So I really wanted to drop in a blog in the last few hours of August. I have only written twice this month because one of the weeks of this month was absolutely one of the worst of my life. I do believe a cancer relapse may have been easier. This kind of pain was different because it was the kind that was mostly brought upon myself. Those who need to know what happened know and those who don't, will not know. All I can say at this point about that is that I have finally started to feel like Lauren Meow again in the past couple of days. I know it's been the prayers that several people were praying for me and a couple that I cried out for myself- the peace of Christ has come over me. I have been reminded of who I am and who I want to keep being. There were a couple of moments where I honestly contemplated running far, far away from everything because then I would never have to face anything. I would pretend that I did not have to face myself. I can't run from God. I could run into the mountains of Oregon or Spain or somewhere and still God would be there, pursuing me, chasing after me like a mother after her kidnapped child. Like a man who felt his lover slowly slipping out of his arms, He came back after me. I am grateful with all soul that I was not able to escape Him.
In three weeks today I will be leaving Immokalee. Tomorrow makes exactly three months that I have spent here. Despite all this self-inflicted pain I have been experiencing lately, I am so glad that I can say now that close to 4 months of my life were spent here. I am thankful for the stories I have heard, the people I have met, the pain God helped me to embrace, the countless times I laughed, the moments that made me uncomfortable. I am grateful for the way God has made me yet again even more desperate for Him. I am privileged to have been able to open up this world to many others that I know. I am honored that I have been accepted into this community, even as so far that two of my friends here from Oaxaca (southern Mexico) have insisted that I come to visit them soon when they finally go home after several years of being in the US.
The last two weeks have been a bit of a blur for me being here in Immokalee. I know that I have been working and living but it has been hard. I am trying to remember the week before that but right now I can't. Right now I feel like I am in a stage of mourning....mourning the lost of things very precious to me, mourning over the broken person I am, mourning over things that should have never happened. Anger has been flaring up and down in me, mostly at myself, somewhat at others. Others who should have heard me when I said certain things but mostly I wish I would have heard myself and that I would have heard God in moments that I really needed to...
Grace.
I have never had this kind of deep understanding of grace and love before. I had, in many ways, forgotten what the Gospel really is all about.
The Gospel is for people like me. Broken, prideful at times, feeling like much of my life has been a disappointment, feeling inadequate, confused, not one of the most educated, not someone who can speak in a very intellectual way, someone who just messes up a lot. The Gospel is for ragamuffins, for people who do not have it all together, for people who will never think they have it all together. The Gospel is for places like Immokalee, where there is a town full of people that the most of the world has rejected. So perhaps this has been a good place for me to be in a lot of ways. Though I am not materially poor, my spirit has always been poor and I will always need Jesus to keep coming to fill it to just where it needs to be.
I have recently started reading a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I think everyone in the world should read this book. Unless you really think highly of yourself, that you're good on your own and that you don't need God. Otherwise, it will break you in ways that you didn't think were possible.
I have been dwelling just a little bit on this old Anne Frank quote that I have always really liked..."I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains". I remember I used to have that written that on my bedroom wall in high school (along with all the other hundreds of things written and painted on the walls). Let's face it, there are plenty of things to be miserable over in this world. I see a lot of things to mourn over every day in Immokalee. I see a lot of things that are miserable about me. I have done some miserable things but there is still so much beauty in me that remains simply because I am a Jesus follower. That is the only way any beauty can remain in me ever and it's the only way to keep bringing something better into a miserable world, even when you are the one who caused the freakin misery in the first place.
Reconciliation. Like I said in one of my earlier blogs, that seems to be the theme of my life this year. That is a theme I am desperately praying to keep around. I am hoping and praying with everything in me that I will see it once again lived out in my life again soon.
Perhaps I will write once or twice more before I leave here. My mind is still trying to grasp so many things that have happened lately that it's been overwhelming.
I hope all of you are doing well. I will see many of you soon!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Just thinking....
Brian is right. It will never be cool to follow Jesus in the activist world. In that case, I would rather call myself a Jesus follower than an activist, an anarchist, a socialist or a radical. When being all about social justice stops being cool, I'll still do it because I'll always be a Jesus follower. It's not a phase, I am not being idealistic. I am just trying to follow all that I know to be true in a world full of lies. This is so much harder than I thought it would be. It is so hard to be the only one in a world full of activists trying to really hardcore follow Jesus. I struggle every moment to remember who I am and not to compromise myself to make others happy. That is not easy being the natural pushover, people pleaser that I am. Like I have said a billion times before throughout this blog, I miss my community and I cannot wait to live out justice with them. Last night a very dear friend of mine offered to pray with me over the phone and as we prayed for each other, I realized how much my soul longed and ached for something like that. Just to simply pray with another human and cry out to God together. After we hung up I started reading Ecclesiastes for some reason and then I got to the passage about how two is better than one, because if one falls, then the other can help bring them back up. I am grateful for many of you who have been my community from a distance. Please keep praying I don't forget who I am here. Please pray that I remember who I serve, who I follow, who I worship, who I love.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Can you pass me my machete, por favor?
I don't have wireless in the house I live in anymore in Immokalee so I have been limited on when I can actually sit down and write. It has been way too long. But less is more, right?
How does joy exist in the midst of pain? The past few weeks I have been crying quite a bit over several different situations of people I know, people I love and care about so deeply. I have been crying out to God and asking Him why. I don't completely understand why pain has to exist, why suffering has to happen. One could go ahead and give the cliche, "Oh, you know, for character development" deal but damn, it does not always feel that way when the suffering hurts as bad as a thick needle being stuck into your bone marrow. I know that I have learned that suffering is good and necessary because through it we learn obedience and discipline (Romans 5). It just doesn't always feel that way.
Where would be without the Lord? Where in the world would I be if Jesus had not intervened into my life and rescued me from myself? What would I do when I encounter so much pain this world? Where else would I turn?
Really, what can you say to a group of farmworkers who have been exploited their whole lives? To a group of people who have been discriminated against and taken advantage of simply because of their ethnicity and the class they were born into? Where does hope come from when those fair wages you are fighting for don't come in? What do you say to one of your good friends who has been battling a rare cancer for two and a half years, who has been to doctors all over the country and no one could cure her? What do you say to your aunt who is dying from diabetes at only age 42, what do you say to your uncle who has to do everything for her now that she is blind and can't walk anymore on her own? What do you say to your younger cousins who never come home anymore because they can't deal with their mother dying? What do you say to some of your closest friends when one of them hurts the other deeply, when one of them breaks the trust that was once there? What do you say to people who feel like there is no hope, there is no redemption for them, even when deep down inside you know there is something for them? What do we say to all this pain in the world? What do we say?
The thing is that I have nothing to offer, I have nothing to say, except for Jesus. I have nothing else to hope in. I do not have all the answers but I believe that without Him we are pretty much screwed. To think that we can make things right and better on our own is just straight up prideful. Who are we, but broken human beings, in desperate need of a Savior? Broken people searching for wholeness, and once we find that wholeness in Him, only then can we truly began to be used to bring some comfort to the pain of this world. Seriously, this has been one of the most painful years of my life. I have felt so sad way too many days but on those same days I have also felt a lot of joy when I have chosen to crawl into the arms of my Redeemer. Jesus is truly good news and I do not understand why any broken human being would reject everything we have always longed for. Being in Immokalee has allowed me to see my incredible need for Jesus more than ever. I never want to do anything apart from Him and all I want to do is bring others to know this incredible man, to put their hope in Him, to find joy in serving Him.
A little over a week ago my peoples from Tampa and St. Pete came for an immersion visit to Immokalee. It was so great to see InterVarsity in Immokalee! About a week before that, some good friends and leaders of the church I go to in Tampa also came to visit me, Brian, Joann and Alison. The visits really helped to affirm so much of what I am doing here. I am still so honored that they would take time of out their schedules to drive down here and spend some time in the community (especially with these gas prices). I loved how everyone was so engaged and so willing to take a posture of learning while they were here. I loved seeing my good friends from Immo talk with my good friends from Tampa & St. Pete. Bridging two worlds together, that is something Jesus uses us to do. I also do not feel as alone as I did before, in this burden to love migrant farmworkers, because now my community has seen what I have seen, now they have felt a bit what I have been feeling. Now we are in this together and this is so incredibly encouraging.
God has been really faithful in answering some other prayers. I have been able to really build deeper relationships with so many people in the community, even in my broken Spanish. I was thinking today about how much Vero and I have become good friends. Vero is the wife and mother of the family I live with and she doesn't speak much English at all. She understands quite a bit, though, and asks me how to say things all the time. She is also very patient with me when I forget how to say things in Spanish and I have learned a ton from her. I do not think I have ever had such a good friend where neither of us were completely fluent in the same language! It is amazing what the Lord can do, how He can work. God is bigger than my messed up Spanish, He is still able to use me in spite of it, to share His hope and love with others and He has been the One who has enabled me to be able to share my life with others here and for them to share theirs with me. Vero even told me a few days ago that she wished she had a sister like me and then I told her that I am already her sister.
Oh yeah, and I went to pick guavas about a week ago, too, that was so much fun. Lots of spiders, yikes. I never realized how incredible it could be to live in a rural area and to be able to drive out to the middle of nowhere and then run into a forest and shake the trees until the guavas fell out. I went with Melody (my roommate) and Reina, who is this really great lady from Paraguay that always invites us over to drink mate and chase alligators in her backyard. She is probably in her late 40's and she just puts on this big rubber boots and grabs her machete and starts cutting any of the branches in our way so we can run into the forest to climb up the trees. I hope that someday I can live somewhere in Latin America for a while in a rural area and climb mountains and swim in waterfalls. See, my indigenous roots are starting to be awakened more and more in me. My mom is so proud to be half-Incan, she would be proud of me. :) Perhaps I will start putting my hair in braids again and wearing my ponchos, like she used to do for me when I was a litte girl.
How does joy exist in the midst of pain? The past few weeks I have been crying quite a bit over several different situations of people I know, people I love and care about so deeply. I have been crying out to God and asking Him why. I don't completely understand why pain has to exist, why suffering has to happen. One could go ahead and give the cliche, "Oh, you know, for character development" deal but damn, it does not always feel that way when the suffering hurts as bad as a thick needle being stuck into your bone marrow. I know that I have learned that suffering is good and necessary because through it we learn obedience and discipline (Romans 5). It just doesn't always feel that way.
Where would be without the Lord? Where in the world would I be if Jesus had not intervened into my life and rescued me from myself? What would I do when I encounter so much pain this world? Where else would I turn?
Really, what can you say to a group of farmworkers who have been exploited their whole lives? To a group of people who have been discriminated against and taken advantage of simply because of their ethnicity and the class they were born into? Where does hope come from when those fair wages you are fighting for don't come in? What do you say to one of your good friends who has been battling a rare cancer for two and a half years, who has been to doctors all over the country and no one could cure her? What do you say to your aunt who is dying from diabetes at only age 42, what do you say to your uncle who has to do everything for her now that she is blind and can't walk anymore on her own? What do you say to your younger cousins who never come home anymore because they can't deal with their mother dying? What do you say to some of your closest friends when one of them hurts the other deeply, when one of them breaks the trust that was once there? What do you say to people who feel like there is no hope, there is no redemption for them, even when deep down inside you know there is something for them? What do we say to all this pain in the world? What do we say?
The thing is that I have nothing to offer, I have nothing to say, except for Jesus. I have nothing else to hope in. I do not have all the answers but I believe that without Him we are pretty much screwed. To think that we can make things right and better on our own is just straight up prideful. Who are we, but broken human beings, in desperate need of a Savior? Broken people searching for wholeness, and once we find that wholeness in Him, only then can we truly began to be used to bring some comfort to the pain of this world. Seriously, this has been one of the most painful years of my life. I have felt so sad way too many days but on those same days I have also felt a lot of joy when I have chosen to crawl into the arms of my Redeemer. Jesus is truly good news and I do not understand why any broken human being would reject everything we have always longed for. Being in Immokalee has allowed me to see my incredible need for Jesus more than ever. I never want to do anything apart from Him and all I want to do is bring others to know this incredible man, to put their hope in Him, to find joy in serving Him.
A little over a week ago my peoples from Tampa and St. Pete came for an immersion visit to Immokalee. It was so great to see InterVarsity in Immokalee! About a week before that, some good friends and leaders of the church I go to in Tampa also came to visit me, Brian, Joann and Alison. The visits really helped to affirm so much of what I am doing here. I am still so honored that they would take time of out their schedules to drive down here and spend some time in the community (especially with these gas prices). I loved how everyone was so engaged and so willing to take a posture of learning while they were here. I loved seeing my good friends from Immo talk with my good friends from Tampa & St. Pete. Bridging two worlds together, that is something Jesus uses us to do. I also do not feel as alone as I did before, in this burden to love migrant farmworkers, because now my community has seen what I have seen, now they have felt a bit what I have been feeling. Now we are in this together and this is so incredibly encouraging.
God has been really faithful in answering some other prayers. I have been able to really build deeper relationships with so many people in the community, even in my broken Spanish. I was thinking today about how much Vero and I have become good friends. Vero is the wife and mother of the family I live with and she doesn't speak much English at all. She understands quite a bit, though, and asks me how to say things all the time. She is also very patient with me when I forget how to say things in Spanish and I have learned a ton from her. I do not think I have ever had such a good friend where neither of us were completely fluent in the same language! It is amazing what the Lord can do, how He can work. God is bigger than my messed up Spanish, He is still able to use me in spite of it, to share His hope and love with others and He has been the One who has enabled me to be able to share my life with others here and for them to share theirs with me. Vero even told me a few days ago that she wished she had a sister like me and then I told her that I am already her sister.
Oh yeah, and I went to pick guavas about a week ago, too, that was so much fun. Lots of spiders, yikes. I never realized how incredible it could be to live in a rural area and to be able to drive out to the middle of nowhere and then run into a forest and shake the trees until the guavas fell out. I went with Melody (my roommate) and Reina, who is this really great lady from Paraguay that always invites us over to drink mate and chase alligators in her backyard. She is probably in her late 40's and she just puts on this big rubber boots and grabs her machete and starts cutting any of the branches in our way so we can run into the forest to climb up the trees. I hope that someday I can live somewhere in Latin America for a while in a rural area and climb mountains and swim in waterfalls. See, my indigenous roots are starting to be awakened more and more in me. My mom is so proud to be half-Incan, she would be proud of me. :) Perhaps I will start putting my hair in braids again and wearing my ponchos, like she used to do for me when I was a litte girl.
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