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To feel or not to feel
There’s more lessons from trip like this than are possible to write. I think the challenge for all of us in writing is “how do we take others there with us in our written words?”
How do we recreate the smells, the laughter, the joy, the openness from our new friends? The smell of antifreeze in our bus that’s limping along towards Antigua? The site of the yellow liquid running down the bus aisles as everyone holds their feet up!
We can’t of course, but we can give snapshots that will hopefully bless those who didn’t go, and who might go in the future.
Snapshot: A tiny girl 20 yards ahead of her brother running towards us. Coming to see our meeting with a big grin. Chris Kulkulski yelling “C’mon ninos!”. Excitement, anticipation in the way they run and smile.
Snapshot: Conversations : With Gonzalez- 55 years old, standing in front of his small home. No flooring, slatted boards, and metal roof. His hands with their deep lines from hard work… Deep sadness- he asks for Prayer for Alonzo- his 22 year old son who disappeared a week before, and they’ve not found him yet. He’s afraid he may be dead. The likelihood here is very high that that’s the case. We met him 3 days later. Still no word.
Snapshots: Clarity/Forgiveness: We find villagers who are happy that we show up at their doors. They are glad to hear this message of Jesus. For people who’ve had a confusing religion that didn’t guarantee forgiveness, and who are often times manipulated by false messages of Jesus with strings attached, this message is different. A free gift from God. Jesus Christ calls Himself the only mediator between man and God- there’s no other middle man required! Some want to learn more. Others ask us to pray for them. At least half are in tears after we pray for them.
Snapshot: Lessons in deeper joy.
Kids here who run and play, who fight a bit just like at home. They seem to have an openness we’re missing. They seem to actually see us. Perhaps they’ve not had media each day that draws them more towards themselves? They sing for the joy of it. They don’t seem to be “seeing themselves” as if they’re on American Idol when they sing. They don’t dance in a kind of self-awareness because they think of themselves performing in their mind for a tv audience. Modern culture seems to cause each of us to imagine we’re in Hollywood, performing. At times, even infiltrating our worship singing. Instead of enjoying the thing… we imagine others watching us do it. Nothing kills joy like seeing ourselves in the center of the drama instead of forgetting ourselves and looking outward and upward. Self-consciousness kills Joy, it kills Christ awareness… starting in the garden of Eden.. continuing today.
Snapshot: the phrase “ahh.. what’s the worst that could happen?”… becomes a hilarious phrase that’s used each day as we see precarious and funny choices in front of us.
Snapshot: Laughter. With the dads and moms. At ourselves. With our kids. With our friends’ kids. Laughter mixed with tears. Laughter at silliness. Laughter at broken schedules.
Snapshot: Singing until 11pm with new friends I met 12 hours before. Different language. Same chords. No sound system. Just a guitar and a common joy of singing to and about Christ. They teach me new songs. I teach them new songs.
Snapshot: the phrase “ahh.. what’s the worst that could happen?”… becomes a hilarious phrase that’s used each day as we see precarious and funny choices in front of us.
Snapshot: Broken world, broken buses, broken bodies. A bus water pump is failing and Jason Smith and Chris K. nurse it along by pouring water into the overflow that’s right by where all of us are sitting. (A logical location for hot steam to blow?)
Broken bodies: Like me, so many people on the team have had health issues for a long time. Sometimes their whole lives. Headaches, a back that never feels good, coughs and fevers, intestinal problems. The apostle Paul did too- Broken, physically exhausted and tortured. He still “pressed on”. Sometimes we hide these frailties, afraid they make us look weak. As Christ matures us, we realize he allows these things so we aren’t ruined by our successes, and a false sense of self confidence. He turns it into Christ confidence.
Snapshot: Transformations. Hearing the stories of a previously cruel husband.. now gentle, kind and serving his neighbors. Meeting a man who was previously a hitman who worked the drug trade… Changed, giving his time and money to his neighbors. Building them a place to meet to hear about Christ. He shares, quietly. Not loudly. Not with eloquence. No radio ministry, no staff, no YouTube page. He’s the closest I’ve seen to what the Apostle Paul was. He’s hoping to find enough money to finish the tin roof for his family’s house.
Snapshot: “To feel or not to feel”. There’s so much pain here, and everywhere, that the easy answer is “I’m not going to feel that… I have too much inside of me that hurts too. If I let myself feel it.. their hurt, their poverty, their pain of losing 3 of their children.. I’ll break in two”… But I don’t break in two, at least not completely, because Christ does exactly what He says He’ll do. He gives us more strength when we move towards Him and towards others. He gives spiritual “muscle” when ours fail. He .. Is.. Faithful. Always.
Snapshot: Impact: Hearing Mitch, from one of the US families who live here permanently. He nails the essence of the gospel the last night with his own story of Christ. “I’m not very strong, but I’ll use what strength I have for telling people about Christ”… “I’m not all that intelligent, but what gifts I have, I’ll use them for telling people about Jesus”. He humbly reminds us of the shortness of our lives, and the moment we stand before Christ. The reality of what Jesus did that informs every decision we make. He reminded me of how Christ pressed that very fact on me when I was 15. My thought at the time was: “If this is true… I mean really true… why would I be ashamed of Jesus? If it’s true, wouldn’t it change everything? Wouldn’t it make me want everyone to know?”
Snapshot: Working on a final verse of the song I’ve been writing for these people and others like them.
“How many songs.. have not been sung, by a young man.. under the gun.. How many poems still untold.. buried in the pages of a broken girl’s world”.
“How many portraits sit half drawn, hazy, hidden, behind a yawn, in a grocery cart world, under an overpass curled up in a trench coat warriors mind”
