It's impossible to wrap up this internship blog in one entry.  However, I think it's important for me to be able to summarize what God has done in me through this year of trials (both the testing kind and the hard kind), excitement, and jumping onto a moving train type of faith.  So I came up with three things God has taught me this year, and I want to share them here.

Thing 1:  It is a blessing to say, "Yes," to him every day. 

And not only is it a blessing in itself, but it brings innumerable blessings to your life when you say, "Yes," and watch what happens expectantly.

Thing 2:  Leadership is often subtle and quiet, but powerful when it's service and sacrifice.

What is a leader?  Why does it have to be someone outgoing and proud and strong-voiced?  And yet Jesus calls us to the loving leadership that comes with kneeling before our friends and waiting on God to lead us.

Thing 3:  Jesus will always be the source that enables me to love like he asks. 

Sometimes it's just exhausting to try to let go of our lives.  How beautiful that God would call us into something where we need him so close to us in order to be what we're meant to be!  Love others fully, allow God to love you fully, and somehow the relationship is made so complete that there's no other love that compares.

 

Here is the capstone of sorts.  There is still much for me to learn about what God has done in me.  Praise him that I have the rest of my life to keep learning...

 Adieu.

I know, I didn't do it before I left for LA... and now I'm not going to do it either, and will be gone for another few days... but it'll be here... by the end of the weekend... really... :P  I'm just preoccupied. 

I want to write that I have left Madison.  I spent a day in Chicago with some friends, and flew back out to Portland, OR.  I'm exhausted, and emotionally weary.  But soon, I will find the words to wrap up this internship, and hopefully by tomorrow you will have a final sealing entry to this blog experiment. Until then, know that I'm thinking a lot about what it all means.

I had an interesting experience when I went as a substitute to a different work site Tuesday.  I saw one staff member and a few kids that were at the same Spring Break program I helped with the week before I went to India.  I had talked about my trip that week, and that I was leaving to go to India to help with the tsunami damages. 

 First, Mike, the staff I met that week, greeted me by asking how my trip ended up going.  What a surprise!  A guy that I worked with for four days, and hadn't seen in two months, remembering and showing interest in the thing that was so important to me.  I was honored and blessed with it.  Then Amol, a kid who I think is at least part Indian, did the same thing... I was just playing at one of the tables, and he said he remembered me from the other school, and said, "Didn't you go to India?" 

 I was just thankful for the recognition that my sharing, even with people that I knew for one week, had sunk in enough for them to remember when they saw me again and ask.  It was a warm-fuzzy thing.  :)  I don't know how all God has used me in my time here, and I'm excited that through my faithfulness, seeds have been planted, and as small as they seem to me, tiny mustard seeds of faith will sprout and grow and flourish, even after I am gone. 

 Thrilling.  It makes my heart beat a little stronger.

My roomie and co-intern is now gone... I will see her in L.A. in a few weeks, but we've had our last sweet moments in our room together.  I'm sad, and our room is too quiet.  So far, I'm just avoiding it... we'll see how long that lasts.

I don't know what to write.  That's all I really want to write, but I still feel like it needs some explanation. 

 So much is happening... so much has happened.  How can I possibly start to describe how I feel, what God's doing, and what questions I have in my head and my heart? 

 Maybe it's just because it's not very "easy" for me to journal.  I'm not a bad writer, but every time I sit to try to journal for myself or on this blog, I just get so frustrated at how long it takes me to get out a train of thought, or how much I can't put into words what I want. 

 One of my housemates labelled me as "logical" the other day, and I was shocked by it... but everyone sort of agreed with her that I do tend to fall into a logical mode of thought.  Okay, so I can see how that works a little, but knowing the inside of my head, I just think, "WHAT?!?"  I feel so disshevelled most of the time trying to even pin down where the heck my emotions are going these days, much less trying to get things done while so scatterbrained.

 See, even this entry is like that. 

 I'll try to wrap up some of the major events of the week--though that feels like a simplistic and superficial way to approach my life right now.  But perhaps it will work.

 * Finding out one of my repetitive sins: Saying mean-spirited things when I don't want to and it's the opposite of what I mean to say.  I did this to Angela, I did it to Dayla, and everytime it happens I know it was stupid to say but I don't know how to take it back, and then I find out how much it hurts the people I love, and then I feel like crud.  I went through this Sunday morning, before/during church, and did this repentance thing as I walked to church that felt cleansing, but also so humbling that it hurt.  I got to church and just kind of came to terms with how much it hurts to care about people, and when we fail at things (especially when we fail at caring for people).  I feel a new release from that sin that I don't think I've been able to come to before.  It's like I can imagine better how Peter must have felt when he heard himself denying his connection with Jesus before the crucifixion.  The agony of knowing in your heart that you love someone deeply and yet watching your tongue betray your heart... there's something wise in James about the tongue.  And in Romans about being of the flesh and therefore doing what we do not want to do.  But to go to the end of John and read how Jesus reclaimed Peter and gave Peter his chance to love Jesus as his heart did, and that Jesus' response was "Feed my sheep."  To this, right now, I just think, "What does that mean?"

 * Sadness is hitting me in such an exhausting way.  I'm agonizing over how to close this period of my life, how to show people here what they've meant to me (which is hard to do when my love language would tell me to give elaborate gifts and yet I have so little money to lavish on people...), and how to prepare myself to move back into the relationships back in Oregon that have been put on hold for so long.  I want more time to sleep and rest my weary body, but I want more time to play with friends and children.  I want to spend long hours laying around talking with my church family, yet there is SO MUCH going on for everyone during finals and end of school and just regular life.  I don't want to say goodbye... and I'm dreading that my life might be only about that.  If I'm always following God somewhere else, yes, I can take joy in the Kingdom's eternal-ness and space-less-ness, but it hurts to sew your heart to a place or person and then have to walk away.  I mean, how many pieces of my heart can I give away before I die?  How do I keep trusting in God to fill me and lead me through a life of abundance rather than crawling like an enebriated faint body...?

 * I have to just say, too, that I am despising life's details right now.  Resumes, applications, finding housing, paying bills, seeking a subletter for my room, and terminating work.  Ug.  That's all.

 

I don't want to forget to mention that there are tremendous joys in this time.  I am getting to love on so many people, and to even recognize how God has grown me and those around me in the time I've been here is such a blessing.  I am excited that somehow I've been a catalyst to bigger things, watching my church eager to support the friends I made in India, pushing others to long for lives of justice and service, and lending my perspective to scriptures and life and love... I am enjoying all my housemates and church friends so much more knowing that I will soon not be in their viscinity anymore.  And trusting in the ways that God is putting us in his family together.  Glorious.  I'm totally in love!  I just wish it weren't so much work to remember these things every second of every day...

 Okay, that's probably enough from me for a while.  Sorry for being long-typed. 

Well, just wanted to comment on beautiful flowering trees, the appearance of new green shoots coming out of the ground, and the gently falling snowflakes...

snowflakes??

Yes, it began to snow today, May 1st, during church, after church, and way after church. Whatever happened to the 70something weather that there was less than a month ago?...

Wisconsin seems confused. And Wisconsinites are angry... they want spring more than I do. :)

I just kind of laugh at the weather, these days.

You know how sometimes you just keep pushing and pushing and not really keeping up with yourself or the really important underlying meaning-of-life type things? That's kind of been my past week or so. I got really wrapped up in getting ready to travel to Oregon for my two friends' wedding last weekend, and then the weekend was just packed with wonderful goodness (and stress that goes along with everything), and then I return to work an almost 10 hour day Monday, and spent too much time out with my coworkers last night, and now I'm just caught in this sort of weird time warp brain lapse thing. I feel like I could step into a dark, nonmoving oblivion and feel about the same as I do at the current moment.

I'm also realizing that my motivation to get back to the core things Jesus has been trying to show me is waning... I haven't spent any real time looking at scripture in the past week, and all my prayers feel distant and disconnected. It's like, I feel India floating over one shoulder, and the mission to the Triangle floating over the other, and somewhere between is my work and my house and my church, and I'm just kind of looking at them all, back and forth, thinking, hmm... there's a bunch of things hovering around me... what does that mean?

It's funny that something that really makes no sense to read is like, the best description of how I'm feeling that I've given in the past few days.

What next? I think maybe I'll try to move the motivation meter up a bit by staring at my bible as long as my short attention span will allow and maybe a few minutes longer. Then perhaps I might have the energy to write in my journal or pray or have a conversation with someone that goes beyond the dull, meaningless chatter of everyday talk.

Lord, please don't let me sink into complacency and discontent and apathy and boredom. Somewhere inside me I know that's not the truth of what you have for me. I just need to buff off some grime and shine it up and remind myself of that pretty thing you've showed me in the past. Love me well in your grace.

here's something from an email i just sent to my india teammates... i hope it makes sense.

--

"When we were praying for you last Sunday at church I got an image of you standing on a beach there. The waters had come far up onto the land, but now were receding. As the waters pulled back from the beach, there in front of you were many sparkling jewels & gold nuggets & gold dust where the waters had been. I think that God has some powerful ways that He will use you on this trip to distribute these riches & to enjoy them yourself. God bless you on your trip!"

As I ponder these words, having been home for several weeks now, I marvel at how many ways God could mean this vision to be. I think of standing on the shore before my baptism, looking at all of you and our friends, certainly jewels and gold in all your own right. I think of the small shells that so many of us were collecting in different places, common now but before so rare. I think of the physical scars left by the waves, and yet the ways that healing is being brought to the lands through the ministries that have spent so much of themselves there. Distributing riches... does this have to do with the people we met there, the hope that we reflected back to them (that exists inside them already but having witnesses showed it to themselves), and the love that we so freely gave? Or does it have to do with the stories that we returned with, and are spreading like riches in the lands where we are planted, because there's nothing else we can do but share the things God put inside of and revealed to us while we were in India? Enjoy them myself... what has Jesus gifted me with through this experience? Can I put that into words or images? Can I even start to communicate that?

If God has moved his waters, right in and around us and away again, leaving things where before there was nothing we could see, what is it that we are witness to, and what is it that we should grab hold of and pull in quickly and with a selfless greed? How can we have a healthy worry that if we do not take them now, these jewels and gold nuggets and dust will wash away again soon, to a place where we no longer will be able to reach, for ourselves or to share with others?

I think this vision was for all of us, not just me, and therefore I hope you can think on it and let it seep in a little bit... ask God what he means by it.

It's strange to think that I've been back from India as long as I was gone in India. I finished my malaria prevention medication. I have sent emails and a letter. I've showed off pictures.

Strange.

It's kind of an "off" day.