Guatemalan Goodness

I've been pretty sad lately, paralyzed with missing the life I left behind to move to a foreign country, stewing in a sense of what I've lost, instead of soaking in the good, the gifts.But today I choose to see the good, to bite off the tasty fruit of this life, this fruit, this place He has given me. To rejoice in what is, not pine after what isn't.  I will choose to, as Jason Todd recently wrote in an article for Relevant Magazine, "taste daily, deeply and constantly of the goodness of God."My new blogger friend, Elizabeth at Taking Shape Slowly, very eloquently wrote about this challenge to finding Home wherever we are,

"The challenge is to make ourselves at home, to live the life that is, rather than the one we had always dreamed. Praying over tender roots still unsure that they were meant to live in soil, unaware that the burlap was just the transition."

I want to let these roots of goodness grow. I will not plant bad days. I will plant hope and gratitude and grace for myself in this transition, this oh-why-is-it-taking-so-long-to-feel-at-home transition.Today I offer up a smorgasbord of the goodness of God in my life here in Guatemala, my life now, the life that is not exactly the life I dreamed, but is the life I have before me.The goodness of God is..

• a run to a cross on a hill, sweat shining, heart pounding, lungs and legs and life alive.

• a warm breeze, a volcano view, and a green picnic table turned outside office

• being walked home after a night of salsa dancing, delivered safely to my doorstep,  no moves made, no disrespect, just a friend looking after a friend

• friends and family who put up with my snotty, crying homesick skype calls

• promises to flank me if I'm seen getting too friendly with a creepy guy, or a very cute, non-creepy guy that I still shouldn't be getting so friendly with. . .

• learning new salsa moves

• being challenged to give a blog training workshop in Spanish to my Guatemalan and Salvadoran coworkers--and enjoying it!

• being trusted to polish people's words, to tell their story on their behalf

• freshly folded laundry and a laundry lady who knows me by name

• a purring cat curled in my lap

• stringing together syllables of Guatemalan slang

• spontaneous cafecitos with friends I just happen to see in the park

• the anticipation of sharing this place and this life with my family when they visit in just three days!

What are you grateful for today? Where do you see the goodness of God?

T.S. Tuesday: Be Here

"Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present."--Burnt Norton, Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot 

Birds called in the distance as I panted my way up the hill, hiking one foot in front of the other to my favorite spot in Antigua, El Cerro de La Cruz. It's my favorite because there are trees and the hill curves upward and it reminds me of the foothills of Northern California where I grew up, where I first learned to pray in the hushed quiet of a forest blanketed with pine needles and smelling of Christmas. A soft haze hung over the city and my lungs burned and my legs burned and my rear end will not be happy with me tomorrow (although hopefully the stair steps will yield some perky results in the long run.) And I can't explain why, but it even looked like a better day.A day when God would speak. A day when light would pour in to the lonely places and the sad places and the hum drum and homesick places.A good friend of mine was just telling me that she misses doing things with people--active things like walking or dancing or making food. It's one of the deepest ways she connects and she feels she doesn't get enough of it.And it got me to thinking about how I connect. Not just with people, but with God. And it made me miss the salt and the spray and the startling beauty of the cliffs where I used to run in San Diego. Where I would pound and pant and start to pray again after a very long time of silence.

Somehow God always seemed to show up there, at the edge of the cliff, on the edge of the world, in my quiet morning workouts before the work day. He was in the lapping waves and vertical cliffs and smell of sulfur. He was in my lungs as I ran. He met me when I stopped.

I know I connect with God in nature, in movement, but I haven't really done it here. Not in this town where the streets are ankle-twisting cobblestone and people say it's not safe to run alone. Where the cat calls abound and I know women who've had their butts slapped and their dignity degraded on an afternoon jog.

But I'm sick of staying inside. I'm sick of treadmills and spraying down work out machines.But more than that, I miss hearing God speak.So today I ran up to the cross. Lungs burning and legs burning and heart wide awake.And you know what? God spoke. I've been wrestling with the temptation to focus on the AFTER, to stew in my discontent. Lately I've let myself get bogged down in missing my friends and my life in San Diego. In missing my church and holding hands across the aisle to pray at the end of the service. In missing my routine and my car and the relationships that give my life such fullness, grace, and color.I wrote it on Friday and it's a daily surrender: Be here. Be present. Don't miss this life here.And as the birds called to one another and the haze began to lift and my labored breathing began to slow, I looked out at the city I have chosen to call home for now, and He whispered,"Be here--because I am here."And today didn't just look like a better day. It was a better day.

Five Minute Friday: After

Happy Friday!For a few months now, I’ve the pleasure of participating in Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday blogging challenge. Every Friday, a group of eclectic bloggers turn off our inner critics and perfectionists and just write for five minutes straight. Zero editing. Just a stream of consciousness free for all. And then we all link up and encourage each other. To learn more about Five Minute Friday and how you can participate click here.This Friday's topic is AFTER.***Go. I thought that after I moved, it would all make sense. The burnout, therestlessness, the ache in my heart to live in a foreign country that never went away.Then, after I got settled, I would be happy.After I made more friends, I would feel home.After I set a schedule, I'd feel peace.After I started a new job, I've feel engaged and connected and alive.But it wasn't so.It's not that I'm not happy, it's just that I'm still waiting for the AFTER.After I get in shape, I'll be happy with my body.After I go to Spanish school, I'll be fluent and confident and no-longer-shy.After I write, I'll feel accomplished.After I pray, I'll be at peace.But the AFTER never comes.The waiting-for-something-better becomes a trap. A prison. A recipe for discontent.Because life isn't in the AFTER. God isn't in the AFTER.Life is HERE, right now. God is HERE, right now.

In the flowers on my table. In the words I tap-tap-type.That's the idea of GRATITUDE. The awakening of joy in the current moment.So I surrender my clinging to the AFTER. This unfreedom of waiting. The discontent of a life disjointed into BEFORE and AFTER.I forget the BEFORE and AFTER. I open my eyes to the HERE.