privileged shiftings

I've been fighting the urge to not share these thoughts. They are hard to articulate, difficult to understand, full of different layers and issues, and maybe even a little embarrassing. But, as is with most things I don't want to address, it won't go away. I apologize now if this is a lot to read. I apparently have a lot I need to say.

I've talked about this with several people, journal-ed, reflected, prayed, and cried. For a while, I could not even articulate what was wrong. It was simply a feeling that something wasn't right; that something had internally shifted and wasn't the same.

From time to time, things like that are easy for me to ignore. I stay busy. I avoid sharing my more personal thoughts with people. I still live and serve, but I don't always process what I've experienced; I've found that it's just easier that way. When you can't explain yourself eloquently, don't waste someone else's time. If you are going to cry for apparently no reason at all, just don't go there. Keep it all nice and neat. Don't show your brokenness, don't let your shit hit the fan. It's easier that way.

I've lived with that mind set for most of my life. Yes, occasionally the Spirit or just pure exhaustion (or both) would overwhelm me, and I would break, letting down my guard temporarily. But then I would apologize, and quickly rebuild my wall. That's been the cycle for as long as I can remember.

And then Gramps' got sick and died. Now, I recognize that I attribute a lot of my growth this year to his death. But that's my reality. My Gramps' suffering and death has marked an unexpected change in me. I still hurt over it; most days I'm still angry. And I couldn't hide that. I shouldn't hide that. I can't hide that.

I still get heartsick when I see the painted clouds on the ceiling at Downtown Pres and think that there should be stars. I see a butterfly and I choke. The sunsets, the stars, rainbows, a certain kind of hat. . . all pull me back to the pain I hold. The pain of not being there, the pain of being away from home when they needed me, and when I needed them. Even now, my eyes are full of tears.

I never expected this to happen this year. I never expected to lose Gramps, to have that as my constant struggle for this year of service. I expected struggles financially (you can only get so far with a few hundred dollars a month), community struggles, works struggles. . . all of which have only been compounded by this death.

I was expecting Guatemala to cause me to see poverty in a new light, instead, I've seen life and death differently. I've begun to see my life of privilege. I've always thought that people who had more than I did were the privileged ones. The nicer cars, the bigger houses, the better clothes. But Guatemala brought to mind my Malawi trip, which brought to my heart that sense of discomfort I described at the beginning of this post. And now, three weeks after being back in the States, I get it. I am privileged. By my experiences, my education, the communities that support me, the gifts I have, the love I share. I am privileged. Even as a middle class, white female, I am privileged. I am privileged to be serving this year in Nashville, to be discovering new passions, to be making new friends and connections, with the support and blessing of those who matter most to me. I am privileged to be growing and changing, to be experiencing God through new ways and through my own gifts. And I'm privileged, as hard as it is to say, to be able to say that I'm broken, that I'm angry, that I still miss my Gramps terribly. And I'm privileged to say that pain associated with losing Gramps has been the threshold for all this other growth and maturing that so many are saying they see in me and I'm starting to feel via that shifting. I am so privileged.

lists and loves

I have a list I've been carrying around with me lately. It's not a to do list, so to say, instead I'm calling it my "one bite at a time" list. The nine items on the list are things I need to have done by a specific date: books to read, devotionals to write, scholarship essays, and a sermon.

That said sermon is now crossed off, as I preached it last night. I had prepared the liturgy (another crossed off list item) and was ready to serve God with my words. . . whatever words came out. And I loved it. Really, truly, loved it. I preached on a text I read in my God, Moses, and Torah class two springs ago that really spoke to me. The text was Exodus 18.13-26, where Moses gets his ideas realigned on how to serve his community.

I loved getting into the text, reading it with new eyes. I loved how the creative energies flowed as I thought about the text and the lessons I saw there. I loved getting up and sharing that inspired knowledge, speaking loudly and boldly; praying the entire time that one word, one sentence would allow the Spirit to move in someone in a new way.

And I loved that so many from my larger Nashville community were there. It was great to have the PSF regulars there, don't get me wrong. But it really meant a lot to have my housemates and YAV community members, friends from Downtown Pres and 2nd Pres there too. Earlier yesterday morning, I shared with someone that it was going to be hard to preach without my family there. She asked what difference my family would make, and I told her that I've always known that even if I totally flopped and failed, my parents, sisters, and grandparents would have told me that I did a fabulous job. They would have smiled, hugged, and supported me through it all. Even without my family there though, people who love me were there and they smiled, hugged, and supported me. Yes, I still missed my family terribly; but that hole they would have filled wasn't entirely empty due to the wonderful people I have in my life here. I'm so blessed.

Before I put together this "one bite at a time" list, I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading, writing, and proclaiming how God works in and through my life. It was exciting to be affirmed by the gathered community last night, but there was also a deep sense of affirmation in me. The kind of affirmation that can only come, I've found, when I stumble upon a portion of God's plan for my life.

Monday Conversation

Mondays are usually my favorite day of the week. Mondays in my life with PSF have a set structure: I have a meeting at 10am, lunch with students at 12, and then some "free" time to study, catch up with students, before staff meeting and house night. Today was extra special though.

Last night PSF hosted the homeless ministry of Room In the Inn (RITI). RITI partners with different churches to provide warm meals and a warm place to sleep. Tweleve men spent the night last night with several PSF students and myself at St. Augustine's, the chapel on campus. I really love the interactions with the men--they are jovial, friendly, and are always ready to exchange a little sarcasm/BS with me, which is another one of those Olson family qualities that I possess.

The only real negative that RITI has is that I don't get to enjoy much sleep on the nights PSF hosts it. We went to bed around 10:30pm to wake up around 4:15am to start breakfast. After the kitchen was cleaned, and all my belongings packed up, it was only 6:40. I didn't have another commitment until noon. Now, I certainly could have spent the time working on my sermon for tomorrow night's worship, but that wasn't my immediate thought. Instead, I offered two of the students who had spent the night (and both journeyed to Guatemala) some coffee at Starbucks and some conversation. They indulged me.

What I expected to be an hour long, light conversation ended up being about three hours of a deep and wide conversation. It started with me asking some questions, as Jennifer has shown me, and before I knew it we were in the midst of a conversation about values, morals, personal beliefs, faith, and life. We talked about what we learned in Guatemala, about being vulnerable in a community, about simple living and shared a lot about the issues of life in America and how sometimes those issues cause us to be more gray than black-and-white.

This conversation in and of itself was an enriching experience. It brought a smile to my face as I reflected on a conversation I had last week, when someone asked me if I have an agenda when I met with students over coffee. I was somewhat shocked at that suggestion, and responded saying: "No, I do not enter into a conversation with an agenda. It's the student's space and time and we talk about whatever they need or want to." And that's exactly what happened this morning. Had I had an agenda, I don't know that I would have asked the questions I did. . . questions that brought up issues that the majority of the time I don't even know where I stand. But this morning, early this morning, two students and I gave each other the space and freedom to say whatever needed to be said in a space with no agenda and certainly no pressure to have an answer.

trip reflections

I'm struggling to believe that just a week ago, I was still in Guatemala. It feels like I've been back in the States and at my regular routine for much longer than a week.

The PSF trip to Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala was a great trip. There were four staff and eleven students who ventured down to work on a hospital that was destroyed in the fall of 2005. When we got to the hospital, we discovered that our tasks would be digging two 15ft. deep holes and moving lots of buckets full of rocks, sand, and gravel. I spent a lot of my time dumping the buckets near two large water silos on the back part of the hospital property. It was a nice job to have (minus climbing up half the hill on every trip) because it gave me a lot of time for reflective thinking.

When we weren't working, we were spending time around Lake Atitlan, in different market and church settings, spending time in conversation, or experiencing Mayan culture. We saw several Catholic cathedrals, visited a school for students with disabilities, saw a local Mayan god, experienced a ride in the back of a pick-up truck, rode across the lake, and heard many people's stories. It was a very enriching experience, one of the best mission & cultural trips I've ever been on.

It's my prayer that seeds of change have been planted in all of us that traveled together. For me, this trip reminded me of how easy it is to share part of my life story with someone--even if I never learn if/how it touched their lives. One of the most powerful moments on this trip for me, was when the director of the school for students with disabilities shared her story for why she worked so hard to open the school. She shared with us, a group of total strangers who couldn't share even the same language with her, about her daughter who was born with water on the brain. Having a dear friend who was born with the same condition, really hit home for me. But beyond that, it was how vulnerable this school director was, to share her story with us. To let us into that deep part of who she is and how she feels called. In my own life, I tend to not share those deep, more intimate parts of myself. Her story was compelling to not be so fearful to share about myself. Who knows, part of my story may be exactly what someone else needs to hear.

This trip also reminded me of the many lessons I learned in Malawi, and how quickly I forgot about all of those. I wish I didn't always require trips out of the States to remember the importance of water, food, necessities, livelihood, etc. But I'm so thankful for all the opportunities I've had to be reminded of how blessed I am.

March!

It's hard for me to believe that it's all ready March. I leave tomorrow afternoon for the PSF spring break trip to Guatemala. I've been eagerly awaiting this trip and now it's here!!! I'm a little nervous, a little overwhelmed, but really excited. There will be 11 students and four staff members on the trip and we will be gone for a week. We hope to work on completing a hospital which was destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Stan. We don't know exactly what we'll be doing, but the trip promises to be fantastic.

My sister Kayla is currently in Guatemala, about six miles from where we'll be, and from her few messages, she's having an incredible time and promises that I will have the same experience.

Here's the volcano that separates where Kayla was and where I'll be:



If you are interested, I've listed a few websites that you can look at, to learn more about where we're going and what we hope to doing. Your prayers for a safe and life changing trip would be a blessing to us all.

Hospitalito Atitlan, where we'll be working
CEDEPCA, the agency we're going with