Support Hong Kong

So when was the last time you heard about a protest movement being described as taking the "high ground???" That kind of blows me away, and most of these are kids in High School, College, and new grads. What a story. I am anxiously awaiting the result of the talk they have agreed to have. This is one of my former and very respected Chinese professors, who organized some of her students to show support for the HK protests. 
I recommend this article from the New Yorker, for a general update, but I'm sure that the information will soon be old news.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/streets-hong-kong

The Future and the Past with a Present God

 Something hit me pretty strong last night: what if all the time I used thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, and seven years from now was suddenly open. That would leave a whole lot of time for right-now head space. 

"Come home to the present, where you will find Me waiting for you (Young, 2004)."

My deepest desire, when I am truthful with my soul, is to join God wherever he is. Abide in Him. Worship Him. If I live out of the present more, I'll be in God more. Sounds like a win-win. 

Two things I've never really been "good" at, and avoided as much as I could day-to-day:

Prayer

True Worship

Truthfully, I've always enjoyed praise and worship time at church, because it is so good to remember and remind myself of all they things God is, and all the things God can do. True worship, though, seemed so hard to get into, I worry I'm not genuine, I get distracted easier than a two year old in a new playroom; "the singer is too loud, look she is wearing heels, his hair is really trendy, why does it have to be so trendy, why do they all look coordinated, who is here today, what is everyone else doing, what do I have to do as soon as I get home, gosh I'm cold, I hope John is okay, wow I miss Bubby, that little kid reminds me of him and now I want to cry, I'm missing out on my family's life, oh is the song over now?"
Something's a little different. At World Mandate it seemed to be all about worshiping God, and the whole posture of my heart changed. I was able to let go, realize that I feel at home with God, and that I really, really, really want to worship Him in whatever way I can because all I want is Him. I still get distracted easily, but God is bigger than that!

Prayer. Most of my older years prayer has scared me just a little. I could journal to God every other day, but I couldn't pray aloud, or so I though. Recently, though, I just keep seeing the power of prayer in my life and walk with Him, as well as in the life of my family, and I just want more! There have been a few times I've been able to pray aloud and nobody laughed, no lightning fell, and all awkward moments were just okay. I hope that I can continue learning about growing in prayer.

These are just some random things going on right now, and I'm taking a break from memorizing my Chinese characters for the ever-present vocabulary quiz tomorrow (only 17 words left!!!!). I was also able to meet with the Hope for The Nations director and his wife for dinner last night, and talk about my Asia desire. God keeps telling me just to focus on the next step not the end result. I could be in the states of a year or two after I graduate in the school and end up with a team from another community in the country I want to go to. In a way I am not worried about staying for another year or two as anxious as I am to get there, because I will be able to get a job with the OAG or maybe the OOG in Austin. 

The First Canyon Trip

     I go home to Honduras for Christmas. I also started writing this post maybe a year ago. I'll put quotations on the stuff I had written and then keep going. This happened on New Year's day of 2013, and the day after that.
   "It was lovely to be back home for the first time since moving to Estados Unidos last May. Many traditions were observed, including the one that means hiking past the back of our property to find a rumored waterfall we never could find. Last summer, though, the kids found this waterway far below our property in what may be described as a canyon.

Looks dark, right? That's because it IS a canyon of sorts. 

  I'm not to that picture, yet. You see, we decided about noon (more or less) that we were going down according to tradition. I was the driving force on this, as there were reluctant members. John specified that we could only take good swimmers - this ruled out a few. We were left with my brother Arnol (in the blue) and Reynaldo (in the red) shown in the picture plus John. We wanted to get out the door quickly - the" 

 I'll keep going, the day was already getting on maybe 12 or 1, I'm not sure, and we packed a jar of peanut butter, half a loaf of bread, one machete, and one water bottle. We make it out the door in high spirits - I'm especially pleased because I've managed to selfishly coerce my brothers and sister into doing this for me, mainly because I felt a little out-of-touch and jealous that they went and did something without me (it was my first time back, I didn't want to face the fact that I didn't live there for most of the year anymore, like I didn't want to face it AT ALL).

  The trip took us into Chungo's property, a local campesino who grows sugar cane and coffee. We go on and we're not finding any path down, but we keep going, doubling back once or twice, as we attempt to get down the mountain the very narrow way we took sometimes had us holding onto the side of the mountain, with a drop off on the other side. We manage to slide down a considerable amount, pulling up a few trees as we try not to roll down, but this is not bad at all. 

  We get to the bottom. 

This picture was taken another day, but it looks like this when we get down.

John says that last time they went to the left and came out in another neighborhood a mountain over, but it took about 2 hours and wasn't a very good way. So we follow him to the right, which we thought must lead out quicker. 

I don't know how long it was before we came to a big pool looking like this (same place, different day). 

We know we're going to have to swim, but we are already standing around shivering. John crosses, I tread water in the middle, we cannot find any bottom, and it takes time for my brothers to try to cross. Once they are in the water they are incredibly scared, and start to fail, so my sister and I try to help them across. We make it.

We wade through more rocks and water, it's getting later, and we come upon another big pool, this one looks larger. The scary bad part for me is that John and I had to yell and plead for a long time to get my brothers to try and cross, Faith and I again help them cross while John waits at the end ready to help. My brother is in tears, crying out before we get him to cross. He crosses okay, but my other two brothers are also getting a little hysteric once they are in the water and it is a huge struggle to get them to cross, with times that I felt like I was being pushed under, crying for John to help, and he did, but he told me that when someone feels like they are drowning they cannot understand that they are really forcing the person helping under. Praise Jesus we crossed, lost the machete and some shoes, as well as our water on the way. After that one I thought I knew without a doubt that if we tried to cross another one someone would drown. We find a sandy area and call our parents with the phone we took, hoping it won't soak up water. I remember asking John not to make us go further. So we wade as far as we can until the next big pool and and then find a small nook against the dripping wet rock wall of the canyon that is wet sand but not underwater. It is very dark down there, since the sun doesn't get in. I swim on, but the pool is too big and I don't find any exit. Faith and I do not want John swimming. 

We decide to stay there for the night until someone can come help. We don't really know what is going to happen the next day but everyone feels they are too cold and too tired to move on. So, that began one of the strangest nights. There nothing living in the canyon except for bats, which was very interesting because we could see little dull pinpricks of their eyes and hear them bumping off the walls. Our feet almost dipped in the water when we all lay down, and we begin to talk. It was a little cold to go to sleep. Timmy is very upset because he believes we will never be able to see the Hobbit movie (the next day dad had said he would take us into Tegucigalpa to see the first Hobbit movie, we were so pumped!!), among other things. Reynaldo is completely quiet, and I don't want him to feel like I am holding against him what happened earlier. Arnold was not very quiet, but after he calmed down he focused on getting Fudgy, our STINKY STINKY dog to cuddle with him. I don't know what John, Faith and I talk about, but I remember that we did a lot of laughing, not that we were happy go lucky, but I think we wanted to help everyone out and these sort of situations tend to make us just a little goofy (ask about the time we all had to hide in the show while Mom and Dad manned the doors at night). John buried our feet to help us warm up. The funniest thing was probably the fact that here we were, trying to cuddle to get warm, and worried about the next day, and laughing about the fact that we were scared a crocodile was waiting to come nip our toes, and yet every single one of the guys, in the pitch dark, had to go to the bathroom about every 5 minutes. It's tough to be a girl. 

The next day we are afraid to get into the water, we are cold. We are supposed to wait at our island, so John being the man he is, starts a talent show. First, he and the boys scrape pond scum, vines, and the like to "decorate" this giant log hanging across our island. After that we find to mini islands (about 2x2 feet, maybe), one of them is designated for the bathroom, now that it is light, and the other is for John's talent show. In which he tries to show us he can lasso with his short rope (which is totally untrue, but he tried over and over again). We are all laughing that nervous scared laugh. I don't know how to describe it. We weren't happy, some of us didn't think we would  be able to get out all together, we were scared and cold and thirsty, but we were laughing. We found Yoda's stick, as we fondly call it (it looks like a stick got wielded to a piece of dried and petrified poop, and it's exactly how we think Yoda's stick must look like). We wait a long time, our phone is getting wet and running out of battery. We can hear yelling above us - the Foster's our good neighbors from another mountain have come to help mom as far as we can tell. The common consensus was that mom was going to kill us when we got back, which is part of what we talked about most the night.

 We find out that some of the guys who live on the mountain are coming. One finally does come, he helps us get back across one pool, helping the boys make it across. We then see that the easy way out is a two tired cliff that has a slippery alcove where one person can stand and pull a rope up to get another up. We learn that dad is still looking for us, he has gone down a different entrance and so any yelling I hear I think is him. My brother John gets in the alcove. I can't tell you how scary that was. While the other guys are on top, pulling the second rope. The two little boys go up first. Then Faith, it takes an incredibly long time, and the drop is straight onto rocks. This was probably the hardest part for John, Faith and I, because we could swim but Faith and I can't pull our weight up, and to be gripping onto John while he tries to tie us up as he is straddled in a tiny foothold on a slipper cliff with no rope holding him there and no support was too much. Faith and I consider swimming back, but we don't know if we can get up the mountain where we slid down, and John and the guys tell us we can do this. I remember Faith screaming. The look on her and John, but he got her tied and stayed on. She got up. My turn. I remember thinking about the fact that I could pull John and I down onto rocks maybe 15-20 feet below so easily if I messed up. Also, I couldn't pull myself up very well and it was very hard for the guys to get me to do it, but we get up. Faith and I get mad at the dog who has pawed up the dirt to where we can't climb up the last part easily. Relief when I see John make it. Shaking and resting with Faith as we make the hike home, now out of the canyon, but still with mountain to go up. We make it. We eat, we go to bed. The worst was finding out my Dad had basically swam all night to get to us, came back, got another Missionary dad with two tire inner-tubes and tried again all morning. He is wiped out when we get home. That night was hard. My Parents, I can't even imagine what they had to deal with all night and all morning. I don't know. 

But, we made it, all of us.

I don't want to be dramatic. My fingers are still shaking and it's hard to type all this up. But I've been trying to for more than a year, almost two. I think doing this will be the last step. Last January my Dad insisted that we, all of us who went the first time, go again, this time with him and several inner tubes. We called it an adventure and we were scared. But we went past the place we had spent the night a year before, we went on for almost 8 hours and came out the way my Dad had come in that night to try to get to us. We were safe. That was one step, this story is the last. I'm sorry if this was not too good an idea to put it on the internet. 

Main point: we learned a lot, I learned a lot. I was being stupid in the first place to make my brothers and sister go, we didn't prepare, and we put a lot of people besides ourselves through a lot of pain and worry. I was being prideful, but even though it was clearly not something God led us to do, he was so faithful. There were so many ways that it could have gone wrong, out of our own stupidity, preparation, or leadership skills. God still got us out, all of us out. I should think that all of us have grown because of it, at least I hope I have. God rescues us even when we are stupid, people, over and over again. It's all over the Bible, all over our history, all over us, but He is Holy.

Since last January when we went back for the second time, Tim's boy scouts have been down there and so have some of my family. All the pictures of the canyon, except for the first one, are from the Boy Scout's trip. 

(Above) This is our island, a year later, with the log that was once decorated with pond scum and vines.

More than a year later, they find the machete I dropped, I kid you not that thing felt like an anchor when I was trying to swim with it.

Sometimes I Teach my Heart not to Hope too Much

There have been a few things shifting in my heart this summer.

         I realize something shocking this morning; I taught my heart not to hope too much. I did that.

    My heart like the Jews, who for ages must have dealt with false hopes and promises of fake deliverance while they wait for Jesus. So many imposers and laws that they educate and speculate about just how their messiah will walk, how he will look and speak, what he will do and what he will be. They spent lifetimes guarding their hearts against any false hope. 

    So what happened with Jesus comes? They cannot see him. They have a hard time allowing their hearts to hope again, to run and greet their Messiah. So miracles happen, again and again, enough to fill the world up with pages and pages of accounts. This is enough for some, but not all.

    I add the miracles part, because, when I guard my heart too closely I am ignoring all the miracles that have happened to me, personally. 

    Where this is coming from: I want to go to China. I believe God has called me there. I built a degree around this fact, but in my heart, I say "I'll believe it when I see it," and in my mind, I list the things I'll be able to do with my degree like a lullaby to tell myself it will all be fine if I never make it to China, or if I don't ever find my purpose there.

    Oh my heart! I'm asking Jesus to teach it how to let my heart free to hope, because hope is running away with a light spirit. It is vulnerable and it is joyful. A hoping heart is expectant and doesn't hold back. I love him. I really really don't want to hold back from Jesus's promises, and I do have hope about a lot of things, but sometimes I let my flesh say "no more." 

     I recently heard a college professor say something to the effect of "there is not much place for the cynic with Jesus, though there be realism and some skepticality." 

Finals - Time to look at why I'm doing this

So, it's finals time again.

Note the excitement.

What makes finals hard: self esteem on the down low, people pleasing mindset, living by my expectations of myself, and believing I could never live up to those high expectations, study habits that come back to bite you, research papers, CHINESE.

What makes finals worth it: CHINESE

God's plan for me

Eternal mindset

Learning

GROWTH

When I graduate I feel like I have been called to go to Asia, where I plan to work with U.S. - Asia relations on the side (or so I think!). Aside from finals, I really do love learning. Most of it is practical for my future (or so I think!).

Bottom Line:

Finals are worth it

I have the summer to repair

Grades don't matter in Heaven, character does

What is Good

I like learning, but there are some things that are emotionally taxing to learn.

Like a whole class on Modern Day Slavery.

Thanks UT, right? It is amazing that they provide a class on this topic for students of all levels.

 We, the students, get to read books, watch movies, research product supply chains, and hold debates over this topic. It's a lot of fun, but at the end of the day, I'm noticing patterns that tell me I'm in a bit of an emotional bind. At first I thought it was just me, being sloppy, lazy, unhealthy in some instances. And sure, I am all of those things sometimes (right, mom?), but not all the time. 

 Of course, I didn't exactly connect two and two until 3 weeks before the close of the semester. Saturday. I was sitting outside the Blanton Cafe waiting to meet with a woman who had been in the foreign service for many years. It was nice weather, and I enjoyed being outside. Then, in my head, I thought, "these are good things," as I looked at the leaves on the trees and the grass on the ground "this world has good in it."

 That was it. I realized, after a few moments of wondering what had prompted such a response out of the blue when I wasn't focusing on being thankful or anything like that.  I had been learning about a lot of bad. Sometime experience, also, makes me unconsciously expect bad. Slavery is bad. A generation of children born into HIV and AIDS is bad. A generation of loved children working in a way that Americans don't understand beyond feeling that the work they are made to do is awful. A professor who explains the headway Christians made in Civil Rights as merely fodder to their ego, and in some ways, I see that. I see people who want to ease their conscience, I do too, and what that takes is surprisingly little. So much pain. So much grief. I easily blame anything I can, and that is ugly.

 Now that I know, coping with all the information is a goal. A prayer goal, Lord calm my heart and preserve my empathy. I don't want to be stuck at pity, I want to move with compassion. Compassion, con passion, I think of the Holy Week and your passion. I love you, I love that you are good and you were moved to the passion by your compassion on us. You have already defeated poverty and consumerism and trafficking. 

 I feel tender, just now, and I am fine with that. It doesn't matter what this does to me as long as some of it can be used for others.

Nightmares

I don't know how to start this.

I don't think that very many of us will be exempt from having nightmares. I just had a few last night.

Here's the thing; as a child, we seek a place or a state we know is safe before we try to sleep again. If it is our parent's bed, our floor, or, if crying and drinking water makes us feel safe then we do that.

My Mother would pray over me, and then I could get back to sleep.

Naturally, when I wake up from nightmares now, I try to cry to God. I tell him I don't like nightmares, or ask him to take them away. This is good, but it isn't getting at the root.

Last night I tried something new. After crying to God and asking Jesus to be with me, I told him what the nightmares were preying off of, my fears. I'm not going into specifics here, but when I was able to tell God exactly what the nightmares reminded me of, he began to help me see that nothing nothing nothing can snatch me away from his hand. I began talking aloud, repeating that and then I began to understand that even my worst fears couldn't destroy my soul, even they could not make me so sullied that God could not redeem me. I was and am forever His. 

I think Jesus wants to bring us healing, not just a good night's sleep, and talking about our fears and his realities with him is healing.

And that is how I deal with nightmares, starting with last night.