the children and the stars: Itaugua.

It has been quite a while since I last wrote. Sorry! Things have been very busy here, and an hour and a half of typing at the end of every day has been about the last thing on my list. (: But here I am, sick and on bed rest, and so I have literally nothing else to do. I already cleaned my room and organized everything I call mine, and started a load of laundry. Then I made coffee and found out when the futbol game is tonight (Olimpia is playing for the Copa!) and cleaned up my little downstairs bathroom. The doctor (who I saw yesterday, by myself!) gave me antibiotics so that this recurring cough doesn't turn into walking pneumonia, as well as cough syrup with Codeine. So I took that last night and didn't wake up until 10:30 this morning. Which, by the way, was well after Po had been off to the airport. So I am on my own here, now, and my room is clean, and I have nothing left but to tell you all about the things that have been happening.

This is the post I started when I was in Itaugua:

(By the by: on our way to trying to get to Itaugua, I stepped out of a moving bus, backwards, while carrying two pieces of luggage, in the middle of the street. Bus drivers seriously stop for nothing. I heard my ankle crack and I landed on my butt on the road, amid oncoming traffic which graciously waited until I could get up and hobble back across the street. I am pretty sure my ankle was only twisted because I walked on it until it got better, but it's still a little bruised and very easily pained, two weeks later.)

Today I am in Itaugua. Itaugua is outside of Asuncion, and Po and I got here by bus. I just woke up, and it’s lovely here. I feel like I’m on vacation from the city! There’s grass everywhere and a huge soccer field in front of my house and three houses full of real orphans and house parents and messy dinners and terere. There is only one road, and all our houses are along one side, while the administration building, soccer field, volleyball court, and multi-purpose house are on the other. Further down the road there is a school house for the orphans as well as children from the community, but they’re on winter break right now.

My camera is broken. I have been praying fervently that it will start working again. When I turn it on, it makes a terrific grinding noise and the lens readjusts three times, and then the display screen turns black and says, “lens error: restart camera.” But when you restart it, the lens does the same thing. Over, and over, and over. So…the lens won’t shut. Last time it did this was right before my camera warranty was up, so they fixed it for free. But that was three-ish years ago. So I am not holding onto much for it. It is a crying shame (yes, a crying one) because I really really want to take pictures of this place! (another side note: I broke it trying to take a picture of an armed bank guard. Secretly. Out of a bus window. He would never have seen me, I know it. Go figure.)

Another awesome thing is that you can actually see the stars from here! Let me tell you something. I am not a city person. It’s amazing that I am having as good of a time in Asuncion as I am, because I (dare I say it?) hate cities. I greatly and fervently dislike them. There are a great many reasons why, but I will not dwell on them because I have to go back there. (: But! I can tell you what I love about not cities! I love the smell of fresh-cut grass and I love dirt paths and big fields. I love tall trees covering up parts of the sky, and I love farms. I love kids being able to play outside barefoot in the yard together, and I love the night sounds of forests and jungles. The crickets chirp and little animals rustle and the birds coo as their babies fall asleep. The wind is always moving something, and the night air holds everything gently. And it’s so dark at night! I could see myriads of stars I’d never met before, and my eyes kept trying to make something familiar out of them, but if I was being honest, I would tell you it was a completely different sky. It was like meeting a brand new friend that I’d been waiting to meet and heard very good things about. Only I didn’t have very much time to talk to my new friend, the night sky of the southern hemisphere, because there were lots of children who desperately needed to be tickled and hugged.

I think my favorite thing here is how much everyone likes each other. It’s like a huge happy family, of eight parents and thirty seven children, and they all live together and play together and go to school together and are happy! I think there’s a community here at Hogar Ganar (the name of the orphanage) that I had not thus far anywhere. I love it. I want to stay here forever. (:

The children are beautiful and young and tricky, and there is a very slow Hope that kind of falls off of them onto everyone else. They love to joke. Po and I spent dinner with the third house of children on Thursday night. The first night, Wednesday night, we had dinner with the first house, and they had already eaten when we arrived, because all the kids were hungry early. The second day, Thursday, we had lunch with the second house, but none of the kids were hungry when we arrived, and we were taking a break from a job we had to get back to, so we ate alone there too. So for this third house, on Thursday night, we arrived at about 7:30 pm, after we had spent an hour or so supervising volleyball, motorcycles zipping around, babies climbing all over the place, translating TobyMac songs for one of the girls, and eating cake from a random man who showed up in a van and wanted to give us all cake! When we walked in the door, there were kids sitting in front of the TV watching some kind of cartoon in Spanish. They brought our dinner out immediately, but I asked if we couldn’t wait and eat with them. They said that all the children had to take showers before they could all sit down and eat, and it would be an hour wait. I didn’t care. (: So we watched cartoons with them until everyone was sparkly clean, at which point two rushed out the back door to go get more chairs and the rest rushed to the table. We had The Best Hamburgers Of All Time. I am serious. First of all, the sandwich bread was huge. Second, let me tell you the contents, from the bottom up. On the very bottom was the bottom half of the sandwich bread, then a slice of ham lunchmeat, then the burger, then a fried egg, then tomatoes and lettuce, and then mayonnaise and ketchup. I couldn’t even keep the juice from falling out of the bottom of it. It was SO GOOD.

After dinner, the boys got out a bunch of mini playing cards from the states that someone had given them. They had this little broken thing that looked like a calculator, but they’d removed the screen and could slip things into where the screen was so that it looked like their makeshift “phone” had pictures on its screen… So of course, all of the pictures from the “old maid” game were used to play like the boys were taking pictures of Po and I, and the old maids or doctors were our pictures. Then there were the go-fish cards, with sharks and seahorses and underwater monsters. We seriously played “tell the Americans they look like sea creatures” for almost an hour. (: Then one of the older girls tried to convince me that her tonal gibberish was Chinese, in which she was fluent. Lots of laughter surrounded that one.

We finally had to go home because we were both so tired, but we came back the next morning before we left to take a picture with the family.

I didn’t stay there very long, but I fell in love a little. Only a little. It was like a vacation for my little heart, which was very tired and not resting well. I didn’t do much and there was no reason for me to be there except to see the ministry and to love on the children. I did it, and it was wonderful. And I saw some stars in the midst of the whole thing.

i feel bad for the Pharisees. [but this is War]

Usually, I'm the type that looks down on the disciples for all their problems. I'm not even going to pretend like I'm the only one that's thought it: "How could the Disciples fail to understand every single thing that Jesus said? I would never have denied Jesus three times. I would have known what He meant about temptation being sneaky and sin knocking at the door, and I would have given that girl by the campfire a firm stare and declared loudly that I was indeed a follower of the Son of God. Maybe Jesus just picked the dense ones on purpose or something." 
I just re-read that paragraph and I feel all squirmy inside, like I said something I knew wasn't true and now I can't take it back. But that's really how I used to feel about the Disciples. I used to wish that I could have been there so that Jesus would have had at least one disciple in scripture that listened to Him and understood Him and got things right the first time. Hah! That's a joke. Looking at my life, at any human life, should wither the pride in that italicized paragraph. 
But today I was reading in Matthew, and something very strange happened in me when I read the "Seven Woes to the Scribes and Pharisees" in Chapter 23. Go read it. 
I felt so bad for them. In me, somewhere, there was something that identified with a proud and ancient people, asking of others what had been asked of them, trying to be a little better than the last guy, propagating the same teaching that had been taught to them, staunch in ideologies but a little weary of heart. I connected with a people who had been taught the teachings of well-respected men since their childhood, and knew how to say the right answers and look like the best kind of person and be just exactly who they were supposed to be in church. I knew what it was to be surprised by a person who didn't make sense, claiming ludicrous things that went against every single idea I had been taught, and to react with disdain and judgment. I cringed when I remembered all of the people that I had written off because they didn't line up with my theology or because they went about their lives in a completely different manner than I did, or just because they didn't have any social skills. Come on!
When these men stood up to preach in the synagogue, they didn't read the scriptures! They read the commentaries of whichever scribe or pharisee was the most to be respected, and they cited sources back through the generations for every sentence they spoke. Timidity reigned. When Jesus stood up to talk, He blew their minds. He spoke with authority and He said His own words and He interpreted scripture in a way that destroyed the paradigms that built their daily lives. And all of the people, sensing something they had never sensed before, flocked to Him. They couldn't get enough of authority and love and challenges to their daily routine and dead religion.
How am I to be surprised that when a not-very-attractive man came from a disreputable community with a raggedy band of extremist followers (Peter and his sword didn't do anything in half-measures) and went to tell all of the preachers and theologians that they were wrong and dirty and sons of Satan, they wanted to kill Him? I would too! If someone knocked over everything I'd pridefully stood for my entire life, toppling my respect in the community and challenging every single thing that I had been able to convince my people of, I would react with hatred. Indignation. Disbelief. I wouldn't even entertain the thought that He might, just might, be telling the truth. 
And even if there was something in Him that drew me, even if I knew, deep down, that there was more and that maybe He had it... How many times have I felt that really, for real, in this life, and ignored it? How many times have a known that tug at my heart and decided it was silly and emotional and that maybe right now wasn't the time to risk looking crazy?

For a very long time in my life, I have been enchanted by the idea of being a Marine. I don't tell people that, and I don't hardly ever bring it up. But last year, two girls I grew up with, one of whom to which I am kind-of-not-quite related, joined. They signed their lives over and disappeared to Bootcamp and then came back for a little while with harder faces and slower smiles and they stood up very straight. Their bodies were strong and their minds were good at keeping a cap on rebellion and there were so many stories they'd lived without us that it was like there wasn't a way to tell them and they'd made kind of a wall. 

In a very real sense, they had been set apart.

All the rest of us were on the civilian side and they weren't anymore, but there was a strange honor that floated around them. Something in the air that said they had been through the fire and lived, that they'd made the commitment and they weren't backing out, that they had lived through unspeakable things and would live through more, and that if they were afraid, it wasn't worth showing. Maybe I'm romanticizing what they've done and the things they've been through, but I've never been this close to the transformation before.
But the more and more I read of scripture, Matthew especially, the more I see that I don't think I wanted to see. In my sometimes-complacent and mostly comfortable life, I would have been content with not being run over by this new, undeniable truth. There is a call that is not optional. And it is not partial. The things that He tells us to do are absolute. Forgive. Give to the poor. 
We cannot paint watercolors over it and call it a goal and talk about how the Holy Spirit helps us but we'll never really get there, so just remember that Jesus forgives you and that way we can all keep not giving our all. I am being a little bit facetious, but that is how it comes out sounding most of the time. And I know this is not a popular theme. Me a month ago would have told me today to stop being legalistic. 
I am not saying that God doesn't love or forgive. That would be entirely untrue. I am saying that we are in an Army. We are enlisted. We are soldiers in training, and if we don't do the exercises assigned to us, we will never have bodies or minds that are prepared to fight.
I don't think we can ever understand the value of our freedom and our inheritance as sons until we understand the weight of the commands that have been given us. 
________________________________________________________________________

P.S.: I don't mean to sound harsh and angry. I am just very, very convicted. I have never seen this before in my readings of scripture. It was like it was jumping out of the words at me. I know that's crazy I've-been-a-christian-too-long talk to some of you, but the Lord reveals new things in His time. I was told by someone once to only live in the revelation that God had given me. I didn't like the advice because I always wanted to try to make myself better, and to learn new things all the time, but I have realized that they were right. When I try to live according to revelation that the Lord has given to someone else, but not to me, I end up hurt and confused and feeling legalistic and lazy at the same time. It's so, so easy for Satan to pin all kinds of condemnation to me when I don't understand the thing I'm trying to live out. 
So. If this is not something that the Lord has revealed to you yet, let it go. I am serious. I want to say, gently, that this is what Grace is for. The Lord reveals in His time, and when it's your time to understand this thing that I have so suddenly discovered, you will understand it, and then you will be held accountable for it. 

and what about giving up things?

I miss Mozzarella Cheese. 

I miss having my household of things around me, orderly, giving structure to my world and setting boundaries for my brain. I miss being able to bring out my dishes and cook for someone, or being able to pull out my compilation of First Aid supplies and fix up any cat scratch, dangly toenail, or roadburn. I miss understanding the jokes that people make when I'm talking to them, and I miss having guyfriends. You wouldn't think that guyfriends would be such a taboo, but they really are. Every time I go to a social function, there are groups of guys talking to each other and groups of girls talking to each other. I am not good at being friends with girls. I never have been. Not even in English. And I detest small talk.

I miss the depth of the relationships that I have at home. I miss being able to walk up to my best friend at church, and, knowing almost all of her life history as it coincides with mine, ask her any easy question and thus begin a conversation that lasts two hours, through lunch, and into an Audrey Hepburn movie and a nap on the floor with tea. 

I miss touchy people who like to hold my hands and lean on me and let me put my head on their shoulders. I miss cuddling with my roommate, and I miss my prayer team. I miss ice cream with fudge ripples, and cold water.

I miss being able to text people that I already know, to make plans that I can understand, in a city I know how to get around. I miss spontaneously inviting people over to my house. I miss being a hostess and feeding all my boys fresh bread with my grandma's Raspberry Jam. I miss having my books on my shelf like sentries, every title holding a story in words and a story in memories, wrapping up in a binding each point in my life that was marked by its reading. I miss my tea kettle and the little sound it makes that only I can hear that lets me know when the water is exactly the right temperature. 

It is okay to miss those things. It is not bad to recognize a blessing and to notice its absence when it's gone. 

I've been reading a blog called Kisses from Katie, and I think I have been more challenged by her posts than by anything in my life. In one of her posts, she talks about feeding/clothing the poor and how Jesus says that those who believed in him and those who did not will be separated in the end of time. Matthew 25:41-46 says, 

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." 

I have never actually contemplated these words. I cannot escape them. I am very afraid, because I cannot ignore them, and I don't like what I think they mean. I've been trying to escape it ever since I read it, and I don't think I can any longer.  There's always this tug-of-war in me when I see someone who needs and I know I have a little extra. I think of exactly how much I have, and how much is coming soon, and my budget, and things I would like to buy, and the list of expenditures that certain amounts of my money are allotted to, and I rationalize my way out of just handing the poor man all my nickels and dimes, or ten of my cans of string beans that are in my back seat, or the loaf of bread I just bought and my jar of peanut butter. Why? Why do I think my way out of giving someone what I have? Why do I redefine "a little extra" every time there is an opportunity to be to another person what God has been to me? 

[[side story: I can't even tell you how many times I've seen someone on the side of the street and I've looked away. We have all done it. There's been a time in every single one of our lives when each of us has seen someone who had less and we chose to look away, and I will be the first to say: that is wrong. Who gave me the right to refuse to look at someone, simply on grounds that I knew they were asking for something that I didn't want to give? After all, what are they really asking for? Money would be useful, yes. Employment? Shelter? What if really every person on the corner of the street is just asking for a little dignity? What if all they want is for someone to look at them and See them? 
There's a lady from a band that did a Ted Talk, and her name's Amanda Palmer. The talk is called "The Art of Asking," and while I may not agree with her whole lifestyle, she makes a very good point. She talks about the unspoken moment of recognition and appreciation that would occur every time she would lock eyes with a donor and hand them a flower. After having watched the video three or four times and contemplating its contents, I think really what she's talking about is dignity. How dare I, even if I have nothing to give, avert my eyes and steal away the dignity of a person created in the image of God?]]

But I'm really not even talking about Dignity and Homeless people and Making Eye Contact. All of these things that I miss, they are good things. But they are not the most important. In the New Testament, there a several times that Jesus addresses the words, "Follow me," to someone. There are two commands that Jesus used most often in conjunction with that phrase, and they are used an equal number of times. The first, we hear about all the time: "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and Follow me." The second is not so common to hear: "Sell all you have and give to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Now, this is a very haunting thing to me. Because I have heard all my life about taking up our crosses and bearing them and how that means we aren't supposed to sin, or that there's a certain burden that we'll have our whole lives. 
[[Among the list of things I have heard mentioned as or thought of as crosses that some people just have to bear are: ugliness, bad marriages, obesity, poverty, illness, faulty church theology, and dead end jobs. Are you kidding me?! But that is a rant for another day.]] 

But I have never once heard a pastor preach on how Jesus said that to follow him, 

something necessary for perfection (like He said to the rich young ruler) was that we sell all we have and give to the poor. 

I said I was afraid. I am afraid because there is something in those verses that is entirely absolute. 1 John 3:17 says, "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" Now, Jesus talks an awful lot about how if we love Him, we'll do what He says. All my life, I have had this backwards. Somehow in my head, this turned into: "Do all these things so that everyone will know you love me," instead of what He meant, which was: "Fall in love with me, and watch these behaviors come out of your love." The reason I am afraid is that I really do enjoy all of the things I talked about in the beginning of this post. I enjoy fudge ripples in my ice cream and having guy friends and cuddling with my best friends and being I've-lived-here-21-years familiar with a city. I enjoy having quality kitchenware in which to cook. I like buying bulk medical supplies on sale so I can mommy people at school. I would like to own a MacBook and a really big nice camera that takes 18 megapixel pictures of adorable children. I would like to have an apartment and collect old stoneware dishes and eat organic food and buy a gym membership. I would like to spend $40 on 5 lbs of looseleaf tea online from an underground store in California. I would like to get engaged and not feel bad for spending $1,856 on a ring. I like to go thrift store shopping and get cool looking things that I don't really need but that seem trendy when I set them just right in my room. But I can't. I can't, I can't. Every time I try to go somewhere nice for dinner, every time I eat more than I need, every time I look at how little sugar Po and I have left for our tea and coffee and think of how it's almost time to get more, my heart gets very restless. 
I think somehow we have talked ourselves out of the moral wrongness of misappropriating God's funds. It's his money, isn't it? Don't we pray for him to provide? and Doesn't He? 
I want to apologize for writing this. I want to say, "Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone. Maybe it's okay for some Christians to have yachts and $500,000 houses and eight cars for their five person family. We can justify some of this, right? It's okay for me to look into buying a motorcycle when I already have a car, right? And I could justify owning an iPad, if it would help with my schoolwork. What if someone, just out of the goodness of their heart, gave me a Canon EOS 5D Mark II Camera? How far does this have to go?" 
But He said it. He said it. He said: sell all you have and give to the poor; follow me." The nomadic lifestyle that Jesus was suggesting was directly related to His being a nomad and wanting His disciples with Him, physically following Him. So maybe it's okay to live in a house.
I sound insane. Out of my mind. But something is seriously wrong here, and I can't keep putting off my decision. When it came down to crunch time, Orpah kissed Naomi goodbye, while Ruth clung to her. It's kiss-or-cling time. 

the last four days.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I spent almost entirely in Mbocayaty (I looked it up on Google Maps, and that's how they spelled it, but it could still be entirely wrong.) We spent all three days teaching biblical lessons, singing bouncy songs, and corralling children into and out of rooms, brainstorming how to make sure that each of 200 children only get one Rice Krispie treat each. It was awful. The field director's wife was almost crushed against the back door of the church because the boys that were inside with her were so uncontrollably eager to get outside. They pushed so hard to get out the door that they actually got stuck and couldn't move. 
It was ugly and scary and horrific and disappointing and sad. I saw the dirtiest, most hateful, most greedy and impatient side of every single child there. When I told them what to do, they mocked my words. They spat my words back at me and laughed in my face. They said ugly sounding things in Guarani that I couldn't understand, glancing at me sideways and then refusing to do what I'd asked. They ignored the leaders and almost destroyed every single thing we brought to play with them. 
There was a profound thanklessness that I couldn't understand, and it angered me severely that children who had so little could be ungrateful for so much.
And then I woke up a little and I realized how very, very poor I am, and how very, very thankless I have acted. And then I remembered the greatest gift in the universe, and how, so often, I forget that I haven't acted worthily of it, and it's still mine anyway...and continue to treat it poorly.
And then I remembered how home lives effect the children that come out of them, and I remembered what I was like in 7th grade, and how my youth pastor chose to love me, and how it changed me. And I remembered what I was like in 11th grade, and how my Chemistry teacher chose to love me, and how it changed me. And I remembered what I was like freshman year and how the leader of the prayer team chose to love me, and how much it changed me. 
And then I knew that there was nothing I owed anyone on this earth except the debt of love that I owe to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, payable to the meanest and rudest and dirtiest of us, payable to the ones who hurt me and disrespect me, payable to those who just seem insignificant or annoying.
And so I chose to be gentle and to be patient and to be kind. Not mine, of course, that I should boast. But I chose, and when I chose, He gave me more of what I needed, and then it just came out of me like water, like kisses, like Hope. It came out in Love, because when you Love someone, you're choosing to believe that they are capable of attaining their full potential. You're choosing to believe that they will choose what needs to be chosen, and you're choosing to act in Love on their behalf, even though they haven't made their behlaf look like it's worth much. 
That is Hope.
That is what Jesus had for us, while we were still sinners. While we were still his enemies. 
Love is Hope in action.