Loose the Fear & Live

April 18, 2012

I had the strangest feeling as I was walking home from class this morning. I felt for a moment the sadness of estrangement wherein one seeks any alleviation that might dull the pain that I believe every human feels in the depths, in the quiet, in the secret space of the soul. I felt it, for a moment. I watched the students, and in my mind, I saw the frantic race of people trying to escape all the sadness. I saw the moments spent alone in fear, I felt the aching heart after a relationship lost, I smelt the liquor on their lips, I heard the voices in their heads that paraded around telling falsehoods, and I watched as little hands grasped for anything that might fill the emptiness. I knew it for that moment, and it made me want to cry for every human experiencing this feeling. Whether you are jumping ship like Jonah or you’re drowning out the voice that tells you there’s something more, we are all running in some form or fashion. That’s what humans do: we run. When I feel myself running: I listen to far too much music, I lose sleep over my thoughts, I use the future to feel secure, I count the days of the calendar to exert some type of control over my life, I make phone calls to silence the fear, I write to alleviate the pain, I ignore the pain, I act as if everything is fine, and lastly, I begin to seriously doubt the existence of all things good in this life. I wallow.

It takes courage to confront the fear we all feel. I am beginning to believe the opposite of love is not hate, nor indifference, but rather, fear. Most of us feel fear in some form or fashion on a daily basis, whether it comes in the form of anxiety, stress, depression, despair, loneliness, you name it—I believe all these arise from the origin of fear. In order to rid ourselves of the fear, we must face the fear. We must give it up, let it out, confess it like a secret long kept hidden. And there is no fear in love, but perfect love has the power to cast out fear, to throw it out and give it no place in our lives. Love, then, hates fear.

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I am sweating and the stream of my tears feels cold on my face. I am crying the tears of my momma. They weren’t mine. They were hers. I do believe I have just shared a real pain in my spirit, so closely, so tenderly. I walked in the little cement kitchen with a loaf of bread to tell her I could fix myself a peanut butter sandwich. As I glanced up, I watched as tears began falling down her face. I wondered what I should say or how I might be able to give her a timely word or some form of comfort. I claim no mastery over the Spanish language, and I stumble through sentences and can’t find the words to say, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. She didn’t need words. She needed someone to feel with her, to say it hurts, to know the pain and to let her cry and be small again. I told her I wanted to pray for her in that moment. Since tomorrow will be the 5-year anniversary of the death of her eldest son, the house has been heavy with a sadness that seeps through the walls, leaks out the vents, and crawls on every piece of furniture he once knew. The boys don’t say a word, and the father has been on the computer all day. Only she chooses to feel and let God do his work in her. She chooses to let the sadness in, to let it change her, to allow it inside. As I prayed for her, looking for the words in Spanish, I began to weep. I could hardly speak. I held her trembling body against mine, and I let myself feel, if only for a moment, her sorrow.

As I write, I still cry. I cry because it is the same sadness I felt earlier this morning, the place of fear and of solitude. What balm might provide a salve for that? For her, it is more than just sadness; hers is the termination of memories and of a life once lived and shared. Though I can’t begin to imagine the pain, I know it in the strangest place inside. I feel it like I felt it this morning, except, there’s something different about the outcome. I don’t see her running around frantically. I see her bowed, knees on the floor, head in her hands. I see her asking God the whys and hows, wondering if she will ever be able to go on, and yet, standing up in the midst of it all. I smell the rich aroma of trust, of faithfulness, of belief, and of love rising from her prayers. I believe she is getting closer and closer to Jesus himself in every prayer, every act of service, every loving word spoken. I believe God wants to tell her “Well done my child, you are faithful, you believed, and there are crowns of gold awaiting you. I see you. I feel your pain. I am with you in all of it. I cry with you there in your little room. If you could only see…”

She’s been chipping away at all the walls inside of her since he passed. I see them coming down, and I see God building a new home inside of her. It bears great treasure and peace. It is holy and sweet to my soul. It gives me new life each time I walk through that little iron gate. It is a dwelling for God himself.

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We are all knocking on the doors of eternity, waiting to get in. To those that are chipping away at the walls, removing the bricks that we have all laid to self-protect and hide, I am walking with you. I want to say this: he is making a home out of us, but we must make the conscious decision every single day to allow him entrance into our little houses. The doors don’t unlock by themselves. So turn the key, swing wide the doors, loose the fear, and live.

a traveler's thoughts on time

dated: April 14th

There are days when I count the minutes. There are days when all I can think about is the future that I believe awaits me on the other end of things. I think up every scenario of my plane ride home. I see my tears, I hear my music, I see the hugs, I see the sighs, I feel my nerves already. What it will be like walking down that aisle traveling home, what I will do when I see my old friends, who will I be after 5 months of time spent in a 3^rd world country with nobody familiar to me but my own thoughts? I wonder if I will feel the solitude that so often separates one from another after months of separate experiences, I wonder if God will travel with me there, to those places.

I find myself thinking in future mode when I feel alone, when I feel afraid, when I feel weak. It seems controllable, it seems like it sits in the palm of my hand, like I could somehow teleport myself to that place and cease to feel in the present. But, today, I didn’t feel that way. I felt ready to face the present moment, I felt like time was so out of my hands that it was free to be and to pass as it wished. It felt like a person I was well acquainted with, like it was for me and not against me. Anyone that faces an extended period of time away from the comforts and the familiars of home has most likely experienced this same type of conflicted feeling over the passage of time. In some ways, it passes so quickly I don’t even have a chance to know it. In other ways, I feel like I am living a new life that will never end here, like my entire past got wiped off by a few months, never to come back to me.

As I walked the dusty streets and breathed the smoke-filled air and carried my sack of shampoo and water bottles home from the store, I asked myself: “Why and when do I specifically experience these moments of freedom? What is it about this point in solitude that makes me feel somehow more alive and yet, less human?” There’s something divine about that place, it is free. Like Rainer Maria Rilke says in his “Letters to a Young Poet,” I believe it has something to do with a deep and profound trust of what difficulties lie ahead. Future thinking gives us the illusory idea that we can control. We cease to operate in faith because we don’t feel any need to. And yet, time might be the only thing we absolutely have no control over. It passes quickly and then it passes slowly and we have no way of speeding it up or slowing it down. But, might I just trust that life happens right? Might I just trust enough to let go of my grasp of the future, the future that I have made up in my own mind?

In the remaining two months I live here, I hope I can break out of this very human way of thinking, that somehow I might be able to break out and really live as one set free from time, from anything that tries to set a boundary in places that should be limitless. In trying to control time, I allow time to control me. I want to think of time as segments of growth, love, rightness, and realization. I don’t want to be hemmed in to the very human way of thinking in days and hours and minutes for didn’t we just create all that just to give ourselves some form of structure? I want to think like Jesus thinks with Kingdom thoughts. I want to use my moments of fear as opportunities to open the doors of my soul and let trust in, let God do His work in that moment, let His love destroy the fear that so often accompanies the inevitable human solitude.

i am the cracking sound of trees

dated March 18th:

I was walking through the National Park in Nicaragua called Mombacho. Though located only an hour outside of Managua, the temperature drops to around 50 or 60 degrees as you climb to the top of the mountain. As we walked along the moist paths, my lungs were filling with the fresh, cold breaths of pure air. The leaves strewn along the paths held water in the cup of their little hands like cups. I let me hands brush the lichen that grew on the stone. In order for lichen to grow, the environment must be incredibly pure. Lichen look like algae and feel like some furry animal you might encounter on another planet. They obtain all of their nutrients and hydration from the water in the surrounding atmosphere. They can be indicators of atmospheric pollution.

We passed under a tree with 35 different species of plants growing on its wooly branches and limbs that hung down like human hair. Everything felt alive, the plants, the rain, the clouds, the mountains, the earth. All of my senses were tingling from the purity of the place, a haven completely saturated by water. It was a dwelling for growth and lush vegetation.

I could hear the sound of a tree cracking, groaning in the wind like a heart once broken. It hit me like a sensation, like a feeling, like a pain in my chest. It sounded like a soul. I turned quickly to see the thing break, but I only heard the noise. The image wasn’t there for me to look upon. I began to imagine the tree as it fell. I saw it fall in my mind’s eye, and I saw the wood splinter. Something about the thought of it breaking felt heroic. Like it gave itself back to the earth.

One of my prayers over the course of the past few days has been that God would give me a revelation of what it means to walk aright with Him, to be in righteousness. I do not believe it is dependent solely on behavior. If that is the case, I give up. Yet, I am beginning to believe there’s far more to walking righteously than my actions. I feel it deep in my spirit. As I walked those paths, bathed in rain, I started to think about that image as it relates to me. The forest was covered in clouds, almost like a blanket. It received all of its water source and nutrients from the moisture that leaked out of the clouds above. The forest remained uncontaminated from the pollution of the surrounding atmosphere. Although located in close proximity to cities like Managua and Granada, the air in Mombacho was so free of contamination that lichen can thrive on almost every surface of rock located in the park. One tree can house up to 35 different species of plants due to the character of the environment.

I picture myself, head in the clouds, arms spread wide like that tree, hands open, waiting to be washed by that kind of dew. I am that forest. I am covered in fog. Some days, I can barely see in front of me. Some days, I cry out just to feel a presence bigger than my own, just to hear the sound of a soul that is breaking through, just to know that there is a light flickering inside me. And though at times, I feel myself existing in the world, on the other side of the door, stumbling among the shadows, I believe. In fact, I believe so much that I feel it is no longer a part of me. It is who I am. I am the girl begging to be bathed on the corner, my face covered in grease and my hair in knots. I am the child walking with dirty feet that need to be washed day after day after day. I feel myself depending more and more on water that doesn’t run dry, and at times, I am fearful because I feel so dependent. But then, I remember the tree. I remember the sound of my soul in that tree. I am groaning to return to my origin, splintering in every which direction on my way down, falling into the unknowable universe of faith with a noise so loud that it echoes into eternity.

We must not seek righteousness alone. We must not aspire only to be good. We must look for something far beyond the concrete world. We are looking for water that lives, a rain that has the power to wash the soul. To those that are not satisfied with this world, I am holding your hand. I am crying out so that my sounds might reach the heavens. Tell me who Jesus is. Show me how the Holy Spirit can move in winds and in breaths. Show me the sunset melting into the sea so I may know that good things exist in this world. I am looking to find God in all His glory, nothing less. I am begging to find Him, to behold His beauty. Oh God, saturate me in the clouds of Your goodness. I give myself back to You, my Maker. I lay at your feet, as a tree that bows to the ground in glorious groans.

Nica Dust

I stumbled upon this writing and wanted to include it because I wrote it the first week I was here...in shock.

Nica Dust

“I can always be found” (Liars).

Third worlds know no comfort. I am third in line for my beans and rice. Don’t drink the ice. Bring the toilet paper to the stall. Oh, if a dog approaches you, pick up a stone, and he’ll scurry away. Teach me things so I know. My teacher tells me his goal is to understand the people, in his own home country. Maggie tells me to try not to understand because I never will. And strangely, I find hope.

Sometimes, I just need to be told I am brave. I led the anciano to her home in the night with her hand in mine, misshapen knuckles clenched to find even steps. My madre prayed, “Si senor, si senor.” I didn’t find it odd. Here, no pavement is even and every street is cracked. Men sell bread at 4 in the morning over an intercom. The streets, the venders, they call my name. The papas don’t got mamas, and the hijos don’t got papas. Papa looks in the room, the empty cuarto. And my mother, her son, he died from cancer in his blood. Blood red eyes go with the water that is no good. I itch. The dust floats here.

I got on the bus this morning with 25 cents to ride across the city. And everyone honks here like it will dissipate the traffic. Trash thrown over every bridge like compost. Backpack in front, I will never forget that rule para protegir. My brother, mi hermano, protect me at the discoteque. They say technology saps life. Hardly believe it till you have none. Nothingness. All they drink is rum, like sweet, lethal rum. I can’t say I like it much. Dilute it with water. Soldiers, boys, dance, dance, dance. Soliders here carry machetes. All hail the Sandinistas. Make room, make way. There is a way that leads to death. Walk on. I am going to bed with dirty feet.

Las mujeras venden sus cuerpos. I work to find love. I labor to know goodness in this place. Children chained in the storefront like dogs. She never lets me take her picture. Age 7: sufferer of severe low self-esteem. Scarlette, don’t throw rocks at the small girls. They didn’t mean to steal. If someone tries to break in your window, bang back. Tamara hugs her mother on market day, the same mother that sold her. Shirli, age 9, asks me to pray for her father que es un alcoholismo. I am begging to find You here. And then, smells of smoke, soft like stars rise in the sky.

I cry much of the night.

Jesus lives w/ the Poor

Dated: March 10th

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25

The girls at the home all have lice and their faces are smeared with dust and grime. The first few weeks it was all I could do to pick one of them up. The red beans in their bowls and the fruit juice in their cups stains all of their clothes. I must be honest and upfront and tell you: I felt such an empty place in my heart for them. I didn’t feel love. The human part of me felt afraid and paranoid each time I took them in my arms. I wondered selfishly what I would do if I got lice down here without the luxury of driving to the store to buy lice shampoo. I worried about getting sick and not being able to get the medicine I needed. In an effort to protect myself, I was cautious and maintained a safe distance.

Because of these feelings, I began praying that God would impart a supernatural love to me, that He Himself would put a deposit of His love inside of me. I needed to feel my heart widen for them, for their hurt, for their desire to just be hugged and loved like a child. And then, I realized: in loving these girls, I am getting closer and closer to Jesus Himself. Yet, it is impossible for me to fully embrace the grace and the heart of Jesus without the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us the awareness to sense and know the love that God has for His own. When we let the Holy Spirit come in, we are allowing our own spirits to connect with the heart of God. I think we, as humans, as believers, walk around with the crazy idea that we can extend a real form of love on our own. We try to love in our own strength by serving or giving gifts or telling our loved ones how much we care, and then, we feel worn out and spent by the end of it all. All of these things are very true and good things. However, I firmly believe that we must learn to love like Jesus did. He loved out of the outflow of love He had received from the Father. I want to know Jesus because I feel His love in my own individual soul. I want to sense that love when I brush my teeth in the morning, when I walk to class, when I listen to a good song. I want to be awakened to His love for me in every single moment of my life for that is what makes it worthwhile.

I want to know a love that reaches beyond my own limits, that operates out of gratitude and not obligation. When we connect to the Holy Spirit, we begin to sense the surpassing love that Jesus modeled for us by giving His own life for our welfare. I recall a time I was laying in my bed one night. It was 4oclock in the morning, and I began to pray that God would give me a better understanding of who Jesus is in my life, the reality of His life and His death as it relates to my own. I needed to feel and see the depths of what He did for me, Margaret Pearcy Fleming. Funny how I grew up learning about the sacrifice of Jesus, yet still felt a disconnect in my heart. I was lying there, and I had tears streaming down my face. And in my minds eye, I saw the image of a cut out, much like a body traced on roller paper. The body was covering me. The body was Jesus. From above, all that could be seen was the cut out, covering me. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what Jesus still does. He covers us like a cut out so that God, the Father, can look upon us and only see the good parts, the parts that look like Jesus. I will never forget that image.

Which brings me to tell you about this strange feeling I have been having, that maybe, just maybe, that’s how God is calling you and I to love people: to only see the parts that look like Jesus. To let the rest fade out of focus for a moment and begin to look upon a person as one who is divinely loved. What a miracle. There are these moments, when I look the little ones in the eye, and I begin to wonder if I am looking at Jesus. In that moment, I want to kiss them on the head and let them hang all over me. I want to feel tired with their love and feel their weight as they crawl all over my lap. I want to learn to love Jesus. Matthew 25 tells me that by extending my heart to these girls, I am opening my heart and home to the person of Jesus. To love Jesus means to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and visit the sick. It means to lend freely to those that can give nothing in return. For when we experience the true sacrifice of who Jesus is in our lives, we want nothing more than to show it to everyone around us.

We love God because He first loved us. We love others because He first loved them.

Living w/ A Family

Dated: Feb 19

You should know that the family I am living with lost their oldest son just a few years ago. I have often heard that the grief of losing a child before a parent passes is the hardest kind. I can’t say I have ever known or seen that to be true, thankfully. However, last night I got a glimpse.

Marvin is his name. From what I gathered, he was the preferred son, the oldest, wearing the name of his father proudly. Every corner of the home serves as a shrine to his existence. His picture hangs over the singular computer in the house; his photo albums are spread all over the little, concrete walls. It took me a few weeks to gather enough details (in Spanish) as to what happened, but he died of cancer of the blood. In his last days, there are pictures of him in the hospital, bald and frail. The family invited me in to live, to eat, to walk, and to be a part of their home. I have a strange feeling that God has me here for a little bit more than that though. What emptiness they must feel after the loss of the eldest son. Marvin senior, the father, took me through 4 different CDs of photos of his son. As he did so, slow falling tears rolled down his rough face. Every single day, he faces the reality that his son, his Marvin, no longer lives here on earth with him. He cannot see, touch, or know him any longer. The only memories he has are the pictures, the digital moments of life and color. I cannot begin to imagine the pain he must feel, the intense longing he faces every single night he lays his head down on the pillow, or the questions he fears to ask God when he says his prayers.

To see a father cry twists something in your gut.