Everyday I begin with trepidation, reborn and shivering, everything is magnified or muted. I am lost and want to be productive, helpful, though it is hard to just do those things for my own edification. I lack the discipline to do good for good’s sake. Often loose touch with God. But, when I stop he says, “Follow me,” and I am often reluctant and frightened. I have this idea I think from God to just walk around the city on the max go down town and pray so I’d like to do that, each day seems to fill up with my own little tasks or distractions and I haven’t done it yet. So my goal, on Monday to do that beginning I guess in the morning sometime and come home in the afternoon. It be nice to have a friend to do things with like this, or tennis, but for now I think ti would be good to go in alone. It reminds me of Hong Kong, newness, when all of life feels like a risk.
I miss the wide-open space of the Rez, how easy it is to feel free and full of the sky. It feels like here everything is so closed in and hilly that the expanse of heaven has shrunk. But it is just my view of heaven that has shrunk not heaven itself. I really miss being able to have Christine close and her companionship, just staying up and talking into the night, or playing games, or watching TV, mostly I do that alone now and it feels so much more empty. My hope for this place I don’t know how to locate, so many things I can’t locate inside of myself, and still I feel blessed perhaps guilty for the blessing of such a insulated life and at the same time I’m not sure I enjoy this lifestyle as much as the one I had before. The city is exciting and scary, the traffic makes me cuss and hit my car, but I am starting to adjust. I guess this is what they call culture shock. I miss brown people and not feeling like I have to look nice to fit in. I hate not being able to walk to the store and being able to not talk to anyone if I don’t have to. Its weird, I keep expecting to see the same people I used to, to wake up and talk to Christine, or get a random call from Corey, or Kris Sohappy asking me for a ride. It’s like I half expect to show up at youth group next month and unlock the stinky Presbyterian Church building and see James, Tino and Caleb waiting for me to let them in.
Sometimes I feel so useless here, like I’m just taking up space and not affecting any sort of common good. It’s hard being a busy bee when you can’t see the flowers and miss the smell of honey.
Still I am looking forward to being in a different kind of community, with some friends from college we are starting a little small group. Also, the green trees are helpful, I really need growing things to survive spiritually, even if they are seeds that haven’t sprouted yet. I think I need to find some grass and stare at it long enough to see a couple bugs. Usually that lightens my heart, seeing little ants or flying things helps me to relax. Those sort of pictures of God help the feelings of inadequacy and fear subside and remind me that the Creator loves the flying things and he loves me more (not sure why). I’ve been reading this Anne Lamott book and she says something like, when all else fails, ask for help and follow directions. Which is helpful for me, but even before that, my insides usually need to be reworked, cracked open enough to let out the muddy gunk, allow the wax out of my soul’s ears so it can hear the million different ways God is saying, “I love you.” I am scared and nervous about life right now in all this newness. Most of the time I freak out and then finally get to the point where I have to choose between my freakish existence and simply believing that, one way or another, my Father in Heaven will be faithful, as he has been over the last 24 years of my life, and particularly the last three. In Psalm 37 it says, “Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness.” That I guess is what I hope to do, as scary as it is sometimes.
1 comment:
much love, bchizzung.
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