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My favorite things in the world have yet to be seen as I have not seen the world in its entirety and I feel if I had, things like Venice’s water paved streets, vineyards in France and African dances in the dark would top the list. But I don’t know because I haven’t seen those parts of the world yet.

My favorite things in Guatemala are:

Pineapples and mangos from fruit vendors on the street.
Our hammock.
My students and hers.
And Luis.
Tuna fish in lemon juice.
The smell of the morning before the day pollutes the air.
The colors: Attempts to make life out of grey normality.
Thunderstorms.
Sonya, who is supposed to be only the housekeeper but turned out to be our friend.
People who speak no English.
Lemonade made from lemons we felled from the tree out front.
Hearing, seeing, smelling things which remind me f home – which remind me that all the favorite things in the world still don't make the world home.

My favorite thing about Guatemala is that I’m only passing through and though I have not seen the world in its entirety, I feel that passing though may be my favorite thing about that as well.

found

I read about contentedness today. I should read about it more often, it seemed to be a big struggle of mine several years ago, but I contended with it then. Now it rears its every so ugly mug again and I find myself confronted with beating those daily thoughts to the punch. Declaring truth and purpose in the face of adversary and pond water.

It stinks.

People keep asking “What is your life like down there?” and the only descriptive one word answer I can come up with it “Hot.” Of course no one said it had to be one word, that’s my own ploy to evade the answer that runs rampant through my mind. But if you really want the truth, and if you don’t mind the grotesqueness of the face behind the pasty mask, here it is:

It’s harder than I ever imagined. Because see, I have a big imagination. I’ve read all the good biographies of godly men in jail for fifteen years and women waiting at home for their husbands who are being murdered by cannibals. See, I know these things. I’ve read about tapeworms and moldy rice and nasty prison guards. I’m well versed in proper and improper protocol. Paul is my hero and Richard Wurmbrand my stand-in. But this is harder than I ever imagined: this is day in a day out. Day in and day out. Day in and day out. Not the stuff of good books or heroic attempts at kingdom expansion.

I laid on my bed last night, on my back with my feet stretched out in front of me, poking out from the sheet and thought at once that I was, for the first time in I don't know how long, waiting until real life resumes for me -- in November! Committing the mortal sin of Christian Living! That is Not Living For Today and Eternity, but waiting for living to really begin when I cross the threshold of that which I want.

So my great imagination fails me. And here I am again wanting, lacking, seeking and not always finding.

known

Madeleine L'Engle, in her book The Summer of the Great Grandmother, wrote:

”Our lives are a series of births and deaths: we die to one period and must be born to another...and both life and death are present for me in the house this summer. I look at mother, and think that if I am to reflect on the eventual death of her body, of all bodies, in a way that is not destructive. I must never lost sight of those other deaths which precede the final physical death, the deaths over which we have freedom: the death of self will, self indulgence, self deception, all those self-devices which, instead of making us more fully alive, make us less.
The times I have been most fully me are when I have been wholly involved in someone or something else; when I am listening rather than talking; cooking a special festive dinner; struggling with a fugue at the piano; putting the baby to bed; writing. A long dead philosopher said that if we practice dying enough during our lives we will hardly notice the moment of transition when the actual time comes.”

I identified with those feelings. They don't happen often and I am acutely aware of their existence the moment they make themselves known.

Usually I expect them though. Usually they come while worshiping in church; laughing around the kitchen table; joking with Theresa at Sergies; curled in blankets, drinking sleepytime tea with two friends, hashing out the principles of life and the Kingdom; writing when the house is silent; laying on the front room floor listening to her play the piano; talking with one of my little brothers. These sort of things make me feel alive. These sort of things make me feel fully me. And, while I know this isn't the purpose of my life, to make me feel fully me, redundant as that may be, more thoughts and convictions and life changing decisions happen in those moments.

I haven't felt one since coming here. I've been convinced it was due to the unfamiliar surroundings: the concrete walls and humidity; the tropical fruit, which isn't limited to pineapples and bananas, but all manner of curious tasting colors; the language which forbids a true expression of one's self and one's heart. These things are to blame if I'm not growing and changing and being continually molded into what I ought to be. Right?

But the other night I listened to a two hour tape made by the people I call home. Just a night of fun they knew I would have loved and missed put on hundreds of feet of thin brown cellophane. I loved it. I cried tears of joy at first. Laughter at how well they know me and their attempts at comic relief. Then, a quarter of the way through it, I began to grow quiet and just listen to how much I'm loved.

When it finished I got up and turned on the CD one of them had sent along with the tape, knowing I would need to hear it. Turns out, I did. Took a shower. Cleaned my room. Set my alarm. Lay down. Opened my Bible and felt, for the first time since coming here, fully myself.

Fully myself knowing that I am fully loved and, in that, can fully love back. That is the fullness of love. That is the mystery of love - love, being perfect, can do no less that present perfection. It made me love Him all over again.

Because it was Him Who first loved me.

spanish

It is Sunday. I often have to force myself to walk into this building on Sunday. It means three hours of emotional Spanish. An emotion I am well familiar with, a language I am not. The mix causes a feeling of absolute unsettledness.

A feeling with I hate.

We are sitting in the middle. Right in the middle. The middle row of the middle row, halfway back the auditorium. I like it this way. I always wanted to be a middle child. It is hot and I am distracted by the sweat on my forehead and the denim skirt which seems to be the only skirt that hasn’t completely begun resting somewhere below my hips in the recent development of lost weight. I am hot. I am distracted. I don’t want to be here. It was better at the house, the CD player playing familiar songs, my bible opened on my lap, my friends eating breakfast and singing along. I liked it better that way.

My journal, bible and black pilot precise pen [one of the last of the spare package I brought with me] are lying on my lap. Unopened. Ignored. He is sitting next to me. The gentle rebuke from last night sitting, squeezed, in the space between us. He pulls my journal off my lap and opens to the last page. I don’t look. He is prone to this. Communicating the deeper things of life is always easier through the written word, I understand people like this. I am like this.

It is written in Spanish.
I read it hours later, at home, on my bed. Using my Spanish English dictionary to help me with the hard words: Agradecida; Recibiendo, Seres. But soon I find the dictionary only helps me translate, the words are still hard.

He writes of me learning to live single-mindedly. He writes of things I know. I know them, I tell you. I’ve learned them. He writes of me learning to trust. To let go. To be gracious for the lessons.

When will I learn? To forget about me. To forget about things, distractions, learning a language, wanting to be home, how hard it is, how hard it isn’t, to forget. To let go. To shut up. To trust that even when I can’t see, He can.

otra vez

When I was young, in that turbulent section between your sophomore year and nursing home, I took a class with my father and older brother. It was a means to an end really. My parents were insistent on my not being a missionary and the only way I could conceivably train for something I was not allowed to do, but had set my mind on anyway, was to get some medical training. It was an Emergency Medical Technician class and I was the youngest and smallest person in the class. The buff fire fighters and continuing ed. nurses were all older and obviously more suited to this sort of environment. I was not.

And so, when finals time came along, nine months later, I failed the exam by two points: 78%. I cannot remember which two questions could have gotten me in by the skin of my teeth, but I’m fairly certain they had something to do with blood alcohol level, which I’m sure I still don’t know the answer to. I feel like the only real knowledge I still retain from that class was the fact that you don’t ever take someone’s pulse with your thumb because it has a pulse of its own, instead you put your index and middle fingers together over the wrist and check the pulse.

I forgot this until Saturday night:

Laying there, tears misting and a fresh rebuke still smarting on my mind. My temples are pounding a painful beat and I am feeling sorry for myself. I curl under the blanket of her sweatshirt and turned my face to the window, hoping for some glimpse of the world outside myself. It doesn’t look too good for me.

My thumb is resting against the column of my throat and I begin to feel two more pounding tempos. At war with each other. At war with the pounding in my head. At war with me. And it occurs me that this body, this warring body, this humanity, this temple of the Holy Spirit and this creation in God’s likeness is fighting against its own members. The two beats in and resting against my throat, along with the painful one in my head, are disturbingly marching to the beats of three snares and none is at peace with the others.

So, I question, how am I to ever reconcile my newly created persona with the image of God I was pulled from the ground in a cloud of dust from, when even my internal organs protest against one another? How am I to ever part ways with the old and welcome the new when imperfection seems to be my only lot? How can I swallow the rebuke when the lump in my throat is refusing to be dismissed?

This body, this paradox, earthen jar – this tent—the temporal reminds me that one day I need never worry about mismatched throbs from various parts of my person, this rebuke, this inability and this stupidity which ravages my being will pale in the light of His glory, His ability, His perfection and His light.

And that’s sort of the wonder of salvation, a second time around to get things right.

I took the exam again. Got a 92%.

worth

Feeling defeated by the warring rememberance that the English language never ceases its addition of words and that I can only teach, at best, seven words a week. Granted, at the end of this journey they will know 300 more words than they knew from the start, but that's only at best. My expectations feel like they ought to lie somewhere between 100 and 25. The task is overwelming and the journeyman are only six years old, prone to wandering minds and hands.

But somehow it's a little more worth it all when I am handed a blue homework folder, due last Monday, by a beaming boy named Ricardo. We worked hard on this concept yesterday - just him and I. And even though the single mistake is obvious, his white smile and proud bearing makes everything okay.

So we're making progress. Today we made sentences - I LIKE READING. Utilization of pronouns, preferences and a conjugated verb. This is progress indeed. Whether we will remember them all tomorrow is another story, but for today - I LIKE TEACHING.