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.

CANNONBALL!

Hello Everyone,

It has finally happened. I made a choice and am now taking action towards this fall and where I will live. I decided to do all I can do to move to San Diego in the fall. Crazy? Probably. Will I mess up and fall on my face? Very likely so. Is it a good decision? I have no doubt about it.

Now that I have that over with, I can move on with writing. I will let y’all know as I know what it is I will be doing there; right now I have no idea.

I realized that a theme of this summer so far has been that good and easy do not mean the same things. This summer has been good, but certainly not easy. I have also been caught with the image of an Ebenezer. We often sing about an Ebenezer in the song, “Come Thou Fount.” “Here I raise my Ebenezer hither by thy help I’m come.” In 1 Samuel 7:12 you can find out what this actually is, The verse says, “Then Samuel took a stone it set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer (which means stone of help), for he said, ‘Till now the Lord has helped us.’” This was during a battle between the Israelites and Philistines and in the next verse it is simply stated that the Philistines were subdued.

This summer has been a great test of my faith as I have put myself in a position where I am completely dependant on God for many things. In the spring when I decided to drop out of school I began making all these great plans to go places and do things I always wanted. One day, however, I clearly understood God telling me to stop planning because good things were coming. I stopped planning; I waited and hoped for good things. In my mind this meant life was going to be easier and happier. It hasn’t been that way, though. Life has not been easier, just different; I have no been happier, only more content and able to find joy in the struggle. Good doesn’t mean easy.

Many times this summer I have been in a place where I could either make my own plans and take charge of my life, or wait on God a little bit longer. Every time I have wanted to take control and do what I thought best. Every time I have also remembered Samuel raising his Ebenezer and saying, “Till how God has helped us.” I have said that to myself as a pep talk, and I have looked back on my life, on the past four years, in order to raise my own Ebenezer and say, “Till now God has not led me astray. Till now God has led me good places.” Good doesn’t mean easy. God has led me to some of the most painful places in the world. God led me to Rwanda and Uganda; God led me to look at what really happened to my family. These were good places, but certainly not easy. I have raised my Ebenezer knowing God is not leading me to an easy place; he is leading me to a good place.

Then God said, “San Diego.” I cried, I mourned the loss of my family and friends in Seattle. Then I set my sights to the south and am now doing all I can to actively prepare for that move, for the next part of my adventure. As I take this next step I again raise an Ebenezer, knowing that till now God has helped me at every point and with that knowledge I am able to take the next step forward. I also raise this knowing God is leading me to a good place, so I can know with complete confidence that it will be anything but easy. Yet I still choose to jump.

Plug my nose, assume the cannon-ball position, and fall into the next chapter of my life. I hope I know how to swim!

Love to all,
Joy

Uganda Changed My Life

Lately every time I try and sleep, either at bedtime or to take a nap, my brain goes wild because it finally has a quiet moment to speak. My brain is loud and has a lot to say.

Today I wanted to take a nap. I got up at 5:15, was at work by 5:40, and then worked until 1:30. I was so tired. I got home, changed into comfy clothes, sat down on the couch and my brain took off.

Thoughts about what my life is like right now at camp. I cook, am around people a lot of the time, yet I feel lonely. Yesterday I got to talk to Deanna. She is with people all the time, yet she is also lonely. In our conversation it seemed like everything that felt wrong in our lives went back to Uganda. Everything always goes back to Uganda. Always.

When we got to Uganda our direction told us the Uganda Studies Program was not about Life-Changing experiences, but was instead about 1 degree changes, like on a compass. At the time this was relieving because my life had been noting but change the past 4 years. While talking with Deanna, however, it became apparent that Uganda had changed my life.

Before I got to Uganda I was excited about school, about the major I had just designed for myself, about doing Young Life the rest of life, about my church in Seattle and about my life in Seattle. I felt I had finally crossed enough bridges and processed enough family shit to move into some normalcy. Finally!

When I looked at my life yesterday with Deanna with the hindsight knowledge if what it used to be my life is completely changed. I dropped out of school, I am working at Young Life camp and questioning this ministry I have loved for the first time ever and finding it coming up short, and I am seriously thinking about moving to San Diego. My life is not just 1 degree changed, it’s 720 degree changed. I have been spun around and around and ended up in a very different direction then when I started 11 months ago.

Young Life was my life’s path before Uganda. Every summer since I was 12 or 13 I have done something with Young Life. Young Life camping is where I have found my niche; I love working hard and being with people while working, I like the background of camp and don’t often enjoy the spotlight. I fit well into Young Life camping and I loved it. Until Uganda. In Uganda I saw so many other ministries. I was also taught to question EVERYTHING in Uganda (Thanks for that Mark Bartells). Now I am questioning Young Life. Young Life camps especially. It is always the same thing over and over again. I know Young Life camp structure better than the back of my own hand. No matter what property you go to or what age group is there the same sequence of activities and club talks are given. I used to love this. Now I question it on so many different levels. Young Life’s slogan or motto or whatever is, “You were made for this.” It’s a recent development, but if that’s what Young Life has come to… if Young Life believes every kid was made for this way of presenting the gospel, sharing the good news, do I also believe that?

I looked at my own Young Life experience a little closer and saw a different picture than I often present people. I saw that if I hadn’t been the daughter of a staff person I would have fallen through the cracks of Young Life. I do not fit the formula, I am not a typical Young Life kid, and I was not made for this! Because of my staff connections I was able to connect with a leader from a different school (a staff person, in fact) and therefore felt like I was a Young Life kid. At my school, though, Young Life leaders never pursued me and I even felt like they didn’t want me at club because my parents are my parents. It was awkward, as ministry politics always are. I do not fit Young Life camping as well as I thought; the same formula for every kid, the same pristine grounds and high quality program at every camp. It all looks great at first, but then I went to Uganda and not I wonder if it really does make a difference. In my life Young Life was what made me fit in somewhere, or at least feel like I did, but I had to conform to Young Life, I had to become someone who could fit in Young Life. Young Life was not made for me; I was made for Young Life, right?

When it comes down to it, I don’t fit Young Life. I was not made for it as they claim. I was made for something different. It took Uganda to break that idea in me. It took being shown a different world and asking where I could love people best in the world to realize Young Life is not where that will happen. I am uniquely made to love people in a way no one else can, I just don’t know where or who or how.

Uganda changed my life. I hate saying that, but I have to say it because when I see the direction I was heading before Uganda and the direction I am heading in now, they are drastically different and I know Uganda, and the work God did in me while I was in Uganda have directly impacted me every day since.

Now that my life has been turned upside down and inside out where do I go? What do I do? Do I have to do anything or is it enough to just be? Where are the people I was created to love? In San Diego? Or in some other city? Or in the middle of nowhere?

September is coming soon. I will say goodbye to Young Life, goodbye to being a student as my friends return to school and I don’t, and to what will I say hello? Where will I call home?

God, please show me soon.

*This was not written with the intention of bad-mouthing Young Life or giving a one-sided view of it. It has also done good things for me… I just didn’t see the hard things until now.*

Mirrors and Clothes (pronounced cloth-es)

I had a strange experience today. I was in Astoria with Kelsey (roommate and fellow intern), had just finished the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had (not kidding) and I had to pee (naturally). While washing my hands I happened to look at the mirror. I looked at the mirror, the image in the mirror, and I smiled. The image in the mirror was a beautiful woman; she had a kind face with soft green eyes. She wore black glasses with artistic pink accents and just a few spots of bedazzlement. Her hair was a feisty short cut, blonde but almost light brown. Her nose spotted with freckles, her mouth curved in an alive and open smile. I looked in the mirror and I smiled because I love the woman who was in the mirror.

Why is this is a strange experience? Why did I pause today and see myself when I see myself in the mirror every day of my life? Why today of all days? I don’t know. Today I actually saw myself, though. I paused and I saw me.

The past week has been full of new people and tasks and challenges. I have felt uncomfortable and somewhat awkward. In that space of being I didn’t notice me, I noticed everyone else and wondered if I was performing correctly or being friendly enough. I wondered how everyone else was doing and if I was being the right way to get along well with him or her. I didn’t see me. When I looked in the mirror I didn’t really look. I popped a few zits, I plucked some stray hairs, but I was seeing flaws to take care of so people wouldn’t find me weird or awkward or find it painfully obvious that I was homeschooled. I was trying to fit in, to be cool, to be normal… whatever that is.

Today I saw me. I saw that I am lovely and full of life. What a beautiful thing it is to pause and see the woman in the mirror and love her.

In Uganda we didn’t have mirrors. The most I saw of my face was my nose or the top of my head; just a piece here and there but never my whole self. There was one trip we took and the rooms we stayed in had body length mirrors. I stood in front of the mirror for several minutes then, just remembering what I looked like. It’s funny I forgot after just a couple months. It isn’t that I didn’t know what I looked like anymore; I just lost the awareness of my appearance for a time. I didn’t care because I never saw it. In Uganda, however, I felt more beautiful and graceful than I have ever felt. A big deal for me because I often feel clumsy and awkward, or simply not put together because I have never wanted to care about that. I want to care about other things.

Yet I do care. I care a great deal. The rebel in me refuses too show that, but deep down I care about my appearance and I often feel less than others because I don’t want to actually show that I care. In my mind, caring about ones appearance is a waste of time. Except that the other part of believes it isn’t.

I was looking at photos of Uganda, and photos of Kelsey’s trip to Honduras, thinking about the clothes people were wearing. I love the clothes people wear when they travel to do missions projects or go on camping trips. What I love is that suddenly the competition to fit in with clothing is gone. People wear their grubbiest clothes, or what the culture they visit expects them to wear, because they don’t care. The competition to fit in and appear put together, beautiful, "normal," is gone.

In the pictures of us going rafting on the Nile there is one of Hanna in a brown shirt with words on it, I don’t think I ever read those words. I don’t think I ever read her shirt. I read everyone’s shirt in the US, and I remember the words, or recognize them at least. I never read Hanna’s shirt. Her face, however, I had seen over and over because I have looked at that picture before. Her face was as familiar as my own sister’s face. In her face is the same aliveness and beauty I found in my own today.

When people travel like that they don’t worry about their appearance. No makeup, no blow-drying or straightening hair, sometimes not even shaving. A person is stripped down to the basics of their body. They simply are a body and a soul. The beauty in that is something I cannot capture in words from my language, and I am not sure any other language could. The beauty of person just as they are, well, it reduces me to speechlessness. For a person who uses words to understand life and understand herself, being silenced by beauty is more powerful than volumes of descriptions.

Today, my own beauty silenced me. I did a double take and paused and saw me and was speechless. It was as though I were back in Uganda, seeing myself in the mirror after two months of not seeing myself, and finding myself stunning.

What a mysterious and surprising place to find myself; caught in the spell of my own beauty.

Fighting to Live, Learning to Die

Wendell Berry, a farmer and a poet, seems to understand life and death at a depth I have no yet conceived of. I was reading some of his poems today while sitting in my car, José, near the woods outside of Astoria. One of his poems, "A Wish to be Generous," says:

“All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may known
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.”

The last phrase, “my life a patient willing descent into the grass” nestled into my soul as I read it.

I have struggled for life. Life has been a fight for me. Not in terms of my physical health, thought that has also been a tricky thing, but in terms of my spirit and mind. Keeping the desire to live alive within me has been a fight. I have fought for it. I fought fiercely, and I still fight. I love living, but sometimes giving up feels so tempting because I fight hard to live. My emotions overwhelm me so quickly and so often because it seems I feel everything deeply. Feeling so deeply hurts and is hard, sometimes I would like to give up and rest without feeling. Yet I keep fighting day after day, and I find joy day after day, or I don’t and I try again the next day. Living is a war for me.

Then I read, “my life a patient willing descent into the grass,” and I realized I will die. My body will shut down at some point and I will die. I am fighting so hard for life and at some point I will die no matter how hard I fight.

One of my favorite Jon Foreman songs is “Learning How to Die.” The chorus says:

“All along, thought I was learning how to take,
How to bend not how to break,
How to laugh not how to cry,
Really I’ve been learning how to die.”

I keep thinking I am fighting for life and learning to live, but if I am heading towards death with every breath I take in, maybe what I am learning is actually how to die.

I have learned patience in this fight. When I am overwhelmed with emotion and feeling I have learned to be patient with myself and give myself time to feel it until it passes. I thought this was learning to live, maybe it is learning to die, though. Rather than clinging tightly to what is happening right now I am learning to patiently, and sometimes willingly, let things pass through me or away from me. Rather than insist I stay at school I recognized it was time to leave, and rather than fight that surrendered to the reality within me and let school slip away from me. That sounds more like I am learning to die than learning to live.

If that is what I am learning, than why am I fighting so hard to desire life? I will die, and my life, it seems, will be spent learning how to die. Maybe I am fighting for the wrong thing. Could it be that fighting for a desire to live is the wrong thing to fight for? It could indeed if Wendell and Jon are correct. What do I fight for, then? Do I fight at all? Or is life a surrendering, a slow and painful surrendering to death?

I don’t know.