"real job"

It's my second week at my first-ever "real job" (although it's not technically a job - I am, in fact, a full-time volunteer). It's my first time working "real job" hours, anyway. The Monday-Friday, 8:30-4:30 grind. I realize I haven't had these hours very long and it might be a little early to say whether I love or hate my schedule, but as someone coming from school/restaurants, I'm not sure I can get down with it. I have no problem working 40 hours a week (if you know me personally, then you are most likely aware that I tend to over-commit myself on a regular basis). It's the transition to a repetitive, conformist schedule that is taking some getting used to.

This past Saturday, I took one heck of a Sabbath.

Sleeping until almost 11am, lounging in my pjs for several hours after that, I entertained the dogs and did almost nothing. I made some cookies, washed my sheets, and played catch-up with my read-the-Bible-in-a-year assignments - that was about it. I don't know what I even bothered changing clothes; I was only up for ~12 hours.

Sunday was better. I read a bunch of Eat, Pray, Love and then had an excellent Skype conversation with Friend Katie. I attended a training so I can start volunteering at one of the local elementary schools and help teach kids how to read. Church was good, as per usual. Thought-provoking. Sort of depressing (still in Ecclesiastes) but gave me a lot to think about.

So now I'm back at work. Day 12 of 365. Sitting in my chilly office. Staring at my to-do list. Listening to the Pandora chill/downtempo station through my headphones. Attempting to get myself acclimated to sitting down eight hours a day, five days a week. Wrapping my head around doing this for at least 51 more weeks. Trying to focus on the tasks as hand but instead pondering what the heck to do about next year.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.

my sentiments exactly

Shared from Dani's awesome photo blog. She shared it from someone too.

what if it all means something

This past week I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico for AmeriCorps VISTA training. For those of you unfamiliar with the AmeriCorps VISTA program, it's basically a domestic Peace Corps designed to fight poverty. VISTA training is meant to provide a context for the program and to motivate people before they go to their service location - all I can say is that it had the opposite effect on me. I left de-motivated, wondering what was the point of it all, and deeply missing Haiti.

I'm not trying to cheapen anyone else's experience of training. I am glad that there is such a program and hope that Congress votes to keep AmeriCorps as a line item in the budget. I'm just saying that when I heard one girl say that she was sad to leave because of the bonding experience she'd had with some people, I was confused. It had only been four days. Most people - including the girl speaking - had spent the three evenings out drinking. I didn't understand how this set of circumstances could add up to anything except an eagerness to go home. Please don't take this as a judgment. I'm certainly not against drinking or the community one could potentially build in four days. I simply had not had the same feeling of connection in New Mexico. When this girl talked about how she was a little sad, I immediately flashed back to June 31, 2010, when my Haiti team was huddled in the airport crying, praying for each other, and how I had actually refused to go home that night. I flashed back to switching my flight to the next day and going to the Atlanta Braves game, sleeping at a friend of a friend's house, and trying to cling to any time I had left with my team before we went our separate ways.

Albuquerque left me with a growing list of questions, questions I may have had before but now seem to be haunting me. How does my year of VISTA service fit with the type of community I had in Haiti? How does my new life in St. Louis connect with everything that came before? How do I balance wanting to stay here and move forward with how much I miss everyone back east? Even more so than that, how do I balance appreciating the here-and-now when I have always been a planner, trying to figure out what the heck comes next? What do I do when I read Katie's blog and think "Good grief, I miss the crap out of her. And Spain. And Italy. And traveling?" Is St. Louis a stepping stone or will I be here a while? Indeed, what is the point of it all? All for the glory of God, for sure, but enjoyment too. (And now that I'm sitting here, I'm realizing that my church's current sermon series on Ecclesiastes is bleeding all over this blog entry.) Am I enjoying myself as much as I could be? I was made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Am I enjoying God?

Are you?

Because if not, you and I should go think long and hard about what we would rather be doing.

About the Perpetual Struggle in Letting Go of Expectations

I did what I said I would - I moved to St. Louis. I moved to St. Louis because this is where I know God wants me to be and I want to follow Him no matter what. So about a month ago I packed up my car and left the east coast. Besides the unfortunate car transmission incident on the way through Ohio, my time here has been quite enjoyable. I have a nice house to live in, a comfortable bed to sleep in, space for all my stuff (which I am still increasingly feeling like is too much stuff). I've met great people. In Virginia - and I'm speaking generally here so if you're a Virginian, don't be offended - people are supposed to be southernly hospitable and nice but it often comes off as fake. People here are genuinely nice and not in-your-face about it, which I appreciate so so much. I've pretty much already found a church I'd like to invest in, at least a church that has welcomed me with open arms. It's been wonderful, just as I knew it would because whatever God has in mind for me will always be wonderful.

But I sort of feel like I'm missing it.

I think I'm feeling it more today because it's snowing (AGAIN) and so I am once again cooped up in the house all by myself, just like I have been since last Friday. Roommate #1 is in Europe. Roommate #2 is in Illinois. It's just me and the dogs. And I know I should be digging into the Word and praying and reading some Jesus lit, and I WANT to, but instead I find myself perpetually lying on the couch watching endless hours of "How I Met Your Mother" and "Bones" reruns. Even on days I do a lot of work, run errands, and do my daily Radical tasks, I get to 11pm and feel like I completely missed it. How am I helping others? I go to work and go straight home after because I only have enough money to do the absolute bare essentials right now (and I'm not complaining - just stating a fact. I chose this situation and am happy with my decision.) (Although now I feel convicted because even with my meager stipend, I still make more money than 80% of the world, which is OUTRAGEOUS and makes me really mad and sad.)

I think maybe I just answered my own bad feelings. I asked "how am I helping others?" and while I value helping other people more highly than just about everything else in life, that's not actually what my focus should be. I should be asking "how am I glorifying God and working to grow His Kingdom?"

The thought has been growing in my mind that the next 13 months especially (until the end of my VISTA service year in late February 2010) are working to prepare me for what is coming ahead. Being the planner that I am, I've started making plans concerning my VISTA situation. Most of these deal with finances and learning more about the nonprofit realm. That being said, God's plan for my next 13 months might be totally different than what I have planned. I don't want to take over God's plan and make it my plan, turning something holy and good into something sinful and self-worshiping (I've done this before - hello student affairs plans - and it clearly did not turn out well). I want to keep God's plan as God's plan. If He has other ideas for my life, then He has other ideas and they are always going to be WAAAAAY better than my ideas. He knows how I can glorify Him best in my poverty and baseness. And so I am again trying to let go of my expectations. I am again trying to be ready and open for all He has planned. I guess I should turn off the TV because

I don't want to miss this.

Be a Good Neighbor

By now, your New Year's resolution might be wearing off. In an attempt to give you a little more motivation and a resolution revision, here is a list of 50 ways to be a good neighbor. (This is also preempted by my review of David Platt's Radical. Go read it. Internalize it. Let it challenge and change your way of life.)


1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church's sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor's grass (or shovel their snow).
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid's family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes - and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor's too (they'll let you...really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who's cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grown your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say "I'm sorry" to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation - care by going fuel free for a week - ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don't get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and buy mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don't have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God's Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help you church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember than Jesus said he would meet you there (Matthew 25).

List shared from http://www.craiggross.com/post/171657321/goodneighbor.

An Anecdote about Getting to Missouri

Three days after returning from my most recent trip to Haiti (which was INCREDIBLE, more on that in later blog posts), I loaded up my car with my junk (once again) and drove drove drove across I-76 and I-70 to Missouri. It's about a 14 hour drive.

Hour six (roughly 2pm): central Ohio. My mom and I are cruising down the road, listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audio book (I think we were at the part where Harry, Hermione, and Ron almost get caught by the Deatheaters when they apparate into Hogsmeade -  a pretty intense part! Although most of the book is pretty intense...). All of a sudden it feels like my car pops out of gear and revs real loud. Mind you, we're going 70mp and while there's not a lot of traffic, there are some other cars around. I try to get my little Hyundai back into 5th but it is just. not. working. I pull off to the side of the road and call AAA. I'm sort of freaking out at this point because I have no idea what's wrong with my car and there are trucks rushing by on the highway and the falling snow slowly, slowly covers my car so that I can't see anything.

Fast forward to my car being towed 40 miles to the nearest place that is open on a Saturday afternoon (apparently all of Ohio shuts down every weekend). My transmission is busted. No autoparts stores will be open until Monday, and then it will be several days after that before my car is ready to go. All my jenk is in my car - what do we do? Tell the auto shop to leave my car outside when they lock up for the day because we'll be back to empty out the car.

Since it's the weekend in Ohio, no rental car places are open except at airports, so my mom and I take an hour long taxi ride to the Columbus airport, get a rental car, and drive back to Zanesville. Pulling up to the now-closed auto shop, it appears they have locked my car in the garage. If you know me at all, this next part will come as no surprise. I start banging on the garage door really, really loud. Then I start banging on the shop door. If anyone is still there, they are sure as heck going to let us in.

It turns out someone was there. Hooray! We load up the rental car and I end up taking every single little thing out of my car just in case we don't go back for it. Mom and I are pretty tired at this point (it's about 10pm and we left at 7am), so we drive a little farther and then get a hotel, driving the rest of the way to St. Louis in the morning. My mom's plane from STL back to Philly was Monday afternoon, so we had to get her to Missouri by then.

So my car was stuck in central Ohio. Eight hours from St. Louis. Six hours from my parent's house. Not near anything with which I am familiar. But fixing a transmission is cheaper than getting a new car, so we get it fixed and all the while are brainstorming ways to get my Hyundai from Zanesville to St. Louis.

In the end, I took an overnight greyhound bus. In Europe, doing things like this is exotic and romantic. When I took the midnight train from Madrid to Paris, it was exciting because I was going from Madrid to Paris. Oooooo. This was decidedly not romantic. Or exotic. At all. However, this trip did provide me with excellent people-watching opportunities as well as a chance to practice my ability to sleep on a bus while sharing a pair of seats with a stranger.

After 10 hours on the greyhound, I got to Zanesville, retrieved my car (which I endearingly call Little Red Riding Hood), and drove back to St. Louis (all the while praying that LRRH will last me at least three more years, please God!). It was all very adventuresome and not anything I want to repeat. Ever.

So, yeah. I'm now a brand-new St. Louisan!

Happy New Year!

If I'm coming in a little late on all the New Years well-wishing, it's because I was in Haiti for the past week and the internet at RENMEN Foundation (www.renmenhaiti.org or check out the Facebook page) was spotty to the point that I didn't even try to do anything web-related except send a message my friend Tiffany who left for the World Race on Tuesday (http://tiffanyhandley.theworldrace.org/).

New Years: a time for reflection and resolve to do things differently in the New Year. I've never been big on New Year's resolutions myself although I admire people who make them. I am someone who likes to have a good time on New Year's Eve. During most of my post-high school life, my New Year's Eves have been spent in Norfolk with my sister and/or brother. House parties at Graydon, leaving just before midnight to go see my boyfriend-of-the-time to give him a kiss when the ball drops, great dinners out with friends. New Year's Eve 2009 was fun. We were at the club dancing it out but we all missed the countdown because the TV connection went out. The staff got it to work and we all got champagne and counted down and then confetti got everywhere, even in our glasses so we couldn't toast with our bubbly. Good times, good times.

This New Year's Eve, NYE 2010, was different and somewhat unexpected. Half of Team Uncaged ended up returning to RENMEN for the holidays. As there had been a huge, all-night party on the 30th, the 31st was pretty quiet. We, however, were of course going to stay up until midnight. We grabbed some snacks, an iPod & speakers, and headed to the roof where we had slept in June. We stood there in the dark and counted down, quietly saying "Happy New Year!" since there were sleeping children right on the other side of the wall. I turned on "Auld Lang Syne" and we each ate a peanut M&M and toasted with our long Nibs ( a gift from Canada via Melly). It seemed that none of our Haiti brothers and sisters were up to celebrate but then at 1am, they all gathered in the courtyard to do prayers. It's been chilly at night so they were all wrapped up in sheets for warmth, giving their gathering an ethereal feel. The kids' beautiful voices rose into the night, welcoming the New Year by praising God. Many kisses and wishes of "bon annee" followed prayer when we all headed for bed.

I think it was the best New Year's Eve I have ever had.

PS: In all of June and this trip, the only time I have ever gotten up early enough to take part in morning prayers was on January 4, my birthday. After prayers were over, my Haiti family sang me "Happy Birthday." Could there be a better start to your 25th year than 50 orphans singing to you? I submit that there cannot. It was so incredible, I cried.