T.S. Tuesday: Recovering What Was Lost

In his fabulous book on vocation called Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer writes, "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."

I first read these words fresh out of college, at a time when I was slowly recovering from a deep depression/crisis of self after an eye opening and even traumatizing study abroad experience. Horrified at the poverty and injustice I saw throughout Central America, I thrashed from angry to hopeless to numb and back for months after my return.

But I don't count it as a waste. In fact, the very darkness that threatened to envelop me provided the space and silence to actually learn to listen to what my own life was speaking to me. To tune my ears to my true self. To see the values and truths I embody when expectations are thrown out the window.

Out of the darkness, out the rubble, I learned to hear God's voice. I learned to listen to my own voice and learned to gauge and discern my own responses, my attractions and repulsions. Out of the silence I found life. I found hope. I found a job that brought me more joy and purpose than I could have ever imagined. I found a church that fed my soul and helped me to experience God as a personal, present, powerful source of Love within me.

I had learned, to some extent, to let my life speak.

But now, after a year of burnout and tears and agonizing over whether or not I should leave the job that had once brought me so much joy, I find myself at loss for what I really want.

While trying to survive burnout, to end my job well, to live up to all of the responsibilities I had taken on, I somehow forgot how to listen to my own life. I find myself here in Guatemala, fulfilling a long time dream, and yet I still feel hollow, like I've become a stranger to myself.

These last few months I have written, I have banked on, what I think God would or should be telling me instead of what I really hear.

And I've been calling it trust.

I haven't really been hearing from God. Not like I used to. I've been remembering what He told me. I've been rewriting His past promises. Is this being true to myself? How can it be bad to remind myself of God's character, voice, and promises? When does it become untrue? When am I feeding the emptiness, the expectations? When does anchoring myself on the past become an excuse not to listen for His voice today?

In his poem East Coker, T.S. Eliot writes, "There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again."

I am fighting to recover what was lost--my joy at work, my sense of purpose, my ability to hear from God, the patience to listen and discern what my own life is telling me. In the clinical sense, it's a journey to overcome burnout and depression; in the spiritual sense, it's a journey to recover my true self, who I am in the eyes of God who loves me. 

As of right now, I don't really know what I want. I know what I am SUPPOSED to want, but I don't know what I REALLY want. 

I SHOULD want to blog.

I SHOULD want to connect. 

I SHOULD want to hear from God.

I SHOULD want to help people.

I SHOULD want to spend my time wisely and be a voice for the voiceless. 

I SHOULD want to do something about the poverty and injustice I see around me.

But really I want to disconnect. I don't want to care or get involved or commit myself to anything. Just because I am no longer crying everyday or agonizing over my decision to leave, doesn't mean I am healed. Doesn't mean I am myself again. 

I take heart in T.S. Eliot's words, that it's a fight to recover what was lost and found and lost again. It is a journey.  It is a process. And this time I know the Healer. 

So in the next couple of weeks, this blog may be a little silent as I visit friends back in the States and also take some time to listen--to God and to myself.

T.S. Tuesday: What a Difference Hope Can Make

“You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope.”  T.S. Eliot, Family Reunion

I know what it is not to hope. 

The Guatemala City garbage dump, where hundreds work  each day to support their families.

Six years ago I came to Guatemala at the end of my semester abroad in Central America. After three months of visiting garbage dumps, hearing rants on U.S. involvement in dictatorial coups throughout Central America, and basically having my entire Christian belief system come crashing down, I was numb and tired. Tired of hearing of injustice. Tired of trying to care.

From the airport in Guatemala City we drove to Seteca, the theological seminary where we would be staying until we separated out again into different groups for a week long work project.  We’d barely had time so to set our bags down and sit down before our professor began yet another belligerent, and yet no longer shocking, tirade about U.S. involvement in Guatemala.  

In a rare act of encouragement, one of our leaders played a song in which the singer confidently declared that in God’s hands her “pain and hurt looked less like scars and more like character.”  We’d been through a lot that semester, but we were developing character, my study abroad program implied.  Character shmaracter, I thought.  What if you no longer believe that God has hands for you to be in?  Or feet?  Or a heart?  Anything?  Had I gone Nietzche on myself?  Could I really believe that God was dead?  

Yep, dead as a doornail.  Or a least in a coma.  

Our professor, Don Mike, continued to rant and rave, we heard from different people involved in myriad types of government positions, toured the city, went to the dump, talked about justice and Jesus and liberation theology. 

Is it so awful to say that after awhile all third world countries start to look the same?  The littered highways, the graffiti-covered concrete buildings, the bars and spikes and security guards with guns.  I wish I could say that I instantly connected with Guatemalans, that it mattered to me that they had been in a civil war for decades.  But I didn’t care about the indigenous, specifically Mayan, influence on the culture or that hundreds of thousands of women had mysteriously lost their husbands and sons, fathers and brothers to midnight kidnappings and mass murders during the war.  I feared there was nothing in me that cared anymore.

I had lost my hope.

Throughout the last six years, I have experienced a Love that saves, a Joy that saves, a Hope that saves. My friends and family and church and coworkers have shown me that my anger doesn’t help the suffering, my hopelessness does not prove my compassion. They have shown me, and God continues to teach me, that Hope brings change, that Joy alleviates suffering, that Love drives out fear.

This time around in Guatemala, although I’ve already heard countless stories of war and violence and injustice, although I’ve already visited the wasteland of the Guatemala City garbage dump, although there are plenty of reasons to shut down and tune out, I will cling to hope. I will look for the bright spots.

I will remember the words of AnnVoskamp in One Thousand Gifts,

“Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world."

This time around I will not be paralyzed. I will not reject joy. I will listen and I will move and I will act. I will engage.

I will not disregard the suffering. I will not turn a complacent eye to their pain. But amidst the pain and horror, I will look for hope. I pray I will be brave enough to “focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true.”

So far I’ve seen some incredibly hopeful, transformative work being done in Guatemala. There are so many ways for me to get involved in bringing Hope and Life and Joy to the people around me. But I don’t know quite where to spend my time yet. Despite my commitment to move, I feel a call to be patient, to wait on God’s timing and leading. I pray for wisdom in how to spend my time here. I ask for an open heart to accompany my open schedule.

Kids playing with bubbles in the park in Antigua

As I wait and look for ways to engage, I will share the bright spots that I have seen. Throughout the week, and I imagine beyond this week as well, I will share the stories of hope and redemption and transformation that I have glimpsed. I will write of the miracle of kids being able to be kids in the midst of gang violence and extreme poverty, of women speaking out against injustice and sharing their stories of pain for the first time, of brave individuals seeking alternatives to violence, of people daring to hope and try and move in a place where the problems seem copiously complex and insurmountable.

I know what it is not to hope; this time around I will fix my eyes on the Hope that saves. 

T.S. Tuesday: Experiencing God Together

“What life have you, if you have not life together?”

T. S. Eliot (The Rock, 1934)

This weekend, Love drove out fear.

My fears. Of moving to another country. Of leaving everything I know behind.

Fear had begun to fester. Worry set in. Then disengagement, disconnection, isolation.

I don’t do well when I can’t name things, explain things, write it all out and flourish it with a pretty little bow.

I don’t do well with in-betweens. And right now I’m in between jobs, in between countries, in between lives.

To put it mildly, I’ve been shutting down. Not an earth shattering break down, just a slow dulling of emotions, tamping down of fear, tuning out of daily life to be lulled by the constant hum of doubt and second guessing.

My prayers of gratitude shifted to pleas for peace.

And on Saturday morning, God answered my plea.

My friends and roommates threw me an incredible “Brunch Voyage” going away party complete with every delicious brunch food imaginable and all of my favorite people in San Diego.

Not only did my gooey pancakes topped with Nutella, raspberries, and chocolate sprinkles fill my belly, the company was sustenance for my soul.

I don’t write about my friends very often because I haven’t really figured out a way to talk about them without sounding like every other social media user who writes “my hubbie is the BEST <3” or “FAB weekend with my girlz.”

Of course most people think their friends are the best ever. But I really do think I’ve got a unique thing going.

My friends from college have become my family. They have been the most shaping influence on my life. They daily challenge me and encourage me and draw out my hideous witch cackle laugh like nobody’s business.

And this weekend God used them. He used them to remind me of who I am.

A speaker at my church once said, “The people we love the most reveal our God-given identities,” and I’ve found that to be exactly right.

On Saturday my San Diego family joined together to remind me of who and whose I am.

When my own prayers had fallen flat, when I’d become caught in a cyclone of burnout and apathy, when I began to doubt my own ability to experience God, my friends showed up.

With their words and pancake toppings and hugs and prayers, they breathed life back into me.

They reminded me that I am not alone. That I don’t have to hear from God alone. That I was created for community. 

The most meaningful and humbling part for me was when they spoke words of affirmation. They affirmed my character and my dreams, reminding me of who I am and who I want to be. They recounted the promises God has spoken to me. They told stories of the shifts and triumphs I’ve already experienced.

More than just offering reassuring words (everyone likes to hear good things about themselves), my friends’ words revealed the thread of God’s presence and purpose and love in my life.

And it was this Love that drove out my fears. My friends’ love for me. Their love for God. Their reminders that Love is with me and goes before me, even all the way to Guatemala.

When everyone finally cleared out of our living room and the final plates were scrubbed of maple and boysenberry syrup, I found myself stunned.

Overwhelmed by their words and overwhelmed by God’s grace. And in awe of the transformation that had taken place in my heart in just a few hours’ time.

Numbness had given way to a full array of emotions. Weeping had turned to laughing. Sadness to joy.

And, like most meaningful times in my life, all I can say is Thank You.

To my friends I say thank you for your prayers for safety and purpose and community and vision.

Thank you for your cards and quotes and books and letters. They are more meaningful than you know.

Thank you for your time given up on a Saturday morning.

Thank you for your tears and emotion shed for me.

Thank you for speaking to my God-given identity.

The day was life giving.

The day was hope bringing.

The day was from God.

And to God I say Thank You as well.

Thank you for speaking through my community to remind me of your goodness, to remind me of who I am, to point me to who you are calling me to be by reminding me of your promises and your work in my life.

Thank you for loving me and shaping me and speaking to my heart. Thank you for this life we have together.

Amen.