so this is the part of the story where i come out and ask

“what do you think i should do?”

Brasilian consulate says they approved and sent my visa. i called/wrote/begged for them to please send me a tracking number. if there is one. the post office sorta screwed that one up.
The post office says they do nothing until i have a tracking number.

so what happens? how long do i wait until it doesn’t appear?

do i file missing/stolen passport and visa?

If i get another passport, will the Brasilian consulate stamp it too, since they already approved it? can i just get it re-evidenced? but i don’t have all those papers again…do they need all those horrid papers again? isn’t the visa given no matter what, even if stole? isn’t it on file somewhere? i mean, i have my old passport–good until next year…could they just stamp it in that one?

should i go to Chicago and bug them some more?

do i figure God is trying to teach me patience and let the postal service find it?

ahhhhhh!

it is really hard to plan things. it hurts and i feel grumpy, because i don’t want to admit defeat. i have these mood swings. i get depressed when i just imagine my life going on  and on and no visa and no visa…i will be fine and happy and like “ok, what do we get to do today?” and then…i am not fine and all i want to do is stare at the front steps and will my visa to walk up them.

i looked through the Bible. i wanted a formula. a system to make God make my visa show up. uhhh. has it really come to that? how sad.

i rode my bike. fell in love with my old typewriter i picked up at a garage sale. slept outside with John again. cleaned the house. went swimming. went grocery shopping. as soon as i feel like “yeah, i should do that!” and go do it, i feel so much better. when i am gone from the house i get this “oh yeah, it musta come while i was gone!” feeling, and arrive at home, waiting to see mom run out the front door and tell me there it is.

sometimes i get the feeling and i kill it. because i hate the thud feeling when i see the mail, and it isn’t there. or when i see my mom’s face and she says it didn’t come. hope is hard. hope hurts. aches.

so God has suddenly given me this…vacation. rest. where i don’t have to do anything. why am i not overjoyed? i must admit, sometimes i am like “whew, this is the life.” my family is so kind and feel bad about the whole deal, so feel very ready to spoil me silly. i have been picking up a couple books where i am like “i was supposed to be reading this. right now. this is right.”

and…i know i am in God’s hand. i know this is right where i am to be. waiting. i saw God take me up to this place, and He will keep going. and…

there are no such things as coincidences.

i see that…but don’t think i really live like i believe it yet.

so it is get up in the morning, and ask God–so what’s it for today?

one friend said it was sorta like Christ’s returning. we don’t know when it will be, and must be ready. umm. i wonder if that meant bags packed. because it is a pain to try to find things in those trunks.

people are so kind: “i don’t want to see you here!” or “you are not supposed to be here!” when they see me…yep:) i am not the greatest at receiving love. chalk that one down to another lesson to learn.

I feel like i’ve got this hazy time from outta no where. i don’t know what to do with myself. it is like borrowed time, or time that isn’t mine. or time i feel guilty using. i wake up wondering if today is the day the visa shows up. or not. and if not…what a blank piece of life is in front of me.

i don’t want second goodbyes. goodbyes are hard enough for the first time. i don’t have enough emotion left for second goodbyes.

so i am am grumpy sour plum. i don’t want to be with people and say “yes, i am still here.” i don’t want them to feel sorry for me. i fall in and out of playing the blame game and feeling sorry for myself and saying what i “coulda shoulda” done. i can feel myself being completely self absorbed and it is gross and i wonder how often any of us really forget ourselves and live for others.

i wanted a good story to tell. how one hour before the flight the visa miraculously showed up. i was ready, too. and it didn’t happen. nothing happened except a bunch of desperate phone calls. and i felt let down. unfair. i had done everything right. i didn’t deserve this. you know–when you do things right, God is obliged to work it through or something. right?

i felt like yelling to God “This is my life that you are messing with.”

instead, i yelled “It is always going to be something, isn’t it?”

if it is not waiting on my visa…there is always going to be something “not right” or “not fair” or something that just doesn’t fit. every day of my life. it is part of life (that made me want heaven even more). so what about it? Does God still work for all of it? all the “somethings?” am i still waiting to see if one day God “doesn’t work” for me anymore? am i only “doing things right” so i can get what i want?

no.

everything that was true yesterday still stands.

and i’ve got this gift.

and so this evening i rode my bike. all the way past downtown. and John and i are sleeping on the trampoline. and maybe tomorrow i will go to Brasil.

i woke up dull. waiting doesn’t exhaust you, it dulls you. i finished packing. i bounded up the stairs anytime the phone rang. the front door was open for the postal man. UPS trucks plague my dreams. i drive anywhere and pass three at a time. their licence plates have “666″ on them, and i know they are mocking me. the past week, i have gone back and forth on who i should call the wrath of God upon–the Brasilian embassy, or the post office.

the lady at the embassy in Chicago knows my name. she has asked my to quit stalking her she told me–the good news–that i did get my student visa–and the bad news–that she sent it on Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday, depending on which of the three conversations we had. she either lied, gets her days of the week mixed up, or sent it out. (or my dad’s theory, that she sold it on the black market). she insists that i must now check with the post office–it is their concern, and that i must stop calling her.

the post office goofed when i purchased the express mailing and just marked on the receipt the amount the stamps were–not the tracking number of the envelope. and now they tell me they cannot do anything without the tracking number. express mail is overnight. so whichever day she sent it…it still shoulda been here by now. no one claims responsibility.

so.

i sat and waited until the last possible moment. i played with the blinds. i tangled them up. i untanged them. up. down. up. then called American Airlines. thank God for the nice AA lady. she froze up my ticket until September…meaning…i just call up when my visa comes, pay the $200 change fee, and go.

so.

i sit and wait. at any minute a UPS truck can stop in front of my house and hand me my visa and i call the nice lady and i get my ticket and go. i just don’t know which day it will be.

There are some lessons I can only learn in Brasil

There are some lessons I can only learn in the US

And God knows when is when. And how is how. And who is who.

And I trust Him.

*

I called the visa lady. She said she sent my visa two days ago. It is supposed to arrive 24 hours later. Hasn’t yet. When I heard she had sent it, I cried. I guess I am going to Brasil. I am rather emotionally unstable. I started saying goodbye to everything. Goodbye playground. Goodbye swing. Goodbye grass—ahhh! I am going to miss grass. So today I sat on the steps and waited for the ups truck. I haven’t sat on the steps and waited for something in a long, long time. No truck. Maybe tomorrow. Something inside me is bound up tight and I can’t get it unbound. Everything that happens around me happens. But it doesn’t touch the tightness inside me.

*

“Remember: you belong to God from eternity to eternity. You were loved by God before you were born; you will be loved by God long after you die. your human lifetime—long or short—is only a part of your total life in God. The length of time doesn’t matter. Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say to God: “I love you, too.” –Henri Nouwen

I got to speak about Brasil a couple places. Once for a whole 45 minutes. I just like to talk about it. Why? It’s just the little corner that it is mine. And I love it. And when you love something, you want to talk about it. It isn’t all the poor children in the world. It is my 147 children in Paudalho. It isn’t third world countries. It is my northeast Brasil. But what makes me qualified to speak?

After I spoke once, I had someone come up to me and say “Your life sounds so amazing!” there was a touch of something in their eyes to where I felt like they were looking at a movie star. Or a hero. But they were just looking at me. It made me want to be all I could be. To be superwoman and come back in a year and a half with amazing stories and…

At the same time I felt like there was something very wrong there. Something deceptive. I talked about a lot of things, but really, they only heard the good stuff. They didn’t know about the junk. The ugly stuff. The failures. The sins. But I do. And to see that look in their eyes…made me want to set it right. To say “You just got one part of the whole story, and if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t look at me like that…I just hope you would look at me as a friend, a comrade, and someone on the same journey as you.”

I have a home church. It is official. I belong at Horizon Central. They have reached out to me and called me a part of them. Even more than that, they say they are proud that they are part of me. They are going to put my picture on the wall with the other missionaries. They are going to send me off this Sunday. I will be sent. I will have a place to come back to. When that time comes.

Sometimes…I don’t like that. Now it is going to be harder to leave. For every person I get close to it is another person I won’t see, someone who’s life I won’t be a part of. It is someone else to say goodbye to. Part of me wants to sneak in and out and keep it simple and easy. But I can’t live like that.

When I see a plane in the sky, it hurts. Does it hurt because I want to go back so much or because I want to stay?

“Ministry is the fruit of finding your gifts and offering what you have. If you are living in communion with God, if you know you are the beloved, and if you make yourself available for service, you cannot do other than minister. Ministry is the overflow of your love for God and others. Ministry is when two people toast their glasses of wine and something splashes over.” –Henri Nouwen

I should print a retraction. Or something. I love that feeling I have when I realize I have spoken millions of words without knowing what I was saying and what it meant. I just assume that the words I say mean the same to everyone else. But no. like “Emergent” and “Emerging.” And…I read a couple of books, felt like I knew the world, and then made my conclusions. Some wrong ones too. even in making a retraction…I am not knowledgable enough to do it well. This bothers me. It bothers me that I don’t know. And that I won’t have time to find out.

Anyways. I read some good books and God is doing a lot of good things in many people. That is what He does. But I cannot say all that good stuff is “emerging” or the “Emergent church.” What is being understood to the general public of these terms is not all good. Not all right. Some heretical doctrine. So in my newsletter when said something about the emerging church…yeah…take that as someone who doesn’t know the whole story.

How sad. To see a lot of really good ideas and actions…where they have cut off their legs, their foundation. I wish it wasn’t so. It makes my life so much easier to just think everyone is fine. That they are going to be okay. That nothing needs to be done or said and it will straighten itself out in the end. But not everything is like that. Sometimes…confrontation. Standing up.

That scares me. But it makes me feel good too. feel good to know I stand for something. Something worth fighting for.

Christian doctrine vs. Christian tradition

Doctrine is not going to change. It is us trying to wrap our minds around God, who He is and knowledge of Him. and God does not change. Truth does not change. Tradition is how people have tried to experience God through the ages. Some good stuff, some bad stuff. Some really bad stuff. Screwy. But in tradition, we forget and try to make it doctrine. You can only reach God this way. Experience Him this way. We make it an “us” vs. “them” and see who will win. And where is God? When it involves doctrine, there is no change, no compromise. With tradition…we need to love. To listen. Understand.

*

I got to work in the coffee shop. Found out that I cannot handle more than one cup of coffee a night. I learned how to make thai coffee. Lots of sugar. I met lots of really great people.

blips from cornerstone:

Incarnation:

·         Know culture

·         Be in culture—it is hard to be prejudice against someone you really know

·         Be culture—set the tone

I have found my job. Story collecting. Find out people’s stories.

The prayer of Oscar Romero:

“…we plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well…”

amazing. my week was amazing. perfect. what i needed. more than what i wanted.

and there are just good people in the world.

and you reach out and grab them and don’t let them go. because sometimes they are few and far between.

and…

still no visa.

sitting on a hill with a candle and 5 thousand other people
freezing blanket whipped around me
not blinking
just thinking
and the music takes you somewhere

4th of July. and i have this conversation:
“11
days until i leave, God. and i don’t know if it is going to happen. am
not emotionally prepared. because don’t KNOW anything yet. but it
doesn’t matter if i am in Brasil or the US–i am with you. and this
life is so short, i am practicing eternity now.”

5th of July. and i have this conversation:
“10
days until i leave, God. and i don’t know if it is going to happen. am
not emotionally prepared. because don’t KNOW anything yet. but it
doesn’t matter if i am in Brasil or the US–i am with you. and this
life is so short, i am practicing eternity now.”

6th of July. and i have this conversation:
“9
days until i leave, God. and i don’t know if it is going to happen. am
not emotionally prepared. because don’t KNOW anything yet. but it
doesn’t matter if i am in Brasil or the US–i am with you. and this
life is so short, i am practicing eternity now.”

7th of July. and i have this conversation:
“8
days until i leave, God. and i don’t know if it is going to happen. am
not emotionally prepared. because don’t KNOW anything yet. but it
doesn’t matter if i am in Brasil or the US–i am with you. and this
life is so short, i am practicing eternity now.”

one week now. more conversations.