Can I play, please?

A few weeks ago, Brad and I spent seven long days at my parent’s house. Those days were filled with Dora, Blues Clues, Barney, Sprout, Princess coloring pages, markers, crayons and my 21 year old sister. If this were a standardized test, I would ask which of these doesn’t belong. But most of you know me, and know the fact that my 21 year old sister has the mind of a 5 year old. It has been a humbling week full of temper tantrums and outbursts as well as moments that capture your heart. One of those moments happened at the beginning of the week, at the magical word of McDonalds. Now, before you start to think that I am a nice big sister for taking her out to lunch, I need to get real with you. I took her there for 2 reasons: 1) I was hungry and 2) she had a gift certificate. 

We were sitting at a table near the play place and I was feeding her a fish sandwich when she looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said in her sweetest and most innocent voice, “Can I play, please?” My heart sank and the following words fell out of my mouth like a ton of bricks. “No. You can’t.” Not because I’m a mean big sister. Or because I want to suck the fun out of her day. But because literally, she can’t. Bound by physical limitations, she is confined to her wheelchair, unable to play like a normal “kid.” The body she has been trapped in and betrayed by since birth is too weak and frail to climb the 20 feet it would take to get to the top of the slide. I remember when she was younger we would take her up. I would go in front, to lead the way and make sure there were no obstacles in her path. And someone else (usually my mother, or even Mimi on occasion) would take the rear, giving her the extra boost she needed to crawl one more step. The tunnels immediately clogged into a traffic jam, with impatient kids literally shoving us aside to reach the top. And then, 20 minutes after our initial ascent, we finally made it to the slide. We would wave from the plastic bubble to dad and others down below. Then we would ride, in tandem, down the pink tube - all of the hard work gone in 30 seconds - back to reality.     

Reality, for her consists of home, school, church, and the occasional restaurant or family gathering. And yet her joy is complete. Sure, she has her bad days, but she is one of the most joyful people I know. It doesn’t take plane tickets or diamond rings or (fill in the blank) to make her smile. A pack of washable markers and a $3 coloring book and she’s content. She doesn’t dwell in the sorrow of all that she can’t do. She simply celebrates the things that she can do. 

I cannot help but draw a parallel to my own life, only in this case I am the one with the handicap. How often do my limitations keep me from experiencing joy? My limitations, while they might not seem as obvious as my sister’s, have a hold on me that sometimes seems far stronger than the gentle whisper of God. My limitations exist in the form of pride, arrogance, individualism, greed, and power - just to name a few. And more than I care to admit, these are the sentiments that dominate my day. They limit me and keep me, not only from experiencing joy, but from experiencing life to its fullest. They hold me back from my greatest potential. So how do I reconcile this? How do I move from these limitations into an attitude that celebrates the things I can do? 

I do not think I am alone in this struggle. I think we, as Christians, battle with these things daily. Some of us may be better at hiding this struggle, but beneath the surface it is there nonetheless. These things have become the “giants of our age,” that must be slain in order to experience God more fully and to live the lives He has called us to live.      

Chris Heuertz offers some sound advice in his book Simple Spirituality. He talks about the five stones used to slay these giants that were blocking his view of God. Within the pages, he reminds us what we are for: “In a world of arrogance, we are for humility. In a world of individualism, we are for community. In a world of excess, we are for simplicity. In a world of power, we are for submission. In a world of triumphalism, we are for brokenness.” It is not always easy to remember these things. Sometimes, like my sister, I need someone to go before me and help clear the way. And sometimes I need someone behind me to push me along.

What about you? Do your limitations keep you from experiencing joy? 

Reason and Passion

I spent a good portion of my morning/afternoon looking at pictures of South Africa and reminiscing on my days spent there. So much laughter. So many tears. So many precious memories of singing songs and playing with the kids from Linawo Children’s Home. And I couldn’t help but think of how much things have changed since then - both in my life and in the lives of those I served and served with. I am not in the same place I was when I returned from that trip - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.  

My first instinct is to want to return. If it were up to me, I would be on a plane right now, with Brad by my side. Yet I am grounded and on my way to nowhere. Instead, I am on a couch, in a room, in a house, in a town that feels like it has been my home for too long. I am ready to move on. I often ask myself (and Brad) what we are waiting for. We have both had dreams of living overseas, doing mission work and I get frustrated that it isn’t happening. But then I am reminded of the whole “being sent” thing.

It doesn’t make sense for us to leave. Brad has a job that he loves (most days). I am teaching and gaining experience and learning new things every day. We have a house. We are able to pay our bills. We are close to family and not too far from friends. So why is there this nagging feeling in my gut that keeps me from being content? And then I worry, will it ever make sense for us to leave? I want to share with you a passage I read this week that shed some light on this dilemma. It’s from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on Reason and Passion. 

“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite...Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; and let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.”

I guess you could say I am at war right now within myself. My passion is leading me to take charge of my life and make a change, but my reason (the little that I do possess!) is keeping me in place. It is necessary to have both and one cannot outweigh the other. I think that is where my problem lies. I am such a passionate person that I do not always stop to make sure I am within reason. Lucky for me, Brad is a very reasonable person. We are able to balance each other out in that way. However, it is often an area of miscommunication. My passion gets in the way of understanding his reason. And his reason gets in the way of understanding my passion. And so we go round and round until we are worn out. We are fighting the same battles and we are on the same side, but this difference between reason and passion feels miles apart sometimes. And yet there is hope. There is a beautiful place where they meet in the middle and everything makes sense. 

“Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows--then let your heart say in silence, ‘God rests in reason.’ And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky,--then let your heart say in awe, ‘God moves in passion.’ And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.”

Rest in reason, move in passion. Rest in reason, move in passion. Rest in reason, move in passion. Easier said than done.

My Quest for Wisdom

I am the kind of person who reads the last page or chapter of a novel before she is finished with the book. Brad hates this about me. He says that my impatience is unhealthy. And yet it remains - against my will but somehow still an entity I am unable to get away from. I get frustrated when I don’t know how things are going to turn out, or even where they are headed. So I search for answers. I search for hope that somewhere down the road the characters are happy, the conflict is resolved. I search for wisdom to make sense of the messes we make of our lives.  

I have spent a lot of time thinking since my last post, and processing things on a front porch with great friends. I have come to the conclusion that wisdom comes in the most unlikely places. I came home on Sunday evening to find a letter waiting for me (along with a few envelopes from Sallie Mae but that’s a different story!). Inside was the wisdom I had been so desperately searching for. Below are the words of a wild, wacky, and wonderful woman - my grandma, my Mimi, and in this case, my wisdom. After reading my last blog, she expressed these words:   

“God only opens doors when you persistently and prayerfully knock real loud. God’s will is that you search for what your yearnings are, what your talents are, which road to take (then another and another and another road, so find sturdy shoes and a sturdy companion - and you have one).

His will must be found by you on earth, no matter how painful the quest. The angels will sing sweetly if and when you persist, and He will rejoice that you pleased Him and, in return, His child well pleased with herself. 

The lazy spirit must be challenged daily, hourly, if not physically then mentally, ruthlessly, with time set aside for meditation and prayer - which life is -a prayer unto itself.

I think God is irritated to have you being so harsh on yourself. In life we always need periods, self chosen, of readjusting to radical, sometimes dramatic life changes. High on the readjustment chart is leaving home, marriage, new job, financial re-adjustments, leaving old friends, finding new friends, gaining weight. Finding the joy that suits you - the list goes on and on, so give life time to settle and be good to Katie.” 

And now I search for the joy that suits me. 

Time

I find time to be a paradoxical thing. It seems the less you have of it, the more you complain about wanting more. However, the more time you have, at least for me personally, the more of it you waste. I’m not talking about time that is measured by months or years. I mean time in the more transient sense - seconds, minutes, hours. This is the time that we squander.

This new “career change” has really opened up my schedule. Sometimes I have entire days with nothing on the agenda. Because of this, I find my days filled with unimportant things. It’s funny - before this schedule became my reality I was excited about all the possibilities that more time would allow me to do...things like creating art and playing music, picking up some extra hobbies, going to the gym, reading, etc. These things, however, remain on the list of things I have yet to do with all my time. Instead I find myself wasting away on the couch, consumed by facebook or the latest TV series on Netflix instant stream.

So why am I admitting these things to you? Because what it comes down to is this - at the end of the day we are all alloted the same amount of time. No more, no less. It’s what we do with the 24 hours we are given that tells us what kind of a person we are. At this point in my life, I am not the kind of person I want to be. I had all these dreams and hopes of what my life would look like after college. And don’t get me wrong, some pretty great things have happened over the past two years since graduation. But I feel like I am just sitting back watching my life go by, watching time slip away. Deep down, I know that is not the kind of person I am. 

I have spent my whole life waiting. In high school I was always waiting for college. Once I reached the milestone of graduation and finally made it to college, I found myself waiting there too. I was waiting for Christmas break, then for the next semester, then for summer break. Towards the end of summer I was always waiting and anticipating the trip back up to school. I am not alone in this. I continually hear people say that they are just ready to get out of wherever they are. Someone will passively say that they cannot wait to be out of school, or be finished with their internship, or in the real world, or back in school. We all want to move to Africa or Mumbai or Europe. Somewhere in ourselves we want to believe that if we can get out of the current context then we will finally be set free. And then we wait.

Waiting can be the death of us. It puts us in a coma of time, in which we are lethargic and unresponsive. This concept may seem harsh, but I think we even use the will of God as an excuse to not live out our lives. We say we are praying for God’s will, or that we are waiting for Him to open a door or somehow reveal to us our next steps. And then the waiting comes. But what if, instead of focusing on this ambiguous “will of God,” we focus on the fact that we were sent? This doesn’t always look like we want it to look and I think that’s where we get confused. When I think of being sent, I think of the times in my life when I was on an airplane headed to Mexico, Australia, El Salvador, South Africa, or some other physical mission field or exciting destination. But the thing is, not only are we sent to those far off places, or those mountain top experiences of faith - we are sent home too.

I am still learning what it means to be sent and where that will take me next in life. There is no formula, no clear cut answer or bullet point list. Being sent just means that we have to go and it means that we are not ready. It means that we are broken and hurting and yet, at the same time, we’re very much alive and whole. It means that you probably have this aching inside of your chest sometimes. You know the times where you feel like there is something that is just beating inside of you and you can’t figure out how to get it out? The feeling where you have a wall between you and whatever it is that you are supposed to be? To be sent anywhere, whether it is to Haiti or Cape Town or Madison, IN could simply mean that you are to remind everyone around you that this kingdom inside of us is real and it is coming.

I just started reading Francis Chan’s Forgotten God, a book about “reversing our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit.” Something he said in the introduction really hit me and I think it speaks to this idea of time and waiting and being sent. “I refuse to live the remainder of my life where I am right now, stagnating at this point. Don’t get me wrong: God has already done so much in my life, and I am grateful for it. I’m just convinced there’s more. There’s more of the Spirit and more of God than any of us is experiencing. I want to go there--not just intellectually, but in life, with everything that I am.” 

My next task is to find out what it means to live sent here in Madison.

The Past 7 Months

It doesn't seem like 7 months have gone by since our wedding day. Our lives have been a whirlwind since May 29th, 2010 and I am just now coming to a point where I can look back, amazed at everything we have been able to be a part of. So here's what we've been up to:

We set off on our honeymoon adventure still flying high from all the excitement of the wedding. After traveling many miles and through many states, we ended up in Georgia where we experienced extreme southern hospitality and memories that will not soon be forgotten. Upon arriving back home in Madison, we began organizing our new living space and were thrown into the incredibly frustrating task of job hunting. It took about two and a half long months but we are both fully employed, remind us that good things really do come to those who wait.

July was a big month for us...We became an aunt and uncle! On July 1st, Brad's sister gave birth to a beautiful little girl--Brylie Meranda June. Holding her for the first time brought joyful tears to our eyes. We were also blessed in several more ways this month. We volunteered with the Ulster Project, which is a reconciliation program that brings Northern Irish students to America and pairs them up with an American host family. We helped as counselors for their "Time of Discovery," which is a fancy name for peace building. We had the opportunity to invest in several students, and saw major changes in the mindsets of these teens. Not only did we volunteer our time, but we also opened up our home and hosted one of the American counselors for the month. We were completely consumed by this project the entire month, but it was rewarding. We are both now on the Ulster Board--Katie as vice president and Brad as fundraising chair.

August started off with a bang, or more of a sister yelling from her bedroom. That's right, Tracy and Rick (Katie's parents) abandoned Emily and all the animals to travel the Oregon Trail by airplane, which meant Emily was left in the loving care of her sister and new "bwa-der." We had two full weeks of Dora the Explorer and coloring outside the lines. This time of our lives was spent learning about patience and being humble. Not to mention, our newfound respect for Rich and Tracy!

Nothing too exciting in September or October, other than the fact that we started up a monthly Friends reunion weekend. A group of our favorite college friends got together down in Evansville for the epic Evansville fall festival. It was full of donut burgers, pyrano pups, good talks, and laughter. And it sparked a tradition. Each month we meet in a different city to catch up, hang out, and enjoy each other's company.

November brought on the holiday rush and we found ourselves scrambling all across the state of Indiana to visit family. We learned the value of traditions--both the keeping of the old and the beginning of the new. One of my favorite traditions is cutting down a live Christmas tree! Brad was thrilled (or not so much...) to participate in this tradition with me this year. It was a cold cold day and we definitely made some memories in the process!

Brad surprised me on my birthday with a house full of family and friends--and cake and ice cream of course! It is good to be in the presence of those you love.

We rang in the new year at my best friend's house in Indy. It was a night filled with karaoke, good food, and good friends. What a perfect way to start 2011! January has already been full of change and surprises. On January 10th I packed up my desk and said my goodbyes at the Boys & Girls Club, where I was the Resource Development Assistant/Americorps member. Leaving there was harder than I thought it was going to be. I really enjoyed my time there, and I learned so much, but it was time for something new. Which brings me to the next chapter of my life: Ivy Tech. I am currently an adjunct faculty member, teaching Life Skills courses. It is hard to believe that I am teaching college. Most of my students are older than me! But life is a funny thing and I am waiting to see which door God will open next.

<--- This is Tuna Charlie. She is the newest member of our family. I never thought I would be a pet owner, but I've got to admit that I am quite fond of her. She is a feisty little kitten, and she loves to make me bleed. But now I can't imagine life without her.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. It is strange to look at the past 7 months of your life mapped out on a computer screen. If nothing else, this blogging thing has been therapeutic for me.




Until next time.....

Love and peace,

New Blogger Alert

So, I am new to this whole blogging thing. And to be quite honest, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I mean, is blogging just an arrogant way of expressing yourself? Everybody look at me. Everybody read my thoughts. Or is this an opportunity for an online community to form where like-minded people can express their thoughts? I am hoping for the latter. Either way, here it goes. A glimpse into our new life together...