Both

So I suppose several things about myself I knew before coming here, but some have become particularly highlighted since November.   I’ve become acutely aware, for example, that I am seemingly a person of extremes. If I like something, I’m obsessed with it, i.e. orange juice or naps; if I don’t like something, I can’t stand it, like a loosely made bed or Jack in the Box commercials.  I’m a hot or cold person, an all in or all out, a thumbs up or thumbs down.  I’ve been aware of this and the positive and negative effects on my daily life, but I think I’m finding how deeply this trait runs within me.   And how it’s proving problematic here.

You see life here seems to be one of dichotomies. 

The compounds can be a place of such discouraging despair, and yet the joyous smiles of the children with whom I interact leave my heart stirred in the most encouraging way.

So many Zambians seem to struggle with basic problem solving, yet everyday I see the most ingenuitive and innovative solutions to situations here that would leave me stumped.

My job is really hard and really amazing.  On most days it leaves me beaten down and pumped up at the same time.

Working with and living with the same people can be really awesome, and really not awesome at times. 

Driving on busy Zambian roads amidst unpredictable minibuses and pedestrians is both exciting and terrifying.

Running hills at high altitudes can be devastating and well, kind of good.. 

You get what I’m saying.

And I’m having a hard time processing this.

People ask how I’m doing, like really doing, and I never know how to answer – I’m good and bad?  Things are awesome and things suck?  

I don’t ever leave many feelings floating in the air; I tend to come down hard on one side or the other.  On so much here though, I can’t seem to do that.  And son of a gun, I hate it.

But the more mornings I sit with Him, spilling out my frustrations with this and asking for help, the more I’m starting to think this is where He wants me, growing in a furthering acceptance of the idea of both.

Because there is a dichotomous nature of living out our faith on this side of glory.  We are often called to the limits of discomfort and brokenness to truly find joy. 

We are to actively pursue further revelation of our personal weakness and inability, to realize and access strength and ability in Him.

We are supposed to grow in independence from this world, yet dependence on Him.

There is joy in the struggle.  The impossible is made possible.

If I think too much about all of the above it makes my head hurt, and I think right now, it makes my heart a little/a lot too.  But there is victory in that hurt.  It’s evidence of my hard heart being broken, and those cracks, that’s the space where the Spirit enters in.   And that’s something I know I want/need.

Some of you follow the instagram account a couple friends and I do called @happyisdoubledouble.  The original idea was that the four of us were going to challenge ourselves to document something that made us happy every day here (unlike my blog, this is actually something to which I post everyday). The name came from a worship song called “Everything is Double Double,” about how in the Lord, there is joy abundant, and being four of us, it seemed, you know, cute and clever.

And while it’s been pretty great, as the first couple months have passed, to me, it’s starting to take on a little different of a meaning. 

Because alas, most things seem to be “double double.”  Yes, the awareness of his presence and grace make the good twice as good, but so little in life right now seems one-dimensional.   There is sharp pain and intense gladness in every day, sometimes in the moment to moment.

And right now, I’m learning to be thankful for that.

Oh hey, I made it to Zambia

So remember when I said I wasn’t a blogger, that electronic communication was hard for me?  You probably thought I was exaggerating, but as this post finds its way online a couple months after its predecessor, you’re understanding what I was saying.  I’m sorry.  I’m a work in progress.Honestly, part of my delay in writing some sort of update was being at, in addition to a pretty significant lack of time, also a pretty significant lack of words.   Its like after you finish a really long and detailed book and someone asks you how it was.  What do you say?  There were good parts and there were bad parts, and you try to tell little tidbits of it here and there, but giving an accurate depiction of all that you read, a truly summative description of the story; that seems impossible. Putting to words what has happened in the past couple months has felt a bit like that.  My life has changed, in what at times seems like its entirety, and I kind of don’t even know where to start.  But the time is far overdue for me to at least give it a try.  Though maybe instead of attempting a full synopsis of the last two months, I’ll just share some thoughts from this past week. This week was our first week of school. I suppose this seems like not only a good time to share recent events, but also one to pause and reflect on them personally as well, so here it goes.At the close of this most recent one, I’m struck by how many “first week of school”s I’ve lived.  As a teacher’s kid, then a student, then a teacher myself, the start of the school year has been a notable event ever since I can remember.  My 12 month calendar has always operated from August to July.  At week’s end, I’m thinking about how this first week was so similar and yet so different from those past.As per usual on the eve of the start of school. I slept restlessly on Sunday night and anxiously awoke extra early Monday morning.  However, as I sat to have my daily time with the Big Guy, my attention was already perked by the differences even in my prayers. While I still prayed for the Roots girls and the kids of Highland Park, and for my family, and for my heart and tongue to be granted the graciousness that doesn’t come naturally (that last one is a def necessary routine and repeated prayer), I found my prayer journal had taken on some new ones.
I prayed for my co-workers and my roommates, many of which are one in the same. I’ve prayed for my fellow teachers before, but this was different.  These people are more than just colleagues I go to work with, they are people I’m doing life with.  I prayed for logistics, for the building operations and staffing of our schools, things I had never really put a second thought to in the states, but now an area of which I had vested concern.
I prayed for our teachers.  I prayed prayers of surrender of worry and of thankfulness for them and about them.  From family members to friends, obviously there have been lots of teachers in my life I’ve held dear, but with these, especially the secondary teachers, it’s a little different.  It’s one of those times you find yourself caring for a group of people so much illogically fast.  My heart almost reflexively contracts with a strange mix of pride and concern and appreciation at their thought or mention.  Here are these professionals who have chosen to take their own education and skill and charge ahead into the unknown with us, into the darkest places of this city to meet our kids where they are and willingly put up their hearts to be broken on their behalf for His glory.
Or I suppose this is what I pray for.  And I’m reminded to pray for myself to choose to do the same everyday.
And obviously the kids; I prayed for our kids.  The nearly 10,000 children that flooded our LCA’s this week, almost 3,000 of them for the first time.  Like I said, I’ve prayed for the kids that enter my school’s doors for a while now, but again, this is a little different.   These children who have been continually told and shown and told that they are the “least of these,” its our task to show them that to us, to Him, the opposite is really true; they are of the greatest worth.  Oh that our schools would be the safe haven so many of them long for, the lighthouse to which they can return everyday where they experience God meeting their needs.That first morning and still now I pause at this developing reality.  All of the above mentioned, the things I had theorized, maybe even hoped, that my heart would care for, how surreal that it now does.  My heart painfully, yet joyfully breaks for these things, these people, this place every day anew.
As I went out into the schools that opening Monday, I had that familiar feeling; that dichotomous and unique feeling of excitement and nervousness that often accompanies the first day of school.  I’ve always thought it interesting that both teachers and students experience that feeling…every year.  I wondered if teachers and students here would show evidence of the same.  And of course they did.  But I saw something, no, I experienced something different, something more with our kids here.  They weren’t just excited for their first day of school; they were elated.  The sometimes disguised blessing that comes from their hardships, the idea that many of our kids in the States never get the chance to fully understand or appreciate, our kids here don’t have to go to school, they get to go to school.  And even on that first day, many of them could barely contain their joy of this prayer being realized.  Imagine this as of one the parts of the book that no matter how much I try to describe the contents of its pages, my description will not suffice.  Just trust me, you should come read this chapter for yourself someday.

All in all, after my first couple months here and looking forward towards this year, I think I always want to come back to this first week of school.  I think I need to.  I need to be continually mindful of why I’m here, why we are all here – to serve these kids and the people of Lusaka in order to make much of His name.  Amidst some things being frustrating, some things being amazing, and everything in between, its all in His sovereign hand; He will be glorified.  I was reminded of this on a much overdue run this week.  I’m a music person.  As in I usually need music playing in the background of my solo tasks.  Doing my quiet time, going for a run, while driving – I need music playing.  I think that God uses music a lot of the time to help me talk to him.   Anyways, mid-run, Second Chance by Rend Collective came up on shuffle.  One of the repeated lines includes, “at the base of the cross, that’s where my hope restarts.”  To be honest, there have been a lot of days where I’ve reached the end and I’ve needed my hope restarted.  But wow, how comforting, how life-sustaining that my hope comes from nothing here, nothing in America or in Zambia, in people or in things, but in Him, solely in Him.