Sundays

Okay! So I am going to attempt to recap all that my life is and was this past year, all within this confining space, and I doubt it will even be that well written, but thank you all for being patient. Some of you, not so much... A lot of this may be a reiteration, as well as my blatant copying of a recent email I just sent on this very topic. I'm either incredibly busy or incredibly lazy... your call.

As you may know (or not know), family friend, peer, father and husband, Chris Laurie, died in a car accident while I was in Haiti, and my family was just heartbroken. And I couldn't come home. A week or so after returning to Boston, high school friend and fellow clique member, Dave Deane, died in a motorcycle accident. And I couldn't come home. (Read past blog post "Pain in the Offering" for more details)Im not sure there is anyway to describe the helplessness that consumes you when both your family AND your friends are hurting and grieving and you cant be there. To be honest, I still have not come to term with either of their deaths because its not real here in Boston. I both long for and dread coming home for that very reason. But I miss home every single day, and that constant pull and heaviness on my heart is exactly the kind of thing that almost made me miss my big chance at a new life.

Haiti obviously changed my life in so many ways... and not in cliched ways, but in like - real experiencing God like I never have in my whole life - ways. It was the hardest month of my whole life, I probably cried every single day, not only out of fear, but anger, hunger, sleeplessness, frustration, whatever hardship you can think of - we seemed to endure it. Not one minute of it was "easy."
(Consequently, I urge anyone who wants to grow up and get over themselves, while simultaneously meeting God on a Haitian mountain, to go to Haiti with Leah next summer. She hopes to run this exact program every summer, and anyone who wants to be broken and humbled is strongly encouraged to come along!)

While I was there, I helped out the two American nurses who were working in the RURAL clinic a couple days a week (Please read Ryna Hansen's blog, upper right corner. She is the young nurse from WA we "left" in Haiti. We went home, she stayed. She has committed to live in Haiti for one year, for free, to work in the clinic. All was typical until two recent Hurricanes made living conditions intolerable. Her blog is so compelling and describes what a girl of 23 is experiencing right now. Stuff you and I will never comprehend. Please write her comments of encouragement, once you read her posts, you will know why.) and saw horrific stuff. Experienced births and deaths and insane wounds and disease. I was not just watching, I was participating! A man died in front of me, a baby was born in my arms, I cleaned wounds, held the sick, prayed for the poor. I felt uglier and sweatier than I ever had in my whole life - but alive for the very first time. That experience solidified what I had been pondering in my head for... well since I witnessed the miracle (and traumatizing events!) that were Ashton and June's births. I wanted to be a nurse, and do radical things in this world. Something that means something. The prospect of a life u-turn that huge had always seemed laughably implausible.

I got back from Haiti on August 6th. For two weeks I prayed about going back to California (out of sheer grief and homesickness)and starting nursing school back home. Had I done that, I would have been on a two year waiting list AT BEST. On August 20th I walked into Simmons College, one of Boston's best nursing programs, JUST to ask them what their science pre-requisites were. (With a degree in English - I literally bribed people to not have to take math or science) I got to talking with the admissions counselor about Haiti, and how I used to be a makeup artist in LA and was just over living such a "fake" life. She asked me if I would like to apply to Simmons. Class literally started in two weeks, so it was unlikely I would get accepted, but I wrote a very lengthy essay about my past and my goals and turned in my application. On September 3rd, I was not only accepted to Simmons as an undergrad working on my 2nd Bachelors Degree, but also accepted into the Nursing program starting Summer '09, and given a scholarship. I started classes September 5th.

Even the admissions counselor said it never should have happened. I walked out of the main campus building and just looked up at the sky... My entire life just changed in an instant, and all because I literally surrendered and stopped fighting Him. I cant describe to you what that moment was like. The mess I'd made of my life while trying to do it my way was nothing compared with the pain of having everything stripped away from me slowly. It started with losing my job, losing Darren, losing everything I thought I knew about myself.... in order for me to find it. Find me. Find God. Find forgiveness. I understand now that it was the way it had to be - my stubborn heart would never have listened until I was standing out on that ledge, with nothing and no one to entice, distract, or bail me out, save only God's outstretched hand waiting to pull me back in. If was mine for the taking.
I would urge anyone reading this who knows they are fighting God, out of anger, fear, or just plain spite, to please here me when I say this -

If you dont surrender your pride willingly, God will create the altar of sacrifice for you and devise that perfect crucial moment where you must choose this day whom you will serve: His will or your own. It could be elaborate, as was the drama of my life this past year, or it could be stealth, things crumbling around you so slowly you barely notice. But one thing is for certain, it most likely will hurt.

You can do this the hard way, or the ridiculously harder way... either way its going to come. Get ready. God promises to hold us with His hand during the good and the bad. We just have to take that first step toward uncertainty, knowing full well we are in control of nothing. Oddly enough, finally admitting that was the freest moment of all.

I have been in classes now for a few weeks now - taking Biology and Organic Chemistry among others - and again, the hardest stuff ever, but this was God's plan and he has even given me the ability to like chemistry!!! WHAT? (Well at least make minuscule sense of it. Thanks Mr. Dimitrowich!)

I also moved to the ghetto, literally, in order to be near the kids we tutor, and I take the bus with unfriendly black people every single day. It is actual crazy town. Sometimes, I marvel at how I even got to this place - what a polar opposite from this time last year. So while I know the next 2 1/2 years will be hard - it's confirmed meant to be. The first time in my life I can confidently use that phrase. So it must be worth it. And I am grateful every single day.

I thank you, my dear hilarious friends, for sticking by me through the good and the flagrantly ridiculous. You are the Kid to my Play.

Holla if you hear me.

Quotes of the Day:

"The god who cares so much about getting rich must not have treasures stored up in heaven, and the god so concerned with getting even must not have very much patience, and the god who cares so much about the West must really hate the rest of the world, and that doesn't sound like a very good god to me. The televangelist can have him..."
-Donald Miller

"If you see a good fight... get in it."
-Vernon Johns

"Basically, whatever gets your mother a house, do that thing.
-Chris Rock