March 6, 2013

• Home. Breathe. Home.

  I’ve been convinced for awhile now that the best of life happens when you can’t write. Just like the best ideas come in the shower or right before you fall asleep, and so can’t be marked down. It is Wednesday. My first return to my mini-sabbaths, which have been able to fit into my new schedule. Breathe.

  I read http://www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com and it always makes a bit weepy because it is life and it is beautiful and i can feel it and it is so close and yet so far. Katie is doing many things I at a level I have never reached. And I half envy her at times. The other most of the time, I know enough to never wish that on anyone…carrying so many burdens. It is a beautiful horrible life. I say a prayer for her and her people.

  From inside my apartment I can hide and finish unpacking and writing more papers and plans for the future. And my mornings are divided between Cajueiro Claro and Mussurepe, my rural Living Stones, and my afternoons are divided between Carpina and Guadalajara, much more urban areas, where I help the Athletes in Action group with basketball. Weekends, of course, at the dump. I’ve only been once so far, and felt the familiar feeling of hands crawling up my arms to hold my hands and rest on me. To just…touch.

  We are planning Easter good stuff. And for my Mom and friend to come visit next month. And regestering all these new children and birthday parties to catch up from January and February. And stories to tell like Gustavo, who had a head infection with pus coming out of it–healed. Like the boys riding up on their donkeys in the middle of our coloring circle. Like Cajueiro claro getting uniforms, and getting Edivaldo to answer just one question in front of everyone, because he is so trained into thinking he cannot do anything right in school.

  I am glad to be back. Home. I look at the groceries on the shelf and I think about what it will be like to shop with him next to me. I walk to church, and can’t wait until he will walk with me. I doodle his name, and write him the weirdest messages on skype because I am used to texting. Long distance relationships. All of the best and worst of human interaction. Breathe. It is a different focus, thinking about how things will change to where I am coming home with him. to him. Exciting and scary and one step at a time.

  I find myself lacking many words many times. And wondering how to enter life, in general, on a deeper level. This growing up stuff seems to just keep going and going. I thought I already did that. Already claimed my adulthood. Why is there still so much to learn? Thank God there is still so much to learn!

  And the children. So many, with their lives ahead and their pasts behind, and who knows what they need right now, and how do I handle the kid in the bright yellow shirt who keeps yelling at me with that smirk? And then how do I leave and do other things like paperwork and organization? And now I am a grad student. In a class overflowing with gossipy women who are nice, but make it so I can’t hear the teacher and make me wonder how the future of the world will be, if this is what it means to be at the top of the educated world. God save us all—no one knows what we are doing.

   

   

  • 1:39 pm
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