Foreign to Familiar: A Strange Journey

Here I stand, a foreigner in the midst of a joyous throng of Nicaraguans.  Hands raised high, my neighbors sway and dance, much like an anemone under water (though less tranquil I suppose).  They sing praises to the One above, thanking Him for life, love and hope.  I join in song, my tongue stumbling on the Spanish words that are on the projector screen.  I clap and I sway just like my neighbors, but I know that in reality I stick out like a sore thumb. 

My eyes become momentarily distracted by the elderly man sitting next to me: skin dark and leathery with age and sun exposure, his eyes closed in prayer, his mouth moving in song, his hands raised high to feel the Spirit in this place.  He does not notice me, a stranger, sitting next to him.  He is completely absorbed in the moment, worshipping the God he loves.  Inspired, I decide to join him.

In this moment, I feel peace.  I don’t feel awkward that I am an outsider; I don’t feel weird that this is definitely not my style of worship; I don’t feel unwelcome in the slightest.  In this moment, I know that this is where I need to be. 

The church I had this experience at is my host family’s church, Rosa de Sarón.  It’s a large church with a few hundred members, and is located right next to one of the biggest outdoor markets here in León.  To put it simply, it’s a bustling center of energy and movement, both inside the church and outside.  For the next while, I’ve decided that this is the church God wants me to be at.  The 3 hour long services seem daunting, as does the heat, but when I feel that sense of belonging I’ve learned not to question it :)

I have to say, I still feel like a traveler in a foreign land.  But, each and every day I feel myself growing used to my surroundings.  I’m no longer startled by strange sights, like 3 people on a motorcycle.  I am no longer taken aback by strange noises and smells, like fireworks and outdoor markets (which are smelly, let me tell you).  I am no longer unnerved by strange places, like my room, my home, my neighborhood, my city.  Nicaragua is growing on me, folks.  And what a strange feeling that is!  To know that I am on this journey of living a new life here, waiting patiently until the day where everything seems familiar.  My journey from foreign to familiar is a long and sometimes strange one, filled with many curves and hills and sudden detours.  But, I know that if I stay on this path, I will eventually reach my destination: belonging.  So, lace up your boots!  There’s a long walk ahead of us :)

This week, the Dordt students arrive for their semester abroad here in Nicaragua.  To say the least, I am excited!  This is what I’ve been preparing for these past 2 months and I find myself giddy with anticipation and worried with last minute details.  These next two weeks or so are going to feel like a never ending marathon, running from one obstacle to the next.  

Please pray for safe travels for the students as well as for endurance, patience, and joy for all of us during these exciting moments of change and newness. 

Stay tuned!

Calm the Storm

From  http://trojanhorsecollective.com/conversations-with-my-storm/ 

There’s a storm, of dust and dirt, swirling in a chaos of grays and browns.  Lightning dances within the darkness to the beat of thunder’s drums.  Rain falls like shards of glass.  The wind howls, crying out and moaning as if in pain. 

Let’s call this storm the current state of my mind.  The dirt is my thoughts, the lightning is my ideas, the thunder is my desires, the rain is my emotions, and the wind, well the wind is the voice of others calling out to me like a siren’s song.

Now, imagine this storm has been suddenly trapped inside a little glass bottle.  Cork in place, the roaring chaos is but a muted whisper.  Its strength has not gone—it rages on as if nothing has happened.  And yet, on the outside, is has been silenced.  This glass bottle is the mask I wear, hiding the reality hidden underneath.

Despite the peaceful and confident mask I wear, I feel in this very moment weighted down by the storm in my mind and heart.  I feel stalked by the dark things in this world, things we combat fiercely with news reporters, Facebook posts and #hashtags: sex slavery, gang violence, drug trafficking, hate crimes, ethnic cleansing, systemic poverty, political corruption.  I’m trapped by my uselessness to truly do anything about it.  And those are things on a worldly scale—what about the things that affect my life here and now?  In comparison my situation feels insignificant, and yet it is holding me ever so strongly in its grasp.  It doesn’t feel small to me.  How can I reconcile that when the world is literally crumbling around me?

More importantly, as a Christ-follower and imitator, what am I supposed to do?  WWJD?  How would Jesus calm the storm in me?

I’ll tell you what Jesus would do, because he’s already done it for us.  He would walk up to my storm, speak his Truth to the wind and chaos and command it to be still.  He would turn to me, kiss my forehead, and take my worries, my doubts, my sins from me.  He would remind me that my burden is not my own, that I alone cannot save this world.  In fact, I cannot save anything.  Only God can.  With his soft voice he would remind me that He is the Eye in the storm, the Peace that transcends all understanding, the Light to this dark world.  He would take my hand and say, “My child, come follow me.”

Truly, “[h]umankind cannot bear very much reality.”[1]  Even with what little we do carry we are weighed down like Atlas, knees bent and trying to carry the world on our backs.  On our own, that burden is too much.  But with God, our burden is light and our joy is great.  We need but follow in Jesus’ holy footsteps, no matter how clumsy or slow we may be.  With our eyes on Him, our feet shall not waver from His path.

Let go and let God.

Stay tuned!

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[1] T.S. Eliot, “Dry Salvages” in Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1943. Reprint, 1971), 44.

Noise

Just imagine chickens clucking, diesel engines roaring, motorcycles revving, babies crying, horses clomping, dogs barking, parrots squawking, fans droning, people calling, doors squeaking, kids laughing, buses honking, and music playing.

All at the same time.

When you move to a new place, the first things that strike you as different are generally the food and the way people look.  Ask anyone, “So what was such-and-such a place like?” and they’ll say something like “Well, it was crazy, people walking everywhere, wearing these colorful dresses—even the guys—but the food was amazing!  Ok, a little spicy, but so good!”  These things seem to be easy to get used to—you find a food you like, you copy the actions of other people to fit in, you buy a new “indigenous” outfit or accessories.  To put it simply, you adjust.  

But noise, now that’s hard to get used to.  Noise is something that is constantly barraging us, whether we are aware of it or not.  Smells come and go.  Taste only happens at meal time.  And sight, well, sight can be shut out if we but close our eyes.

And I know what you’re thinking—you can tune out the world too.  You can use headphones, earplugs, or lock yourself in a soundproof room.  But those are just replacing one form of sound for another: music, muted sounds, the sound of your own breathing echoing off of the soundproof walls.

Noise never leaves us.

I don’t know about you, but I like to sleep in relative quiet.  The rhythmic whirr of a fan or the light notes of soothing music is about all I can tolerate.  Or could tolerate I should say.  I also like to work in relative quiet, focusing on the task at hand.  Tranquility, not silence, is the level of noise I love.  But living here in León, tranquility is hard to find and even harder to preserve.  Fleeting moments it’ll be here, like a breath of fresh air, and then suddenly a motorcycle will go past or a woman trying to sell tortillas or a car announcing the circus is in town. 

And for a while there, these interruptions irritated me.  I felt constantly attacked by sounds, the noise traveling up my spine like nails on a chalkboard.  I found myself exhausted, listening and mentally complaining about every little noise I heard and didn’t approve of.  Why couldn’t people just shut up for one second so I could sleep?! 

But the problem wasn’t with the people and the world living their normal lives around me.  The problem was definitely with me.  I realized that I just cared too much about everything I heard, as if it were a clue that I had to uncover and understand.  And because of this I became so overwhelmed to the point of irritated exhaustion.  Things needed to change.  I needed to change.  And so, slowly but surely, I began to ignore things.  Honestly, I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I grew used to the multitude of noises around me.  Now, when things are too quiet I get on edge.  Like, did everyone move away or die or something?  Is there something going on that I don’t know about?  Why is it so quiet?!

Do I still like to sleep in relative peace?  Yes.  Can I sleep when there’s lots of noise?  Thankfully, yes.  Even better, I have grown used to the noise around me and have begun to appreciate it.

So, when you sleep over at a friend’s house and hear strange noises coming from the walls, just remember that your friend has lived there all along and has slept soundly without any problems.  When you travel to a new place, sit for a bit and enjoy the new sounds around you and appreciate them for their uniqueness. And when you move to a new home, a new neighborhood, a new country, take comfort in the knowledge that someday, somehow, you will get used to it.

Stay tuned!

We are the Aspen

Two deaths have greeted Wayland CRC this week, deaths of two women who were dearly loved by all of us.  Judy Potter and Josie Talsma have been pillars in our church, strong in their faith, bright in their happiness and joy, tender in their love.  We mourn their deaths, the sudden holes they leave in life behind them, a vacuum that nothing can quite ever fill again.  And yet, more than our mourning, we rejoice in the life Judy and Josie shared with us.  We celebrate the time we were blessed with to get to know and love two such beautiful people.  We are thankful because we were the lucky ones to know Judy and Josie.  We were their family.

And this week, I am blessed not only to celebrate the past lives of Judy and Josie, I am also blessed to soon welcome a new baby into our fold.  Missionary friends of ours, Josiah and Sarah Bokma, are having their second child very soon and are excited to see just who this little person is going to be.

Two different celebrations, both of life: one of ending and one of beginning. 

My sister told me the other day that Jerry Zandstra shared with our church a beautiful metaphor describing the life of the Church. This metaphor struck me as so beautiful and I just have to share it with you.  Jerry described the Church, both local and global, as being like the aspen tree.  For those of you who are not botanists or biologists, aspen trees are very unique in the way they live and grow.  From wise ol’ Wikipedia (cough cough sarcasm):  

“All of the aspens typically grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30–40 m (98–131 ft) from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen)

And so a cove of aspen trees is a clone family connected to the parent tree—and to each other—by its extensive and life-sustaining root system that can last for seemingly forever.  How cool is that?!  And so, in honor of the Church being like the Apsen trees, I’ve written a short poem:

We are the Aspen,

Trees with roots that go deep,

             deep,

     deep,

          deep.

Roots that grasp one another,

Entwined, joined, inseparable

Connecting tree...........................to tree................................to tree

We are One.

One in body,

One in mind,

One in spirit.

When one tree cries, we all weep

When one tree laughs, we all join in glee

When one tree dies, we all mourn

When one tree grows, we all share in the new life

Storms may come,

Toppling trees from their roots,

But in their sudden absence we live on,

Our roots keeping us strong with life.

May we never forget that we are forever united,

That we reflect the image of the Father who made us,

That we are much greater than what we seem at first glance,

That our life is in the community beneath the earthen ground.

We are the Aspen.

We are One. 

I dedicate this humble piece of literature to the beautiful and inspiring lives of Judy Potter and Josie Talsma and to the little baby of Sarah and Josiah, whoever you might be :)

Stay tuned!

PHOTO (http://fineartamerica.com/featured/aspen-tree-grove-ron-dahlquist.html)