Who Am I Again?

What am I doing here at Whitworth University?
What am I doing in life?
This is bad timing for a freak-out seeing as I need to submit sample applications to all my top priority life-options in class tomorrow.
meh.
bleh.
shit foo.
unrelated: why are no boys ever interested in me?

in imitation of ee cummings

I who have lived have died again today.

And this is the anniversary of all my scars; this is the day
Of pain and of bitterness and wounds and of the grave
Great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

RFP #952-4733

She tells us afterwards the best analogy she can come up with.
Its like finding out you're pregnant.

She's the mother who for so many reasons has been telling us to turn this grant in early.
For our well-being, for our health, for our futures, JUST LISTEN TO HER.

We'd worked really hard, we'd created so much good material. we were really going somewhere.
Until we looked down and saw that we were Late.

Desperately speeding down to County Purchasing. Shoe stuck in the door.
Getting there at 2:01.

The pit that dropped then, it settled, it is quite comfortable in the depths of our stomachs and psyche.
The terror that she tried to convey, through e-mails, loving support, conversation after conversation.

Even Sophia's admonishments the day of.
were nothing.

compared to this. this lethal potion of guilt-judgement-failure.
Its something we'll never forget.

We did not live in terror, and that terror was not the final line for us.
And we turned in our proposal late.

She says she's disappointed and sad, with us.
now we're marked. we've joined the club. of those with denied dreams

that Late-ness was all that mattered.
kinda like being pregnant.

Its three am, i must be lonely now

So the sermon today at UPC was about Solomon, when he asked for wisdom.
and the point was that we can't just ask for anything. we have to love God first. and then within that, desire that which we desire.
I really want something to happen. But I'm being outwardly passive and patient, and possibly being really obnoxious in the regularity that I pray for that to happen.
but in other news, I love those GAYG girls so much. and its so crazy that some of them are going into COLLEGE!! i feel like they're my baby sisters, and they're not allowed to be that old yet!
but at the same time, its so nice that they're maturing, asking deeper questions, really asking advice.
i'm gonna miss them a lot a lot. i could probably cry.
but part of that is also because its 4am by now, and I still haven't finished writing the grant material stuff.
hm,
maybe i should get on that. :)

I'm home in Fresno.
Avoiding some things.
easing into some things.
diving into FIRM again, and UPC too, to a lesser extent.
spending lots of good time with my family.

I just came home from a day on the lake, where we wakeboarded and tubed and swam our hearts out. We went with some old family friends.
I'm tired.
I'm always tired.

I had a little self-satisfying cry when we came home from the lake. I'm just so bad. I'm so bad at anything related to strength or athleticism. I tried and tried to get up on the water but just kept getting pulled straight over out of those boots.

When we got in the car to go home Kyle congratulated me on actually being a good sport. which served to just piss me off more. before i was frustrated and a little withdrawn. after he said that, oh, and telling me that i had just done a Nathan Berend (one of his friends who really is a good guy, but it really wasn't helpful)

anyways. i'm mad at my brother and i'm feeling sore and out of whack. its so easy for me to get out of sync with normal life. Sharon says that that's normal, and she felt out of sync with society for a long time after she came back from Korea.

Its pretty selfish though. and wallowing never gets sympathy, which is really what i'm craving.

So I picked up Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. That book changed my faith in High School. I've read it plenty of times since then, and loaned or given it to probably all my friends. The way that he talks about Jesus and God, it soothes my soul. The shared reality of faith and life and doubt. Of talking about Jesus with friends. Of important realizations. This Jesus-guy who came down and dwelt among us. Its pretty amazing. and i love him. and i see him in the Gods Asian Youth Group girls. I see him in the staff and clients of FIRM. Its so much easier for me to see Jesus in Hmong and Lao faces than anywhere else.

Its right about at the God dwelling among us, living our experiences, that I put my book down, and ask/command God.
but your dad didn't leave your family for another.
your dad didn't leave you, forget you, ignore you, replace you.
your dad didn't choose your former children's ministry director over you.

mine did.

how do i know that you won't leave. that you won't find someone else that's better.
i understand that you love me now, that you have always loved me, but how do I know that that's gonna stay. and how can you be in That?

its almost like i have to surround myself with people who I know you love, who I see your care for and concern for and devotion to, in order to even continue to remember You.

I don't trust people. I don't open up to people in order to make new friends. I try to avoid the surface fake stuff, because I still have my high-school era disdain for inauthenticity. But I don't have the trust or the guts to be authentic to everyone. I'm generally removed and probably judgmental. and i never have anything to talk about. i do hate though, when i talk and people laugh at me for talking too intelligently. thus, it takes me a while to have everyday conversations.

except with my high school girls. thank God for his grace. it amazes me that I get to be a part of their lives, and even an agent of Him, in spite of everything.
and i get to keep working at FIRM. and seeing His Love work amazing wonders.

i don't know. its like whenever i stop and really think about it, God and my fathers choices are irrevocably tied together. And I love Jesus for bringing me through all that, and Being with me during the worst of it. But I'm still so scarred. and i feel like they're always gonna be there, and i feel like i should be over it by now, seeing as i have a completely different relationship with my father now, (which is almost miraculous in and of itself, except when he completely disappoints me all over again)
and my dad just wraps himself with biblical language, and rights and wrongs, and prays so much, and runs a ministry. but he still lies. and he still says he'll do things that he doesn't follow through on. so how...? i dunno. how am i supposed to have the deep faith that is in all parts of my life?
because all deep questions run back to my father. and his selectivity in his participation in my life.
and no real answers ever seem to surface.
no matter how many times we have this conversation with tears welling in our eyes.

i do know about God's feelings on:
the oppressed
the hungry
the aliens
the widows
the orphans
the prostitutes
the sick
His World

thus, i still want to do humanitarian work for the rest of my life. maybe to help me figure out where i'm going, where God's moving. maybe for deeper spiritual reasons than that. maybe not.

ps: this is why i need to blog more regularly, so I don't post seven blogs all in one. sry

thanks.

My father says that after True Thankfulness will always come Joy.

my father is a man of great wisdom, even if he has hurt a lot of people along the way and doesn't seem to acknowledge it.

He told me to try it. just to see if it would work.

So I wrote an e-mail of true thankfulness to my stepmother, who alongside my father, decided to let me have $200 for a birthday present a few months early. It allowed me to go to Mozambique for a few days.
In Mozambique I had the best prawns (shrimp) known to man-kind. I had matapas? matadas? some kind of delicious spinach and prawn liquid that you pour on top of rice or pap/mealie meal.
I met great adventurous spirits.
I laid in a hammock in the afternoon sun.
I slept a lot.
I experienced life in a normal city that didn't feel touristy. It was normal Maputans eating in the restaurants and buying vegetables from the women on the sidewalks. It was school kids who passed me on the streets not beggars. The police presence perhaps had something to do with that, and I know that I missed seeing a lot of the city, the poorer and more desperate areas, I'm sure. I walked around the business areas. the government housing areas, the beaches, most of the city center.
All the streets are named after leftist revolutionaries. including Mao Tse Tung and Kim il sung. and Karl Marx. and Lenin.
I am thankful for that adventure.
And I am thankful that I had some time to get away from Stellenbosch to process my time here. And I didn't cross the Atlantic, so when I came back, I could remember the parts that I really do love, and acknowledge the many idiosyncrasies that I have gotten used to. And I got to take more pictures.
I am thankful for all of that.
See you soon America

http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/PageServer?pagename=action_ghana_program_job1

I want this job in a few years...



or I wanna do the Peace Corps.

or Teach for America

or life in Fresno
- teaching credential in math
- work at a high school until i burn out
- get better access to the various communities in poorer parts of town
- Live, Love. choose peace. do something good for the place where i am from. the place that continues to claim me no matter how far away i go.