A Love Story

I'm taking a short reprieve from my usual blend of sassy cynicism to write about a love story that delivers more oohs and ahhs than the silver screen.

This year my grandparents will celebrate their 66th wedding anniversary. 66 years! Even as I type, I find myself shaking my head in a dazed disbelief. How can two people be married for 66 years? Maybe my questioning comes from the poisonous message of the current culture that validates an "I'm sick of it and want out" policy. Maybe it's because I don't really believe people can marry their high school sweetheart; don't we have to "discover ourselves" first? DeLores and Joe Ackert answer my skepticism with proof that I can't deny. 66 years after they said "I Do" they still stand by each other with unwavering loyalty and a love that I can't even begin to do justice with my feeble words.

About three years ago my cousin, Katie, and I stumbled upon a box full of old letters. When we looked closer at the letters, Katie and I both thought we had struck gold. The box contained hundreds of letters written by a young husband stuck overseas involved in a war that tore him away from his lovely bride for three years. Katie and I both vowed to type the letters and create some sort of a book for our family. The way in which our grandpa wrote brought tears to our eyes. Life has gotten in the way of our once ambitious plan to bring the love letters to life again, but my passion to tell their story has been renewed. Their health has been slowly declining and each day brings a new set of challenges. In the wake of my very own love lost, I have come to see the rare and priceless beauty in a love that defies all odds, years, and even wars. It's a love that makes me believe it can exist and trust that love really does overcome. It's a love story that begs to be told...and so...I will.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ~1 Corinthians 13:1

What is going on here?

For what seems like years, but in reality has only been about six months a small group of us have been planning a well...movement for lack of better word. Give Yourself Away 08 is a movement to connect people with needs to the people that can help meet those needs. It's kind of a "needs network".

We are launching it on September 14 with a big Robbie Seay Band concert. The catch is you can't get into the concert unless you give something away. You can sign up to the needs network at giveyourselfaway08.com or bring something to give away the night of the concert.

I'm angsty and feisty and just plain bored with church done the same static way it's always been done and this excites me in a way I can't describe. Being the Church doesn't mean we gather in a building once a week to smile and sing and learn how to be like Jesus. Being the Church is about getting our atrophied butts out there and connecting to the real world. One with pain and hurt, frustration and devastation.

It can be as simple as taking photographs of a family and putting them in a nice album or changing a single mom's car's oil. Money is good, but relationship is better. I once had a conversation with a friend about "assisting" bringing the Kingdom here on earth. He disagreed and said, "God's Kingdom is already here. He doesn't need our help to "bring" it". I've since revised my view. I feel as if God's Kingdom is under a veil of ugliness, unjustness, inequality, and oppression. Every time we step outside ourselves, we tear back a small portion of the veil to reveal God's Kingdom here on earth.

Whether you agree or disagree with my theology is irrelevant because I'm learning life isn't about me anyway. giveyourselfaway08 needs prayer and participants. Check it out. Tell your friends and family and strangers on the street. It's not solely a church thing or a Jesus thing. It's about loving people because we all deserve to be loved.

Consumerism at its best...for real

So, like most females I love to shop. I have to restrain myself more times than I care to however, because of lack of the ever vital dollar bills.

In the ugly wake of consumerism versus lack of money versus "Gosh, I should be doing better things with my money", I stumbled upon the most amazing thing; Tom's shoes www.tomsshoes.com. I'm dying to get these shoes! Not only are they super Cali cool and remind me of my (almost) surfer days, they actually donate a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased. Every pair!!! Not 10% of the proceeds, not an undisclosed portion of the profits, a whole pair!! Pair for a pair.

For those of us trying to be conscious of what we buy and how we spend our money, I think we should make a statement and get a whole bunch of these shoes. Keep a couple pairs for yourself and give some away as gifts. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving...for real. I love this company and their commitment to give.

Stay Classy Bloggers! :)

Yvonne

Often times I find myself having "aha" moments over and over again. I'm not sure if it's because my brain seems to be partial to exclamation marks or because I'm easily distracted and need to be reminded. In either case I had another "aha" moment last week over a topic I've been wrestling with for quite some time.

It began two weeks ago when I joined three other ladies from my church at a woman's apartment. We had been called by the CAC (Community Action Council). Yvonne had called needing assistance moving. Her husband had died three years ago and she had been on the waiting list for Section 8 housing for just as many years. Finally Yvonne's number was called and she needed help packing and moving her two bedroom apartment. She had surgery a few years back and couldn't pack herself and didn't have access to any help for lifting and moving items.

Yvonne is a larger than life character. She has two cats, one of which bites...hard. She is an adept chit chatter and can derail any small attempt at progress swiftly and with Bond-like precision. You need a designated out when you start talking with her or else your goodbye may last 45 minutes.She has amassed a colorful assortment of useless, indecipherable, and unmentionable trinkets over her life and they all sat proudly displayed in every available nook and cranny in the two bedroom apartment. It's an intimate thing to pack people's belongings. You see and touch their prized possessions. Sometimes I blushed at the items and other times I sighed with a heavy heart. Her husband's closet hadn't even been looked at since he passed away and I had the task of packing it up. I couldn't help but breathe a little deeper as I opened the doors. It felt like sacred space in a way.

When we got the call to go back a few days later and actually move her stuff I couldn't help but feel a little hesitation. Her apartment is thick with lung burning smoke, her cats are just plain scary and she's got soooooo much junk. I really wasn't looking forward to it, but we didn't have that many volunteers so the part of me missing the guilt trip immunity agreed to help, but I was grimacing on the inside. Upon my arrival I was surprised to see the amount of volunteers expected had more than tripled. "Great." I thought, "It'll be done quicker". I was wrong. 4 hours later I loaded my sweaty, smelly body back into my car, but I was smiling and my mindset transformed.

During the course of the night, I got to know Yvonne. I listened to her story. I found out that her husband had been diagnosed with cancer 2 months before he passed and that her daughter had been murdered 5 weeks within her husband's passing. She was the first African American woman to ever be employed by WCCO Television and she loves her mother. There's power in human connection when we allow a voice to be given to people's stories. It should be a human right to be heard; your story ascribed worth and value simply because it's yours, no one else can claim it and no one can take it from you.

Yvonne knew we were from a church, but we didn't tell her which one. We weren't advertising a worship service or even Christianity, but something amazing happened. She asked us. She wanted to know what kind of faith community would gather and help someone out who had nowhere else to turn. She wanted to be a part of that community.

I used to think relational evangelism was about listening to people so that you would "earn" the right to be heard. I realize now that that philosophy is manipulative and shallow and deduces the value of a person's story to some sort of a commodity or currency to exchange. You tell me your story and I'll tell you mine...about Jesus.

I became genuinely interested in this eclectic lady named Yvonne and in turn she asked about faith and our church service. It surprised me. I'm starting to see how powerful stories are especially when you listen without pre-selecting the words you are going to say next. Learning to listen is like learning to truly love.

First Impressions

Since graduating from high school I have lived in three states and about eight different cities. Needless to say I am constantly meeting new people and kid you not as I was typing this a guy at Caribou approached me needing help finding directions to an interview in Bloomington.

What do we notice first about people? The way they look? Dress? Talk? How they present themselves? A friendly air about them? Whether we like to admit it or not first impressions are mainly based on shallow presuppositions. We accept or reject further relationship based on a limited amount of information.

I have a friend named Jeremy who is the coolest guy I know. He is the bomb.com.net.org.gov.edu. In wikipedia next to "cool" is a pic of this dude flashing a bright smile. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but anyone who knows him knows that he is a solid man of God with incredible character and integrity who also happens to be super cool. Naturally when Jeremy was single I thought it was my right, no my duty as his friend to hook the brother up. We were both living in CA at the time and the beautiful ladies were plentiful. My first attempt fell flat when the first words out of her mouth to Jeremy were, "Do you like my shoes? They were $200." I totally mistook the first impression I had of this girl. I focused on the shallow points of her beauty and style and thought that she would be a good match. I was dead wrong. I was so wrong that the next time I tried to set Jeremy up he almost declined my offer...but thankfully he trusted that I'd learned my lesson about first impressions.

This brings me to Mikaela, a young woman from MN who had just moved to CA a few months before. A mutual friend was throwing a New Year's party and thought as fellow Minnesotans we needed to meet. By the time we met, she was heading out the door on to another party, but we did talk for ten minutes. Seriously, only ten minutes! Of all the words I used to describe Jeremy, she surpassed them all. In ten minutes I got a picture of an amazingly beautiful, sincere woman with an even more amazing heart. Her outside captured you, but her heart made your mouth hang wide open. I called Jeremy the next day and the rest is history. They were married last August.

It makes me think first impressions really are important, but not in the way I've always thought. It says in the Bible that there was nothing special about Jesus' appearance that would attract people, but that is just what He did. He attracted people by the droves with his heart. So maybe I need to think less about my wardrobe choices and hairstyle as I do the condition of my heart. We all say that we want to work on our character, but do we really believe character can come out in a first impression? I do.

I'm not gonna write you a love song

Have you ever felt like you were under the thumb of someone or something? Life is full of prescriptive mandates and you play the game according to the set rules or...what? You become a rebel?

Can faith be prescriptive? Follow this set of principles, stroll down the "Romans Road", pray a prayer and Bam!, you are saved. For as long as I've been a Christian I have struggled understanding certain tenets, especially the logistics of salvation. It may have a lot to do with my denominational mut status. I was raised in a Lutheran church, attended a Baptist college, went to church with Vineyard and AG friends, and have a whole side of my family claiming to be Catholic. Needless to say the messages about "being saved" have swirled about my brain in a confusing picture that looks like a finger painted Picasso. And interesting to note, the first mention of salvation wasn't until my first year of Baptist college. What??? What the heck is going on? I have gone to church my whole life? What are you telling me? The concepts, terminology, logistics surrounding salvation frustrate me. I often feel like it becomes divisive. If you believe this theology, proceed to camp A. If you believe in this theology, please proceed to camp B. If you do not believe in either, please proceed to hell...in a handbasket. I'm not saying that theology is not necessary, but it seems to aid in our grouping and distinguishing of individuals' salvation based on what denomination they ascribe to instead of the state of their heart.

Also, once you are counted among the "saved", your responsibility is to "save" more. I'm sure there are many people in my life that stood by me excitedly awaiting the day where I would come to a relational faith with Jesus Christ, but thankfully no one pushed, forced, or coerced me to pray a prayer before I knew what I was doing. I wish I could call those friends that I thought were a little loopy for being baptized in what looked like a hot tub when we were juniors in high school and say, "Guys, I get it now". Those friends loved me. They didn't try to change me and most of all they never tried to prescribe a certain journey of faith I needed to be on. God was pursuing me. The Holy Spirit was working and my faith was growing and developing.

This brings me back to my experience in Africa. As part of the medical clinics, patients were invited to receive counseling. For a weary heart and body I'm sure this sounded like a much needed respite from the harshness of their reality. I was expecting an opportunity to show compassion, share tears, embrace a broken soul facing a life with HIV, but instead I was shocked to discover the mandate of salvation. I felt myself becoming physically ill when a patient was hounded about her lack of relationship with Jesus and her desperate need for Him. Never mind that you came in here to talk about how scared you are to tell your family you have just been diagnosed with HIV. Never mind that you are scared to die. Never mind that you want a compassionate face and someone to accept you the way you are. You need to change. You need to have a relationship with Jesus before we will speak to you. Let me start by talking about sin and (y)our need for a Savior...

Really? We are going to talk to her about how she is a sinner? Right here? Right now? I could feel the uneasiness in my stomach begin to creep it's way up my esophagus. I've never gotten physically ill before, but everything in my body was screaming NO!!!!!!!! JUST LOVE HER!!!! You can listen and love her and tell about this amazing man named Jesus that gives you hope, but don't make her pray a prayer. Don't prescribe her faith like a pill to swallow. Let her be herself and love her just the way she is. I pray that after we left she was able to speak with someone she trusts about the grace, love, hope, and redemption found in this man Jesus and not just the freedom from sin.

I attended a class about missions in which a man once told a missionary, "Your message of Jesus comes to us already planted in a clay pot decorated the way you like it. We love the message of Jesus, but we had to break the pot and replant it in our own." We can't tell others how to know and love Jesus. We can only show and tell of Jesus' love for them. Let's leave the prescriptions for the doctors.

I walked out of the counseling and couldn't return for the rest of the week in Africa. I couldn't write the love song they asked me to write. I couldn't add to the number of "saved" that week, but it doesn't bother me because I know God is pursuing the hearts of all He created and He is drawing them unto Himself in His time.

Africa...Take 1

Here is my first attempt at describing my experience in Africa. My life has been anything but linear these last couple of months so when asked to go to Africa, I jumped on it faster than Angelina hopping on a plane to pick up her next kid. It’s hard to explain Africa. It seems to be the humanitarian cause du jour; social justice is the new “black”. It’s in. It’s trendy. You can wear it on an expensive tee or around your wrist. You can sip it out of a mug. You can drink it out of a bottle. You can put in on over your newly styled coif. You can be just like a celebrity, if you choose Africa.

A fellow team member asked me, “So, why did you choose to come to Africa? Of course you felt called, but why do you feel called?” Crap. This kind of question already? We’re still in New York. We haven’t even gotten on the “big” plane. I sheepishly retorted some rehearsed answer perfected by years of ministry and knowledge of the spiritual lexicon. It seemed to appease the questioner, but it caused uneasiness in the pit of my stomach for the rest of our ridiculously long journey to Malawi. Why had I come to Malawi? Had I ever really thought about Africa more than just the CCF commercials when I was a kid and I thought you actually adopted a child? (Incidentally my brother and I would argue over getting a girl or a boy because we thought they actually came to live with you). Or maybe when I’d seen the Invisible Children film and heard about the kidnapping of child soldiers in Uganda. Then of course I heard about Rwanda, and thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio, the Ivory Coast. But, Malawi? Can’t say that I’d ever thought about it much and here I was sitting in a plane for 26 hours about to embark on an adventure I really hadn’t thought about all that much. Story of my life. Act first and sort out the details later.

The first striking thing I noticed about Africa was my annoyingly ignorant and ethnocentric view of the globe. Africa is freaking huge! You could fit nearly 6 United States inside the continent. Clearly the maps we use to teach our children have an agenda. Fly South African Airways and look inside their in-air magazine for a more accurate take on the size of the world’s continents. Secondly, Africa is not all desert or barren wasteland. Granted, I had the blessing of traveling immediately following the rainy season, but it was covered in rolling green hills, mountains, and beautiful trees and flowers . I felt this overwhelming sense of entitlement as we rode through villages each morning to get to our medical sites each day. I couldn’t help, but think, who the h are we? We travel anywhere in the world that we want. We drop in on people, on communities that have never experienced life outside their tiny village and we swoop in to do what? To save them? To heal them? To teach them about McDonald’s and running water? Who am I to come in and change anything? What do they want? What do they need? Whatever I do, I want to start with asking those questions first. One of the many beautiful things about Africa is their list of wants and needs are generally the same. Growing up in our overindulgent society, needs and wants become this indistinguishable mix of stuff. When you shake it out, distill it, you actually start to see that our needs and wants are very different things and our list of needs is small, but what would someone else's list look like?

WANTS & NEEDS: MALAWI (NTSCHISI DISTRICT)
1. Clean drinking and bathing water that is less than a mile away.
2. Bandages so lesions don’t become infected.
3. De-worming pills so I don’t get sick from my every day life and all the parasites lurking in and around my home.
4. Soap to wash away the parasites before I eat with the very hands that touch the parasites.
5. A toothbrush and toothpaste so my teeth won’t rot away.
6. Shoes or sandals so I don’t have to go barefoot everywhere.
7. A parent so I don’t have to take care of my baby sister and actually get to play with the other five year-olds in the village.
8. A husband that doesn’t leave me and our kids when he finds out I have HIV.
9. A friend I can actually talk to about being scared to die of AIDS.
10. A hug and acceptance from my community when I tell them I’m sick.

So, I actually made up this list obviously. But, I think it wouldn’t look that different if a Malawian living in the Ntchisi District was asked to compile such a list. They wouldn’t ask for toilets with running water or restaurants serving burgers and fries. They wouldn’t ask for gas guzzling cars to get around (they may ask for a bicycle) or new clothes. It makes me think that the more you have the more you want. The more I’ve been exposed to, the more I’m accustomed to expecting it. The basics of life are not a want for me. I don’t even think about clean drinking water or getting sick from taking a shower. It’s so expected and taken for granted that I fail to think of the many people who struggle for such things on a daily basis.

Back to my original thought: Asking them what they want. What can I do for you? Instead of, bursting in with “Here I come to save the day”. It was very frustrating standing by waiting to help build a chicken coop because so many guys from the church came out to help, but isn’t that the point? Together. We build it. Also, I love kids, but I wanted a break and they followed me everywhere even when I was supposed to be doing something else, argh, kids. Attention and fun should not to be overlooked. Hugging a child with stuff oozing out of their eyes and nose and ringworm over half their head exposing their bare scalp, is usually not my idea of fun. But to see their faces when you reach out, to feel their bodies relax into yours is indescribable. Kids in Africa have to grow up so fast. The stress of life is unbearable. I pray that for one moment they felt what it’s like to be a kid.

Wow, I said this was “Take 1”. I’m not sure how to stop writing. More will probably come as I continue to process the experience. I didn’t even get into the ways God moved and also the ways in which spiritual agenda made me sick. Africa is worse than I thought and more beautiful than I thought. It’s not a cause. It is a place with amazing people and amazing stories. Africa makes me feel incredibly small and that is a very good thing.