me

I'm living like my life is about me.

If it's about me, I'm right to be afraid of people. I'm right to hide, to not speak when I have words that need to be heard. If it's about me.

But it's not about me.

It's about the King of the universe.

And the way I am living is not fitting to represent him.

God is not disgusted with me like I am disgusted with me.

God will not abandon me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P--Sxx5VjN8&feature=related

bells
wind

this room is freezing.

God will not abandon me.

To avoid the weight of the world cliche,
it feels like the weight of a baby elephant is on my head. (not really, that's just a good image) but there are some things that are pressing on me right now.

no fun.


God will not abandon me.

Assignment for school- NOT finished

These are khaki days. They sleep too much and sing too little. Dull, no one calls the brown-grey a favorite. No one dances to a khaki beat. These days do not respond, they wait. For usefulness, for light, for the smell of dust to fade. They hold sorrow in their seams. The mornings are exhausted and the nights are restless. These are khaki days. They wait.

 Laleh sits on the steps to wait for these khaki days to fade into the shadows of yesterdays and last weeks, three months ago, a year ago, “when I was a child.” Of course, she isn’t a child now, though someday maybe she will have been.

 These days she is neither child nor adult, but some resplendent being, caught in a place between home and everywhere else. Her life lived on the peripheral, not in the news shows, the papers full of politics and war, reports of what her country has threatened to do to all the rest. It is simply here, sitting on the steps in a grey place, waiting for the world to say hello, to welcome her in.

 This fresh-wet morning she watches a brown bird bounce in the fresh mud, pulling its wriggly breakfast from the soil. She is quiet. Quiet because there is no one to talk to, quiet because there is nothing to say.

If she were home, with her parents and her brothers, there would no doubt be some extraordinary music escaping the stereo, cello strings or the ivory hammers of a classic piano; she and her mother would dance a story about lavender, the color of the walls in the kitchen, twirling about the living room, annoying the father who just wanted to listen and the brothers who just wanted to play. If she were at home, there would be the smell of milk tea wafting from the kitchen, warm and waiting for lunch. If she were at home, the velveteen cat would be curled on the sofa, longing for a delicate caress behind the ears, purring along with the lavender music, dreaming of milk tea and cerulean forests, stalking birds and pouncing flowers. If she were at home, the room would be illuminated, the incandescent day-star pushing forth warm light onto the rug, its savory colors turning gold-orange in the strong-soft light.

 But she is not home and the light is not warm. There will be tea with lunch, but not milk tea. The cat which paws at her feet is not her velveteen cat, but sooty brown, a sack of fur and skin and fleas and still licking leftover lunchtime fish from its whiskers. Laleh reaches down to run her fingers through its fur but it dashes off through the grass, off to coax the sparrow into chase, to frolic with the day, chasing men with lunch pails, teasing children on tricycles.

 Laleh waits on the steps for lunch; she’s been sitting here since breakfast, watching the free animals not tied to places that are home or not, and the people who mill around the road, the central vein of this place, a highway of tricycles, a pathway for plastic soles and the bread trucks. Everyone joins the path once a day, becoming blood, alive, helping the vein to move, to keep this place breathing beyond the barbed wire and guard shack, beyond strict cement walls, even if they are painted orange. Once a day, they surge out of the burrows and barracks for lunch, at least to gather their pans of rice and noodles, their chicken or beef, the orange juice  they pretend tastes like milk tea. Once a day they remember to breathe, to come out for air, into the steamy wet summer day, out of their daydreams and BBC News.

The khaki days, Laleh sighs, and waits, wanting velveteen cats and the way her father looked, cross, straining to hear the cello strings and piano notes over the giggling of his smallest daughter, the way her brothers whined for quiet and begged for soda not wanting tea.

Maybe tomorrow they will come, maybe tomorrow the air will be clear and the worms will rejoice, burrow deep into their soft-warm caverns with their families and be safe.

           

           

*had to use special word and techniques, writing exercise. I will explore it more later. 

           

            

for my love

I will write You a song about love,
using wind and rain,
the smell of leaves,
an inheritance better than sons or daughters,
the way that You catch my eye, the way You set aside air for my lungs.
not to shy away-
but there is something better,
more delicious,
stronger.

And I will run to that.

things that have been floating around in my head

living extravagantly for Jesus/ freedom

I think I listened to a sermon on- was her name Mary... or was that something else- the woman who poured her perfume on Jesus, "wasting" a whole year's salary on it.

My friend is on the world race and learning freedom. 

free to live extravagantly for Jesus

free to "waste" on him.

choices- doing what I'm passionate about- if/when my passions line up with His.

letting Jesus pursue me, instead of chasing Him through other peoples' measures.

taking rest. Today I sat, for a short while, on the steps to a building on campus and enjoyed the soft wind and the sunshine and watching people. No music, no talking, just being.

the freedom to not worry about what others think of me. and by others I mostly mean my community, my brothers and sisters in Him. It stings when the world doesn't appreciate my life, the way I am, but it flat out hurts when my community misunderstands or doesn't approve. but I'm trying to learn that His freedom transcends even those who love Him. 

learning that even a cup of water is valuable if it is for Him. 

big things.

that maybe I can't live free because I'm trying to do it on my own. If I just chase harder, run faster, talk more.... that maybe I need to just stand in one place and wait for Him to come to me. maybe instead of seeking out people, to do more more more I need to sit in my living room and wait. or sit on the steps and enjoy the wind. maybe I can't live free because I'm afraid He doesn't like me. but He DOES like me. because I don't fit, I wonder if that means I should try different things. 

NO. 

No. I wasn't made like them and I think we lose a lot when we try to cram ourselves into each others' molds. I know I have (lost a lot).

so these are the things floating around in my soul.

big things.

made for

Today, I had international (and some American) friends over to play bananagrams and catchphrase, drink tea or juice or water, and eat chex mix.

It was so simple, and it was what I was made for.

My apartment is not at all luxurious, I was coughing the whole time, and all I had to share was chex mix. And it was so fun.

I don't know if my guests had a rip-snorting fun time, but everyone seemed happy. It was so simple, so easy. We played for an hour and a half, and then they left, and I rinsed the bowls and washed the mugs and went on with my day.

Hospitality.
feels so good.
fits these passions.

Then my roommie and I went on an adventure on the bus to Kroger, and had a grand old time there, and then we cooked a real dinner (together, that's the best part) with spaghetti and extra stuff :) and then we made muffins. with lemon glaze. and homemade powdered sugar.

"we're so domestic" she said. I didn't ever expect it to feel so good.

Today was real life!
And now, 10:16, I must do my homework.

It's worth it though.

For Christmas 2010, I went to Syria. It was beautiful, and I was so impressed by the hospitality of the people. I would go back.

And now... that beautiful place is hurting, crumbling.

I spent the summer with refugees. None of them Syrian that I know of, but next summer they probably will be. I hope I can tell them I've been to their home and how beautiful it was.

It is a bit crazy to think that a place I've been, that I really enjoyed, is producing refugees now...

just crazy.