Nampa, Idaho

We were off bright and early and have made it to Nampa, Idaho for the night.  The drive was uneventful.  As is Nampa, so far.

Cheers to the MAF headquarters being here, though...

The Final Oregon Hurrah

We roasted sticks (and "shmarshmallows," but the sticks were more plentiful),

threw "really big, humongous heavy rocks" into the lake,

and generally had the perfect last-Oregon-summer-before-moving-to-the-sweltering-humidity-of-the-South weekend.

It's always interesting to explain time and distance to children.

Me: Hey nephews, I need extra hugs and smooches, because I'm moving far away.
Nephew 1: Like, as far as the beach?
Me: No, really far.  Like, the other side of the country.  The beach is one hour away.  I'll be seven days away, in the car.  You'll have to get on an airplane to visit me.
Nephew 2: Oh, so it's like a whole mile?!?
Me: Farther than a mile.  I won't be able to play with you until Thanksgiving.  That's all the way after Nephew 2's birthday.
Nephew 1: It's okay, Aunt Mary, you can still come to my house next week.  I'll make you a special cake.

...They never did get it, really.  But it was wonderful, at least, to have one last romp with them, and to spend time with my brother and sister-in-law.  Our camping trip was a perfect blend of sunshine, thunderstorms, salamanders, pine trees, water, star-gazing, running around, relaxing, and hilariously earnest conversations with my boyses.

Tomorrow, morning, though, I'm off!  I'm glad finally to get this show on the road and see what this new place brings, even if it does mean saying goodbye to some of my favorite people for a while.  Moves are almost always bittersweet like that, hey?

The Final Portland Hurrah

This weekend, one of my favorite people in the world came for a visit.  She's one of my Baltimore people (but, lest you wonder, she now lives in California, so it actually did make sense for her to visit me before I move back to the east coast).  It was perfect timing for a mini-vacation and re-connection with a good friend.  I'm sleep-deprived (somehow talking took priority over sleeping), but my soul is refreshed.

We did many lovely Portland-y things.  There were the staples: Powell's, the waterfront, Multnomah Falls, the rose garden, Stumptown coffee, general wandering through the Saturday Market and farmers market.  We watched beavers and herons at the rhododendron gardens and had pastries at the charming little St. Jack Patisserie (where I happen to know the pastry chef...highly recommended).  

We did two things, however, which I—as a born and bred native—had never done, and they were awesome.  All of you Portland people out there should go do them.  

The first was the Kennedy School, which is an old NE Portland elementary school which was repurposed by McMenamins (another Portland fixture, of course).  They have transformed into a restaurant/pub/gathering place/movie-theater-pub, filled with appropriately quirky artwork and lots of outdoor space.  The movie theater is $3(!) for an evening show and the seats are all comfy, mismatched couches and armchairs.  I have been to many McMenamins locations and one or two of their other theater pubs, but this was a particularly fun one.

(I didn't have my camera, so photo is courtesy of  http://www.bva.org/spr09bulletin/reminders.html.)

The other was The Grotto, which is, well, a grotto.  Our highschool choir sang there every year during their Christmas festival, but I had never actually seen it in daylight.  Nor did I realize there was an elevator which would take you a hundred feet up into a lovely, peaceful arrangement of paths and gardens, with a view overlooking the city and river.  You would never know you were less than ten minutes from an international airport.  

I am excited and ready to move, but I am going to miss this city.  Somehow, seeing all my favorite, familiar places with someone who had never seen them before made me realize afresh how much I love them.  So, appreciate where you live, all you Portlanders.  It will help to know that my city is being properly enjoyed in my absence.

Zdravstvuitye

Shasta's heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.

- C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

- Luke 6:32-33 (English Standard Version)

Loving people is hard.

I remember a particularly difficult time with a friend at university, where she was working through deep wounds in her own life by trying to control her other relationships (like ours) in unhealthy ways.  Our friendship turned into a series of painful conversations and very high relational stress.  During that time, my desire to love her didn't waver, but my determination to act on that love certainly did.  I was tired, and bruised, and all my efforts seemed futile anyway.

I remember praying daily that God would help me to show his love to her.  It was only towards the end of that season, though, that I realized: I had not been asking God to help me love her better.  I had been asking him to make loving her easy.  I was hoping for—maybe even expecting—some sort of beatific wellspring to appear me, which would make it effortless to be kind and patient and encouraging.  I didn't want to be frustrated and hurt and choose to speak gently anyway; I wanted speaking gently to be the only thing that even occurred to me.  I wanted goodness to flow out of me unbidden.

Since then, I have discovered that attitude creeping up elsewhere: I want loving people to be easy, I want trusting God in impossible-seeming situations to be easy, I want breaking deeply-rooted cycles of sin to be easy...

Yes, I believe that as we grow in faith and our hearts become more closely aligned with Christ, that these things get easier.   But easier isn't easy.

On my very first day of Russian class, I was expected to say "zdravstvuitye."  Ha.  Right.  (Seriously, what kind of language puts that many consecutive consonants in the word "hello"?)  A few months of class, and Russian was "easier," too.  I could whip out zdravstvuityes without even thinking.  The horribly complicated system of word-endings necessary in order to say "I live in a house" instead of "the house lives on me," however?  Again, ha.  And again, a few months later that concept was easy and the next thing was hard.

I'm willing to put in the work and suffer the frustration to learn Russian grammatical systems (yes, I'm weird), yet when it comes to spiritual matters I expect to grow without effort.  I want magically to skip right from wherever I am to perfectly virtuous. 

…It's a hard thing for me to understand, how the completeness of God's work and my own efforts intertwine.  I am continuing to learn how God's power is made perfect in weakness, and how securely I can rest in his grace, and how trying to do and grow in my own strength is different from doing and growing in God's strength.  I do know, however, that we are not promised anywhere that loving people or trusting God or struggling against sin will be easy; in this broken world, those things will be hard.  We are promised help, and comfort, and hope, and sustenance, and strength, and power, and mercy...but not ease.

Loving that friend in college was not easy at the time.  Maybe now, years later, if I went back  as my current self and faced it again, it would be easier.  I'm pretty sure it would be, actually.  But it doesn't work like that.  Now I'm faced with now--the people and situations and struggles of today.  They're still hard.  Indeed, I have the distinct (sometimes sinking) feeling that that "really hard" time was just a zdravstvuitye in my life.  It will only keep getting harder.  Yet, perhaps weirdly, I'm convinced it will keep getting better, too.

Here comes North Carolina.  Praise God that he remembers that we are dust.

Three Things

Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do (2) Things we’ve got to do (3) Things we like doing. I say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of the three reasons, things like reading books they don’t like because other people read them.

- C.S.  Lewis,  Letters to Children

World Refugee Day

Photo courtesy of UNHCR - http://www.worldrefugeeday.us

Today is World Refugee Day.  It's a day to acknowledge the millions of people worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes because of violence or persecution.

Only a small fraction of those refugees end up permanently resettled in North America, the U.K. or Australia, but it's those "lucky few" that I would especially like to remember today.

I get the impression that many Americans believe that once refugees arrive in the U.S., most of their problems are over.  They've gotten out of the war zone and arrived in the land of wealth and opportunity: education, healthcare, and technology are at their fingertips.

Yes.  In many ways, life is safer and better here.  I would never want to deny that, nor how grateful most refugees are to come.  However, arrival in the U.S. doesn't magically fix everything.  Refugees still face language barriers, un-/under-employment, unfamiliar customs, and the aftereffects of trauma.  Many are separated from at least part of their family, sometimes permanently.  Many go without healthcare or food simply because they don't know how to use our systems.  Many want an education but their long work days make it almost impossible.

Those are the big things, though.  It's the "little," moment-to-moment challenges that I think we overlook most often.  The things in life that are so much a part of our lives that we don’t even realize we ever had to learn them.

What a refrigerator is.  How to hold a pencil.  How to buy food at a grocery store.  How to read the walk/don't walk symbols  at crosswalks.   How to know that when you buy toothpaste it comes in a box, even though when someone hands it to you it's in a tube.  How weekly garbage-collection works.  How to stand in a line.  Not only how to read, but--in some cases--how to understand that marks on paper can even have meaning.  

Picture encountering that much bewildering unfamiliarity, on top of the other "big" challenges.  Picture leaving a home where you were eloquent and skillful and respected, only to find yourself in a place where you don't even know how to prepare dinner or how to greet your neighbor; a place where people assume you're stupid.

In spite of all of this, most refugees who come to the States approach their new surroundings with an astounding level of energy and success.  Most I've met are quick to smile and eager to learn.   It's a beautiful testament to human resilience and the courage of the individuals themselves.

It's never easy, though.

I'd like to call people out today, to pray for the world's 43.7 million refugees and displaced people.  Pray for the people who are in the middle of fleeing and don't know where to go or if anyone will take them.  Pray for the people sitting in over-populated refugee camps, sometimes for decades.  And pray for the small fraction of refugees who have been resettled in our land of opportunity, that they would be encouraged and blessed and thrive in their new home.  

Pray also for us, as a resettlement country, that we would see and remember and love these people among us. 

Some places for more information about refugees and their lives:

- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

- International Rescue Committee

- What would you do? (an interactive tool to see the dilemmas faced by refugees)

On the Move

Last week, I accepted an invitation to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, to work among the refugee community there.

Come August, I'll be living in an apartment complex where they resettle refugees and, essentially, loving on people as we all live our normal lives. 

That part sounds awesome. 

However, loving people is always messy.  Throw in cultural, religious, generational and social differences, language barriers, and the effects of physical/emotional trauma, and it gets even more complicated.  I am very aware of my inadequacy to navigate these things on my own, and to meet the staggering needs I will encounter.  Part of me is afraid that I will go and invest my heart only to have it battered and exhausted.  Part of me is afraid that my heart will be battered and my presence there won't even be helpful, or that I will make things worse somehow.

Yet, despite those fears, I'm in one of those odd (blessed) places where even in my fear I have a confidence outside of myself that this is where I'm supposed to go, and that—although I am small and fragile—God is great and inexhaustible.  His love and grace will be the only source of any good that comes of this, anyway, and there is great comfort in that.  I am afraid, but I don't feel afraid.  (Usually.)

So, yeah.  Here's to the next stage of life's adventure.  May God do with it, and me, what He will.

Culinary Adventure (or, Sometimes They Really Do Have Those Warning Labels on There for a Reason)

So, I know it was stupid.

There I was, cutting french fries with my vegetable mandoline, and I had this one, funky, irregularly shaped piece of potato left over.

One half of my brain: I know you're never supposed to hold food in your hand when you use this crazy sharp tool, but it'll be okay just this once.

The other half of my brain: DANGER, Will Robinson!! DANGER!!

Unfortunately, that second voice wasn't quite fast enough, which is why I am now missing the tip of my right middle finger.

I'll spare you the details, but know: It was quite exciting.  Fortunately, we had a nurse practitioner visiting for dinner, so I didn't even have to go to urgent care.  It's all okay.  I'll just have a wonky looking finger for a while.