When worlds collide...

It's such a weird thing when worlds collide. I remember Charity talking about how strange it was to have a team of people from her world back in the States come visit her world here. I didn't really understand that until today.
It's so odd to see them here... and it's only the first day.
It's also so fun to be reminded of all the things that are now normal to me but are new to them. Figuring out how to flush the toilet, walking on cobblestone, the crazy parking, all the cars (ok, this never really meant anything to me...because I judge cars by color...but apparently it's interesting to my dad), all the marble and tile in the buildings, seeing rows upon rows of apartment buildings and a landscape of tile roofs, listening to my mom and dad gasp as I enter roundabouts, and cling to the side of the cars as we maneuver through streets that make no sense to the American mindset.

I'm so grateful they could be here. It means so much that they will be able to understand what has become so much of my heart and my life. To have them be able to see my life here, meet people that I have grown to love like family, and experience what I have adapted to is priceless. Knowing that whenever I return they will understand perhaps to some extent what I mean when I say I miss this or that...or this person or that person is just comforting in a weird way.

I'm excited to be able to show them more, introduce them to my church family, and hear even more what they find fascinating.

I talked at length with a dear friend of mine the other night. We shared the latest things God has been doing in our lives since we last chatted in August.
God divinely arranged it. As I poured out to her my heart, my confusion, what God has been doing, and explained the puzzle pieces of it all, it was such a comfort to hear her say, "I remember that exact same feeling, Erin. And I don't get why God does things like this either...but He does."
She's been in my shoes. She's lived in another country. And she's fallen in love with it. She's walked through deciphering why God was allowing and leading in directions that didn't make sense to her at the time. She's walked through leaving and pursuing a direction that seemed to be illogical and even absurd. She's had to answer people's questions, and deal with all the emotions of being torn from something she loved while being excited for the next path God had for her.

Friendships are a beautiful thing. Just knowing that there was someone who understood in a small way what I was praying through was an unexpected blessing. To hear her promise to pray and remind me of the truth of God's Word left me blessed and overwhelmed with gratitude.

And as I began to reflect on our friendship...I realized the most incredible thing. God brought our paths together during a year of my life that made absolutely no sense to me. I never understood why God made me walk through that difficult year...and why He led me to that place to begin with only to have everything fall apart...Yet without that year I would have never forged an incredible friendship that has lasted four years later. God's plan is so perfect. While I know there are many lessons I learned there and perhaps a million reasons why He led me there that I am unaware of, perhaps one was for such a time as this. Because the Lord knew that four years later I would need her counsel, her advice, her ear, and her understanding.

It was just another reminder that I am trusting in a sovereign God. One who plans for my good and His glory. One who knows me, inside and out. One who loves and understands me. One who desires for me to experience life abundantly in Him. One with whom no tear is wasted, and no pain left unused. He has blessed me beyond measure... and I am forever indebted to Him.

A weekend...

It's Monday...
and I am exhausted.
Let me recap my weekend as best I can:

1)Prayer meeting
2)Baking cookies till 1:30 in the morning
3)Last minute decision to go sight-seeing
4)Crazy car rides
5)Getting lost
6)Driving on train tracks
7)Nearly driving off a bridge
8)Hiking through a beautiful park to find a castle
9)Touring a castle and beautiful monastery
10)Getting locked out of the park we needed to go through to get to the car
11)Walking for an hour in the dark trying to figure out how to find the car
12)Praying that I wouldn't have to call the police to help me find the car
13)Finding a man and working up the courage to explain the predicament in Portuguese
14)Hearing him promise he'd help us find the car...and then mutter the word, "matar" which means "to kill"
15)Deciding not to tell my colleagues (who didn't understand Portuguese) that we may or may not live through the night
16)Replaying the conversation with the word "matar" in it about forty-five times in my head...and finally figuring out that he meant a dog...not us.
17)Finding the car after walking what felt like an eternity in the dark
18)Praising the Lord for the kindness of random Portuguese strangers
19)Church
20)Lunch with my friends...lots of Portuguese...
21)Trying to concentrate on Portuguese while my brain is desperately wanting to shut down and sleep
22)Coming home from lunch and realizing I had ten minutes until I had to leave to go sing at another church
23)Realizing I couldn't find the lyrics to the song I was supposed to sing
24)Running through the song with my friend one time
25)Driving an hour to the church
26)Walking in and realizing it was utter chaos
27)Singing without ever running through the song, or even checking sound...or for that matter even knowing when I was supposed to sing
28)Kissing and hugging all sorts of people I didn't know (it was like the Portuguese version of "I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God..." when we all used to hold hands...only not so much hand-holding...and much more kissing and hugging)
29)Feeling very American and trying to force myself to be okay with tight spaces, no personal space, and loud noise...and chaos.

And here I am...Monday morning. Tired, but alive. Grateful to have this time here. And wrestling deep in my heart with what feels like my heart being broken in two. I'm so in love with people here...and my life here... and yet I can't figure out all that God is doing or why He is allowing certain things.
I don't know.
But I know He does.
And in time...He'll show me when I'm ready.

Upon turning 28....

Yesterday I turned 28. TWENTY-EIGHT.
Seriously, how is this possible? Didn't I just get a baby-blue Schwinn bicycle with a white a floral banana seat for my birthday a few years ago? And how can I be closer to thirty than I am twenty when I still feel like I am 18 trying to figure out what to do with my life?
28.
It's ridiculous and absurd.
Year 27 taught me a lot...more than I've ever imagined I could learn in one year. I learned how to cook, shop, drive, and survive in a foreign country. I learned a foreign language. Correction: I started learning a foreign language. I learned more about myself than I cared to know. I learned that I really am pretty outgoing...and not nearly as shy as I thought I was. I learned that I love diversity, and that I thrive under high expectations. I learned that I really am more indecisive than I ever thought I was. I learned that life truly is about people...and watched God create in me an intense love for people here.

I'm anxious and nervous for year 28. Life is far more uncertain and unpredictable than I thought it was supposed to be at this age. I log into my finance account and am daily reminded that I live by faith. Faith that God will provide now...and faith that at the end of this He will provide my next job, my next paycheck, my next housing, my next country, my next everything. I pour through God's Word begging Him for direction for my life...and I imagine He smiles...because He knows why He has not revealed that to me yet. I know that right now He is preparing me for my "next."
Deep in my heart I know this year will require more of my faith than I think I am ready to handle. While I seek Him, I know He has asked of me exactly what He has asked of his servants..."Go. Go where I lead. Follow Me."

I am finding comfort in the rarest of Scriptures. Every time I read through the Old Testament I find men and women, far older than I, who were asked to live lives that made no sense. Most of their ministries started when they were near retirement age. And while I'm not there yet... I take comfort that I don't need to have this all figured out. God, the only One who can discern my heart, has created and designed me for His glory. And He knows how and where I can best give Him glory...and because He guards and protects His glory...He will lead me to the place where I can best glorify Him. Ironically, He's been simultaneously teaching me that HE is the determiner of the value of a life...and that I can't think one profession, or one path is the ultimate "glory-bringer" to God. If Joseph spent years of his life as a slave bringing glory to God... why should I think I could craft the perfect scenario to bring God glory?

Regardless of what 28 brings, I know it will be an adventure.
So, ready or not, here I come...

My apologies...

Dear Portugal,
Yes, I am the idiot. I forgot that when it starts raining, flip-flops get put away, dark colors come out, and dresses are banished to the back of the closet.
I am sorry. Please stop staring. I know it might look as if I will catch a cold that will kill me. I promise, I'll be alright.
And I'll never wear a bright pink summer dress with a floral sweater and pink flip-flops again until at least April.
Just please, stop staring.
A Stupid American

Tears.

"What is it? What is it?" he said. "I do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera?"

"No, Little Brother. That is only tears such as men use," said Bagheera. "Now I know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears."

So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.

"Now," he said, "I will go to men. But first, I must say farewell...
You will not forget me?"

"Never..."


I read this selection to my students today. I fought viciously to not cry in front of them. Now, as I am typing it... the tears are flowing freely. Because I understand what it feels like to realize that doors may be shutting...no matter how hard I wish and hope that they won't. I understand what it feels like to feel as if I fit better in a place that isn't made for me than I do in the place that was. I understand that I have goodbyes that will come...and when the time comes...I don't really know if I will be able to make them. I understand what it feels like to not understand myself...and like Mowgli...I've been asking God over and over, "What is it? What is this that is going on inside of me?"

So today...I am just letting the tears fall.
Because I don't have an answer as to why I feel like the doors are shutting.
Because I don't get why God brought me here to lead me away.
Because I don't understand what on earth He is doing.
Because I don't know what to do next...
So the tears fall...
And I am letting them.
After all... they are only tears.

ESL... ;)

I have started teaching an ESL class in a small community every Thursday night from nine until eleven. If you had told me ten years ago I would be standing in front of ten woman from the ages of forty to sixty and teaching them English, I would have laughed in your face. Every week I stand in front of them I feel like Moses, quietly whispering, "Oh, Lord, I think you have the wrong one for this."

Regardless of how nervous I am, I really love doing it. The women are so much fun.

This week was nothing short of hysterical. I have been trying to teach them the present continuous tense. For example, "What are you doing? I am studying. I am reading. I am sleeping."

After we practiced, read, and did some activities, I decided in the spur of the moment to do an activity with my ladies that I had read about online. The idea of the game is that they have to create as many excuses as possible to explain why a friend can't come to the phone. For the most part, they were basically the same. "She's sleeping. She's working."

Until I got to one student. She makes me laugh every week. She loves to practice what little English she knows, and often it comes out far from perfect. All of her examples were great until I got to the last one. "I'm sorry, she's to suck."

I looked at her, looked at the other women, and then asked her to repeat herself. Surely I heard that incorrectly. "I'm sorry, she's to suck." Ok. That was what she said...

I asked her what she meant, and she smiled and said, "You know. 'To suck.' When you have the baby and you..." she then proceeded to act out nursing a baby.

I looked across the room to see if my male colleague was listening to any of this. Thankfully, he was fully engaged with his student. So, I discreetly wrote the word, "breastfeeding" on the white board (for some reason the term, "nursing" did NOT come to me...until another colleague mentioned it after I told her the story). I quietly said, "We don't say, 'to suck.' We would say this word." I made sure I didn't say it. After all, I didn't want to draw the attention of the men in the room.

Sure enough, five, loud, Portuguese woman looked at the word and simultaneously said, "BREASTFEEDING!" as loud as they could. My male colleague instantly stopped, turned, and covered his ears. I tried to quickly move on, but all of them kept repeating the word. And then proceeded to write it in their notebooks.

:)

I love my crazy, ridiculous life.