European Adventure

Have I mentioned that Viv and I fly to Europe in 10 days?
It's all we've been talking and thinking about since we decided back in January to do it this year, not next time or when we magically have the money just lying around, but grab 2012 with both hands and stop wishing and start doing.

I know it's going to be a time of high expectations, contradictions and some let downs. For example, I cannot wait for the 6th of September to actually arrive, and I am so impatient with the days dragging on and on. And yet I love the anticipation, the delicious knowledge that it's still ahead of us, and almost don't want this waiting to end.

I know it will be the stuff of dreams, and yet the reality will probably never measure up to the wistful portrayals of 'Europe' I've seen in movies and blogs and heard in songs. After all, for me its the exotic, the different, and yet for those who live there, it's just another city with the same problems we all face.

We'll be staying in hostels, cheap hotels and with my extended family all throughout the continent, from Portugal to to France to Italy and Austria. It's been 8 years since I've seen my aunts, uncles and cousins so I am pretty nervous about staying with them without my parents being there - its now just me, and since Viv can't speak Romanian, I'll be the translator and mediator of jokes and questions.

I know I need to lower my expectations, because I don't want to be disappointed with the reality. I am trying to remember that despite seeing the Eiffel Tower, and enjoying croissants and quaint cobblestoned streets, we will still get tired, grumpy, frustrated, annoyed and that its ok for that to happen. I almost feel like because its 'Europe', it must be a magical land where everything is romantic and historic and imbued with significance that one simply cannot experience crappy emotions like that. So I'm doing my best to remind myself to be realistic!

So much love...

It's ridiculous how much love I have for this man right here in the red hat....and this is just me wanting to shout it from the proverbial rooftops. A wise woman reminded me tonight that we're all on an epic odyssey through this life, and there are some fellow travelers that we couldn't do it without - he is the one who makes the valleys and mountaintops bearable.

What is saving your life right now?

Sarah Bessey over at sarahbessey.com is asking her readers 'What is saving your life right now?' and I feel like I am in need of a whole lot of saving. I am quite resource-less at the moment, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. Physically I can bench-press more than I did last week, thanks to a new workout plan, but the rest? Oh man.

So I've decided to spill here on my oft-forgotten blog, whose posts probably aren't read by anyone other than a bored friend or random visitor.

So, to Sarah's question;

What is saving my life right now?

Th continued forgiveness of a husband who loves me despite all my flaws and my inability to deal with living with my family while we save for Europe.

Episodes of 'An Idiot Abroad' are saving me right now from going crazy and snapping at anyone and everyone and are taking my mind off the tense minefield that exists in the house at the moment.

Meeting Marcy and Laura and Janice and the ridiculously friendly people at a church nearby, people who ask to have coffee and look at me like they're really seeing me. Asking me questions that really sound like they want to know, they want to understand, they want to hear me.

My dreams of Barcelona and lazy mornings in Paris and gondola rides down the canals of Venice are saving me right now.

Emails to a rare friend, detailing the most mundane and ordinary of things.

The Jesus Prayer is saving me right now.

Neither the beginning, nor the end.....just the middle

It seems I am in the 'middle' of a lot of things all at once. We're in the middle of saving money for our Europe adventure. In the middle of figuring out where we belong in a faith community. In the middle of  our marriage, four years in, many, many more to go. In the middle of our housing situation, living with my parents. In the middle of life, of trying to live it well.

And in the very middle of a mini faith struggle  - so hard to pin down that I cannot lend words to it yet, which serves to confuse me even more. If anything, I can always lend words to what I am experiencing and being without that right now is so hilariously painful.

And yet. A book I'm reading says something about the middle being the time and place where things cannot be routine and habit and I do like that.

Also? Could there be anything more wonderful than receiving a present that so perfectly fits your personality? I am obsessed with my kindle/e-reader. I have thousands of books at my fingertips and I am in heaven.

Here I am

Here I am
Back stuffed
Husband mad
Table broken
Door locked
Sunday blues ahead
There she is
At the airport
Off to Africa
Saving the world
Not a worry or a care
Who's got it better?
Me, married, tied down, job, ordinary arguments and dishes to do
She, single, unfettered, flying off to exotic lands to change the world

Whose life is more significant? I want to say hers is because I'm in self pity mode. Yet underneath my self pity I have to acknowledge that neither is more than the other.
Should we all be married? No. Should we all drop everything and leave it behind for the poor and the naked?
Yes. But there are those who are poor in love and naked in their pain right here who need someone too. And they are often right in the midst of our ordinary lives, among the dishes and appointments, the arguments and Sunday night blues.
The excitement of leaving it all behind, the adventure and adrenaline rush of flying off is so tempting for me. And seems the better, more exciting option.
And yet, I haven't been called to be Jesus' hands and feet just when it is fun. I have to do it also when I am sick of it all and craving what's on the other side of the fence. And I must see the lie for what it is; a deception that says everything BUT what I have right now is better and more fulfilling because I'm here at this moment of my life for a reason.

We cannot all possibly be the young, single, carefree girl flying to Africa to salve and heal and save the needy. But we must all be our true Selves in Him, in what we are living already; whether it be motherhood or singleness or marriage or career or divorce or none of the above. If this right now doesn't matter, then nothing matters. But if this right here, this ordinary life can be caught aflame, then it all matters.
All is grace.

Am I a fool? Does it all matter? Or just the exciting lives others seem to lead?

Tell me what you think - and why we shouldn't fall for the "Everything else is better than what you have" lie.

The seeming insanity of faith

If nothing else he has the integrity to tell us up front he's going to do whatever he wants because he is God. I will tell of the most senseless thing he ever did: He showed up here. Not to do away with evil, but to deliver himself over to evil. Instead of showing up to rescue the victims and give the victimizers a sound whacking, he became a victim himself and let them and the plagues and sicknesses and heartaches all go on as if he'd never showed up at all. That is God, take him or leave him.

To take him or leave him is the essence of faith.

He says to us as he is being executed for being God, staring straight in the face of all our incoherence, dissolution and corruption, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." Either he does or He doesn’t. And either we do or don't buy the resurrection, his promise that there is a vast and holy integrity to it all and we too will someday be redeemed from all this suffering.

For my money, in the end, even if the gospel is all a fairy tale hope at best or a damned lie at worst, it is still more attractive than the hopeless and ghastly promises the world hands me.

I admit I’m buying it

Quarter of a century...

I turned 25 just recently.

Assuming I live to 100, I'm past the quarter of a century mark! Age is just a number and all that, and yet it's caused a fair amount of introspection over the last few weeks.

Have I achieved all that I set out to, by this age?

Am I the woman I always wanted to be? If not, am I becoming 'her'?

What do I want my life to look like in another 25 years? What do I want to be known for?

I wrote this in my new, red journal..."I want to be known as a woman who lives and speaks out the grace, the tenacious love and truth that has been shown to me. I want to call out oppression in all its forms - that as long as I am alive, I will be a voice for those who have none, who have no advocate.....someone who 'proclaims freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lord's favour', just like Jesus did. He has called me to no less. To call out systemic and ingrained abuse, hatred, bigotry, and all that stands in opposition to his way of love and powerful grace."

My greatest fear is not becoming her, and slowly turning into a small version of this woman, a closed, fearful and insecure version of who I was meant to be.

There is so much more I wanted to post about. I had a whole blog post ready to go, but I feel it needs more thought. Too often I simply 'vent' and don't shape my writing; this one is about piling high the stones on the altar that testifies to love winning out in the end, about holding tight to moments that proclaim the triumph of good over evil.