Viola lives on the grounds of a large NGO called Urban Promise. We spent the whole day in her house. We listened to music and she did gymnastic stuff and tried to dance. Lunch was fantastic, she had made some potatoes Ugandan-style…tastiness, partnered with convo about cultural assumptions. Good times.
Her house was built a few years ago by Extreme Makeover. Viola’s room had basketball murals on the wall, as well as the name of the two boys who were supposed to share the bunkbed left behind. The family couldn’t afford it in the end. It’s hard to help without hurting. I understand that. As I was waiting at the train station on my way home, I saw a guy asking for money coming my direction. After worrying so much about getting to where I was going, I felt grateful that it had went alright, and I sympathized with him. So I decided not to pull the “My ipod is on and I can’t hear you” card.
As I was getting out my money, an older woman came up and started loudly telling him to leave, that he shouldn’t intimidate people. She started waving her arms towards the security, but they just looked at her perplexed. Twice I told her “ma’am, he didn’t intimidate me.” She disagreed. So I told him, ‘you didn’t intimidate me.” I felt bad for him because he looked embarrassed, and bad for her because she was just so upset.
But for the first time in a while, I didn’t let it bother me. Usually I might do a ‘we suck’ thought project the rest of the night. But instead I just cocked my head to the side, shrugged it off, smiled and went back to my music. I don’t know if that was right. But it was nice. On the train ride back, I continued to be grateful about getting home safe. I had my own little happy epiphany as I was listening to Switchfoot’s Enough to Let Me Go, Free and Jon Foreman’s My Love Goes Free. I had been skimming a book by the Urban Promise founder earlier, and there was a section in it about subversive joy. It included a quote by Mother Theresa:
The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen.
I had posted that lion martyr Christian life sometimes the Christian life isn’t about you photo on my facebook. Cinda responded and said the Christian life is never about you. I’m still thinking on that Cinda. But joy’s definitely not about you or your troubles. Because joy comes from Christ, to you, when you understand why, and then you’re free to stop worrying and fearing for yourself. The circle cell group I’ve gone to so far just finished going through Philippians. The third chapter is where Paul’s like though I’m super awesome and do everything right, I count it all as nothing, for the surpassing joy of knowing Christ Jesus.
When I think about dandelions, I think about a lot of things. One of them is that each of the little fluffs is something I’m proud of about myself, something I get my sense of identity and worth from. These are things I like very much. But saying I count it all as nothing, that requires *whoosh!* blowing them all away, letting it all go. No longer worrying about it, fearing what others think of you. Of the many things I’m bad at letting go of, these are probably the worst. Yet it's all nothing, just little fluffs that are chasings after the wind. But that doesn’t mean I have to go all Ecclesiastes, dark clouds and frowns. Because joy says, yeah, that stuff’s not what matters, and I’m still here. I'm not there yet, but, like I said to myself when I walked past where I was going, I'm not lost either. I know where I am. It's just not where I thought I was going. But I know where that is, and I'm learning how to get there. So. Yay, joy. Okay.
And so, yay, after two mornings of having the random old guy on the corner do some kind of song/cat-call to me on my way to my internship, I can walk up to him – instead of past him – and greet him and get to talking and find out he’s a Christian counselor and herbalist. Okay.
And on my walk to the church cell group I can go at a snail’s crawl for a block and a half because I made friends with a kitty-cat and it knows my legs are for being rubbed against, not walking. And we make quite a spectacle of ourselves, me talking to it and it meowing at me and people walking past smiling, but really, it’s okay.
And I can not eat dinner tonight cuz I left my wallet at home and wait around at my internship for an hour and snack on Danielle’s carrots, so that I can go to cell and then hog all the snacks, after over-empathizing with the kitty-cat and its hungry/lonely-meows, and it’s okay. I actually really like over-empathizing with animals. It’s kind of my thing.
And I can admit to the cell group that I didn’t go to church because I hadn’t really felt like going to church. And I can ask questions about how he is the God of peace and yet in the OT he’s kind of a god of war, and I can feel stupid asking about that and not really have the question answered, but expect that, but listen to some good dialogue, and not really expect that, and knw the questions won’t be answered for years probably and I might not like the answers, but feel like it’ll be ok.
And, let’s see. I can start writing my first grant and need to re-write lots of it and learn how to mat pictures and go down to City Hall all within the first week of my internship and that’s definitely okay, because the programs administrator/everything supervisor Danielle is good at her job and blunt when she needs to be and encouraging when she needs to be and rather a lucky break for me. And I can be more nervous at my performance at the restaurant than at my internship, and that’s okay. And I can get a random babysitting job where the kid is adorable and I’m allowed to snack and I’m very generously compensated, and that’s definitely okay. And I can find someone to play guitar with and it sounds cool but I don’t know if it’s good and that’s okay, cuz I can change that or change me. And it can be cold, and that’s okay.
And my mom can rock, and that’s definitely okay, too.
In sum, things are okay.
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