing life, I am living it and it is hard. Why should I have expected anything different? It has never been easy, only different forms of hard. I just wish I could yell, “Uncle!” and God would run to my rescue and show me the right moves to make. Or even just tell me what I am doing is all I need to do. Today I feel like I should be doing a hundred other things in order to make this work, yet I have no idea what those hundred things would be.

This is my heart today, friends: messy, angry, fearful, sad, lost and very confused.

Waiting... again

I think I am due for an update. I apologize that it has taken me this long.

I arrived in San Diego almost a week ago. I rolled into town on Tuesday after a week of journeying down the west coast. I saw many good friends, lots of fields and mountains and pavement, figured out I should be required to drive with a speedometer (mine has been broken since august), cried a lot, laughed a lot, and tried to take in every moment. Now I am here.

Here. The place I have been talking about moving to for months, or maybe years. I had plans in my head on the drive down of looking for jobs, churches, a community to join, a home to make my own etc. I had plans. What have learned thus far, however? God told me to stop planning. Over and over he tells me to stop planning, to let go of plans and surrender to his care. Over and over I make plans, though.

When I got to LA I found two paths I would love to take: a farm to work at and a camp to cook at. It isn’t possible to do both. It seemed like God said, “Take action!” So I did. One week later I have heard nothing back. When I got to San Diego I asked God, “What do I do now?” “Wait,” he said. Seriously?

Wait. Again. At this point I feel all I do is wait. I feel antsy and I long for something to come that will make me feel I succeeded. I long for people to think I am making good choices and doing my part to take care of myself. It seems this isn’t God’s desire. He said to wait. In my waiting he has provided for me so well. When I got to San Diego I had less than $50 to my name. This week the Lord gave me the opportunity to earn $40 and then he sent a friend to fill up my gas tank and make sure my car was still running well (which it is!). God has not forsaken me; he is caring so well for me.

I am waiting. I sort of look around for jobs, but I realize this is to please people. I am looking for jobs in order to please others and make them think I am doing my part. Today a good friend helped me understand the enormous amount of pressure I am under. All around me is a pressure to appear successful and wise to the world. I have well-meaning adults giving me advice left and right on what I should do and how I should do it and when I should do it. I know most of them do it out of love and concern and I so wish I could take their advice and do it. I hate having to appear foolish right now. My heart, however, knows what the Lord said: wait.

So in spite of the pressures and demands I feel I will keep waiting. This journey was not meant to take me from one pressure filled place and send me to another. This journey was meant to free me from pressures so I may love God and he may love me. What else matters? My Lord has given me one responsibility alone: keep me heart open to his love. It seems so simple, but it may be the hardest task I have ever been given. Whenever I am scared or frustrated I close it up and hide from God. I avoid him like the plague because I want to feel justified in my anger or sadness or fear. I know as soon as I open it up to him he will wipe those feelings away and replace them with joy. Why would I hide from that? Because I want to be in control. I want to call the shots for once and command God. This is foolishness, however, because God is joyfully taking me on an adventure and when I call the shots I get shot down. Of this I am certain: His plans are way better than mine.

Here’s to waiting in the love of God.

The End

Yes, it has come. It feels more like a beginning, though. Here are my thoughts from here at the end.

In the morning I am leaving camp, heading to my homeland. Not yet the place of my birth, but the site of my growing, or at least some of it: Mom’s house. Sometimes the knowledge of going back there makes me cringe, or brings a fear of all the hurt I have felt around the things that happened there. Tonight, however, I know I am going to a place I loved and still love. Mom’s house is where I learned to play guitar, watched countless animal babies take their first breaths, learned to cook, perfected the art of fire building, dreamed up wood forts, hay forts and couch forts and then worked with my siblings to make them real. It’s a place that holds memories so thick I sometimes think I might drown in them. I guess that’s what happens when you live in the same place for all but 2 years of your life.

I have been reflected the past few days on what I have learned and how I have grown this summer. A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook and it captures the essence of my growth over the past several months.

I have learned to be alone.

My whole life I have been lonely. As a teenager I thought this loneliness would kill me, or maybe I just wished it could. The past several years at school or wherever else I have traveled I have grown more comfortable with being alone, but I see know this was always because I knew there were numerous people I could see at a moments notice. Sometimes I couldn’t even find a place to be alone because people were everywhere. I was never really alone except for moments here and there.

In Uganda (yes, Uganda again), we were given four days of debrief experience. One day was set aside as a solitary fasting day. It was completely optional, but only a few people didn’t take the option. Even if you didn’t participate you were still alone. I didn’t shy away from it, but it was the longest day of my life it seemed. The hours dragged on and on cause there’s only so much I could do to entertain myself. I went for a walk, journaled, read, napped, and still had no idea how to fill the time, I just wanted to be with people and here their voices, feel their presence. I was so lonely and uncomfortable being alone there. I was panicked about leaving Uganda and going back to life and I wanted to draw all the life out of people I could before it seemed I would be lifeless.

This summer I had no idea I would be alone so much. Most of the time, though, I have been alone. The past month has been the culmination as I have lived entirely alone. This terrified me, I panicked the first week and, again, thought the loneliness would kill me. Maybe it did, though. Not literally, but maybe a part needed to die in order for another part to live.

As the summer went on I felt the need for solitude more and more. The last two months I have needed to be alone every day. When I am alone I feel so free. A girlishness returns to me and I feel my own beauty. It’s kind of surreal, yet so liberating. One day I put on my flowy orange skirt and went for a long walk in the waves. The water would catch the edged of my skirt, the wind would dance with it and attempt areal lifts. I skipped, I laughed, I watched people sitting together and did not feel envy or desire to have what they had. I was so content in my aloneness, so free in just being me, that I didn’t feel that desperate need have another person with me like an accessory. I didn’t even want someone else there because I didn’t want my carefree-ness to be hindered. Maybe one day I will be able to be so carefree with someone else, but this summer was about being comfortable with my own skin.

Part of the beauty of being alone is that I was able to grow quiet enough in my soul to let God speak and hear it. It used to sound crazy to me when people told me they talked with God like it was a regular conversation or just that he spoke to them was crazy. This summer I was alone, though, and being so alone gave me the space to let God so close I could feel him next to me at sunset and hear his answers to my questions. I would ask a question, and he would answer. I know, it’s a weird concept. I didn’t hear a booming voice from the clouds; it was the soft, still voice Elijah hears after 40 days in the wilderness (1 Kings 19). Not so much heard and felt, or understood. God skips the ears and goes straight to the heart. Which makes sense, right?

Being alone is something to be sought after and treasured. Not isolated, not desperately lonely. I guess solitude has the right connotations: intentional time alone to be with yourself, with God, with the ants and beetles, or even sitting alone in your car. Choosing to quiet your heart and mind and just be aware of what is around you and what is within you. It takes practice and discipline and moxie. Moxie is a great word for what it takes to be intentionally alone. It means force of character, determination, or nerve.

The beginning is tomorrow, my friends. We are closing this chapter and opening another. Get excited! Who knows what is around the bend or beyond the trees.

On Joy

Earlier this summer I came to the conclusion that life doesn’t get easier, just different. How much I wish that was wrong now, but how much I am sure it is not.

Last week I was blessed with the opportunity to see a friend from Africa. We got to spend the morning hiking and being together. It was beautiful. He lives in San Diego and has been involved in my decision making all along the way. As we talked about it some more on our descent he shared with me his fear for me in what I am about to do. This is something no one has shared with me. The general response is, “Go for it! How bad could it be?” In my heart it could be really bad. This friend was kind enough to share a similar fear with me, and that made it seem not so bad.

What it did make me realize, however, is that I have chosen something hard and that it will hurt. There isn’t a way around it hurting. My friend is scared for me because he doesn’t want me to hurt and he knows as well as I do that it will.

Yesterday I talked with a friend on the phone. She and I only catch up every once in a while and there is always too much to tell in so short a time. When I told her what I have done the past several months her response was something like, “This will make you much happier because school wasn’t making you happy.” Throughout our conversation it seemed to me that this friend is searching for happiness in life, that is her ultimate goal. To her it looks like I am seeking the same thing. I guess to lots of people it might seem that way. I was unhappy in school, and I hope I will be happier in San Diego. However, that hasn’t been my motivation (I hope) through this process. It seemed odd to me for that to be a goal when said so blatantly.

Later, I was reading Henri Nouwen’s "Here and Now." There is a whole section in it devoted to joy. I am always looking for a good way to explain what joy is because, as you can imagine, I want people to understand it, to understand me. Nouwen defines joy as, “The experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing… can take that love away.” (26). Later, he says what I have always believed, “Joy is not the same as happiness.” He goes on to say joy is a choice; we can choose to know we are unconditionally loved. When we choose joy we find true freedom, “The freedom to love.” (28). Joy brings freedom.

I left school because I was given freedom. The experiences of my life, from my childhood to young adult years when my parents split up to my semester in Uganda, have brought me to a place of freedom. Freedom to know I am loved unconditionally by so many people in my life, and also by God. It is God who led me through the wilderness to birth me into freedom. It is joy that brings freedom, and joy is a choice. Does this mean I have chosen joy? I kind of think it does. In every hard thing I have faced, be it feeling abandoned, divorce, or meeting death face to face, I have chosen to believe God is a God of love not war, hope not despair, freedom and not bondage. I had no idea how to believe those at the time. I just chose to be open to believing them and I asked God to show me he was a God to be trusted, and he did.

I didn’t leave school to find happiness or leave unhappiness. I was willing to go through the next year of school and be miserable if that was where God wanted me to stay. When I asked him if he did he answered, “You are free.” I was no longer bound to the belief that I had to earn love through performance, or be successful in order to fit in. I was free in the knowledge that I am loved no matter what. Joy indeed set me free.

The choice I made to leave school isn’t leading me to a zenith of happiness, nor has it given me a grand revelation of how to be perfectly content in life. It is leading me toward pain, hurt and fear. It is leading me away from my family, my friends, the beautiful Northwest, to a place I have only visited and dreamed of. I am going into a great unknown time where I will be fumbling around, guessing a lot on how to do stuff and praying I was not crazy. This doesn’t really sound like happiness.

It was not happiness I chose, though. I chose joy. I choose to know I am unconditionally loved and I am free to give my love away. Joy and freedom are the names of this chapter, neither of which lead to ultimate happiness because there isn’t any. Life doesn’t get easier and good has never meant easy. Life gets different, I grow freer, good and hard go hand in hand.

In the meantime I am here for another month. Working away, breathing in salt water flavored air, doing my best to not be in San Diego already, because that only brings about fear and worry: two things not included in joy.

Shalom, my friends.

What I Have Learned About Patience

Has not come easy. The only way to learn about patience is to practice it, and mess up a lot, and then get back on your feet and try it again. Patience is learned through trials, through opportunities to be patient. I am not naturally patient; I want things quickly. Yet this is not life. Life is a long journey, though perhaps at the end I will not say that.

One thing that has tried my patience again and again has been my body. Since I was 12 I have had a digestive system that demands attention, quality everything, and refuses to accept thoughtless gifts. It will only accept the best, and even then it won’t always enjoy it. For 11 years I have been learning to work with it. On occasion I have sought out the advice of doctors, hoping they will have the answer that will fix everything, but none ever have. This spring I was the closest to getting an answer, yet the answer came with no magic fix-it pill or potion. It came with a long-term diet, medication to take for life, and lots of ideas to try out: nothing quick, nothing to fix it and move on to careless eating. In fact, I am more careful than ever.

This has tried my patience again and again. At times I try and ignore what I know about my stomach and just eat what everyone else does; yet this always brings about a swift dose of remorse. Lately even the healthy foods I eat bring that about. After 11 years of searching for a quick fix and an easy out I have come to a place today where I am able to accept I will be working this out my whole life. I am not giving up and I hope to one day find a way of living that brings peace to my body, I have just recognized this will take a long time. It will take lots of trial and error and patience as I give the trials more than a day or two to work themselves out. It will also take patience to sit through the pain and discomfort at times as I work this out. My body is teaching me patience.

This spring I learned to be patient in school. First day of spring quarter I wanted to run away, be free of everything I hated about school, and mostly be free of the panic that welled up in my chest every time I stepped foot in a classroom or sat down to write a paper. I would have run had it not been for a few wise people in my life encouraging me to sit in it and see what it was. One of them said, with knowledge that can only come from experience, whatever was causing me to panic would probably come up again no matter what I did so I would have to face it sooner or later. I decided to face it sooner. I sat in it. It took half the quarter to be willing to sit through a class and stare it in the face, but I got there because I stayed. I was patient in the panic and now I do not fear it half as much as I did before. I know if I face it I will not implode or explode. The root of panic is not panic, it is sadness, or yearning for something different, or a part of myself screaming for recognition. The end result was the same, I dropped out of school, but it wasn’t running away out of fear. It was calmly walking away, knowing it was time to leave, not panicking or carelessly leaving, it was moving forward to the next thing. Patience was learned again.

Patience was something I learned a lot about in Uganda. It was a necessary thing to have there, as many things took longer than I wanted them to: like dinner or laundry or relationships. Often I was in awkward situations that I wished to get out of, they weren’t bad or harmful, just awkward, uncomfortable. Sometimes I did run, and now I wish I could have a second chance. I learned that sitting in an awkward situation and resisting the desire to run could bring about surprises I would never have seen if I had run. Like hearing my Uganda Dad call me his daughter and realizing he meant it. If I had fled that awkward situation my heart would not have received that gift of healing. Patience brought about healing.

Today I wrote an e-mail to my older sister. She and I love each other so much, but we do not often get to talk or hang out because of the way our lives have gone thus far. It just has not been possible. Today, as wrote the e-mail, I recognized the opportunity to be patient. We are sisters, we always will be, there is nothing we can do to change that for good or bad. With the knowledge that our relationship is secure and sort of unchangeable I found a new depth of patience for the chance to really know each other. I am not afraid of losing her if we don’t act quickly and with that fear absent I found within my heart the patience to trust that one day the time will be ripe for us to be in better contact. That day is not today, it might be years before it comes; yet I know she loves me and I love her, so I am patient. It does not take away the yearning. It does reduce the twitching need for action and subdue the panic and fear, however.

I have much more to learn about patience, my friends, but I have learned enough about it to recognize it will take much more patience to learn the art of patience. For patience is an art, a skill that can be learned and practiced, it is not a virtue only few are blessed with. We are all capable of patience; it just takes patience to realize it.