Dullishness

Yes, it has been three months, to the day, since I have blogged.

While this fact has constantly been nagging at the back of mind (occasionally aided by the physical voices of a few loyal followers), every time I try to think of words to write, my life stares back at me like a blank page. I feel like a monstrous case of writer’s block.

Life since India seems muted. Color is there. Life, purpose, community—all the good things of existence—swirling around in the natural ebb and flow of sun risings and settings. But less poignant. Less vibrant. Dull.

I know there are things to write about here. It wasn’t the large things of India that drew my focus. I loved discovering small details, having the time to slow down long enough to notice the ordinary. Even now I’m probably surrounded by hundreds of miniature wonders; I’ve probably seen them so many times I’ve grown blind their existence. I’m probably walking so fast I don’t take the time to notice. Probably.

Half the things I love about India, the Indians likely aren’t even aware of. Maybe they have my problem in reverse. So somehow, my eyes need to become a stranger in their own home.

It’s also just a season. We all have to learn to walk with God through splendor, through pain… through boredom.

As I was walking with my mom last week we were discussing my dullishness. I was lamenting the lack of having anything specific to process. She told me it wasn’t a bad thing not to have issues to work through. “Yes, but being healthy is boring,” I said. She laughed.

She’s right. I should just be grateful for a healthy reprieve. I’m not sure why I’m writing all this other than the fact that I’m tired of walking through a maze of tedious social conventions and want to vent, that something of some kind needed to be written, and maybe there are others of you that can relate to the fact that life does not always feel like an adventure.

I should it make it my goal for my next post to find something ordinary worth noticing.

Culture Shock

For weeks before I came home from India, I braced myself for a tidal wave of culture shock to come crashing over me and leave me in a soggy, mucky mess. The strange thing was, it never hit. Sure, I was a little dazed when I walked into Walmart and stared down aisle after aisle of products that it didn’t seem anybody really needed, but I didn’t melt into tears or get angry and race out of the store. In some ways this absence of obvious grief has been hard.

It took me several weeks to realize that my experience with culture shock was a much more subtle affair. It creeps up on me slowly, softly, in a way that I’m not sure it’s there. I can’t put my finger on the discomfort, I only know that something is not right. Instead of tidal waves I have the gently rolling surf of the seaside. I stand on the shore as the water laps around my feet. It’s easy to withstand a wave, and then another one. But the tide rises, slowly but surely. All of a sudden I look down and wonder where all the water has come from. It’s harder to stand straight as wave after wave rushes in, first around my ankles, then around my knees. It’s easier to lose my balance.

I’ve been babysitting my siblings this week while my parents are off on a much-needed vacation. I love my siblings, and I don’t consider it much of a burden to watch them for the week. I volunteered. But tonight, I’m stumbling for footing as I stare out to the sea. All week I’ve listened to them grumble and whine over food. I’ve watched bits and pieces go to waste here and there, seen them turn up their noses to four offered choices of leftovers for lunch. I’ve gritted my teeth against their little, self-entitled hearts.

It’s not something so big. My siblings are good kids. They have strong values compared to others of their peers. I know they don’t purpose to be selfish and demanding. But their flesh is still strong within them, and they know nothing other than the world of Walmart super stores and refridgerators full of food. But I am haunted by the dear face of an Indian grandmother who lowered herself to ask for two dollars to buy rice to feed her family for the week. Her son hadn’t been able to find work for over a month. I see the faces of my tution students who open their hands to accept whatever snacks I bring, their cries of “thank you teacher” echoing in my ears. I remember a whole village of people that thought it a treat when we brought them eggs or milk or tea.

I left the dinner table in tears tonight. I’m curled up in the dark in my parent’s bedroom right now, finally giving in to tears that may have been kept at bay for a little too long. Abba, teach me what to do. I don’t want to walk in judgment. I don’t want to be angry. But I also don’t know how to navigate my heart between such polarized worlds. I don’t always know how to maintain my joy in the midst of a culture that splays their sense of self-entitlement across their faces, their wardrobes, their pantries, their houses, and their cars. And as I write this I realize it’s not that I can’t live with the glut; I just can’t live without gratitude. Somewhere in the midst of all this stuff, we need to realize that it’s just stuff. If it disappears, the world won’t come crashing down.

So help me, Abba. Show me what to do with the pain. Help me to be vulnerable in a way that invites others to consider your goodness, rather than pushing them away in my frustration.

When friends fall in love

I’m good at weddings. I’ve worked the bridal business for a few years. I’ve been a personal attendant quite a few times (officially and unofficially). I’m an all-around gofer, seamstress, steamer, decorator, snack-maker, boutonnière pinner, dress-fluffer, tabs on the flower-girl keeper, ring-bearer entertainer, lip-gloss carrier, present deliverer, reception cleaner, and bridal sanity maintainer. When the people I love decide to join their lives with someone else, I like to show up and help make it happen. It brings me so much joy to watch a day unfold that has been so-long anticipated and longed for, cried over on couches, and fought out with God.

But I have to confess, that when the cake is all eaten, or the leftovers pawned out on hapless souls leaving the reception, the chairs are folded, and my feet ache from dancing, I crawl into my car and give in to shedding a few a tears.

You see the hardest thing about being single is not being single. It’s watching friends who were single move on to this place that you are not ready to follow. There’s a bit of grieving that happens in the process.

Some of my friends are good at making friendship important after marriage. Some of them kinda disappear. But either way, things shift. And they’re supposed to. It’s a good thing, but it’s hard. I have to re-remind myself of what I know is true, that I’m content, that I don’t really want my life to be different, that the lines God has drawn for me are good. And they are. In the midst of shedding my few tears, in the midst of my heart’s voiced honesty, I remember. I resolve to cling to that remembrance—and to gratitude.

Home Between

For all you readers who have been impatiently chafing at my silence the past three weeks (however few or handfulish you may be) I am sorry. It’s been hard to find words since coming home. It’s difficult even to talk about it so that I find myself reluctant to struggle speak unless somebody takes the time to ask. What does one say? There are even mornings where I wake and wonder, was it all just a dream? Life in the West is so different from life in India it is hard to believe that I’ve lived in both, that they can coexist in the world—and my heart. Sometimes I feel like my brain stares at them as if they were two diverse puzzle pieces that appear to be from different puzzles entirely. You want me to fit these together?! it says.

I’m not even sure if I have anything concrete to say in this post other than the fact that I’m home and fighting to redefine what life should be. I miss India. Just last night I was lying in bed thinking that it was too soft, that I wouldn’t mind my hard flat bed with grass-stained bed sheets. But I’m also finding that there is a familiarity to the choices I face each morning—the choice to be grateful, to not despise humble tasks, to walk with joy, and be honored to serve. India lingers in my heart and has changed what I see as important. Significance must still be redefined because my worth, and even my usefulness, is not determined by the tasks I complete but the position of my heart towards God and the value he speaks into my life.

So right now I’m in a season of lingering between. India is past. Acceptance to graduate school hopefully awaits in the future. I know this time at home is just as significant as the time on either side, despite the fact that some days I wake up and wonder what I’m to do with myself. So I’m writing and quilting, helping friends with weddings, working here and there, and finding a new love of being with my family and my mom. Most of all I’m trying to keep my heart awakened to any little way God is trying to teach me something new, to nudge me with his spirit, show me places to serve. It’s different, but like all things that God brings, I know that it is also good.

Flight Itinerary

I’m coming home. It’s going to take four days since I have the craziest, most-pieced together itinerary ever. That’s partly due to the fact that to get from India to Laos and back I chose an airline so cheap my travel agent couldn’t access their database, and partly due to the fact that Asia is predictably unpredictable and one canceled flight turned into two rebooked ones. Therefore…

7 airports
6 flights
5 countries
4 days
3 continents

from now I’ll be landing in Nebraska, hopefully to find an eager crowd of familiar little faces to fight for hugs all at the same time (one of the awesome features of my king-size family).

Wet Eyes

I cry so easily now when I get overwhelmed by the goodness of God.

I’ve been sitting on Kruses porch this morning trying to summarize thoughts about India into a two-page letter while listening to “Your Love is A Song” by Switchfoot (lyrics below). And I did it again. Cried that is. What else can I do when I stand in the face of someone so powerful and so worthy, yet someone who cares to take everything he is and tend to my heart with such gentility and patience and such stubbornness to refuse to let me remain as I am?

Ooh, your love is a symphony
All around me, running through me
Ooh, your love is a melody
Underneath me, running to me

With my eyes wide open
I’ve been keeping my hopes unbroken…

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-face with Modern-day Slavery

I just finished reading this book by E. Benjamin Skinner, one journalist’s investigation into the existence of slavery still present in the 21st century. He travels in perhaps twelve countries posing as a merchant, factory owner, or just a westerner searching to satisfy his own contorted lusts, whatever it takes to answer the question: how easily, how quickly, how cheaply can I barter and trade for the life, labor, or sexual commodity of a human being? Answer: much too easily.

I won’t summarize the book. Read it for yourself. My question is what to do after you’ve read it. Skinner points out that the face of modern slavery is much easier to ignore than the Africans in chains on southern plantations. The face of modern slavery is hidden. If you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. It’s the face of a prostitute who most will judge and assume she’s chosen the life she leads. It’s the face of factory workers and farmers who appear to be working for wages. It’s the face of an internationally adopted child who appears to have been rescued from destitution and brought to live in suburban America, but it’s all just a rouse; it’s really Cinderella pitted against the cruel stepmother, minus a fairy godmother or glass slipper, with an abusive brother thrown in for twisted measure.

Why don’t they run? Why don’t they speak? Because they are beaten into submission. Because they are illiterate and ignorant of laws regarding their freedom. Because their families might die if they squeal. Because they are afraid of deportation where home might mean death. Because they are brought to believe they are worthless.

I read their stories and I struggle with how to respond. Shouldn’t I be in tears? Shouldn’t I be screaming at injustice? And I am. Sometimes. But I can’t bawl my eyes out with every page. It takes too much emotional energy. If I fell apart at every sign of injustice I’d have to bury myself at the bottom of a tissue box and never come out. I’d be useless.

There comes a point when I have to make a choice to say I refuse to be overwhelmed by injustice. It’s everywhere. There are more slaves today than at any other time in history. That’s a lot of evil getting its way. I’m tempted to think, what can I do in the face of so much wrong? But the moment I surrender to that thought, evil has won. So I have to fight, even if I never see visible changes from my efforts; it’s the principle of never conceding the fact that darkness has won… because it hasn’t.

I still don’t know what it looks like from day to day. I know it means I keep my heart uncallused and hopeful. It means I staunch my ignorance, help others open their eyes. It means I pray, I petition governments, I keep sending money to pay for the schooling of a dalit child in India to prevent him from falling into the same trap. Maybe it means one day I open up my home to show broken women how to find life after hell.

In some sense I don’t think it matters what we do, as long as we do something, as long as we keep fighting, as long as hope stays alive. I can’t fix a problem that is millions of lives deep in countries all over the world. If I think that’s my job, I better give up now. But I can find courage to face those who come across my doorstep. If I spend my entire life fighting for the life and dignity and restoration of one human heart than my existence will be worth something. And slavery, in the world of at least one human being, will die.