Act III: Pushing Through

I am a junior. In fact, I am almost half way done with being a junior. And that is freaky.

Life is picking up speed. And sometimes I wonder why it didn't ask nicely before doing so.

Regardless, here I am, finishing my first semester of the nursing program, playing my 9th season of field hockey, figuring out how to do life and keep myself well fed at the same time.

And I love it.

Not in a fluffy, sunshiney, skipping-through-daisies kind of way, but in a hard, I-cry-sometimes, we-can-do-this-together sort of way. What I'm doing is not always easy, but it is always worthwhile.

Perhaps the best way to convey the feeling of this year so far is by pointing out that this post is one in a series, where I post each fall about my goals for the college year that lies ahead.

I post in the fall. It's December.

I am constantly busy. With homework, studying, field hockey, learning skills for clinical, getting up at the crack of dawn for said clinicals, staying involved with campus organizations, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life.

But on my mind nonetheless, my goals for this year:

1) learn to swim (actual strokes)
2) be certified as a medical interpreter
3) make time for conversation
4) cook more dumpster food

I've decided I want to do a triathalon after college, which requires better swimming than my froggy-stroke. I guess this goal is part of the mental transition to life after EMU.

The second goal is once again thinking ahead, while looking back. I've realized that my Spanish skills have been grossly underutilized as of late, especially for living in a city with a large immigrant population. So I'm going to get certified to use them.

The third may seem redundant and not crucial given my gift for the gab, but the business of this time in my life makes it important. I need to put intentional space in my schedule to connect with those I love, those who are important to me. I also need to practice viewing that time as beneficial, not a waste.

The last one may raise eyebrows, but I wager you'd be convinced once you saw my grocery bill (or lack there of). Dumpsters are full of food, people! And I eat it! I've just learned a different style of cooking. It benefits from cookbooks with indexes organized by ingredient, and usually starts with something along the lines of "How can I use up four cartons of mushrooms in the next three days?..."

So there it is. Late. Random. True.

The things on my mind as I'm pushing through.

photo credit: Jonathan Augsburger

Solid, Not Perfect.

I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine a full 30 minutes early. I sat for a bit, trying to slow my heart rate with deep breaths before going into the hotel and sitting outside the conference room, fidgeting like my chair was made of crawling insects.

I'd been fidgeting since I woke up, something that my dad had obviously noticed. I remember him looking me in the eye just before I walked out the door, and, in that calm, steady voice, saying the most simple phrase:

"You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be solid."

This wasn't just any interview. It was an interview for a scholarship that would pay for nearly half of my college tuition.

And I'm what you might call and "achiever". My own worst critic. Comparing my bloopers to everyone else's highlight reel.

So those words were big. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have every single extracurricular activity listed on your resume. You don't have to have taken every single AP course offered. You don't have to be captain of the team and president of the club and valedictorian of your class.

You are solid. You are enough.

As it turns out, the seven people sitting around the table in that conference room thought so as well :)

But now, four years later, I find myself repeating that phrase my dad gave me. This time its about field hockey, not school. When I joined the Eastern Mennonite University field hockey team as a freshman, I was that obliviously happy kid who was thrilled to be part of a team small enough that I got to be a starter in my first year. Now, with a new coach and an even smaller team, we are in what you would call a "rebuilding period". We fight hard and work our tails off, but our record is nothing to get excited about.

And that is hard for me to handle sometimes. I want more. I want to win. So after each game, I zero in on my performance - good or bad - and wonder why it wasn't enough. I should be able to sprint just a little harder, play defense just a bit more patiently, take shots with just a bit more accuracy. I end up in tears on the sideline at the end of the game because I'm not perfect.

So I'm working on remembering that doing the best I can is what I should expect from myself. Remembering that success is about more than the scoreboard. Remembering that those words were about more than just a scholarship:

You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be solid.

Holding Up The Sky

I am one of those people who wanders around this world, picking up every piece of fallen sky I see - every tear, every broken heart. Yeah, I know they're not mine to hold. Yeah, I know I should learn to put them down. I'm trying.

The sky is so big. There will always be more pieces falling than my tiny hands can hold.

The sky is so big. But I'm not the only one under it.

There is a South African word, ubuntu, which has been broadened into a philosophy. As it was explained to me by my high school field hockey coach, this word means "I am because you are". Humanity is inarguably connected, no matter the mantras of individualism or the geological rifts. And if one member of us is not allowed to be all that they are meant to be, we are all barred from being what we were meant to be.

If there is yet one person belittled, confined, harassed, wounded, forgotten - then all of humanity hurts because of it.

The sky is so big. But there are so many of us under it. There are so many hands among us to pick up the pieces that have fallen, to keep our heavenly ceiling from crumbing.

So I don't have to hold up the sky by myself.

But I also cannot forget all those who are pushed back from reaching the sky.

Sure, the idea of holding up the sky was one I found in a book about women's right's issues across the world*, but this post isn't just about feminism. Whatever group just popped up in your mind three lines before, that's the one I'm talking about. Yeah, those people you'd rather not think about. The ones that you know are marginalized, beaten down, unheard. It could be women, or it could be the stranger in our land, the LGBTQ community, the homeless man you studiously avoided eye contact with as you walked past his cardboard plea for help this morning.

We cannot be all we were meant to be - beautiful and curious, powerful and whole-hearted - until each member of humanity is all they were meant to be.

It takes all of us to hold up the sky.

*this book is called Half the Sky and was written by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It is by far one of the best books I have ever read, and you should read it too. I have copies to share. Seriously, it will change you.

The Desert

The desert.

Dry. Empty. Hostile.

Or is it?

When most people think of the Middle East, I think they picture sand dunes, camels and turbans. And don’t get me wrong, those are there!

But the desert struck me in a new way while I was on cross cultural. Through Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy, over four months and countless cups of tea, here are some things that I took with me:

The desert.

Parched. Scorched. Vast.

So much bigger than anything I feel. A chunk of perspective plopping into the mumbo jumbo soup of inflated emotions that is a cross cultural experience. Everything is heightened when you are out of your comfort zone, and even more so when you stay outside it for four months.

As I stared out the window of the bus on a particularly trying day, the blur of sand and rocks staring back at me became a soothing thought: I am small. Infinitesimal, in the grand scheme of the universe. And that means that my problems – my discomfort, my questions, my wrestling – are all even tinier. Sigh. It’s good to be small sometimes.

The desert.

Harsh. Immense. Challenging.

A place which the Israelites called home for 40 years. They journeyed - growing, learning, straying, returning. Not a stroll through sand dunes, as I had always pictured, but struggling over rocks and brambles, heads bent against the fierce wind, each ragged breath another silent wish for water.

         A place to which Hagar was banished, alone, with her son. Sent away for doing as she was told, evicted by jealousy. A place where she was resigned to die, until the Lord’s angel saved her. Hagar, who’s very name means migration.

         A place where the Bible came alive before me, and I could finally see with my own eyes what the words couldn’t convey.

The desert.

Uninhabited. Barren. Desolate.

Free of buildings, free of walls. Walls are plentiful in the Holy Land. You’d think this would be the place where grace extends and we forget our differences in the light of the Holy of Holies. Nope. We use religion to build walls: between the Muslims, Christians, Armenians, and Jews. Between the Palestinians and Israelis. Between men and women. There are walls everywhere.

But the desert is free of walls. Here I am reminded of the grace of God, and how it surrounds and carries us, regardless of, well, anything.

My time abroad made me realize just how unique this grace is. I see it nowhere but in my God. Everywhere I look, redemption, re-humanization and return are all left behind in favor of rules and laws and condemnation. But all of those fall so short, or rather, we fall short. But grace is there to hold us, carry us.

I am nothing without grace. And walls are nothing in the face of grace.

The desert.

Lonely. Uninhabited. Empty.

So unlike the many holy sites we visited. The Church of the Nativity, the tombs of Abraham and Sarah, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden Tomb – we went to all of them. And they were all packed full of people, taking pictures, kneeling, pushing against each other as they reached for the holy square foot of bedrock that is said to have been touched by Jesus.

These are the places that people ask about and are amazed that we visited, but they are also the places I tended to connect with the least. No, the gold covered buildings filled with candles and tourists were not where I felt the spirit. I spent more time trying not to get separated from the group or trampled than I did in reverence or prayer.

I connected with God while playing Frisbee in the Sea of Galilee. I heard His voice in the long conversations with fellow students as we hiked the coast of Turkey. I learned to know my God sitting alone, watching the sun set across the miles of empty sand.

The desert.

Hopeless. Dismal. Bleak.

         How it can feel when you spend four months hearing story after heartbreaking story of fellow people ripping each other apart.

         But there is hope. We also heard stories of love, of trust, of choosing to see humans before labels. Stories of relationship.

         Because that’s what Jesus was about, in the end. He didn’t sit down at the well and tell the Samaritan woman how to fix her life. He asked. He listened. He learned to know her story. That is the gospel in action: relationship.

         And against all odds, in spite of religion and nationality and walls, people are pushing for something different than what is in front of them. There are groups bringing together Palestinian and Israeli kids to play Ultimate Frisbee. There are Israeli activists protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes. There are college kids in Bethlehem, who look around and think “there must be a better way”.

         There are hands reaching across the wall, building relationships, building hope.

        

The desert.

What I longed for upon my return.

Well, to be honest, I longed to be back in pretty much any one of the places we visited, but the emptiness of the desert was quite enticing. Coming back is hard.

Coming back to isolation after spending literally every moment of the past four months with some portion of a group of 26 college kids going through same experiences. Coming back to people who have never been to the part of the world I have just been submerged in. Coming back to opinions based on inflated news stories and good intentions, but not on the kind of relationships that I have built with the people living in these countries. Coming back to a home that feels much less like home. Coming back to “How was your trip?!”

I’m slowly learning to answer the questions that those around me don’t have the words to ask. Learning how to hold on to an experience. Learning how to carry stories.

The desert.

A new place in my journey, the beginning of new questions and ideas, where I too grew, learned, strayed and returned. While I spent just a fraction of time there, its transformational powers have reached me just the same, and I still feel a nudging to not shrink away, but step towards the uncomfortable places.

The desert.

This piece is a transcript of what I shared about cross-cultural during a recent service at my church.

Fancy That!

Other people like my writing too! Check out my recent post for Mennonite Church USA's #WeAreMenno blog:

<http://mennoniteusa.org/menno-snapshots/wearemenno-i-wrestle-with-empathy/>

I just did that.

- spent almost four months traveling and learning in Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy

- navigated Istanbul for a week with four other ladies and no supervision

- spent a weekend in Italy with no pre-made travel plans except a train ticket

- saw 3 of the Seven Wonders of the World

- hiked 35 miles with a 50lbs pack in 3 1/2 days

- went 3 nights and 2 days with no food or people

- went 7 days without a shower

- overcame claustrophobia

- climbed a 5.8 route

- ran 7 miles (no, not a landmark distance, but the farthest I've ever run)

- went 15 days without any technology

The Return

"Are you excited to be home?!" you ask, eyes lit up at the prospect of my return.

The obvious "Yes!" leaps to my lips, but it only hovers there, never escaping, mired down in complication.

Your eyes turn from excitement to confusion, as you await an answer you thought was easy. I wish I could give you that answer, it would make travel much easier. Or at least that I could explain it to you, this mixture of joy and loss.

But when I'm in transit, I am the only one who can see both my coming and my leaving. I see the relationships, experiences, laughter, tears, growth - all of it stretched out in my wake.

You see only me, in front of you.

So I smile, say "It's good to see you!", while holding my journey in my open palms.

You won't ever see it like I do, you can't get behind my eyes. But slowly, gradually, you will understand pieces. You will hear it in my stories, see it in my walk, feel it when you hug me.

Only I can hold my journey, but I will do my best to share what I can.

Then some day, when you step off the bus, or boat, or plane, I will step forward to hug you and feel the journey in your bones. I promise to give you time. I promise to ask and to listen. I promise to sit side by side in silence when the words fail you, because I can't get behind your eyes.

Yes, we will sit together and hold our journeys, sharing in the parts that overlap and intertwine, and let them pull us past the distance behind our eyes.

Ghost Town

What are you left with
when the people dissipate
and leave you alone,
where they once was a crowd?

What are you left with
at the end of a debate,
when voices trail off
and the silence is loud?

Are you left exhausted,
emptied of your light,
drained of your lifeblood,
solitude your respite?

Are you left full to bursting,
ready to explode?
Is your heart made to pump
by the love that was shown?

Are you left in a dark place
with the parts of your soul
that seem ready to drown you
if you slip and let go?

Are you left with just stillness -
no joy, no regret?
Is your mind left at ease?
Is isolation no threat?

My prayer for you
when you sit without company,
in the silence and stillness
and quiet cacophony,

is that love is what fills you
and peace calms your soul,
and even when solitary,
you're never alone.

Bath Time

I think God's female form is an old, lovingly round, Turkish lady. And she is likely scrubbing the skin off your soul.

The moment this image came to me, I was laying in a sauna full of air so warm and humid I wasn't sure how I was breathing it. I was somewhere on the European side of Istanbul, in a Turkish bath house, freshly soaked, scrubbed, bubble-bathed, and massaged. And I felt incredibly human, and completely whole.

If you've never been to a Turkish bath, it may seem confusing that one would pay to strip down and have someone the age of your grandma bathe you so vigorously your skin rubs off - which it literally does, in gray clumps that make you think you aught to use a wash cloth more often. However, I can tell you that it is an experience I now believe everyone should have at some point during their lifetime.

I felt like a child, taken back to the days when staying clean wasn't something I could do on my own. This feeling was probably augmented by the language barrier, which gave my Turkish grandma no choice but to simply reach out and take whichever arm or leg she was going to wash next, with me limply going along. In a warm room filled with women, she rubbed off my dead skin, soaped up my newly pink body and massaged it, and washed my hair. Between each stage, I was motioned over to faucet where I sat down and was doused with warm water before returning to the slab of heated marble. By the end, I was CLEAN.

Did I mention I was nearly naked this entire time? Yep. Everything's gotta be scrubbed. What started out feeling uncertain and uncomfortable soon became natural and healing, because I realized that I had never felt so un-sexualized in my life. I had to get naked to stop caring about my body.

Now, I'm not terribly insecure. In fact, I think I have pretty good self esteem. But none of us can live in this culture and not be touched by the ads, movies, and stereotypes swirling around us. No one. Even subconsciously, we become so concerned about our bodies and everyone else's.

Laying in that sauna, I felt God reach in and touch my soul:

Look at your body. It's a miracle of tiny cells, coming together to make you into My image. Yes, it sweats, cries, and bleeds, but all of those things make you more like Me.

It also gets dirty. There is the dust of my earth, proof that you fit into the beauty of creation. Then there is the coating of mud that is not from me, that is thrown at you by the world and distorts your image to something very unlike Me.

But it's just a body, and it can be cleaned. All of my children's bodies can be cleaned, so that their curves and edges once again point to Me. After all, you were created in My image, so being completely human is as close as you can get to Me.

This is just a body, it is not you. So don't be so concerned with it, child. Because just as she has scrubbed your body clean, so will I scrub your soul, and that's a bath that can never be soiled.

And with that, I found the most amazing peace, for myself and the world. I know it won't stick around nearly as long as I want it to. I know that all too soon, I'll be once again worried about things like pimples and leg hair and a thigh gap. But hopefully I will be able to catch myself, and hear once again the simplicity I found in that Turkish bath.

In the meantime, I will hug tightly the image of God as an old, lovingly round, Turkish lady, scrubbing my soul clean. 

The Little Man of the Eye

Biblically, this is the Hebrew translation of "apple of his eye" in Deuteronomy 32:

"10 In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft."

Literally, this "little man" is the tiny reflection of yourself in the glassy surface another person's eyes.

Amidst a flurry of Old Testament stories, this phrase caught my attention and stuck in a way that few things do. Because it makes so. much. sense.

When you recognize the little man in the eye, you are seeing a piece if yourself in the other - friend or enemy. In other words, their humanity is as evident as your own, and you become equals.

This level viewpoint allows a whole new window to open: empathy. You can see the shortcomings of being human. You can see the pain that inevitably comes from living in a fallen world, the times when someone broke their trust, the simple things that they have had to fight tooth and nail for. But you can also see the honest attempt at a good life and the need to be loved. How do you see these things in their eyes? Because they are in you too.

One crucial part of the phrase is the eyes themselves, because in order for you see them, you must look. Well duh. Think about it, though. Eye contact cannot happen when you look down on someone lower than you. It cannot happen when you are miles away from each other. It cannot happen through walls. In the same way, you cannot see the little man of the eye if you are overpowering someone, emotionally separated, or ignoring them.

In order to see some one's eyes, you must be on the same level as them, face to face, and you have to choose to look - literally and metaphorically.

So what does this mean? Well, for one, if you take the time to realize that we are all just dust and spit, you will see the value in every person, and you will see the narrative of humanity in their eyes - just as they can see it in yours. If we all did this, the world might be a more peaceful, loving place.

When God sees the little man in our eyes, He sees His image in us, just as He created. He feels the pain and doubt and joy of every one of His children as though it were fully His own, and protects us as such.

The kicker? This is how He always sees us: with a tiny image of Him in our eyes.

Rocks

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." -Maya Angelou

The people of Palestine are desperate to tell their story. My host family, those who gave us academic lectures, our tour guides, even the pastor at a local church we visited - all urgently added to a painful narrative.

Why is there such a drive to tell us about their lives and share their story? Because they are rarely heard. On the oppressed side of an occupation, their voices are often drowned out. The perceived danger in Palestine prevents most visitors from staying more than a few hours - just enough time to snap a picture of the Nativity Church and the Shepherd's Field before piling back into the bus and hiding once again behind the wall. In the driest lands, Palestinians are left drowning in their own story.

The people of Israel are also desperate to share their narrative. They push scriptures and personal accounts at me like a protective wall, keeping them safe from the judgement and discrimination they are now used to after hundreds of years of being outcasts. Neither group of people is well-represented by the media, because only terrorists and crazy settlers make the news. Only tiny fraction of the story is what is broadcast to the world.

"...no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal." -Sarah Kay

A personality test designates me as a helper. This means that I focus on other's emotions and feel them deeply. Living, even temporarily, in a place so filled with pain is hard to handle. It is a struggle to balance the value of growth during discomfort, and being immobilized by empathy. How do I not sidestep pain, but also not become paralyzed by it?

"Tell them what you see."

This was the simple request of a student at Bethlehem University. Our peers here ask only this of us. So let me tell you about this land.

The concrete slabs that form a wall, twenty-six feet high, as far as I can see. This is the barrier that Israel has built for unspecified "security reasons". It separates: Israel from Palestine, farmers from their olive groves, aquifers from thirsty families, holy sites from worshipers, animals from migratory paths. Standing in front the wall for the first time, I take in the prolific graffiti that seems to cover the cold hostility of concrete with some form of desperate humanity. My eyes fill with tears. I have never encountered an object so saturated with pain.

The stones scattered across the fields where it is thought that shepherds once grazed their flocks on a certain starry night. Here, stories tell us, the heavenly hosts surrounded them in a song, proclaiming the birth of the savior of the world. Their song proclaimed peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

The stone wall that encloses the tombs of Abraham and Rachel. These are pivotal figures in the story of both Islam and Judaism, so both demand to have access to the tombs, even in Hebron, where massacres color the history between these religions and clashes happen in a daily basis. So we file past the window in the stone wall, first inside the synagogue, then in the mosque on the other side. The sight of bullet proof glass covering the space between the opposing windows is a keen reminder that places of worship are not off-limits to violence, and my American passport and Christian identity give me an uncomfortable privilege here.

The stone walls of a cave, dimly lit by an array of lamps and a lone fluorescent light bulb. Shining in this light is a star-shaped shrine on the floor. This is the site where Jesus is thought to have been born. People flock from around the globe to touch and kiss this sacred piece of floor where the Prince of Peace came to earth.

The stones that I pick away from the dry dirt at the base of a thorny bush. I raise my pick ax one more time and let out a whoop of triumph as the bramble comes loose. We are working at the Tent of Nations for a day, a farm surrounded by five Jewish settlements. In an effort to prevent the Israeli army from seizing their land, the family is constantly planting olive and fruit trees. If the farm is ever deemed unused, the Israeli authority claims the right to seize it - something they are very keen to do in order to connect the settlements that circle this hilltop. They have even gone as far as bulldozing and burying 1,500 apple and apricot trees just a few months before the harvest. Despite this attempt to break their spirit, the family maintains the motto "we refuse to be enemies", and continues to nonviolently resist. "However many trees they destroy, we will plant the double!" So I joyfully pull thorny weeds from the land and dig holes in the stony earth, because in a land of complicated issues and seemingly unanswerable questions, I have found a problem that I know I can fix if I just work hard enough.

The bricks that I feel resting on my chest every time I close my eyes. We have now traveled to both sides of the wall, and my experience has confirmed what I knew to be true: the pain is everywhere. On both sides. In the present and the past. It has seeped into the very stones of this land, beautiful and desolate, a land that two people love dearly and feel a strong connection to. The answers are not on one side. The violence is not on one side. The suffering is not on one side.

But humanity is not on one side either. On both sides there are smiles and laughter, babies and heart-warming meals, hearts filled with the love of God. On both sides, there are people with the will to believe there can be something more in this land than pain and loss. And that is the solid rock that I choose to believe in.

At Home

I'm sitting on a cushion on the floor of a small living room. There is a PowerPoint presentation projected onto one wall. Surrounding me are 25 other college students, two leaders, and three MCC workers. I'm listening to a list of projects that MCC is working on in Jordan. And there are tears in my eyes.

What?

I pause and look around the room, and it blurs for a moment as I am reminded of another, similar room. This one is warmer, and sun streams in the windows. It's full of people, but not as many: an MCC El Salvador team meeting.

I only spent four of my nineteen years in El Salvador. It has now been ten years since we moved back to the States. But there is still an undeniable mark on my soul from the time I spent there.

Despite the gap of time, I still feel more at home in a random office half way across the world than I ever did in any classroom of my high school or any church sanctuary.

And that's why I am sitting on the floor, with tears in my eyes and a grin on my face.