Being where you've been placed
She squeezed my shoulders and said with a hug, "God has placed you here". I smiled and nodded, but I didn't register what she had said till the next day, as I held my head in my hands and felt my insides lurch forward like they do when I long for something. It's a hard truth to take in, both comforting and insulting at the same time: that God placed me here. It comforts because I can trust Him, it insults because it's not where I thought I wanted to be.
I balance-walked on the curb with my bulky hiking boots, watching the sun rise over the tops of trees and houses, nothing crazy splendid, no splashing colors of orange and impeccably fluffy clouds: just a yellow glowing ball of illuminance that allows life to keep on going on, rising to do its job in a small city in New York. "I'm trying," I said to myself, "I'm trying to be content here and enjoy this sunrise." I immediately blocked all flowing memories of Caribbean sunrises that greeted me ninety-eight percent of the time; one-percent of the time it was cloudy and the other percent of the time I had actually slept in till seven-thirty.
Not much time later, I'm walking down the street towards my job; there's a lady seated on a bench, smoking and looking at me in a way that, to me at least, suggested that she might want to be greeted. So as I passed I said, "Hello" and she just kept on looking at me. As I walked on, I made a face to myself like, "Well, I guess she didn't want to be greeted after all" and then remembered the time that I learned to greet people in La Republica. I had always been so conserved and cautious as we went on walks. I'm not sure why, but I would simply look straight ahead and pass by the people that would sit outside, not particularly doing anything but neither not doing nothing.
One day I was asked why I didn't greet the people. Why I didn't respond when they said "HOLA, COMO ESTÁS?" [because it's usually a shouted greeting] and I said..."I don't know." It was then explained to me how in that culture it's practically mandatory to greet someone, and if you don't they will say, "What's up with you??" From that point on I made sure to greet and respond to everyone. The surprising occurrence was that suddenly I no longer felt like an American set apart and observed by them, but felt considered as a friend, walking through the streets and including them in the meandering journey, while they also included me in their afternoon roadside-sitting.
New York is different. In New York, when you greet someone they'll say, "What's up with you??"
I guess I don't really know.
The other week I purchased my first pair of scrubs. They're the color of garnet, like the kind you find on tree leaves in Autumn. My Mom preps me for the bad and the bad of nursing school [occasionally she'll mention the good, but good comes and goes and you needn't be prepared for it]. Each step of the way I know I'm in the right place. I know I am where I need to be. Yet how can I carry such a paradox within me? Knowing with certainty and yet not accepting it. Or maybe it's just momentary eclipses of certainty rather than a symbiotically dwelling reality of knowing I'm placed here and feeling like an abandoned hitchhiker with no map.
One day in La Republica I was playing basketball on la cancha when Rhita's voice called me over to the gate.
"Help me," she said.
"What's wrong?" I asked, and she said she had a scratch on her back. I took her aside and lifted up the white dress she was wearing, revealing a bloody, two-inch abrasion [but thankfully not too deep]. Grabbing my first-aid kit, I cleaned it off and bandaged it, along with a few more scratches she had gotten on her arms and legs.
Things such as that happened nearly everyday, especially during recess. Only the Lord knows how many bandaids were put on and how much anti-biotic cream was applied. Kristen always did say that my favorite part of the day would be when a child got hurt. I would laugh, saying, "I suppose that's one way of putting it, but I like to think of it more as my favorite part of the day being that I can take care of a child that's hurt."
Hurt comes in a lot of ways, and my perspective in December was drastically different from what it is now in August. I'm beginning to recognize the gamut of pain and wounding that can go on and that can be carried within an individual. Life is a rather broken place to be. Yet just as I have learned this about pain, I have learned exponentially more about healing.
"The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself," said someone in a book I read somewhere, and for some reason though the name and page number never did stick with me, that phrase always has.
It has because it inspires hope. It inspires awe. Because God created the body with mechanisms for healing. Mechanisms that get clogged up or mismanaged, but that usually only need a little boost of encouragement to get going again. This phrase has also intrigued me because it makes me ponder, if the body has this ability, might also the heart?
So I'm doing some research, playing detective to see what clues and data I might come upon, because I know that when Jesus healed, He healed whole. When Jesus touched leprosy, He touched people, who are so much more than just physical pain. I know that Jesus was betrayed and suffered incredible anguish in His heart, yet the beauty in it all was so manifest to Him, the purpose so clear, that He accepted it with "Thy will be done." I also know that He knew there was healing to come, and that through His suffering there is healing to extend to others.
I want to know this, because the next time someone says, "Help me," they're wound might not be a two-inch gash on their back, but a two-inch gash on their soul. Whether I feel I'm placed by God or whether I feel I'm a little more than lost, maybe even discontent, I will be prepared to do what Christ has equipped me to do, regardless of location and regardless of whether or not they respond.
I balance-walked on the curb with my bulky hiking boots, watching the sun rise over the tops of trees and houses, nothing crazy splendid, no splashing colors of orange and impeccably fluffy clouds: just a yellow glowing ball of illuminance that allows life to keep on going on, rising to do its job in a small city in New York. "I'm trying," I said to myself, "I'm trying to be content here and enjoy this sunrise." I immediately blocked all flowing memories of Caribbean sunrises that greeted me ninety-eight percent of the time; one-percent of the time it was cloudy and the other percent of the time I had actually slept in till seven-thirty.
Not much time later, I'm walking down the street towards my job; there's a lady seated on a bench, smoking and looking at me in a way that, to me at least, suggested that she might want to be greeted. So as I passed I said, "Hello" and she just kept on looking at me. As I walked on, I made a face to myself like, "Well, I guess she didn't want to be greeted after all" and then remembered the time that I learned to greet people in La Republica. I had always been so conserved and cautious as we went on walks. I'm not sure why, but I would simply look straight ahead and pass by the people that would sit outside, not particularly doing anything but neither not doing nothing.
One day I was asked why I didn't greet the people. Why I didn't respond when they said "HOLA, COMO ESTÁS?" [because it's usually a shouted greeting] and I said..."I don't know." It was then explained to me how in that culture it's practically mandatory to greet someone, and if you don't they will say, "What's up with you??" From that point on I made sure to greet and respond to everyone. The surprising occurrence was that suddenly I no longer felt like an American set apart and observed by them, but felt considered as a friend, walking through the streets and including them in the meandering journey, while they also included me in their afternoon roadside-sitting.
New York is different. In New York, when you greet someone they'll say, "What's up with you??"
I guess I don't really know.
The other week I purchased my first pair of scrubs. They're the color of garnet, like the kind you find on tree leaves in Autumn. My Mom preps me for the bad and the bad of nursing school [occasionally she'll mention the good, but good comes and goes and you needn't be prepared for it]. Each step of the way I know I'm in the right place. I know I am where I need to be. Yet how can I carry such a paradox within me? Knowing with certainty and yet not accepting it. Or maybe it's just momentary eclipses of certainty rather than a symbiotically dwelling reality of knowing I'm placed here and feeling like an abandoned hitchhiker with no map.
One day in La Republica I was playing basketball on la cancha when Rhita's voice called me over to the gate.
"Help me," she said.
"What's wrong?" I asked, and she said she had a scratch on her back. I took her aside and lifted up the white dress she was wearing, revealing a bloody, two-inch abrasion [but thankfully not too deep]. Grabbing my first-aid kit, I cleaned it off and bandaged it, along with a few more scratches she had gotten on her arms and legs.
Things such as that happened nearly everyday, especially during recess. Only the Lord knows how many bandaids were put on and how much anti-biotic cream was applied. Kristen always did say that my favorite part of the day would be when a child got hurt. I would laugh, saying, "I suppose that's one way of putting it, but I like to think of it more as my favorite part of the day being that I can take care of a child that's hurt."
Hurt comes in a lot of ways, and my perspective in December was drastically different from what it is now in August. I'm beginning to recognize the gamut of pain and wounding that can go on and that can be carried within an individual. Life is a rather broken place to be. Yet just as I have learned this about pain, I have learned exponentially more about healing.
"The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself," said someone in a book I read somewhere, and for some reason though the name and page number never did stick with me, that phrase always has.
It has because it inspires hope. It inspires awe. Because God created the body with mechanisms for healing. Mechanisms that get clogged up or mismanaged, but that usually only need a little boost of encouragement to get going again. This phrase has also intrigued me because it makes me ponder, if the body has this ability, might also the heart?
So I'm doing some research, playing detective to see what clues and data I might come upon, because I know that when Jesus healed, He healed whole. When Jesus touched leprosy, He touched people, who are so much more than just physical pain. I know that Jesus was betrayed and suffered incredible anguish in His heart, yet the beauty in it all was so manifest to Him, the purpose so clear, that He accepted it with "Thy will be done." I also know that He knew there was healing to come, and that through His suffering there is healing to extend to others.
I want to know this, because the next time someone says, "Help me," they're wound might not be a two-inch gash on their back, but a two-inch gash on their soul. Whether I feel I'm placed by God or whether I feel I'm a little more than lost, maybe even discontent, I will be prepared to do what Christ has equipped me to do, regardless of location and regardless of whether or not they respond.
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