T.S. Tuesday: A Taste of Home

"Home is where one starts from." East Coker, Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

This week I had a taste of home. My family, complete with corny dad jokes, freckles, and an abundance of luggage, visited me here in Guatemala. And. it. was. so. GOOD.

Home for me is not a place, but people. The people who have seen all of my ugly and love me anyways. The people who laugh and cry and share life with me. And I was gifted with the opportunity to share a week with four of these people, the people who carry my heart, and give them a taste of the beautiful city and country where I'm learning to make a new home.We laughed, we cried, we ate tortillas, we haggled and we got ripped off. I got to be a tourist in my own town and was pleasantly surprised to see how much I've learned and grown in the past nine months. But mostly, we had a heck of a lot of fun. We laughed at my dad attempting to speak Spanish (to his defense, he studied French in high school). We hobbled over the cobblestones of Antigua. We just so happened to run into ten of my closest friends around town. We bought art from my friend, Joel, handmade boots from my friend, Elio, and chocolate from my friend, Pablo. We hiked, a lot. We hiked to the top of the Cross, to the office where I work, to a magnificent lakeside getaway carved into the side of a cliff at Lake Atitlan. We kayaked across the smooth as glass water to splash upon a lakeside worship service and baptism. We dipped in a hot tub heated with a wood stove. We rode in the back of pick up truck with 15 Guatemalans and sped across the lake in a water taxi regrettably named, Titanic. We were welcomed into the home of my friends and coworkers. We almost witnessed my brother knock down a tiny salsa instructor in one fell swoop because he was dancing "too sexy" with me.It was glorious.I was reminded of the beauty all around me here and the beauty in the part of me that still aches for home.But I am here. I am whole. The missing and the aching is a sign that I am whole, not that I am part, or less than. It is a testament to the goodness of the community I left and to which I will return. It's rare, this type of community, the home I have with my real family and the "family" of friends and sisters who have welcomed me back in San Diego. And I long for it, ache for it with all of my being.But I remind myself, I am here. I am whole. Today I am stopping to see the grace. What grace it is that I am here. That I've learned to navigate a new city and a new country. That I'm learning still how to love and connect and engage with people across cultures, with people who are very different from me.And thankfulness rises.In a town where I can't make it to the park without greeting someone I know, but have an exceedingly short list of friends I could really count on when things get tough, it was a refresher for my soul to be with the people who have loved me for a long time and will continue to love me for a long time still. Thank you for the taste of home, of where I started from, and the reminder that ALL IS GRACE.Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip:Don't you want to come visit, too?!

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.