I haven’t posted in a while. Most of you will let me off for having a good reason, but we all know that a key part of being in community together is sharing our lives with one another. So let’s consider this my attempt to get back on the bicycle…
It’s been a difficult few months, and, if anything, my foreign home has been both balm and solace. In the first and most obvious way, it has given me meaningful work to do. On the day my father told me that my mother had died, the only thing that kept me together, feeling like a semblance of a person, was a mighty to-d0 list. I derived great comfort from my work and my students during her illness, when I was preparing to travel for the memorials, and when I returned to Rio… I can’t really explain the blessing of hearing your students pray for you out loud.
The second way that Rio has helped in my healing is through its beauty… When mom died, I was so angry at God–it wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt so unfair–and I told Him that I just needed a little bit of space. Space from personal prayer, from meditation, and from His word–I wasn’t trying to sever ties (I continued to attend church, morning staff devotionals, and Bible study)–but I was being selfish. I wanted to wallow in my grief, and I didn’t want to listen to God or to provide God an opportunity to comfort me in anyway… And here’s what a lot of people don’t understand about God: He’s omnipotent and omnipresent and unfathomable, but He’s also completely personal. I basically told Him to back off for a bit, and He didn’t push me. He knows me. He waited patiently for my heart to be ready to reconcile, and He reminded me daily through the beauty of this world of His faithfulness–a blue sky, a bandana-eyed bird, the fragrance of flowers, magenta dragonflies. Every bit of it feeling like a gift to me. To continue the relationship metaphor, He wasn’t calling me incessantly and cluttering my voice mail, but He was leaving love notes all over my life and my days, all saying “Come to me. When you’re ready, come to me, and I will give you rest.” God is so good.
Tomorrow is Easter–my favorite holiday of the year. And while I won’t be having my mother’s ham, I will be sharing the day with good friends in good fellowship. All the time remembering that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and though we needed Him, we did not receive Him. And yet at the hour of our greatest betrayal, our most most prodigious failure, God taught us our truest lesson–His grace is sufficient. Hallelujah!
So have a happy Easter! Enjoy your friends and your families, and, if you’re very, very lucky, your honey-ed ham. And I will try to renew my habit of posting on here.
Love, Amy
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” John 11: 32 – 36
And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, nd I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not not that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?…”
Part II–The Blog Continues
The above blog was written last Saturday morning, but, when I attempted to post it, I discovered that my computer’s internet had cut out, a frequent inconvenience for me here in Brazil… I can’t begin to try to express to you how upset I was. There were true and violent tears. And, here today, I discover that Word Press saved a draft without my knowledge–a blessing, clearly, but I think maybe a lesson too. A lesson about living with inconvenience, no matter how upsetting or frustrating it may seem in the moment.
And so the question now is whether or not I can transfer that lesson to a current situation of inconvenience, one involving a package FedExed over a month ago, held hostage by the Brazilian government, and now (I discovered today) unceremoniously on it’s way back to the United States… Making it unlikely that I will receive it until the middle of next month. Within the package is not only my Vonage phone package–the one that is supposed to make it easy for me to stay in touch with my friends and family in the States–but also the Vonage phone package of one of my work colleagues. ARGH!
Tonight, I am headed to a fundraiser for 5 teenagers who have been selected by a group of organizations (lead and organized by the house church that I attend) for scholarships for a selective summer art program at Cal Arts (a prestigious art school in California). They will go in July after months of hard work and preparation. It has been a privilege to watch the project since its inception, and I look forward to the seeing how this opportunity with impact the lives of these kids and their families. More information about this project–Art & Social Transformation–is available at the Project Brazil (http://projectbrazil.com/).
And, I actually need to run out the door now so as not to be late.
Much love & prayers– Amy