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The most obvious marks of my venture to Mexico have all worn away. My suitcase is empty, my clothing washed, folded, tucked away into my drawers. The russet lines of dirt, having once formed crescents beneath my nails, have disappeared. The sour, coppery smell of the water that ran from the hotel’s shower has left my skin, and in it’s place, the soft, coconutty warmth of my lotion. My burnt part line has healed, my strained muscles have relaxed.
From the looks of me, I never left America.
But if you were to perforate my skin, peel it back, and leave my heart exposed, you’d see the change.
I know, because I see it, too.
I can’t spend a dollar now without thinking about Luis, and what ten pesos would have meant to him. Every meal I consume makes me wonder when Miguel ate last, and how much he ate. The screaming kids climbing through the colorful tubes at Escapades, shoving handfuls of tokens into the arcade games, makes me think of the deflating soccerballs Denzel and Samuel kicked around in the naked dirt. When I climb into my bed at night and burrow beneath the layers of blankets and snuggle into the warmth of my mattress, I can’t help but think of the splintery, unforgiving beds we built for the families of Camalu.
My heart has been touched, my attitude softened.
I assume that eventually, these reminders of the conditions I left behind when I crossed the border will fail to be triggered by my daily spending habits, that someday soon I will be able to lift the first forkful of a meal to my mouth without thinking about what Enrique’s mom might have put on the table that day.
But I know I will fail to forget completely. I know these children’s faces, their laughs, their smiles, will find a way to seep into my life, to wedge a space in my heart, my thoughts, and take root at the center of me.
And if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to go back and know the reality once more.
My life changed last week, sometime around 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. It was hot, I was sweating, and my muscles ached from forcing screws through plywood and 2 X 4s all afternoon. I had sawdust in my nose, ears, eyes. The once pale skin of the part in my hair was badly burnt and seemed to sizzle, without being touched.
The air was heavy. It always felt heavy there, in Mexico, and not just with heat, but with the smell of all kinds of things wasting away: food, human feces…and hope.
I was inside a cinderblock house belonging to a family of 7, including two children with spina bifida, one in a wheelchair, the other lying in a small bed under mosquito netting, disabled in every way.
I was inside a doorway, looking into the room in which stood this small bed on which the small boy lay, nine years old but no bigger than a child five years younger. The window above his bed threw light across the ugly scene before me: the boy’s body wrapped in a thin sheet, his too-small limbs, his pale hands, fingers curled toward the light, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if in fear.
But it wasn’t the sadness of it all that forced my throat to tighten, tears to crawl into the corners of my eyes, my breathing to become cramped.
It was the love in the room, encircling the child, shining in through the window, touching every dirty cinderblock, wrapping itself around me as I stood, unable to move, unable to cry, unable to say anything.
If you’ve ever been to areas of Mexico like Camalu, where people build only half a house at a time, hoping to one day maybe have enough money to finish it; where rabid, infested dogs live in the same houses as babies and aged adults; where the dust is a constant thing, rising up in a hazy billowing choking cloud at the slightest disturbance; where children stay hungry and sick because treating them and feeding them comes second to survival; where hope is hidden in the furthest reaching places of the heart, because there’s so much hurt, so much need, so much loss–then you know that a child like this one would be considered a parasite. A leech. A helpless, empty shell, unable to work for the good of the family.
Just one more thing to worry about.
One more thing to take care of.
One more thing to wish had turned out differently, better, so that life could have been a little easier.
But consider the picture I’ve described here: yes, the house is dirty. The floors are bare cement. The walls, nothing more than cinderblocks. But the child, though helpless, disabled, dying, was asleep. Breathing peacefully. Wrapped in clean sheets, lying in the yellow glow of the afternoon sun, on a mattress and a bed.
In a city where I watched children play with glass and nails unsupervised, climb over barbed wire fences to go after lost balls, and sit in piles of trash, this one was tucked in. Kept safe. Made comfortable.
Loved.
Even in America, a child like this one, with an exposed spine and a part of his brain seeping out the back of his head, would have been a huge burden on any family. Imagine sacrificing so much money, time, and love on this tiny, helpless child, as these parents, in a far more stressing environment than we will ever have to live, seem more than happy to do.
Imagine this type of love. The type that takes sacrifices and effort. The type of love that hurts you, that wears you down raw, that requires the impossible.
It’s the most beautiful love.
The love swelling, abounding, exploding in that room in a little house in a stagnant city in Mexico is the same love Christ gives to me, to you, to everyone.
I had never before witnessed love like this in my life.
It looked messy, difficult, pained.
It looked real.
I leave for Mexico tomorrow, and I’m sure it will be the biggest adventure of my life, thus far.
So, prayers would be nice…!
Details when I return!
Love.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
When I read this as a child, I used to wonder how I’d ever be able to give someone else a love like that, whether in friendship or a romantic and spiritual relationship. How could I learn to control my sinful tendencies (i.e., jealousy, anger, selfishness, impatience, etc.) and experience love as God intended? And, if I were to encounter such a love, shouldn’t suppressing these emotions come without effort? Shouldn’t they be a part of the purest love?
Now, I read this verse and see these qualities in the relationships I hold closest to my heart. They aren’t perfect, but I am getting better at giving and receiving the love modeled in 1 Corinthians.
There are days when I believe love is all I could ever need, when I look at the people around me and feel in my heart that their presence, their influence, could become my beating heart. There are days when I feel so FULL that the world falls away and I see with my own eyes the truth and honesty of the relationships I am blessed with.
But there are also days when I feel like love could never be enough to keep me full forever. Because we’re too vulnerable and the world is too cold and there’s so much hurt and it’s all just one big unfixable mess.
But I guess that’s where I remember that love never fails. And I try to experience this truth a little more everyday…because believing any differently takes the life out of it all.
It’s always been my dream to write for life.
Of course, I didn’t always believe in this dream. There was a time when I thought trying for it wasn’t a productive way to spend my time.
It was just this distant, shimmering something far out of my reach, something I would love to do but never actually thought I could. It was like skydiving or mountain climbing–an experience I knew would define me, but one that was far beyond my limits.
In fact, I only started reconsidering all these doubts when a friend of mine expressed a similar goal. She wanted to write and get paid for it.
My life goals changed that day. Because someone else shared my dream and went so far as to discuss how to make it happen, I suddenly believed in myself.
(Which is sad).
Anyway. This summer, I’ve been getting paid to write these SEO (search engine optimization) articles for an “Internet Marketer” in Atlanta. Essentially, Lee, the IM, sends me a list of keywords someone might use to search for more information on a given topic and I write articles using these keywords. For instance, Lee sent me a list that looked something like this:
1. GPS navigation system
2. GPS navigation unit
3. car GPS navigation system
4. compare GPS navigation systems
What I do is write a master article, using one of the above keyword phrases a specific number of times. I then re-write the article with all the same information and substitute the original keyword phrase for the next one on the list. These articles are published on websites that desire more visitors to boost their business’s popularity. Using common and word-specific phrases within the articles posted on these sites makes it more likely that a search engine like Google will choose to present the website link to a person searching for, say, GPS navigation units. Or hair dryers. Or vegetable peelers.
It’s as ridiculously repetitive as it sounds.
I only took the job to have a little extra cash around and so I could feel professional about my writing.
The catch? It really just makes me feel like a sellout.
I know that to dream big, you’ve got to be willing to start small. And I am willing to do that.
But is this the same thing as starting small?
Or am I just a sellout for exchanging the joy of my art for an insignificant paycheck?
1. What I want my life to mean
2. What I want to do with my life–it changes nearly everyday. Writer, editor, professor? Jewelry designer? Missionary?
3. If I really love myself
4. If I really believe in my dreams
5. If I really believe that love never fails
6. Whether I am a strong person, or I am just too obedient to challenge my own beliefs
7. If I really want what I’ve said I want
8. If my parents would support me if I decided to skip the plans for a book and settle for a responsible career
9. If I’m half the Christian I claim to be, hope to be
10. If these doubts I have hold any room for reasoning
…I DO know, however, that there is a bag of pepperoni pizza rolls in my freezer that need eating.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Usually, I hate books about love.
I don’t feel as if anyone is truly knowledgeable enough in the trappings of love to speak for any two people involved in a relationship. And when I read these books, I tend to take everything as fact, rather than merely the author’s opinion. I become jumbled up with different reasonings and conclusions than I had before reading the book, and I start stumbling into all sorts of uncertainties about my current relationship needs.
Right now, I’m in love.
In love, in love, I mean.
To where I can’t stop thinking about him. I still grin and blush when people ask me about him. I look forward to calling him at nights, and feel thankful for the chance to end my day with his voice in my ear. Since we’re separated for the summer, I keep a mental running countdown until I’ll see him again. Each day, I encounter things I have to tell him, things I want to experience with him.
It’s a whole kind of love. I fall harder everyday.
(Stop gagging, I’m moving on…)
With all this good, amazing love drenching my heart, I was afraid to read Sex God. Afraid I’d discover that something was going terribly, horribly wrong in my relationship that would make me want to break it off.
This was, of course, ridiculous.
And I knew this.
So I borrowed it from a friend, and I started to read.
I wasn’t wrong–since starting the book yesterday evening, I’ve discovered so many things about the relationship I share with Shaun. But they’re wonderful things. Spiritual things. Things that have only encouraged me to keep reading, to keep loving. In fact, it only affirmed my beliefs that this love we’re building truly is a beautiful, blessed gift.
And, as Rob Bell points out, that’s what many people fail to notice about their relationships: that they are to be treasured. That they are a rare and precious example of the love God showed to us when He sent His Son to die for us. And when entering a marriage or a relationship, we should understand that the person we’re with is worth dying for, that someone has already died for them.
It’s beautiful, strange, perfect.
It’s love.
I consider myself an awkward person.
Well, okay, maybe, as a person, I’m not all that awkward, but socially-crippling situations and I seem to exist simply to collide with one another. It’s actually quite entertaining, being me. There’s always something sort of quirky and crazy to laugh off. And I MUST laugh it off, otherwise the awkwardness builds and then, well, people begin to avoid me.
I also consider myself a pretty music savvy gal. I think I have great taste in music, and I listen to pretty much anything apart from unnecessarily angry or violent stuff, such as scream-o or some rap. I religiously download the Singles of the Week iTunes offers to its customers, and I also like to pick up Starbuck’s weekly free downloads that are released every Tuesday.
About a week ago, I very innocently picked up a free music video download card from my regular Starbucks, assuming I’d like it as much as the other downloads I’d gotten in the past.
Needless to say…this is probably one of the most awkward music videos I’ve ever viewed, and that really sucks, because the song alone is pretty stellar. It’s by an artist who goes by the name Sia, and the song is “Day Too Soon.”
See what I mean?
I’m all for artistic expression. I attend an arts school. I’m a creative person.
But, really?!
What’s the significance of the people crouching behind trees, or the colorful dots painted under her eyes that were coordinated with the colors of her strange clothing? And what was up with the part where she’s dramatically splayed out in the grass? Why the awkward run-and-dance scene in the meadow, where she sort of frolicks around with the camera? And the hands reaching out from the trees? AND the huge goose/duck boat on the river? The limb-flailing dancing?
Did she TRY to make the video as awkward as possible?
Poor, awkward Sia.
Anyway, since I’m so good at crashing into all things awkward, I thought I might, from time to time, post the most awkward situations/people/media I run into. I’ll call it the Awkward _____ of the Moment, since I don’t know how often I’ll be updating.
Should be fun, right?
Oh, and many thanks to Sia for letting me start this project off with a bang.
