Fire in my soul

16 years ago, today, I was baptized. I remember it distinctly; I was a talkative but serious little girl with knobbly knees and wispy brown hair and glasses that were too big for my face. Ever since I was really small I remember lying in bed at night and talking to Jesus. In some ways he was more real to me then- I had a vivid imagination and the lines between reality and fantasy were blurred, and I had no problem believing in and loving someone who I couldn’t see. (After all, I had at least 3 imaginary friends who kept me company!)
But it was the most natural thing in the world for me to believe that he existed, and that he loved me, and that he had a certain way he wanted to live my life. I was anxious to let everyone know how I felt and make a commitment to God that would last my whole life. But there was one major problem standing in the way: I didn’t know how to hold my breath under water, and I was worried that when I was baptized and my head went under, I would inhale, choke, and drown.
But the fire was burning in my soul. I thought about God in bed at night and when I read the little white bible that had been my great-grandmother’s. My favorite verse was from Psalms 63- ‘O God, you are my God. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you, in a dry and weary land, where there is no water…. Because you have been my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.’ I was so hungry and thirsty to know God more and to embark on the adventures he had in store for me.
I was almost 9 when I finally got up the nerve to get baptized, even though it had been years since I knew Jesus in my heart. My Dad and two of my older brothers, who I adored, baptized me. I was the last of seven people to descend into the baptismal tank and I remember seeing dirt floating on the top of the water but I was so excited I didn’t mind. I was wearing a little pink skirt and when I went into the water it puffed up around me and I tried desperately to hold it down so the whole church wouldn’t see my underwear and my skinny legs.
It’s funny because as I look back, in many ways nothing has changed. (I no longer wear glasses and my legs aren’t skinny any more, although I still do wear pink skirts that fly up at inopportune moments). I still have that fire burning in my soul towards God, and if anything, it has grown stronger. I know I am an emotional person to start with, but I can hardly stand still in a church service without tears welling up from deep within. I often fight to contain myself- what do you do when you love someone so much and you can’t see them, you can’t touch them, you can’t feel them?
Life is hard, there are so many ups and downs, and often I feel that there are more downs than ups. There have been a few days this month when I was alone, completely alone, and I felt like God was farther from me than ever before in my life. I could not feel him at all. Yet something in me, something fierce that was in me as a little 8 year old girl, something kept hanging on. I know God is good. I know it in my soul, deeper than I’ve known anything in my life.
So anyway, I wanted to share with you, whoever may be reading this, this very special day to me. I am celebrating God’s faithfulness to me, and I can say with all my heart, over these 16 years (and more!) that I have known him, he has never let me down. He has always been right beside me. He has been totally worth everything I have ever given him, and I know that as I grow older and learn to give him more and more of my life, I will see him as more and more beautiful as he truly is.

Raising the dead in me

Perhaps it was all the talk about obesity and heart attacks. Perhaps it was the many hours sitting still in class, shifting my position every couple of minutes trying to keep the blood flowing. Perhaps it was seeing the sun come out for the first time in a week…. Whatever the cause, I was full of pent-up energy and after school I decided to go running. It had warmed up to a mere -2 and I figured that I could get in a little run before the fading light completely disappeared. As soon as I got home I threw my stuff on my bed and ran out the door.
….Well, maybe it was colder than -2. By the time I got back my ears and fingertips were numb but my face was slick with sweat. I decided to try a facial beauty treatment to improve my complexion. (Why haven’t I outgrown these silly ideas?) I whipped up some dinner and had a shower and started studying.
Later on in the evening my face began to feel uncomfortably warm. I looked into the mirror and it was a bit pink. Oh well, it will be better by morning.
I woke up in the morning, and looking in the mirror I was shocked to see that my face was bright red- not all over, but blotchy in some spots and with white circles around my eyes. I’m not sure what it was, perhaps the combination of windburn from running and then the salty sweat and all that, but I had toasted my face a nice pink color. I tried valiantly to cover it up with some makeup. Well, perhaps if I make my eyes look extra dark then no-one will notice how bright my skin is. I leaned towards the mirror with my eyeliner and accidentally poked myself in the eye with the pencil. My eyes began to water and I tried to swab out the bits of pigment I could see stuck on my cornea. Oh dear, I was going to be late.
I rushed into the kitchen and quickly tried to eat some breakfast and I could see my neighbor pull up in the driveway to pick me up. I gulped down a bowl of cereal so fast my stomach began to hurt. I had read on the news that the temperature was supposed to be in the positives, so I put on my sandals (for the first time!) and ran out the door. As soon as I hit the air outside I realized there was no way the temperature was positive, but it was too late, so I just sidestepped the snow and jumped in the car.
“Hi, Katie.”
Perhaps if I act normal she won’t notice anything is wrong with me. Katie is a really quiet person and she looked sideways at me but didn’t say anything. I got to school late and when I slid into the back row, Eric, who sits next to me, looked sideways and then had a puzzled look on his face. I opened my books and stared at the professor.
I could feel Eric looking at me out of the corner of my eye again. My eyes were beginning to water again. I blinked back tears and delicately tried to dab at my eyeball.
When we had a morning break I avoided the curious gazes of the people sitting around me and nonchalantly went to look at the bulletin board.
I heard laughing and I turned and my classmate Rob was standing there.
“Heather, what’s WRONG with you?”
“what do you mean?” I asked innocently.
“Well, you’re wearing high-heeled sandals in minus 10, and your face is bright red and your eyes look funny. What happened to you?”
Sigh. I had to explain all day. I got up this morning and my face was about 90% better, but I was feeling nauseas and spent time trying to decide if I was going to throw up or if I was going to make it to school. I took some ibuprofen and waited for my stomach to settle and read my bible.

“We were under great pressure...” Paul says in Corinthians, “Far beyond our ability to endure….. but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.”
Saturday today, and I didn’t have a ride with Katie, so I rode my bike to school. Back down to -17 degrees. I bundled up with a scarf wrapped around my face and ventured out.
I kid you not, biking to school today was the coldest experience of my life. The wind ate through my toque and made my head throb. My double-lined mittens did nothing. As I breathed through my scarf, my breath condensed on it and I could see icicles beginning to form and joining the ones that were forming around my teary eyes.
I made it to school late and the class was about biostatistics and I sat in the back row and tried to warm up, thinking about math and folding paper into interesting origami shapes and wishing my windburnt face didn’t feel so hot.
On the way home I stopped to get groceries and I didn’t have quite enough money for everything and I kept asking the cashier to take things off my bill and it was kind of embarrassing to count out my pennies for her.
I have been struck lately with how much I am at the mercy of God. I’m not talking about the cold weather here, although that is part of it (I’m lucky I didn’t get frostbite on the way to school today!). There are also just the little vagaries of life- the silly things we do- the frustrating things- the hard and painful things. Some of them crush us beyond our ability to endure. Some of them just get us down little by little. But they’re not as random as they seem, I don’t believe. They happen so that we might learn to not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.

Champagne powder

Before I came to Champaign and since I’ve been here, I’ve really struggled with wondering if I was in the right place or not. You know how sometimes you do something, or go somewhere, and you have this sense of peace and destiny within you? Well, I certainly did not feel that way coming here, but it seemed to be the sensible next step to take, so I took it.
I’ve been lonely, and freezing cold, and last week I caught a nasty bronchitis and I think it was Friday, I was stuck at school after class because my ride wasn’t going to leave until 9 that night, and I had green snot coming out of my nose, a sore throat, a stomach ache and nausea, and all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Too much homework. Outside it was -27 C and it was too cold to stand outside for a minute, let alone contemplate walking or biking the half-hour home. It was even too cold to wait for the bus, not that it would have come anyway.
I met some creepy guy who was hitting on me and offered me a ride home. Not on your life, buddy. I’d rather stay here. I fled to another study room and felt sorry-for-myself tears welling up in my eyes.
Saturday morning I slept in, no classes…. I studied hard all day with a kleenex-box by my side, and then I had to get out of the house and I decided to ride my bike (it had warmed up to -10) to the grocery store to pick up some groceries. There was also a second-hand clothing store nearby that I went in and bought a sweater from. On the ride back, bags draped over my handle-bars, steering carefully in the middle of the road so as not to hit too many icy patches, it occurred to me that with my orange toque and turquoise scarf and red mittens and fuzzy boots and all those bags, I looked kind of like a bag lady. I had to laugh at myself.
Sunday morning my neighbor Katie, who I met at the church, picked me up to go to the service. It was immensely encouraging and when she dropped me off I felt buoyed in spirit. I cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, all the floors in the house (since my landlord walks around with muddy boots), and read my bible, napped, and did laundry.
Something about being totally all alone in a quiet house, but in the late afternoon I had cabin fever. Outside it was snowing softly, those gentle flakes they call Champagne powder (Imagine that, Champagne in Champaign…), the kind of flakes that fall, not blow, and settle on top of each other in layers so you can see the individual flakes. I got on my bike and set out, hoping to find some kind of coffee shop to sit in and read and write.
There is a half-dead strip mall a couple of kilometers from my house and as I approached, I had to laugh to myself because the trees around the parking lot still had their strings of Christmas lights glimmering softly in the snow. Who on earth leaves their Christmas lights on, a month after Christmas?
I went in and sat down, unthawing a bit. Then it hit me.
Back in August I was a little bit distressed about my future and I had sat in a park one day, talking to God. It probably sounds a little crazy, but I had a sort of vision. In my vision I saw myself in a city in America- in front of an outdoor Christmas tree decorated in lights. Heather, you’re in the right place. And then in the vision I was standing in the lobby of a huge church- a horseshoe shaped lobby, wide doors going into the sanctuary, vaulted ceilings. There were people milling everywhere and they were friendly and warm. Heather, sink yourself into that church. Don’t be afraid of how many people are there, how different it is from what you are used to.
Suddenly I was sitting there looking out the window at the Champagne powder coming down, and I knew in my heart, I’m in the right place. At the right time.
Why am I here? I’m not really sure some days. To study and learn and pass some ridiculously hard exam. To meet some people and perhaps share God’s love with them. To hear God speak to me. Maybe all that and more. But the important thing, is that I’m here, and I'm not here alone.

Perspective

The other day I got up at some ridiculously early hour and got ready for school. I made coffee and put it in a travel cup to hook over my bicycle handlebars. I opened the front door and groaned when I saw everything wet. Great, a 5k ride in the rain. I stepped out and just about wiped out on the sidewalk. It wasn't rain, it was ice. Coating everything. I made my way to my bike and got all wrapped and ready and then went to get on.
Whoosh! The bike slid out from under me and I crashed onto the pavement. I picked myself up and debated trying to catch a bus to school.... no, I would be really late. I walked my bike a ways and then climbed on and started riding, closer to the center of the road where it had been salted.
The bitter cold wind blustered around me as I biked and I had to tuck my chin down and try to bike in a straight line. 7:00 Saturday morning and I was exhausted from staying up late studying and not feeling too fond of the universe in general.
I made it to school and road up onto the sidewalk to get into the parking lot. The moment my wheels hit the sidewalk, the bike slid out from under me and I went flying, my coffee cup bouncing on the pavement. At least this time I'd fallen on the other side of my butt. I picked myself up, and the coffee, and slid my bike towards the railing to lock it up. One of my classmates came out the door.
"Class is canceled." He said blankly. "We don't have anything until 12:30.
Well, I was hot by that point. I said a few angry things that I shouldn't have said,like why a Dr. with a 4-wheel-drive mercedes would cancel class because of the bad weather when I had biked all the way here.
"I can give you a ride home." My classmate offered. "I'll put your bike in my trunk."
We started towards his car and suddenly his feet went out from under him, his shoe went one way and his books another.
We made it to the car and got the bike in, and he drove me home. The house was cold and lonely and I sat down and studied for a few hours. I was doing practice questions online and scoring around 40%, and the more I did, the more frustrated I got. I was glad to get back to class in the afternoon, but quickly found out that instead of the 3-hour session I was expecting, we were scheduled for several hours. The lecturer was boring, her English wasn't very good, I had a stomach ache, and I hadn't realized we'd be in class for so long so I hadn't brought any snacks or drinks or even money to buy them.
By the time I got home at 7:30 that night I didn't want to talk to anyone, which was just as well because I was all alone. The fridge was almost empty but I decided that what I really needed, to relieve stress, was to have a warm bath. I went into the bathroom, and because the landlord uses the tub to wash his dogs, I cleaned it out. I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing it, and then I cleaned the sinks and toilet, and my back was aching by the time I was ready to jump in. I undressed and lit a candle and then went to put the plug in, only to find that there was no plug. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it, so finally I just climbed in and turned on the shower and huddled under the weak stream. The hot water was out after about 5 minutes so I jumped out and got into my pajamas and jumped into bed to keep warm with my textbooks.
Some days are just like that, you know?
The next morning I had decided to go to church and it was snowing and I rode my bike a few kilometers in the wind until I got to the church, and locked up my bike with fingers numb from the cold, and came inside into the warmth.
Instantly I felt a calm come over me. Someone showed me where to sit and it was toasty in there and the people began to sing and worship God. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Here I was among family. The pastor was talking about the love of God, and afterwards someone prayed for me, and then I got some coffee, and I met some young women who were there, and they invited me to go for lunch with them. They drove my bike home and then we went out to a little restaurant and sat and chatted for hours and ate Mexican tortillas. They were such nice people and I felt like I could talk to them about anything.
When I got home that afternoon I did laundry and cooked and chatted with my landlord for a bit and then had a nap and then called my family and some friends. I felt like a new person. I felt rejuvenated.
Some days are just like that too, you know?
Today class was interesting and I drank some delicious coffee which made everything better, and I am wearing my favorite hoodie and it is snowing outside, beautiful white flakes drifting against the building. I know it will suck to ride home in the dark, I know it will suck to come into a cold dark house and try to make something to eat and stay up late trying to stuff my brain full of information, but that's all part of life.
That's what we have grace for, which enables us not just to struggle through the ups and downs, but to walk through with a smile on our faces. Tomorrow may be better. Or it may be much much worse. (It probably will be worse since it's supposed to be colder...) But one thing stays the same, here in Champaign, back home in Vancouver, wherever in the world we might be and whatever we are doing. God is still the same. He's still good.
I remember getting an email from a friend who was going through a very difficult situation with his job and marriage. My dear sister, he wrote, unfortunately the situation has not changed at all. But praise God, he has not changed at all either! He's still just as faithful and good as he always has been!

A snapshot at my life in Champaign

So I got my bicycle. The other morning I got up and I wanted to punch myself in the head. It was about -10 out and I had to chip the ice of my bicycle seat before getting on. I found a way to tie my hat tightly under my chin so that only a little bit of my face was showing, and then covered the rest with my scarf. With my book bag slung over my shoulder and my coffee cup wrapped in plastic bags and hanging over the handlebars (why don’t they invent a coffee cup holder for bikes?), I rode the 5k to school. The school building is pretty warm so after the first class I had warmed up enough to take off my coat, and talk to some of the other students. Coming from a class of 20 in Antigua, this class of 200 seems huge. I sit near the bag next to a Mormon guy from Salt Lake City, a girl from Guadalajara, a Costa Rican named Alfredo (you should hear his accent!), and a very shy bearded Muslim named Siman.
Actually it is refreshing because most of the students are pretty down to earth, serious and intense, with the average age about ten years older than me. This morning I had biked to school in a skirt, coat, turquoise scarf, orange hat, red woolen mittens, a bright pink shirt and a purple hoodie. Plus my fur-lined boots from Surplus Sam’s which have kept me from getting frostbite. I didn’t really think about the fact that everything I was wearing clashed, but halfway through the day when we had a break I was standing in the back swinging my arms and jumping to stretch out a bit. Nancy looked at me and started to laugh.
“You’re so cute.”
Cute, ahh, how I hate that word! Why couldn’t she say glamorous, or full of energy, or something complementary? But instead I felt like a little colorful girl jumping around at the back of the classroom.
Afterwards two guys came and asked me if I wanted to go out on the town with them that evening.
“I don’t drink.” I told them.
“Me neither.” One of them admitted. “I just need to get out.”
I mean, who does drink when you have class at 7 the next morning? Who does anything, for that matter, when you have class at 7 the next morning, and then classes all day? One night this week I didn’t get home until 8:30. I biked home slowly down sidestreets; slowly to keep from getting windburn, plus it was dark and I had no lights. The snow was coming down softly all around me, I could see it in the orange glow of streetlights and I could feel it stinging my face.
We have classes 6 days a week, and there are tutoring sessions on Sunday. I told my tutor the other day that I’d rather sleep than eat or shower. He laughed and said, “You can sleep next month.”
I might be dead next month, I thought, if I don’t sleep now. At the very least no one will want to talk to me. But then all of us students who are here together are in the same boat. No one is getting enough sleep. We have 4 or 5 hours of homework a night and add that to 9 or 10 hours of classes, and throw in 200 type A obsessive compulsive first-borns (I did a survey of my row at the back of the class and 8/10 of us are first-borns and 9/10 have visited more than 5 countries) and there is an explosive mixture. In addition, our professor Dr. Francis has memorized the name of every single student and every 1 or 2 minutes in class he randomly calls on someone to answer a complicated question and you are expected to jump up and answer it. He says he’s desensitizing us. Also, every few days he calls a student to stand up and he rapidly fires a series of questions at them and if they can answer them all correctly in 10 seconds or less, he gives them $10.00. I was on the edge of my seat today but he never called my name….. better luck tomorrow, I guess.
I’m not feeling as lonely as I was when I first got here, but I do sort of feel isolated from my world. It’s funny how I often want to get away, explore, adventure, but then when I leave I am suddenly looking back and through the rosy glasses of nostalgia, I am wishing to be home. Perhaps home is something that eludes us….. until we are finally able to sink our hearts into where we actually are, not where we want to be.

Bloom where you're planted

I left Vancouver early Saturday morning feeling buoyant. Who knew what this adventure held in store for me?
The airports all went smoothly; only one delay, but I made all my connections and was only mildly sick on one flight. I got to Chicago when it was dark and found the metro station and dragged all my luggage on and sat in the corner and leaned against the railing and listened to music on my dying ipod. I counted the 22 stops down for an hour and then finally got off and the train pulled away and I found myself in a dingy underground station. I’ve been in my share of metro stations all over the world but I’ll have to say that I felt a little nervous in this one, and very much alone. There was not a soul around. I looked around for an elevator but there was a single sign that said ‘stairs’.
I began to carry my bags up, all 150 pounds of them. One flight. Two flights. I switched it up and tried carrying one at a time to each landing, but no matter which way I did it, by the time I got to the fourth flight my arms were killing me and I was wheezing for breath.
There was a ticket booth and I shoved one bag and then another through the turnstile and then asked the lady which way to Union station and was there an elevator?
“Go up and left.” She said impassively, gesturing to a flight of stairs.
Oh no. I didn’t think I could manage anymore. I wrestled up a fifth flight. Then a sixth. Then a seventh. At the top I squatted down on the sidewalk for a minute and felt the bitterly cold wind whip around me and try to yank my hat off. It was pitch black and by the looks of it I was in a sort of seedy area of town. I stacked my bags on top of each other and tried to roll them along the cracked sidewalk, avoiding the calls from guys lurking in the shadows.
When I arrived at Union station I came down a long hallway and suddenly there was a massive train station with old marble pillars and a Christmas tree display and children sleeping on their mother’s laps. I bought my ticket and followed the crowds towards the platforms.
There were hundreds of families, mostly black, carrying their luggage in plastic bags and juggling screaming babies. I waited for the train until it came and then I was ushered into a darkened car by a female conductor that was the biggest woman I had ever seen in my entire life. Her head touched the ceiling of the train car and she picked up huge suitcases like they weighed nothing and threw them onto the top racks. I couldn’t stop staring at her.
There was a family of four in the car with me, and two men, one of whom sat next to me and started talking. The kids were alternating between whining and screaming and the man next to me was very friendly and told me his whole life story and the history of all his past relationships over the two hour train ride. I stared out the black windows at the distant lights whizzing by and listened to him and by the end of our journey he told me he was going to ask God to send him a wife exactly like me, and it was a pity I wasn’t single because I was exactly what he was looking for.
In the train station my new landlord was waiting to pick me up; exactly as he had described himself: glasses, short hair, a green fleece jacket. He helped me carry my bags out to his shiny blue GT mustang and on the way home told me all about the town and drove past my school so I could see where it was. He picked up some milk at the grocery store so I could have tea and then hung around in the house until he was sure I had everything I needed.
The house is big and empty and there is another lady here but apparently she is never here. The last tenants left the fridge full of rotten food and the bathroom looking pretty gross and the house smells funny. But my bedroom is basically clean and I unpacked my bags and set it up a bit. My sheets didn’t fit the bed but I spread one blanket underneath and one on top. The landlord went out and I didn’t have internet and suddenly I was all alone again.
I felt so homesick last night that I cried as I was falling asleep and I kept telling myself that it would look better in the morning. When I woke up to the pale light of morning I looked out and everything was brown. Bitterly cold and windy, but not a stitch of green anywhere; not even a leaf. Everything is flat and dead and brown. I felt the tears welling up again and I thought about home and suddenly these words came to me:
Bloom where you’re planted.
How can I bloom, God, I asked him, in a place like this where I am all alone and everything is dead? Why would you plant me here?
I got up and ate some cereal and bundled up and decided to walk to a church. There was a Presbyterian one down the street and I sat in the back while a lady played the organ and went through the sitting and standing ritual with the 20 other very aged members of the church. Afterwards I left and I’m not sure anyone noticed. I walked to the grocery store and bought too many groceries and on the way back home I thought my arms were going to fall off.
I’d heard it was a safe town here, small-town everyone-knows-everyone, so I stuck out my thumb to hitch a ride. No one stopped. I struggled on, every few minutes stopping to rest on the sidewalk and trying to huddle under my coat and hat against the cold. I stuck out my thumb again for a while, but still no one stopped and I kept going.
After a few kilometers a lady suddenly got out of her car. She was angry and asked me,
“Were you seriously trying to get a ride?”
“I don’t think I can make it home.” I said. I felt sort of at the end of my rope.
“It’s not safe to do that here.” She told me. “I saw you and turned around and came back. I’ll take you to your house if you want and give you money for the bus, but you should never ever do that again. This area has a high number of sex offenders and it’s totally unsafe for you to get a ride with someone. We just don’t do that in this place.”
So much for the small town feel.
I got home finally and put away my groceries and cleaned out the fridge, throwing out all the rotten food. I cleaned the bathroom and swept the floors and cooked something to eat.
And I’m all alone again. Perhaps things will be better when I go to school tomorrow and meet some other students. My classes start at 7:30 and I’m going to take the bus.
I don’t know exactly how I’m going to bloom where I’m planted but in the bible God says that he causes streams to flow in desert places.
“…The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake…”

A new adventure

So I am departing tomorrow morning, at some ridiculously early hour, on my next adventure. This time I'm going to Chicago. I don't quite know what to expect but I know that it will be adventure and things won't go all as planned but I think that's okay.
I will be arriving in a little town outside Chicago called Champaign late tomorrow night and my landlord emailed to say he will pick me up at the train station and will be wearing a green fleece. In my mind I can picture the train station and it will be freezing cold and dark and there will be a stranger in a green fleece and I will be brave and head off to my new house and i'll be tired when I get there and longing for a cup of tea but I won't have any milk, so I'll just unpack and sink exhausted into my bed and hope that the next morning everything will look better.
Things always do look better in the morning, that is something I've learned. And no matter what, things will work out okay. One of my brothers says that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I always add that the third outcome is being alive but a quadraplegic.
I try not to get my hopes up when I depart on a new adventure, just taking it one step at a time, because I don't want to be disappointed. Something I've learned in the last year is that I've often been disappointed, but that is because my hope is in the wrong place. Hope in things working out is sure to disappoint. Hope in God yields the opposite, and what is that? It is appointment. When we open ourselves to God and choose to throw ourselves on his mercy and TRUST in him and HOPE in him, he in turn is free to 'appoint' and 'anoint' us, and by that I mean that he leads us into the divine calling he has for our lives. It is not boring and it is not disenchanting, but it can be painful and difficult.
I am looking forward to the appointments that God has for me in the next couple of months. For sure they will be unexpected. And for sure there will be excitement thrown in there too.