I Can Move Forward

We need not be passively resigned to the problems of life.  

We need not give up and stop fighting for what we believe in; 

there is always hope, and as long as there is hope, 

we can move forward.

-Christine Caine Undaunted

I'm sitting in my bed in my usual tshirt and nike shorts and was on my way to pulling up Netflix for the night when my internet went out. It's gone out twice before, once for a whole day and once for a short time, but who knows how long it would be this time.  I looked across my bed at my desk full of homework assignments that I should start but justifiably can't because of the loss of internet connection.  I see two unfinished books but I really don't want to read right now: The Green Mile and Undaunted.   I try to scan my brain for more options, something that takes less effort.  Nothing.  It's only 8pm and it's too early to sleep.  Against my own will, my hands grab for a book, Undaunted,  as I take a sigh of grief because I really just don't want to read.
If you read my last post, I talked about wanting to pick up books I've put down recently and finishing prayers.  This isn't one of those nights that I felt in an optimistic cheerful mood.  But I relented. There was nothing else to keep me occupied and I felt a strange yearning that I needed to just do it.  I opened the page where I had left off and read the title.  "God is not unfair, silent, or hidden."
Well this should be good.  Because recently God has most certainly been unfair. He has been silent. And he has been hidden.
Just days ago, I wrote into my notebook, "God, where are you?" It's a question i've had in the back of my mind for the past month and half now.  Literally that's all I wrote. "March 18th, 2015 'God, where are you?'"  At home, I have community. I have quiet times, I have Jesus-loving friends, I have people that uphold me, I have amazing roommates, I love my church, I love the way that I get to live and know the presence of God.  Why, here in the most beautiful place i've ever been, am I questioning him?  Never before have I felt so intensely like screaming, crying, yelling, punching, and balling my fists up so tight at the same time that I explode.  I can't put into words the anger i've had and the frustration, reading Job and Lamentations. God where are you? Where did you go? Why did you leave me?
I've told my friends that this just isn't me any more.
"So I say, 'i'm finished. God is gone, my splendor is gone, and all that I had hoped from the Lord.'" Lamentations 3.
This is the most aggravating, irritating, frustrating, and exasperating, experience i've ever been through.  I've never felt so empty and alone and confused.  I've been angry at the Lord.  So angry that I thought "if I'm gonna pray, I sure am gonna give him a piece of my mind." And that's what I did.  And I felt pain and hurt and sorrow pierce me with every word that I wrote.
I had a friend ask me, how is your spiritual life?
I started thinking, and I said, "you know, God is too big to me here. Too omnicient. He was so present in everything at first that I just don't seem him anymore. I use to see him in the colors and the scenery on my way to school.  I saw him in the small things, the little details.  I see those everyday now and I don't see Him."  Going back to one of my first posts, I remember how awestruck I was at his splendor, the way he constructed this country and every detail of the people in it.  But once I saw it, I wanted more, and those first few amazements eventually became the normal everyday thing.  Is it possible that God is so obvious that it blinds you from seeing Him?  I've been furious, bitter with God.  "Come back" I would beg.  "Just explain to me what you're doing and I will follow but I don't understand and I need something to hold on to. I just want to understand."

Page 91 of my book:

"Jobs friends spoke up and offered him the worlds wisdom, 

which helped him not at all.  

Finally God spoke- but he didn't answer. Instead, 

he merely said that he was God, all-powerful and all-knowing,

 and that Job had no reason or right to question Him. 

And never, in the entire story, did God find it necessary to explain himself." 

That's just it.  As a finite being, I want answers.  I want realness and genuinity and a concrete something to hold onto.  But God is infinite.  He doesn't respond in the ways that we're accustomed to because he's bigger and greater than that.  I went from a personal God in my own creation to a God that was way out of my control and too big to comprehend. I can praise God that his ways are not my ways.  It wasn't God that abandoned me.  It was me that needed to return to his truth and not my own.  I am not truth. What I tell myself is not truth.  It was me that stopped listening.  It was me that set our relationship down. And it was Him who took me to the place of seeing again.  Having a relationship with the Lord for years now, I never thought it would be possible for me to go into a new place and doubt his goodness and everything i've been taught over the years.  I knew I could do it. I knew that I could withstand trial and testing. I knew that I could stand firm in the Lord no matter what came my way.  Wow did God reveal to me how much of His strength that I need to rely on. I am so weak. And I still know nothing.

"The weight of my grief and the burden of feeling alone spilled out; peace and confidence in the Lord's love and care poured in.  The words became my sacrifice, an offering to the Lord, who had already walked the road of suffering before me and now returned to meet me on it.  I was in communion with him, knowing he wanted to bless me with ‘beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair’ (Isaiah 61:3). A spiritual exchange took place: I magnified the Lord instead of my disappointment. I began to remember his mercies more than my hurt.” - Christine Caine Undaunted

It's been a long two month journey of questions and confusion, hurt and tears,  but so much growth and conversation and unspoken answers. I'm waking up now with a new view. I won't give up or stop fighting for the very thing my soul loves and needs. I have hope and therefore, I can move forward. 

Social Exclusion/Nicaragua Assignment

Social Exclusion & Nicaragua Assignment 

Social exclusion- a social disadvantage in society which is usually seen from a view of education, politics, and/or economics, and is most commonly expressed in the form of denying access to various rights, opportunities, and resources, to certain groups which thence denies them access to social integration with the other group. Examples of this can be sampled in housing, employment, healthcare, civic engagement, etc.

For me, as a 20 year old white American girl, I see the most prevalent form of social exclusion in my peers in college as well as at a larger scope in poverty in general.  Growing up, through movies and television, i've learned how to act "cool", how to dress "cool", and how the food chain in school works.  The poor and ugly kids get picked on, and the wealthier pretty kids are self-dubbed popular.  That's just how it is.  You either sink or you swim.  And ever since that lesson, i've been kicking away building up my strength for treading skills.  You can let your head go under water when you're with your family or when you make those few and special friends that are close enough to see your weird, silly, ugly and poor side let loose, but when you're in that public swimming pool you better kick as long as your legs will take you. Maybe that's exaggerating, but it's the truth! I've always learned to keep my head held high and not to let others see you fall- it's what gets you past the bullies on the play ground.  As i'm growing into a much older version of that girl with those views, i'm experiencing the importance of genuinity and vulnerability with people.  Those two things have gotten me much farther than self-righteousness and confidence ever have.  Even as someone who has amazing parents with awesome friends and wonderful opportunities, I still have the confidence of a lima bean, so i've learned to use other strengths along the way.

Any-who, even into the beginning of adulthood, in a school no longer full of 7 and 8 year-olds, but of 20 something year olds, you see and experience social exclusion.  It's much less than before because luckily now people have grown up enough to know that they don't have to put others in their places so bluntly, (hopefully).  I see this in the lunch room at school, you have greek life that takes up the portion of the cafeteria that looks out to the lobby, and if you walk around you can notice the students who eat by themselves, with headphones in and eyes down on their work.  It's not that they are better or worse off than someone else, but they are socially excluded from the greek lunch spot.  Now don't get me wrong, i'm in a sorority and i know that no one would tell them to move, no one would pick up their tray like a stereotypical jock and make them feel less of a person, but there would be an unspoken confusion and a little uncomfortableness if they were to sit down at the end of a different social groups table.

Social exclusion comes in many ways, shapes, and forms.  I think as humans we are in constant competition to create this subconsciously, because a superficial form of ourselves assures us that it feels good to be better or to have more than someone else, and to exclude them from a capability that we've "earned".  And how do we measure who should be included and excluded? In the way that we measure poverty for ourselves.
At first glance, we see poverty as a lack of monetary means, which henceforth creates a minute amount of educational resources, smaller housing opportunities, cheaper clothing brands, etc. But as I learned in Nicaragua this past weekend, money isn't always the answer, which can sometimes be counterintuitive to our United States way of thinking.

As we were riding in our seats to a different city of Nicaragua, I turned to our bus guide and I asked him whether Nicaragua was "less-off" than Costa Rica as a country. I was careful to use my words in the least non-respectful way as possible. He turned to me and said, "Oh no, Nicaragua isn't poor at all! We have the richest soil compared with all of the other Latin American countries.  Our biodiversity..." And I don't remember much else of what he said because my mind stopped at that point to question whether he heard me right.  He heard me right.  Money had nothing to do with his opinion on poverty.  It was about the resources, and as a country they were thriving now more than ever!  I was astonished and blown away at the beauty in this mans words. What a new way to experience life altogether.  Imagine, if we stopped looking at monetary goals as a means to get ahead of others, but looked at others for the resources, for the life and genuinity that they bring, for who they really are as individuals.
I know social exclusion is a hard habit to break and isn't something to talk about ridding of lightly, but from what i've experienced here in Costa Rica and in Nicaragua, a persons life is far more worthy than anything they can accumulate for proof or show.

Conversation

Conversation 

(February 27th - March 1st)

We're returning back from our trip to Monte Verde this weekend!  Also known as Costa Rica's Cloud Forest. This is a small get-away in the rainforest where half of our group took a zip-lining canopy tour, while the other half went hiking for the day.  I volunteered myself to the hiking group since I had already experienced the zipline tour for free on a previous weekend.  We spent the day exploring huge trees taller than my camera lends could scope, different creeks and mosses at the National Park, and stopped for a loaf of bread and peanut butter for lunch.  After the long day of sweat and exercise, we gathered in the common place on some bean bag chairs for some jenga, spoons, and Madagascar in Español!! We met some German students over breakfast and eventually made our way back to San Jose the next day.  

It's been a crazy past few weeks with preparing for midterms, Nicaragua, and then parents coming.  I'm loving all of my classes but dang do they love some in- and out-of-class participation. (and lots of it!)  I'm finding myself with a good amount of free time on the weekends but it quickly becomes full of taxi's to the bus station, hiking and/or beaching, late night conversations, and extremely tired Sunday nights.  So I guess you could say the lack of homework enthusiasm is explained by all of those contributing factors.

At the moment, i'm currently doing some soul searching.  I don't even know what that really means, but I hear every study abroad student goes through it at some point and if I had to put what i'm feeling into words, i'd say that pretty much sums it up.  The past 2 months have been extremely eye opening as i've met completely new people from different places with different ideas and different backgrounds. Each and every one of my new friends has taught me something or questioned something inside of myself that I am extremely grateful for.  I never realized how little I know, and how much I have left to experience and learn.  One of my craziest lessons that I always am continuing to learn, is that usually when I feel completely certain and confident in an area, I am completely and most certainly wrong--which, thank God people still love you when you're wrong, because that seems to be the only way I learn anything.  I will always continue to cherish those friends who lay their hand on your shoulder, look you in the eyes with a soft smile, and say "friend, I can teach you something."  Isn't that what friends are for?  To give and take from each other those experiences and backgrounds that contribute to a greater understanding. There are places that I will never be, things that I will never see, opportunities that I will never explore, but nothing feels better than someone who has been there, to sit you down and tell you that you absolutely have no idea what you're talking about- but friend, I will take you there.  I will share with you what i've learned.  I will trade my words for yours and together we can create something new. I'll admit that I might sound a little crazy, or as someone typing over their head right now, but i'll be the first to say that I'm glad my thoughts aren't written in stone on my chest because they have been shattered repeatedly as my ideas have been bent, expressed and inwardly depressed, reshaped, revamped, and retyped.  I guess that's mainly what learning and being in college in your early 20's is all about though.
As many papers I type, articles I read, and assignments that I write, it's the people that have the biggest influence on my learning here and to sum up the past couple weeks that I haven't blo gged, it's been full of conversation.  Conversation and new ideas.

“We are the only living things that have conversations, as far as we know. When you have conversation you never know what’s going to come out of your mouth or someone else’s mouth.” -Grace Lee Boggs (talking about how powerful conversation is in her movie "American Revolutionary" which I highly recommend!!) 

Conversation is one of the most beneficial tools we have in learning, and it has been extremely powerful for me, in my "soul searching" as I call it.  Meaningful as well as simple conversation, with my friends from home, my family, my friends in Costa Rica, my Tiko family, everyone I encounter. Conversation that gives and takes and creates.  Forewarning though- take what I say in conversation with a grain of salt, because like I said- I'm learning that I actually know very little. 
One person I've forgotten in this back and forth communication is myself.  I've forgotten to take the time to pause and look into myself and to process who I am and where I'm going with all of this. So, from here on out I hope to do that. To give, and take, and create with "me". With all of the adventures recently i've forgotten those things that I love to do, the books I put down, the prayers I quit writing, the conversations I paused.  
This is where I'm at, growth from all angles and learning how to balance it both inwardly and outwardly.  Wish me luck!