I'M GOING TO INDIA!!!!!!



...somehow.


:)

...... But we all die someday.

I'm lying on the hard floor, reading of India by the blazing woodstove. The narrative weaves in and out of modern day India, then moves onto the problems faced by a society if they want to keep growing(in a positive manner). Indians seem full of hope and passion that they can change their situation, collectively. I listen to the language of subtle deception; one that preaches hope, one that preaches success, one that promises a better life- one with more ease, one that proclaims people can indeed be lifted out of poverty. But they speak in the language of ethics, they speak in the verbiage of 'prosperity' for all. They speak in statistics and societies and governments. This seems to be a fairly common language for us all, evidently. ...but then the candle is snuffed out, the smoke goes in trails through the air, and I hear words in the silence:

"...but we all die someday"

The dialogue continues, I feel my heart start to contract, in despair I want someone to realize, I want someone to not be disillusioned. I want someone to realize what all this subtle language implies. I want someone to not ignore the fact that we are all of us, while living, hurtling toward death.
I am not negating the importance of some of these things.
What I am saying is that there is a lack.

We speak in technical terms and goals.

But we don't speak in tears and compassion and brokenness and real hope.

We don't speak in the language of love.


We only speak in the language of a fixed world. A better "us" and more comfort and ease.

....but we all die someday.

And really, all this, is it just to provide our own distraction, just to ease the boredom of days gone by and keep our eyes flitting to and fro, but never for one moment contemplating the thought that we are all taking slow and involuntary footsteps toward death? Or the consequences of what this means in relation to the life we live?


I will say it again:

someday I die.

If I don't learn to love like Jesus what else is there?
What else does not turn to dust?

sitting on a bathroom floor

I want to know where you are??
Why did you take the chains off only to abandon me, only to let me get swallowed by the system? Only to prove to me that dreams are only dreams? Only to leave us all to the yawning blackness of all this.

Where are you?

I'm sitting on the bathroom floor after minutes of staring at the ceiling in agony, angry tears set loose from my eyes, hurling questions at God as fast as they come. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor because it is the only place I can find to cry. The only place I have a moment's semblance of being alone unless I want to go sit outside in the snow, watching that mystery fall from the sky. I don't want comfort, I want answers. I am distinctly aware, in the midst of my crying, that no defense is made in reply. I am simply screaming out to the patient silence. It waits for me to finish. Then I am aware of things I don't want to hear. I get no answers of dreams and impossibilities; only the realization that once again I have a small glimpse into the lives of my friends from the previous summer. The ones I spent so many mornings breaking bread with, hearing of God from, learning to see again from. I have no idea how they do it. I have no idea the hope to which they cling when everything around them is broken, when all the can physically see is the dull empty void around them. I think once I was naive enough to think I envied them, in the slightest. This is hard. This isn't easy anymore, and so I'm not sure I like it.
I don't have faith like Abraham. I'm just a lost girl discovering how weak I am. I am just a lost girl discovering how broken the world is. I have no money, no job, no home, even my dream (which involves none of the above, well, not directly at least) seems like a vast impossibility- a person thrown to waves of a restless ocean.
I look at the mirror of myself and laugh.
Am I done throwing questions? ....because I got no answers devoted to the questions I asked. Maybe I will keep throwing them, but maybe when there's nothing else left to scream out, I will turn back to hope. absurd hope. everything looks absurd right now, including myself. My dream is absurd. Who tries to go to India in this sort of situation, and then write a book about it, trying to portray to a world of unloving people this love that even I can't grasp? ...... But maybe I am finally starting to come to what real hope is. It's absurd. Jesus? I'm sorry, but that's absurd, what he did was absurd. What he asks me to believe in the face of what I see? ....that's quite absurd.
But what's hope if I can see it and touch it with my hands, and fit it inside my rationale? ...then it only amounts to another thing I can lay under the illusion of being under my control. Hope doesn't exist that way. It is grows entwined with trust.
And what is being thankful if it doesn't begin and end only with being given the chance to know this person who very literally is love? Maybe being destitute teaches us what it really means to be thankful? (I wouldn't know, not there yet) Maybe what I really mean is that it makes the contrast sharper,such as when you appear to have nothing and yet are thankful for everything.

I'm still left wondering what is going on, why something is proving so difficult, so impossible, when it is the one thing I feel like I am supposed to do. Why is it so easy to give up and go back to a system? so hard to crawl out of the dirt and try to lend new eyes to others, grow new hearts for ourselves? Why is the worthwhile thing the hard one, the one that makes you grit your teeth and struggle along, while the one that lends ease does so deceptively?

Where are you?

I'm waiting for you to make yourself known. I'm waiting for you to make a way even through the wilderness, regardless of what it looks like.

So I sit, here in the darkness. With all my questions, with all my hope, with all my weakness, with all my crying out....
Don't abandon us.

some have felt this much deeper than I :

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

9 Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.
10 On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
11 Be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.

12 Many bulls encompass me;
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13 they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.

16 For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet —
17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

19 But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
20 Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog!
21 Save me from the mouth of the lion!
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!

22 I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.

25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
26 The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
28 For kingship belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.

29 All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
30 Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.

I don't have any words left, so I will borrow some:

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it;
shout, O depths of the earth;
break forth into singing, O mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it!
For the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
and will be glorified in Israel.

I might spend a lot more time on a bathroom floor staring at the ceiling, wondering.

But make me thankful.

And give me hope.

Everything is being made new

Love won. the end.

I've been thinking a lot lately about waiting on God. .... mostly because that's where I'm at (in just about everything), but I feel it really strongly, too, the waiting on God. It's been what I've accidentally been reading about..... and I just now realized, it's also advent.