breathing

So last weekend I went on a little getaway trip with a couple of my roommates to Lake Malwai (in Malwai obvi).  At one point we commented on how many shorelines we have been lucky enough to stand on in the past couple years.  From the current, one of the largest and most unique lakes in the world, to Lake Kariba, the Zambezi, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the point where those last two oceans meet.  How crazy. 

I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach those few days, headphones in, contemplating and praying about...well lots of things.  I was on a little bit of a Needtobreathe kick that weekend, and coincidentally (/probably not), I came across one song, Something Beautiful (I know, I’m late to the party, its old – I live in the 3^rd world, lay off) that I just kept playing on repeat.  It opens saying, “In Your ocean I’m ankle deep, I feel the waves crashing on my feet.  It’s like I know where I need to be, but I can’t figure out – “

I guess the line caught my attention, and well the rest of the song just seemed ethereally relevant to my life, so I kept playing it.  As we’ve returned back to Lusaka, I’ve kept it in my frequent song rotation; in the car, during my quiet times, etc.  So as I started off on an overdue return to running today, it of course started playing as I turned the corner onto the farm road.

Again, I took notice of the opening line, but something sparked as I heard the subsequent second line “…I can’t figure out, just how much air I will need to breathe, when your tide rushes over me.  There’s only one way to figure out – will you let me drown, will you let me drown?

This was probably the 100^th time I’d heard the beginning of this song in the last week, literally, but my eyes widened mid-stride as the Holy Spirit used this time to click my lens of reflection into place.

My mind immediately did another tv style montage (this is apparently how my spiritual mind works) of the last several months, months that were hard…maybe the hardest I’ve ever lived.  My mind then hyper-rewound even further, to the beginning of my time here, and to the first blog I wrote.  I had made reference to the Peter and Jesus walking on water story, and indicated, like Peter had, I was about to step out of the boat.

When I think back to those first several months living here, I realize in a lot of ways, God graciously let me walk on water.  Sure there were struggles and challenges, but He allowed our gaze to remain locked for a bit and I was able to experience that sole (/soul…ha) skimming on water sensation.

And then, somewhere along the way, I think my eyes started to look nervously around, and lose my gaze.  I fought to maintain it, but the eyelids of my faith started to blink rapidly, what I had seen in my peripheral, started to become my increasing focus.   And I began to sink.  Oh man, did I start to sink. 

I think of the part of the story where Peter starts to sink.  The resonating element to me now especially, is just how much Peter sank.  He yelled out “Lord, save me!”  I imagine that means he wasn’t like slowly and calmly descending a couple inches at a time into the water.  No, for him to frantically yell that out, homeboy had to have been pretty much drowning, or at least feeling like he was.  And Jesus let him get to that point.  (I mean depending on your theology, we could say Christ caused him to get to that point, but whatever.)  Right as Peter’s pinky toe had started to lower beneath the water ledge he was perched on, Jesus could’ve stopped it; he could’ve reasserted the gaze just then, telling him “dude – get it together.”  But He didn’t.  I think He let him feel like he was drowning for a sec.  I imagine then with His head tilted a bit, ear leaning in towards his disciple-in-shambles, waited for that inevitable plea of desperation.  And as Peter cried out, He nodded, ah-there it is, “sure homee, I was here the whole time, how did you forget that?”

Enter in-my last several months.  I think for the most part, God let me feel like I was drowning for a while there.  Now I don’t know what it feels like to be literally drowning in the ocean, stuck in the open water, having wave after wave crashing down, trying to gasp for air in between each blow (though I have been stuck under a blow up boat for a few seconds in my parents’ pool as a child, so like, I kinda know), but I think I can imagine.   I picture Satan behind the waves, seeing me at weak points, and hurling tides of loneliness, insecurity, homesickness, failure, etc in an almost masterful sequence.  Getting to be a part of the summer Camp Life season here, where hundreds of Americans and thousands and thousands of Zambian kids are being lavished in God’s fatherly love, getting to even witness that week after week provided nothing short of life-sustaining gasps.  But holy smokes, the crashing waves still swelled. 

Mid-summer, I met up with my mom in London for a week.  Looking back, I feel like God used that time with her to keep me going, as in like breathing.  It was like she came by on a little boat, took my face in her hands, and held it there above water for a couple minutes.  And then, to be honest – a little to my surprise, she let me go again.  She put me back in the water and assured me that she knew that God had me in His hand, He would keep me from drowning (well, in so many words).  Some of you that I saw or heard from me this summer, I know may have been a tad bit worried that alas, I may have been taking in water at an alarming rate and needed like a life guard intervention or something.   But no, my mom, the rockstar of faith she is, knew better.  And you know what?  She was right.  I didn’t drown.

And what I realized on my run today, is that I never will; I can’t.  As believers, we can’t.  The oceans of hardship and despair that Satan has at his disposal can make us feel like we might, but as we cry out, His hand is already there outstretched; He was there the whole time. 

So I feel now, a bit like I’ve been washed up on the beach, still somewhat gasping to catch my breath.  I’m still coughing out the lies of Satan, the aspirating of his deceit is still burning in my nose and throat.  But honestly? As I’m starting to sit up on my elbows now, looking back at the choppy sea before me, thinking “yikes, that was intense,” I’m acutely aware, this is not where I’m meant to remain.  We aren’t made to sit on the beach, or even play and swim along the shore, we’re made to walk on water.  

In few weeks, I get to go home to the States for a month or so, a time I plan to shake any remaining water out of my ears, take some friends and family infused deep breaths, then jump back in.  Come October though, I’ll be standing at that shoreline with a little different perceptive. It’s funny, feeling like you might almost drown gives you the benefit of knowing your lungs capacity.  Arguably, stretching your lungs capacity further than it had been before.  Ah, well played God.

So regardless of the ocean, regardless if He changes the direction of the journey, I’m starting to breathe deep again in His faithfulness, His promise that He’ll never let us drown, and His call to walk towards Him on top of the water.

bet you forgot I had a blog

So remember when I said I was awful at pretty much every type of non-face to face communication?  The blog idea was my best attempt to remedy this issue, but as I now submit my 5^th entry roughly 12 months after its predecessor, I think I’ve proved my point.  Regardless, they say you’ve got to get back on the horse at some point right? 

So here’s me, getting back on my blogging horse, hoping I don’t fall off again.

I think one of the culprits for my such expansive gap in posts is that situation that happens with any prolonged communication - “gosh, it’s been so long, where do I even start?’  Followed by another month of silence, further exacerbating the issue, “now really, where do I start?”  And so it goes.

So I’m going to start with right now.  That seems less overwhelming than trying to recount all the major events and associated thoughts and feelings since last March.

Today marks a month since I boarded a plane back to Zambia after a month home in the States.  5 weeks actually that seemed like whirlwind tours of DFW and Chicagoland.  The time felt packed with friends and family, old people, new people, favorite places, different places, familiar and unexpected, and a few weeks out now, I can definitively say – it was wonderful.  Amazing.  It was restorative and restful and rejuvenating, and all of the other positive “r” words.  It wasn’t just a fun time, it was reviving of the heart-style good.  Because one thing I can tell you about the last year – it was hard.  It was great, but it was hard. 

Lusaka isn’t exactly the Paris of the sub-Saharan like you may have heard.  I sit here now looking at the faint circular scar on the sole of my foot, the reminder of the day in September I stepped on a rusty nail- through my sneaker, right up in there.  That same week I realized my jeans had been getting super baggy; turned out it wasn’t stress, but a parasite.  *In other news, anti-biotics are the bomb (for all of the above).

But come to think of it, those weren’t really even the hard parts.  To be honest, all the 3^rd-worldy stuff you kind of get used to.  You forget what it’s like to have super consistent electricity and water.  That devastation that you missed last week’s episode of Scandal begins to fade as you miss like 23 episodes in a row.  You forget what Starbucks and Chick-fila actually taste like and your taste buds grow accustomed to their African substitutes.  You step on a nail, you take it out – c’est la vie.

No, the hard part I think isn’t all this stuff around, all the things on the outside, it’s that on the inside.  I’m going to real talk here for a second.  I’ve found that moving to Africa as a single person, a single female is…what’s the word…hard.  I know, moving to Africa as a married person with a family is hard too, obviously.  But the single missionaries plight is just a bit different.   I think there is a specific loneliness factor that is a little bit of a game changer; a weapon in Satan’s arsenal almost specially crafted just for us.   At the end of a long day, good or bad, an undercurrent thought line is kind of always present, probably more of a slight whisper from the enemy come to think of it, “I’m here alone.” 

And of course we are not.  God is always with us and all of that legitimate and lifesaving truth, but those times when you think “man this sucks,” it’s not because the internet is too slow in this country to stream Netflix, it’s that. 

I think a lot about my people.  My home team, if you will.  I know I’ve been richly blessed to have a home team comprised of family who have become my dearest friends and some of the dearest friends who have become family.   And on the days when weights of my heart are heavy, from loneliness to frustration, I become even more acutely aware that they are all 10,000 miles away.  And the hard seems harder.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m surrounded by amazing Americans and Zambians alike that serve as constant reminders that..well God is real.  That He will always be present in and through His people; He will reveal His love through them no matter where you are in the world.  I know I am not the easiest person to work with and live with, much less both, and they love me anyway.  But as I examine the last year and a half here through the post home/home team time-lens, I realize how much of my periods of weariness are rooted in the ache of those separations.

Maybe it being Easter time and all, I’ve been thinking about Christ and his time here on Earth, His tenure in a place that wasn’t Home, not by a long shot.  How many times must He looked up and been like, “really Father?  I mean I’m God too, so I get it, but yikes.”  Like times like the Garden of Gethsemane we know, probably/arguably the epitome of such queries, but how many other countless times did his inner thought narrative echo the same sentiment in less dire situations, asking God for there to be another way.  How often do I lift up similar requests.

Single. In His thirties.  Separated from His Father in a very foreign place. 

Jesus is our great sympathizer – um yeah, no joke.  I imagine He had trains of thought just like we do, reflecting on and analyzing situations, deciphering His feelings and opinions on them. And because He was human, I suspect must have internally articulated often how hard things were.  Because His life was really hard; much harder than mine.   But I think He, being God as well, understood far better, more pervasively than I do, that hard doesn’t equate bad.  Quite the opposite actually.  How synonymous does my heart and mind seem to view the two.  But not Him.  He knew the hardest things He was to endure, would yield the greatest reward. 

Hard caused Him to cry out to the Father, every time.  Hard needs to stir me to the same response. His hard times brought about such good things; shoot – they brought about miracles.  Hanging on the cross, bearing the weight of your sins and mine, nothing I will experience will ever be as hard as that.   He didn’t run from it though, but with arms outstretched, embraced the hard – and look what happened.  

The gospel happened.  

My salvation happened.  

My identity and my source of hope happened.    

Good gracious, I’m so thankful He knew the hard would bring about such good.  He walked through His life here with joy because His love for us, His love for His children far outweighed the hard.

And so as I enter into this next season in Zambia, a place of which there is so much, and so many whom I love, I choose faith in that truth.  Hard doesn’t mean bad.  And some other ones too.  Like I’m not alone, not even a little bit.  And that love truly does conquer all – it did at Calvary and it does now. 

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. 

Home.

Home.

Quick, what comes to mind when you read that word? 

Is it a place? A city? People? A time? 

I feel like its a word that's been thrown around a lot in my life recently, and at the moment, like today, I'm not sure I know what it means.  The emotion and imagery that the term is supposed to conjure up is well, a bit fuzzy. 

A week ago I left home to return to my old home, of which in a few weeks I'll be leaving to go to my new home.  

I'm not sure what to do with that.  

In the last 11 years, Texas became my home.  My "you guys" changed to "ya'lls" and Tex-Mex and Whataburger became, like google and gps on our phones - things I don't remember how I previously survived without.  Shoot, I even like football now.  And the people.  Good gracious, the amazing people He put in my life in that place.  From lifelong friendships made at Baylor to life-changing high school students and their families in the Park Cities, yes, this place entered my heart and became my home.  

But Chicago is home too.  I go home for holidays and stretches of summer.  Its the Cubs and hot dogs and Jack's frozen pizza - you know, things my heart holds dear.  Oh, and my family.  Chicago will always be home, most of all, because that's where my family lives.  That's where our memories live.  So much of who I am is wrapped up in that group, in those relationships.  A part of my inner heart battery drains in time spent away from there, from them, and seems to recharge upon return.  

And now Zambia.  I suppose some time ago, that place and its people took a piece of my heart as well.  But now, at the end of a countdown now marked by days instead of weeks or months,  I'll add Lusaka as a third entry in my definition of home.  

And today my mind is struggling to conceptualize that.  

I'm struggling to navigate through this journey of the heart dividing, but not breaking.  People and places claiming such large pieces of it, but as the amount of both grow, I think the capacity of my heart will as well.  

I mean it has to.  

Because as much as the hands of my heart reflexively attempt to tighten their grip around my homes and the people in them, God seems to be gently, but persistently unclasping my fingers and turing my palms open and upward. 

And He wouldn't do that unless He had more planned, more than my world-dimmed heart can imagine.  I'm choosing faith in that this morning. 

And it's funny, I'm struck with this realization that really any attempts I just made at describing or defining "home" are ridiculous.  All of the above wrong.  

Because this isn't home.  

No physical place or group of people, or food group (as apparently marks alarmingly significant to me) can be truly home.  If we weren't made for this world, if our heart's home is really elsewhere, than the open-handedness in which we are called to live this life - with places, and things, and even people; well, it makes sense.  

And for some reason, that thought makes my heart flutter a little with anxious excitement.  

If the joys we get to experience in our homes here are just shadows of the real thing, then our real home has to be just incredible.  The joy experienced there must be indescribable. 

Holy smokes, I can't wait. 

And that's all I've got right now.  That seems somewhat of an unresolved thought, but you can do that with blogs right? 

So I think its time for me to start a blog.
Here's the thing, I'm not really that great at electronic communication.  Emailing, texting, etc...I mean, I'll do it, but I don't like it.
I'd much prefer to just have face to face convos.  I love those actually.
But in less than 30 days, I'm moving to Africa.  That is still strange to type.
I'm    moving    to     Africa.  weird.
Anyways, as much as I'd love to sit across a coffee shop table from my friends and family to share all that's happening in this crazy journey God's chosen for me, I realize the ocean in between us will make this difficult to do on a regular basis.
And so this blog.  Arguably a form of communication I feel most uncomfortable with, so bare with me as I adjust.
I chose the title, "Here am I" in reference to the Hebrew word "Hineni."  In the Old Testament, when patriarchs were given a commandment from God, they would respond, "Hineni," essentially meaning, "here am I Father, ready and willing."
I had the Hebrew lettering tattooed on my wrist a couple of years back to remind me to be mindful of choosing the same response to God's calls.  This past summer, he called me to quit my job in Dallas and move to Lusaka.  He called me to leave a life I loved and follow Him; to be willing to trust that joy abundant was found in that action, that choice of faith.
So I looked down at my wrist...and I did.  Taking Peter's lead, I stepped out of the boat.  I feel like my toes are about to touch that water, and I'm trying my darnedest to keep my eyes locked on His so my feet don't sink.

So here we go guys. Hope you're ready to see God do some incredible things, because I sure am.