Hidden by Naomi Shihab Nye

If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has 
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

I love traveling. I love the freedom of being detached from everything and everyone familiar.

Anonymity
Purpose

the intimacy of all of us going somewhere. We all have stories, stress, and probably exhaustion. Some of us have back packs, some have uniforms and lanyards. Some of us wear sneakers, some sandals.

The amount of humanity in these places is overwhelming but also beautiful.

Passengers are generally friendly towards each other, if reserved.

It's stressful and makes my digestive system go wonky and I get tired of lugging all my stuff every time I need to pee and you must always be alert and the food is redonkulously over-priced

and I LOVE IT.

Tonight we video-ed with Kristin and laughed so hard I thought Sarah and I would both puke. Shrieking.

It was kind of a hard week

Or rather, the last few days have been kind of hard. Living at home is really, really hard. And by nobody’s fault, social support has been hard to come by. Like, I don’t have it. Which is fine, for this week. Sooner or later, I’m going to move to a foreign country, and though I’ll have a team, I want to be steady. I don’t want to need people every time someone says something I disagree with. I fully believe in talking about problems with friends. But I also fully believe in sustaining on Jesus alone. And this week, these past few days, this has been my reality.

It is hard. I’m not really thriving, but I’m still walking. I’m still running.

"It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.” –Hebrews 11:27

How I deal with the Sadness of the World

Sometimes the world is just too Sad. Sin and evil take the spotlight far too often. And if I take my eyes off of “Behold, I am making all things new” for approximately .0001 seconds, the Sadness takes over and off with my heart. It takes me a few days to realize what is going on, and then this is how I deal with it.

I put on my pink socks. I do not think to myself, “I am putting on my pink socks to vanquish the Sad,” I just think to myself that I want to wear my pink socks today. It is later when I realize their help in vanquishing the Sad in all their joyous boldness.

I walk purposefully down to the park, to the swing set and I become a child. I invite the wind to play with my hair, leaving it down and free and it whirls around my face and up my nose and into my mouth and I laugh. I close my eyes and swing until I am no longer at the park. There are no longer people around. I am no longer attached by a clanking chain of metal to a swing set. I am simply soaring.

And then I climb down to the edge of the river and sit in the dirt and listen and watch the water rush by. I think a lot. I make pretty sentences about the day in my mind but I have left my paper and pen at home, along with my watch. I am here to simply refresh, not to make anything. Not even to remember, if my mind chooses to forget, simply to refresh.

And when I have had my fill, I meander home.

Sometimes this is how I deal with the Sadness of the world.
Sometimes I get really angry.

Non-Adventure Saturday

“This is God’s duty for your life,” my friend told me this afternoon, in regards to taking care of children. I almost bust out laughing.

He also said, in a sort of disappointed fashion after checking that I would be in Rome for two years, “It’s okay. You’re young, you’ve still got time.”

I am of the strong persuasion that sometimes, you must listen to someone a long time before they are willing to listen to you.

This afternoon, I sat on the back deck and sipped lemonade and listened for 2.5 hours (before my mama texted (SHE DOESN’T TEXT. EVER.) my papa to come home and rescue me before my eyes glazed over) to my brotherfriend preaching. PREACHING. I do not know if he knew he was telling me things I already know and mostly agree with, or if he thought he was enlightening me. It doesn’t matter. I had decided before he even arrived that today I was simply going to listen. I believe there is value in that.

So I listened. I smiled, and nodded, and sometimes I tried not to laugh. I did not engage in arguing or discussion; I have given up trying to change a person’s heart, and in this matter, it may very well be my heart that needs to change. So, I listened.

In my listening, I claimed my space. I held myself steady. I remembered what is true of me.

The point, is not that what he said was offensive or contrary to God's word, the point is that I recognized what is true of me.

God’s duty for my life is not solely to take care of children. If He sees fit to give me children sometime down the road, it will be an honor to take care of them. But my first duty is to love God. Always. God’s duty for my life is realized now, not when I get married, if I get married. Not when I have children, if I have children. I am valuable to God now.

I am young, but only God knows how much time I have left. However, I have eternity to love Him, and that is my goal in life. Not marriage. Not children. Loving GOD. I am not waiting for anyone or anything. My life is now. I am useful now. I am valuable now.

Thoughts on the Fourth, Fireworks, and some other stuff.

(Will probably read more like a journal entry than a snazzy blog post.)

As a child, I was terrified of fireworks. I hated the loudness that seemed to echo in my lungs. I still don’t really like that part. I have since grown to love them; but not for the lights and the noise. No, I love them because they make me think.

1.     I am listening to the sounds of explosions, aware that this is not my everyday life; this is celebration. I am aware that in many places, these sounds would be utterly terrifying. In our celebrations let us not forget the ones for whom these sounds and lights are not joyful. I am remembering the war-torn lands, remembering to pray, remembering to be thankful that I have been born into safety.

2.     New Years 2011-2012. I watched them from the window of my sister’s apartment in Korea. I woke up enough to get up and watch a few sparkle over the city, remembering that at home it was not even afternoon yet. Living in the future.

3.     New Years 2012-2013. I woke up to see them erupt over our hotel in Tyrol, Austria. I thought about how all over the world they would be exploding. Celebration, all over the world. A celebration the world shared together. And I was thinking about Heaven. When Jesus’ Kingdom becomes the ultimate reality, how beautiful must the sky look then! A celebration that never ends!

4.     Tonight, July 4 2014, we sat and watched them in a school parking lot with lots and lots and lots of other people. Do Americans just not clap, or were we too in awe to make noise? Would there have been noise in other countries? And then we stampede to our cars when it is over, and the honking begins. And the joy is stained because of the impoliteness. It is as if once you are in a car, you are no longer human, no longer worth anyone’s eye contact or respect.

As it is Independence Day, I want to say, I do not support many of the United States’ policies and systems. I do not appreciate many of the ways this culture operates.

However, I do appreciate my ability to say this legally. I appreciate being able to do most everything (even if the culture begrudges it sometimes) that a man does. I appreciate living in a land that is not wrought with war. I do not want to squander my privileges.

I do not want to fall asleep to these booms without remembering those for whom they are not a cause for celebration.

Soup Adventure

Today I made fruit soup for the first time. I had wanted to for awhile. I first had it in a refugee camp in Hungary in 2012. I didn't like it.

Then I had it in a restaurant in Hungary in 2013 and liked it much better. 

I found several different recipes online and sort of combined a few, thinking "it's not rocket science; it's soup."

This, is what I came up with. :)

To me, it tastes like a mixture of the Middle East and Europe. A good thing to do in the afternoon on the Fourth of July, I think!

This is beauty.

http://awwproject.org/2014/07/my-beautiful-and-lovely-kandahar/

Yucky.

I got entitled.

I had a great, simple, didn't really do anything but call people flip phone for three years. And then I got a snazzy, slides sideways and has a nice keyboard phone that could do picture messages and had nice chat bubbles for text messages in slick colors phone. For two months.

And then just Sunday I ordered a new phone because of problems with the old company. I think it is even more in the dark ages than my first phone. And I'm disappointed in it, so I'm disappointed in myself. When did I get attached to this piece of plastic anyway? It's for communication, not aesthetics.

So I confess. I became entitled. 'Tis a yucky feeling indeed.

Peachy-keen, Nadine.

This is summer. I like being raw on Facebook. I also like sharing the beauty of life, cause we all need more of that. Tonight though, I keep it for my blog, for my heart, for my fingers. First is roasted chicken and vegetables on the deck. Lime in our ice water under a tired blue sky, hot hot hot. Then later, as sweat drips down my face from simply sitting in my room (with windows open) a storm erupts. Oh, joyous day! I watch it on the porch with my mama and our friend who is eleven. The temperature drops twenty-three degrees. The sun sets into glorious lightening that lights up the sky into day. Our friend’s dad comes to pick her up and we smash four sets of arms and legs onto an already soaked blanket. I cut up two almost ripe peaches and we eat them while the wind sprays cool water in our faces.

And then they leave and I sing HOLY SPIRIT RAIN DOWN and hold out my empty peach bowl for filling with the rain. Beauty. Delicious. Peachy.