Retrospective Hope

As many of you know by now, I head back to Argentina tomorrow.

How long will you be there this time?

I don’t know (probably a couple of months)

What will you be doing?

I don’t really know that, either (teaching and helping out in some capacity or another).

Has the uncertainty got to you yet? It has certainly got to me a time or two.

Since I left Buenos Aires in December, there’s been a couple of game changers. The seminary building is getting sold/demolished. The graduates obviously won’t be coming back, but neither will my first-year English class students. Courses will be done online until a new building can be found. I will be living in the seminary, Thief Lord style and mostly alone, until it gets razed. I will be helping- not entirely sure with what, or how- during this transition time.

Doubts and questions crowd my mind tighter than an overflowing suitcase. Not only what I’m supposed to be doing, but why…and why not do something else entirely? Why not save up money in the months before I start a Master in Teaching (surprise- don’t know where that will be, either)? Why not stay home? Why not go off the grid for a while and hike? Why not avoid final farewells? Why not ignore that Voice that sometimes I hear with my ears but more often lately in the pit of my stomach?

Why not? When will I be home? Where is home? What will I be doing? And why?

I remember my fears roughly this time last year, too.

Will I be able to function 24/7 in my second language? Who will my roommate be? What about the guy I’m dating? How will I balance being a student, friend, and teacher?

They seem small now because I lived through them, and God walked with me every step of the way. I was able to function in Spanish from the start and quickly found a best friend in Lucy, who helped me get through the long distance and break-up blues. I found more than a community in the 20 people I shared the seminary with; I found family. In hindsight, I can see absolute provision, faithfulness, and goodness shining brightly in the mist of every uncertainty.

In the words of a dear friend, “hasn’t God been good to you so far? So what’s to stop Him from being good tomorrow as well?”

And those rhetorical questions I can answer with absolute certainty: yes and nothing!

Reading

If you looked under my bed, you would find boxes. There are a few photos in them, even fewer scraps of cloth and ribbon and paper, and dozens of journals. Dog-eared spirals, lavender-bound little tomes, folders of loose paper for special events. There are a few factual snatches- if I look hard sometimes I can find what I was up to on a certain day in 1998- but mostly imaginings: poems, fairy tales, beginnings of stories with no endings, cynical parodies, dictionary entries for some invented language, and sketches of characters that, no matter how hard I tried, always looked too much like me. 

When caught journaling, I've often responded that writing is my way of making sense of the world. It's how I order my thoughts and ideas line after line, how I process, how I remember. As I look back through my writings, though, I'm coming to realize that it's not the only way.  

More than any original thoughts (if there is such a thing), I discover that most of what I write- and think- is a product of what I read. My bookshelf is as much a way of processing the chaotic, the unexpected, and the loneliness as the boxes of journals that rest beside it. They are both ways of encoding and decoding life, and the most important bits I memorize and pull out when life seems particularly agnostic or dull or disappointing. 

   "There is a way to be good again..."

   "One foot on sea, and one on shore, to one thing constant never. 

     Then sigh not so, and let them go..."

   "Donde aprendimos a vivir sin lagrimas"

   "I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it"

   "Where else does a turtle crossing the road make all the difference in the world?"

You may not realize this, but if you've ever written me anything- particularly if it's anything meaningful- your words form their own (metaphorical) book. I think there's an entire volume of "I love you"s somewhere in my memory, and I pull it out whenever I need to know. I try to incinerate the unkind words (which unfortunately have the nasty habit of sticking longer otherwise), keep the kind ones, remember your stories and reference them. Some of them are under my bed, all of them are in my heart. 

There is another book, too, that reads me as much as I read it. The annotations don't quite outnumber the original words yet, but in more than one instance it looks like a hybrid of book and journal. It's an odd collection of stories and poetry, more alike and unlike my own writing than any other book on the shelf. It is a portal and a mirror, mysterious and terribly frank. Its were some of the first words I referenced in my own thoughts, and the more I read and study it, the more I realize I didn't quite understand it in the first place and don't entirely understand it now. It, more than any, is the one that shapes my thoughts and these letters. 

   "Who can truly be innocent?"

   "The kingdom is like the pinch of yeast that a woman mixed into her bread"

   "Now we see through a mirror dimly, then we will see face to face"

So here's to the books, and to that book, that make writing (and thinking, remembering, and hoping) possible. 

Selected quotes (memorized) from:

-The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

-Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare)

-"En Paz", Defensa Propia (Mario Benedetti) 'where we learned to live without tears'

-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

-All the Places to Love (Patricia MacLahan)

-Psalm 143:2

-Matthew 13:33

-1 Corinthians 13:12

Brand new shiny toy gift phone!

Meet my new phone. It is granny-smith apple green. It is sleek. It is not edible. I've been asked for many years now if I had one (when I didn't). And now I do.

The apple is not edible

Meet my i-phone (no. 5, currently nameless).

I'm not quite sure what to make of the "everyone has one" argument I'd been hearing. Will it be handy to have a camera again? Most certainly. Is it nifty to be able to see previous texts? Oh yes. Can I use it in my classroom? You'd better believe I will (audio recording, hello!)

But does everyone have one?  Taking a quick glance at most of the world, that'll be a resounding nope.

Then again, not everyone has parents who are still together, a bed, enough money for plane tickets to visit family, Bibles in my two languages, the promise of a hot dinner tomorrow (and two other meals, plus snacks), a bachelors degree, a healthy body and plenty of things to clothe it, a faithful computer (who turns 6 this year!), or even access to clean water.

I'm so ridiculously privileged I don't even realize it until I have a brand new shiny toy gift phone to make me remember.

I don't mean to sound like a downer about these things, but I guess this is where my mind goes when I'm thankful. I'm happily reminded that everything- like this phone- is a gift not meant to be hoarded but shared to bless others and bring the Kingdom a little bit closer to home. I'm humbly challenged that this phone (along with everything else) is an investment, and I am responsible to its true Owner. I may be taking this a bit too grandiosely, but after all, it's an i-phone. It can do stuff.

Okay, enough seriousness and Siri-ousness. I mentioned briefly that this brand new shiny toy gift phone is currently nameless; this puts it at odds with my other pricey possessions, which all have names (Mechitas the Mac, Eddy the car, Lucy the deceased camera, Enoch the trombone...etc.)

....Any suggestions?

The mud on our jeans

Tears are not uncommon on 2nd grade recess. Skinned knees, hurt feelings, accidental (?) pushes and reports that "she's not my friend anymore" swarm 2 feet below me, all of them wondering if I can fix it and asking in one way or another a fundamentally human question: am I going to be okay?

Sometimes, thought, the teary-eyed ones don't come to me, and I find myself drawn, like today, to the boy on the lonely bench. His hood is up because it's cold and because he doesn't want anyone to bother, or even see, him. 

I ask him what the matter is and he replies, shoulders shaking, that he tripped and got mud on his pants. 

"Oh kiddo, it'll wash!" I told him, repeating almost instinctually the advice my mom once gave me and likely my grandma once gave her (I wonder how many generations these phrases go back, but that's beside the point). 

He shook his head rather violently. "My mom will yell at me."

I bit my tongue a moment or two. He has mud on his jeans and is distraught at the idea of getting scolded and hurt for the sin of getting them dirty. 

...

Last night I woke up during a dreamed conversation with my cousin Ethan. He said he was going to preach about sin (this is what seminary has done to me, I guess, since he's never preached, although he is one of my favorite people to talk with...I'm guessing that's my dormant brain's connection), and so I asked him what his main point was and advised him to talk about sin in the light of grace and forgiveness. This is pretty profound, now that I think about it, and in line with Jesus' teachings. He talked an awful lot about what to do with the sister who sins against us (forgive as many times as it takes), the tax collector who can't even raise his head as he prays with his hood up in humble honesty and yet goes home right with God, the wasteful son who stumbles homeward with muddy jeans, destined to be a servant but welcomed into his Dad's arms. 

...

I turn again to the boy, and ask him a question I ought to ask myself more often: "what's more important- you, or the mud on your jeans? Which one matters most to your mom?"

Hiccup. "Me."

Of course, but how easily we forget it. The jeans will till have to be scrubbed, but they will wash. There is a way to be good again*, there is forgiveness, there are even new squelchy mud puddles to discover tomorrow. But under it all, there is the assurance that we are loved so much more than the mud on our jeans. 

And that means we are going to be okay. 

*A quote from one of my favorite books: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

**The pictures are not mine, they are respectively heisted from an outdoor clothing site (http://www.muddyfaces.co.uk/being_outdoors.php) and a random article about God's love (http://escapetoreality.org/2010/12/01/love-of-god/). I don't officially endorse either, although I enjoyed the article and definitely use clothes outdoors. 

Re-entry, or maybe I'm crazy sometimes

I'm sure the comparison has been made before, but there is something about culture adjustment (going from one country/culture to another) that is uncomfortably like being mentally, well, off. I won't say mental illness, which is a separate issue and way too heavy to compare to any plight of mine, present or past. But mentally off in the sense that most of my points of reference for what is normal/expected are suddenly shifted- ever so slightly- but just enough to throw me for an emotional loop.



There are the mornings I wake up and go downstairs for breakfast, and stand, somewhat overwhelmed, at the well-stocked kitchen shelves in front of me with no fewer than 6 kinds of tea (I'm indecisive even when faced between black and green tea). Then there are the mornings when I don't even leave my room before I'm astounded at the size of my room and the softness of the carpet and the smell of my books and the clothes in my closet (the ones I'd forgotten I'd had these past ten months). And there are even mornings when I don't even make it out of bed before I remember that I'm not on the top bunk and that my friends are thousands of miles away and in spite of the fact that I'm "home" I don't quite feel home.



And then there are mornings like today when I hear the lyrics "people are strange when you're a stranger" on the radio and start crying in the restaurant for no apparent reason, much to my (and my Dad's) bewilderment.



Like I said, re-entry = mentally off.


Or maybe I'm just "home" nowhere and everywhere at the same time.   

Argentina and airports

Well, with 8 minutes until boarding, this might be my briefest blog post yet. Airports are weird in-between places: still plenty of porteño going on, but for the first time in months, I'm started to be surrounded again by the drawls, twangs, and phrases of my native language. And thus begins the transition back.

Speaking of transitions and comparisons/contrasts, here are some random differences that might take some re-getting-used to...

-Vertical light switches (most here go left to right)
-Throwing toilet paper into the, well, toilet
-Football on TV (that kind of football)
-Not getting asked "where are you from?" and being told my Spanish sounds weird/good on a daily basis by total strangers
-Stores being open from 1-4 (siesta time here)
-No 80 cent icecream (Grido, I miss you already!)
-Greeting with a handshake or hug (minus the bumping cheeks)

I'll let you know how the transition goes- in the mean time, I have a flight to catch!

Did you pack band-aids? (Mom)

Little Becky (with awesome pants)

About 5 years ago, as I was packing my bags (3 suitcases, 1 backpack) in early August to head to college across the country in Tennessee- count the prepositions there- my Mom asked me if I had remembered to buy/pack band-aids. I tossed a box from the bathroom into a pocket and wouldn't have thought much more of it.

Over the next remaining days, she asked that question again and again. "Did you pack band-aids?" wound its way into most conversations at breakfast, in the car, while vacuuming, heading out the door, at the grocery store, finishing the crossword puzzle, napping at the river. It became almost a joke between us; every time there was a gap in the conversation, I'd respond "yes, I packed band-aids." To this day I'm not entirely sure why she was concerned about this item in particular- there are, after all, band-aids in Tennessee. Maybe she knew that I'm accident-prone and a bit of a klutz (looking at the scabs on my knees, she's right), maybe she knew in my minimalist packing I likely wouldn't think to bring them (again, she's right). Or maybe, in spite of how much she knew she would miss me, she wanted me to have a good adventure- scrapes and cuts and stings included- and wanted to make sure I took care of myself in the midst of it.

My mom when she was about
my age (crazy thought)

I've always been close to my Mom, but I wouldn't say that we have the sister-twin relationship like some of my friends have with theirs. Physically, I turned out more like my Dad, and in personality I seem to have inherited mostly traits from his side of the family. All that to say that I have many of the same things she loves about him, but also similar tendencies that annoy/frustrate her- lack of planning and communication more than anything. Naturally, I have plenty of my Mom in me, too- we have a lot of the same tastes in music, food, humor, and hobbies; I can give her name (my middle name) at Starbucks when 'Jill' is too complicated; my inclination to work with kids and languages comes primarily from her; and I've been told we have the same voice on the phone.

The wonder of my Mom, for me, is not that we're similar- it's that she's wonderfully different. In many ways, she is my complement. She taught me how to hug (and sent one with me in the form of a quilt), gets me to say what's on my mind, and was the first to say "go for it!" when I brought up the idea of Argentina. She is social, pretty, goofy, generous, and wise; she is dressed in strength and dignity and she can laugh at the (many!) days to come. Many women do awesome things, but you outshine them all- and in that regard, I hope to be very much like you- because a woman who lives and demonstrates a good relationship with God, her family, and her neighbor deserves recognition (Proverbs 31, yet another paraphrase).

PDX in February- see you in 2 days!

Happy birthday and feliz cumple, Mom!

And yes, I packed band-aids.