enough

sometimes don't you just look at yourself and wonder what you're doing? i guess it feels more like staring straight ahead, and whatever it is you're looking at, you see a blank wall. like those kind in every suburban home, large, off-white, and barely textured with those goosbumpy-looking things. i hate it. i can't stop staring at that stupid thing sometimes. it's been a long time since i've looked at something real. i mean really real. like the thing that is actually me, that's in me, jumps up to the surface for some action. my spirit. ugh, don't you just long for it? i need to at least know it's still there. i wait in idle until i come to a place where i realize i haven't moved and i certainly haven't seen that real thing around lately. i mean there's a difference between knowing it's there, your spirit, and actually seeing it. when you commit your spirit to Jesus, not seeing it around is pretty painful. it means you're not seeing much of Him around either.

i just let myself get to these places where i recognize them so well; i know exactly how i'll feel to be there again and to be far from who i want to be, and i just sit and stare at those stupid bumps on the wall until i figure out what's happening. i have a lot of spiritually profound things to say, i really do, things that i know to be truths and things i know to be love. i just feel too stupid saying them right now. right now i just want things to be normal between the two of us, my spirit and i, my life and i. i want to sense the presence of my Glorious King, i want to be more for Him than i am. i want my life to be fulfilling His idea of it. my heart moves and sits, waiting to be what it is. i realize now that i must move, i must really move to stop this staring scheme. i don't want to stare off and wonder when i'll finally be different. i don't even enjoy that. i want to be different, for good. you know when you see those people who seem to be what you want, to know Him like you want to, to love Him like He deserves. and you think, "that's it! when i'm like them, i'll be there." i'm pretty sure that's the reason we only say things like that in our own heads; it's because it's wrong. i'm not "them". why isn't He an ultimatum alone?
i do at least want my own story. and it will be about my spirit, once again, being lifted up by His.

Stand

a short video on the situation in sudan, more specifically in khartoum, from my perspective.


this is a place that hurt me more deeply than i could process. the heaviest upset was the fact that my own personal emotion dominated my thoughts more than the needs of people around me. how do we "visit" anyway? am i always just a guest, invited by muslims and christians, blacks and arabs, poor and rich alike to drink tea in their muddy homes? is my goal to be like them, to live like them? i feel worse if it isn't. i feel pulled by some internal organ (because mostly all of them hurt now), attached to a line and hook, to come out of my water and gasp for air with anyone i can. but how dare i try, and with what motives? what great purpose can i serve as a flopping fish anyway? but i need you to know about this thing. to be present. to show up with the giant question mark in your shirt pocket and some love in your heart. i don't know if i did a good job. i actually don't know if i shared much more than my white face and some rap songs with these people. but aren't we both changed now? how can we not be new, to be with each other, me and sudan? how can sudan not feel how i do, confused, unsure of this thing before them or how to be with it, but glad to at least have had the opportunity to have someone new to listen? sometimes i hear these questions rise up and snatch all the attention until i've lost site of my friend, my Love, who answers everything for me just by choosing to be with me. He, Jesus, He tells me "wait! wait!", "I'm bringing you something." He's already given me something bigger than me. the simple fact is that He's making me like Him, giving me Himself over and over, and He loves people a whole lot more than i do by myself. sudan has been loved by Him since it began, and the best way He cares deeply for it is through people who love Him. sometimes they're sudanese, sometimes they're from eritrea, sometimes they're from minnesota. He's the reason we do things we don't know how to explain. when Love is your push, you might find yourself eating breakfast with both confusion and satisfaction. i'm still trying not to make this about me, but as you can gather, that is not easy. sometimes you just feel like you gotta do something, go somewhere, love somebody specific. i don't want to be done with my new friend, sudan. but i also don't want to go again until that beautiful Gift, that Christ, moves me to go with Him. my head points down at my feet when i think about the fact that i got to go and see His bright face in that place, through those people He loves. it is He inside me who loves them back, who desires to listen to and live their pain, and who has the capacity to even care. i alone am simply a spurt of deeply felt emotions that move because i'm the one hurting. i don't want to sell them me or my country or feed them my personal aspirations. i just want to be a good listener. i want to be used if i can, and if i can't, then i want to leave them with Love.

it's taken me a long time to feel myself again after this trip. i don't want to forget, to get distracted, to move on, or to let my proximity to the situation have the final say. awareness has changed my conversations with God, and i'm learning that sometimes what seems to be the last pathetic squeak for help is actually igniting new movements in a God who listens. i still don't know where i'm going or what i'm doing or why what happened to me in sudan happened. most of the time i hear myself wondering what the heck i'm talking about since i've returned home...but then i realize that i'm just like everyone else; we just like to say what's in our hearts, to decipher our purpose and find our connection to our own lives. i believe that the greatest purpose we can ever achieve is in a relationship with that magnificent God, who came as Christ, to seek us out and take us beyond our limits. i can't believe He listens to me and hears me out. i can't believe He gives me passion and compassion and puts me in places where i can play out both. the truth is that even as a flopping fish, i have been made uniquely and designed, implemented, into a plan that is bursting at the seems with purpose, and the title of it all is Love. i'm so grateful to this Friend who is it for me, my Favorite, who is saying the same things to you, maybe in different forms or facets, just so that we can experience a little more of Him. thank you for bearing with me through all of this, for trying to understand and for even wanting to know. nothing is ever finished when we are talking about people's lives. we must be a part of the great conversation, at the very least, and we must not forget to be active in the outpouring of our souls into that of others, which is always greater than our own selves.

there will be more.

last days

well, last minutes, really. i'm in khartoum international airport, and i can remember few times when i felt as out-of-person as i do now. i just shook hands of 24 or so boys and staff who remain at the center with a teary-eyed "goodbye" and "thank you all". after all of this, that's what came out. what do you say to recovering street kids, still raggedy-clothed, after spending three months playing, dancing, being laughed at, then laughing with, eating, getting really frustrated with, but always loving each other? i hate that i can walk out of their lives. i wish i wasn't on that list of people. these last few days were rough, as we have been working with various entities on a decision to close the center at the end of february. it truly is the best thing for the kids right now. as the only whitey on board, and the only adult living on the center, there was a lot of dependency happening. you know, this is typical international development. we come, we give money, we give time, we let a lot of local people lean on us. then we move. and everyone falls. it's hard to teach people to stand on their own, but it has to be done to have a successful thing in your hands. me, i'm not sure i'm smart enough to know how to train folks in this way, especially with only 90 days and just a handful of local language in my mouth. but i just moved, and in doing so i think i let a lot of people fall. the person being leaned on is not necessarily of higher capability, but has simply missed the point: it's not about you. i hope the sudanese staff and i looked more like a team at the end than anything, that our over-reigning goal was and is always for the benefit of those beautiful boys. i honestly don't know what's gonna happen to some of them. all of them have somewhere to go, some relative to take care of them. but the center was their first family, and saying goodbye today made me even more foggy about all that's happened here. i'm staring at this computer screen, portruding out of the wall with its snazzy yellow backdrop, and i feel like i'm watching myself type. freedom and opportunity has transformed itself into guilt. it's kind of pathetic. i'd rather be like them, the boys, living hard but knowing what life really is, and what true goodness really is, and what true Love really is. but the fact remains that i have the choice, and in that case it changes everything i know about desiring such a life. but what i know for sure is that some part of me is new, is different, and in the afterthought of circumstance and chaos, i think it is something good.

Papa Bread

yesterday i went to a big international christian church in khartoum with some of the older boys. i basically judged the entire service. it was mostly white, mostly english, and completely structured. we sang from a book and stood and sat when we were told. we listened to a keyboardist, sat in nice chairs, and ate snacks afterwards. the boys loved it; i hated it. just 6 hours before, on sunday morning, we had our usual church service on the center under our rakuba (bamboo-roof structure). just me and 12 boys or so, jumping around, laughing and dancing, praising Jesus and listening to each other share and pray. one of our little guys, tong, stood up on a bench and lead us in a couple songs while other boys banged on the dented iron table and plastic crates. as i sat in my chair in khartoum 6 hours later, i wondered which one was church. i also wondered why. why do so many of us westerners come here, to this demolished people, packing our cocoa puffs and play stations, picking out the nicest houses in our budget, and then raise our families together to recreate the same environment we have just left? who are we reaching out to? when is reaching out more than just leaving the comfort of your home country but leaving the comfort of your life? i am really not here to say that this person is doing good and that person isn't. there are too many things i don't know, including how God's love is working in the lives of people i've never met. i can't even say that everyone's supposed to drop what they're doing and live in a mud hut. but something happened in my spirit when i looked around at this thing called church-i do know some things. i know we are supposed to be a living, breathing, moving being, a bride that hurts for each of its members and that equally cares for them. i want to know the pains of living as a refugee in my own country with 300,000 others, to feel hopeless and jobless and tired. but where's the line? giving up you're own culture and identity is lying to yourself...and shouldn't be done to prove a point...but there is simply one truth: if you follow Christ, your identity and culture IS Christ, and to be more like Him is to be less like yourself, to value less those things which you value more, to sacrifice your loves for His Love.

you know, when i was praying the other morning, i think God gave me a new name for Him. first in arabic-"baba esh". in english, this means "papa bread". that's His name-Papa Bread. He is the bread of life, the first and final feeding for His creation. we drink of His cup, eat of His life. we are His church, and we've got a lot of people to feed. this reminded me that living with the poor and being like the destitute should exist for only one reason-to demonstrate who Papa Bread is. to demonstrate, like Christ did for the woman at the well, that no matter how many donkeys pulling water into your IDP camp, how much rice from UN aid, you will never be quenched, you will never be satisfied, until you receive from Papa Bread. that's church. when we can learn to live in such a way, to get down and hurt with people who are hurting in such a way that they wonder who or what makes us chose this life of pain to live along side them. that as we do, we are amidst a beauty, a Papa, that motivates us to leave our gods Familiarity and Comfort, that we might be humbled to share His everlasting gift of life with others.

international driver's license, what?

me and the truck have had a falling out.

let me give you a little background about this great blue wonder, which you can view in the picture below: it's got 270,000 miles-a sudanese mile includes thick, dusty roads with average potholes around 2 ft. deep and 5 ft. across. sometimes you have to drive between two 6ft piles of red clay while half a dozen people wander freely in and out of the alley way that the truck is barely fitting in. it has no rear-view mirror, no passenger side mirror, and no horn. oh, and first gear doesn't work anymore.

and let me just say that driving in khartoum is one of my top 10 most stressful situations: take 3 million drivers, 5 million people, donkey carts, and several herds of sheep, then tell them to all go in different directions as fast as they can on the worst city roads i've ever seen with no particular order.

then to add to this chaos, on my way home from some friends in bah'ri, about a 20 minute drive to the center (over one huge bridge and two interstates), the brakes went out. completely. i needed to make it back to the center to unlock the room with the boys' breakfast. so i did what any normal person would do, and i continued driving this giant missle of death with my sweaty hand on the e-brake and my panicked face out the window so i could yell at as many people as i could that this beast was not stopping. 250 bucks later, the truck is still the laughing stock of the neighborhood.

this is how i know God is real: i'm alive.

small updates.

i may or may not have copied this from my recent email to a friend, but i added some nuggets so all can enjoy:

malaria is out-booya grandma! but i do have a cold that won't go away and kleenex is a rare commodity. farmer's blows are my new best friend. at christmas time we slaughtered a sheep that slept right outside my door and with whom i tried to avoid any relationship prior to its depressing destiny. jim almost got arrested for taking pictures in the IDP camp's market (one of which is featured above). the boys love to watch "big mama"-and they get a kick when my lanky little body dances like her character. my american pals (jim and nathan) have left me all alone. but i'm having lots of new fun with everyone. i'm living in the local IDP camp some of the time. a few nights ago my 6 foot denka friend priscilla slept in my bed with me-still not sure why. two UN workers (including one american) were shot and killed while driving in khartoum. another random lady was shot while cooking in Mayo, the IDP camp, just blocks away from where i was having a conversation with one of the teachers who lives there. old and new directors are crazy, the truck broke down, the headmaster's stealing money from the center, and our pets' heads are falling OFF!

but honestly, people, i've felt more peace now than ever. i'm having so much fun-isn't that wierd? i've been reading, playing futbol, dancing, and singing 50 cent. i recently attended a hybrid wedding that was full of ugly 80s american decor crossed with traditional african choruses and one very awkward kiss. i'll be going to another one tomorrow.

long story short, Jesus' peace remains steady in my heart and i couldn't be happier to be here. it's funny how He takes us on a trip where we don't know directions or what we've packed or really, why we're going at all but the point is He's driving and you just don't care. i'm not talking about some corny "Jesus take the wheel" song, more like the beach boys "this is the worst trip i've every been on", but either way the reality is that i'm on a very strange trip by being a part of life in general, especially the life that God makes for me. i guess i'm trying to say that being a follower of Christ is confusing, yet there is this richness that doesn't match up with anything i've ever experienced and i can't help but feel myself uninterested in sorting out the confusion, but simply continuing to marvel at the beautiful Guide...

thank you

ok, you can stop giving now! good news-we have recieved above what we asked for, and we won't be asking you for anymore money (at least not in this scenario). seriously, thank you, to anyone and everyone who gave to a cause that you probably didn't really understand and that was undeniably shady, at least from your perspective. just know that your donations may have spared one to three imprisonments, certainly banned visas, and most importantly 35+ boys from being forced back into poor family situations or no home at all. you have helped us to respect the culture we're in and to demonstrate Love in a most unusual way. so thanks for that. it's not easy to be asked for money from a phone call or a computer screen for a situation you may feel very detached from. but thank you for giving anyway, along side our own personal donations, and for letting me feel bound in the support of those who love me and/or those who love the Father i serve. i really believe He did the giving for us.

thanks again. and happy new year!