life ebbs and flows

A letter to the men and women of Mobile, Alabama, specifically many of the University of South Alabama Wesley Foundation students; with whom I have spent some 700+ days learning and growing.  To my brothers and sisters:  I am writing to you to express first of all, my gratitude. I thank God for bringing me to you and you to me. You have profoundly impacted my life in ways I will continue to unpack for years to come. You all have shown me so much about God, the world, others and myself. Our time together was truly a blessing and I look forward to watching and praying with you all as you walk into new steps of your lives.  I also want to share with you a prayer. I wrote this prayer for you all to encourage and challenge you because there is a lot of work left to do. The work of the Kingdom is found in every single corner of our world. It is our job to accept the work and to figure out our place within the work. It is important that you love and care for the pl...

Rhythm, or out of rhythm rather, is how I feel most days lately. I am among change and transition. My thoughts linger between what has been and what will come. Some days I hardly feel like I am present to the moments that surround me. I am here but I am more elsewhere. I like change...mostly. Change brings about new sight, seeing things and places with fresh eyes. Change is also exhausting. Learning where things go, how things work and how you fit. I find more pain in transition than in change, though. Transition begs for time to process. Transition requires you to sit among the things you've learned and unlearned in a time frame and to think about how this pushes you onto the next thing. Transition asks me to be aware of how I have been and who I want to carry with me to the next place. Transition is the mental process of the action of change for me. Not so long from now I will finish a master's degree in social work. I will tie up my time working at my current job an...

I've been thinking about blogging a lot lately. Well, writing, rather. I used to write a lot. It was therapeutic and life giving for me. It helped me to be in a constant state of process where I was not just taking in life but searching for and digging for meaning. It kept me grounded and real, for lack of better word. I have been starting to write more lately and have several little bits I'm working on. In the process of digging out my blog from the depths of the internet, I found this jewel that I wrote years ago. Yes, that's right... years ago. I thought it was beautiful and worth sharing. So, in an attempt to revive this way of sharing my thoughts and processing... Here is an ode to my younger (and probably wiser) self: Welcome to The Chronicles of a Confused Citizen. Here I am, residing in the country I was born in, living the life I knew from my birth to year 22. It doesn't quite feel right, though. Recently, as I found myself living in Mongolia, I s...

Jesus, I come into the warmth of your presence knowing that you are the very emptiness of God. I come before you holding the water jar of my life. Your eyes meet mine and I know what I'd rather not know. I came to be filled but I am already full. I am too full This is my sickness I am full of things that crowd out your healing presence. A holy knowing steals inside my heart and I see a painful truth. I don't need more I need less I am too full. I am full of things that block out your golden grace. I am smothered by gods of my own creation I am lost in the forest of my false self I am full of my own opinions and narrow attitudes full of fear, resentments, control full of self-pity, and arrogance. Slowly this terrible truth pierces my heart I am so full there is no room for you. Contemplatively, and with compassion you ask me to reach into my water jar. One by one, Jesus, you enable me to lift out the things that are a hindrance to my...

October 26, 2011. That is the day I last wrote a blog. That's not the day when my life changed but it is a day that I can recognize as one of the last ones when I knew who I was and what my purpose was. I'm not generally a quitter. Sure, sometimes I quit on books or I quit on small projects but in life, nope. I  try hard at most things, usually right until the end. I won't say that quitting is not a thought that meanders through my being when something gets tough but I have come to learn that when I stick things out I come out having learned a thing or two. But I did quit. I quit a big commitment. I said I would live in Washington, DC and I would do my best. I tried. I also had my very first panic attack, too. It was too much. I couldn't think or breathe. I couldn't cope with the devastation I felt for leaving Mongolia early that March morning. I couldn't cope with no one understanding what Mongolia had meant to me and how it had changed me right down...

i've heard about this book for a couple of years now, but never had it in my hands. someone unintentionally put it in my hands this past sunday so i've started the journey through. be on the lookout for snip-its here and there from me. i have a feeling it's going to be liberating. "Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both..." "...Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both..." pg. 44, Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Erin just sent me the link to a series of photographs, depicting life in Mongolia. The pictures are hard. They are simple. They depict life. They are real. Check them out here . Let me know what you think.

it won't be as cute as a baby story, on tlc, but it is a story. a story of a family. a colony. scavengers. this, my friends is the story of the ants who took up residence in my work desk drawer. it's a friday afternoon and i was thinking of a snack from my food drawer [yes, i have a food drawer]. i knew i had some rice cakes in there and i was hungry for just that. as i opened the door, my mouth flung ajar, for what did i see but a million ants. that's right, a million. i had seen ants all morning, here and there, but not enough to be alarmed. i thought they were the lone rangers--exploring out on their own. little did i know, they were scouting out the rest of the desk for crumbs and goodies. i looked at the ants for probably a minute straight--doing nothing, simply mesmerized by their pure existence. i snapped back into reality and tried to find the source...what were they after?! it sure wasn't the rice cakes because there wasn't even a single one on them [not su...

as often as you can, find time to sit on porches, sharing and laughing.

3 months. 90 days. just yesterday. forever. It has been 3 months since I left mongolia. Some days it feels like I was there just yesterday while others it feels like these have been the longest 3 months of my life. I neglect writing about this painful time because I still can't seem to find the right words that could describe the emotions and thoughts that I have. No words suffice. No amount of tears calm. No hugs or "it's gonna get better"s really change much. I ache. I long to be in that place again. Yesterday, Erin and I were talking about what we say and think when people ask 1. "If we miss Mongolia?" and 2. "What do we miss the most?" If you know us at all, you know that the first question will hardly make us pause, it will cause us to chuckle and say, "Yes, I miss Mongolia desperately." And that is the truth. Which always leads to the second question. Which is harder to answer. I usually give the answer "The people are what I m...

I'm thankful for people like this... http://thepioneerwoman.com/blog/2011/05/quarters/ ...who give with joy. people that know we're all connected. that know that one day we might be the one needing help. The Pioneer Woman is giving $.25 for each comment left on her post to the relief efforts from the recent tornadoes in my beloved state. ...on top of that, she's giving 4 $500 donations to those comment's favorite organizations. go. comment.

from a book i'm reading... "well, learning to pray and communicate from the present seat of your emotions is part of learning to be awake and aware of life around you and within you. You are a very intelligent [person], (insert name), but sometimes we can get addicted to our minds just like an alcoholic becomes addicted to the bottle to cope. Sometimes we can overanalyze God's presence in our lives, always looking for sings to interpret. Sometimes the most faithful prayers are the questions we bring to God." -pg. 67, Reluctant Pilgrim by: Enuma Okoro questions are more than ok. not feeling present where you are is more than ok. mourning and grieving are more than ok. what's not ok is staying there. there is no time in our life in which we are supposed to stay exactly the same. we move back and forward. we ebb and flow [i'm never gonna quit bringing that up]. we are supposed to because that's how we change. and if you're like me, i don't want to st...

hiatus is a bit of an understatement, i would say. it's been more than a while since i updated. i have packed up, cleaned up, flown across the world, debriefed, unpacked, started cleaning and pretended to re-pack since i last wrote. that's a lot of packing... i would assume you would be able to gather from the "flown across the world" part that i am no longer in Mongolia. i am now in America. it's hard to believe. since march 5th i have been America figuring life out, again. on the 7th of april [next thursday] i will be moving to Washington DC. in the days, hours, minutes...seconds since march 5th i have been desperately trying to find the words to speak about the place i have come to call home. Mongolia. not something you can sum up in words and not something that i can process in x days. so, there's the purpose for the hiatus. i am literally and painfully wordless about what it means to be here. the reason i'm writing today is that i think the words are ...

fill the cups. fill the bowls. fill the table. fill the moon. but most of all fill your stomach. fill may not even be sufficient enough of a word. the correct words translated mean to fill your stomach until it feels like it's going to come back up. gross, right? and who wants to fill your stomach with mayonaise-y salads and boiled little dumplings? oh that's right, everyone in Mongolia does. including me. above all else, i just love to be with them, doing whatever it is that they do. as tsagaan sar approached, the weeks before were absolutely full of talk about meat and where to buy the cheapest. not actually that uncommon of a topic around here... then it came to the week and i began to wonder what gifts i needed to prepare, the houses i would visit, the people i would get to celebrate with. i was excited like a little kid right before christmas. we were here last year at the time of tsagaan sar and we even celebrated but we really had no real understanding of it all. we were...

no, that isn't a tiny bear. but it is cute. my [church] dog finally had her puppies. they will be a month old next week and they are literally the roundest, most snuggly things i've ever laid eyes on. i'm so proud of their momma, joni. any thoughts on good names?

if it has not become apparent to you, then i'll spell it out for you...i hate writing blogs. i've heard it said [though i don't actually believe it] that when i take the time to sit down and write a blog, it's pretty good but my life just keeps getting in the way. my fabulous roommate balances both, living life and writing about it but i, on the very opposite other hand, do not. i like living. just living. there are tons of thoughts and happenings that occur in that living, some that are quite worthy of sharing and writing about, however, more times than not, that doesn't pan out. i'm sorry if you are one of my many, many followers. i'm sorry for letting you down. i'll be sure to let you down gently by posting pictures and a blog-to-blow-you-away every so often. it's best to keep you all on your toes, that's my motto. for today, i'll leave you with these snipits: the symbol of tsagaan sar. more to come. my youngest sister with the cutest pup...

yeah, that's faith vining in mongolia. time for sister time across the planet...

this picture is now a false representation of what is happening in mongolia, since it is snowing right now. but this is what the week of fall looked like...it was beautiful. that's our sweet church dog, joni, the one who is possibly pregnant [soon to give birth to puppy popsicles] this is a gathering of the praise team at our apartment. these are some of the senior citizens enjoying dancing with each other at a gathering a few weeks ago. they LOVE dancing. and last but not least, dobby and luna. i call this dobby's emo picture. i think she scowled so long that her face is now permanently like that.

like all good stories, this one begins with a case of never ending strep throat. a self-diagnosed case but a case nonetheless. there once was a girl who moved to a country far, far away. in the beginning it was difficult to figure out all the ins and outs of this new place but after a while she figured it out and even got comfortable. she has been there for a while now but the time is running out. one day, while she was dealing with the pains of this chronic-like strep throat, she decided that she needed a reprieve from this intense pain. so, she went off to find buy some yogurt and juice, thinking a smoothie might be just the right fix. she was generally a talkative girl but due to the throat ache-age, she was unusually quiet. because of this she had been thinking a great deal about what would soon be happening in her life in the near future. a few days earlier she had received news that she would be returning to her home that is far, far away from the home she's found in what was...