Ale La (Go There)

This post is dedicated to my friend Gemma, who- unknowingly, I’m sure- made me ask myself honest questions. Thanks for keeping it real Pops. Right before I went on vacation I was texting back and forth with one of my favorite friends and she mentioned that she was excited for me to have some time on my vacation to regain my “thoughts and faith.” Hmmmm, I thought. Faith. What would I say about my faith right now? A part of me really resented that question because I had no words, but I didn’t like anything that seemed to indicate that I had lost my faith. So, I decided not to think about it anymore and went on vacation with my brother Daniel. In two weeks we went to three cities. In Washington DC I was tired. Soul deep tired, the kind that knocks you out at night like a tranquilizer dart shot into an elephant. I slept a lot. Then, in the National Air and Space Museum my brother and I watched a planetarium show about dark matter , and my mind and heart couldn’t...

This week I guest posted over at my friend Jen's blog for her series called "Expand." I felt pretty nervous about this because although I felt like I HAD to write about this, I also felt like it could cause some controversy. Would people read grace behind what I was saying? Would they think I was just another woman screaming that men have gotten it all wrong? NOT what I believe by the way. Anywho, in great trepidation I wrote and re-wrote and then sent this off to Jen for final editing. It's a part of my self examination of how fear has ruled my life. It's a part of the writing challenge that I set early this year. Here's an excerpt from the middle; "Looking back now, I feel like God was working on my trust issues with men at the same time as He was making me into feminist. Ironic. But, isn’t that the way that He does things? I want to say here that there are a lot of people who I deeply respect who don’t like the word “feminist.” For them...

Somewhere around the turn of the New Year, thoughts about fear kept weaving themselves through the fabric of prayers, experiences and conversations that make up the living, breathing fabric of Life. I suddenly stepped back and saw a greater pattern in mine. I saw some of the ways that fear has dictated my thinking and guided my decision making process.   Fear dominated much of the way I approached my faith. Fear snuck its way into my thoughts about femininity. Fear told me to hold back reserves even in my deepest friendships.  Fear kept me from following.  Fear had my hopes for the future locked up tight in cages.  But something has been shaking loose.  "Be a Lamp. Or a Lifeboat. Or a Ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd."   - Rumi The BIG parts of life and death keep hitting me like a Mack truck. Rather than be the sad llama  who feels oh so sorry for herself, I want to be ...

Welp. I was going to write something about pain, but… It just wasn’t gelling. Like seriously, this past weekend I wrote 4 different fragments of thought collections, and none of them were anything that I felt in my bones. I was on vacation with my friend Lindsay, trying to write, and suddenly turned to her and said, “ This is not working. I think I maybe need to write something… gritty .” She nodded supportively and asked me ½ hr. later how my “getting gritty was going.” Yeah. I had nothing. I have no success at "grittiness." It just looks like crazy eyes.  Yesterday I was in a patients home with no words, tears in my eyes, and barren comfort to give the daughters of a young mom who is dying of cancer. Last night I was sweating the emotion out of every single pore of my body in a hot yoga class. And today was like listening to the same song on repeat- another family, more tears, and eye contact with my patients hazel eyes that blinked to pu...

The high places break me every time. My hands crack open and bleed from the dry air and from the wind. My breath comes in gasps. When we sing hymns in the morning it comes in an unsteady line of rich notes, full yet breathless. The meaning is full. Eyes around the circle of faces are full. There is a pressure in my chest and I don't know if it is from the thin air or the emotion. Somehow the severity of the landscape breaks off my hardness. Is it the people walking out of the empty painted hills, the way they call me Tia or doctorita, or is it the way that Venus actually shines like the star of Bethlehem illustrations from years of Christmas cards? Is it the intensity on Cathy's face as she stands in the main square in Choco reading the Bible to people who cannot read themselves? Or maybe it is the baby girl, born two months premature at home, because the hospital is 2 days away, who is now cooing at me from within the brightly colored blanket that wraps her to her mothers ...

It can be really painful to be all in. Last week after a flurry of self-pity and bemoaning "Oh whyyyy is my lifeeee so hard right now." I paused and said, "God, if you want to, you can kick my butt today." After praying that I innocently clicked through the blogosphere. So strange that we browse blogs now instead of flipping the pages in a book. And as I clicked I kept coming to story after story of people who are letting their hearts be hurt for something that is bigger than themselves. I repeat. They are letting themselves be hurt. They felt the choice to do something, to feel something or to just let it be and they chose to let their hearts live in a place of discomfort. Jamie calls herself "the very worst missionary" and right now she is letting the ugliness and the rape of children in SE Asia break her heart . She is a throbbing, bleeding, open hearted momma who is speaking out against some of the darkest things in this world. Emily works as...

Surrender and Trust. Those are terrible words. They feel terrible anyways. I mean, I'm sure they are wonderful in theory. But anyone who has ever struggled with Surrender and Trust knows what I am talking about; that sinking feeling when trust comes up in a conversation, the numbness when someone says, " Don't you trust yourself? " and the near hysteria when you realize that trust and surrender mean that sometimes bad things happen. Well, I guess bad things happen anyways whether you trust, surrender, or not. Yes, this post is off to a cheerful start. I have been thinking a lot about  this time  when I was in Peru and vividly remembering my conversation with God about surrender. I remember that I was reading the book of Job on that trip, and I was struck by the encompassing tragedy of it, and how Job just sat in the dirt and wept for days. I remember that when I finally told God, " I think you can really HAVE my life... Yes, really. " I wanted to sit...

How can we describe the moments where we feel the stillness permeate our bones and yet understand that we are moving forward? Like a sailboat all unfurled, gliding across the water, its substance holds it and anchors it while the invisible wind pushes it forward. Such is the present moment. Like peripheral vision we are aware that something has shifted, but if we move our gaze, if we wander, the moment will pass. Recently this knowing  hit me as my brother and I drove along the coast at sunset. The golden haze of light illuminated each car on the highway and entered each pore of skin. Time had stopped. Yet, magically, we all moved forward. And again it landed as I watched an inchworm traverse the violet, fluffy orb of a garden flower. The substance of a memory held and the movement of the worm, slow and deliberate, surprised me. Words echoed, no they rippled, the effect bounced back again and again, with the cadence of my tiny green friend. "Amanda, just because you can handle som...

I had two cases of elder abuse on my case load last week, and somewhere in my processing wrote this. The cycle of violence hurts and seems to keep on turning. Yet, I still rest in Hope. If we can all get out of our god complexes and ask for grace and help...There. Just. May. Be. Hope. Dear ____, Sometime last week you might have hit your mother as she lay there dying, illness claiming her body, sightless in both eyes and demanding, SO demanding. Her imperious voice echoed through the house as she ordered you to pull her up in bed, to adjust her pillow, to change her diaper. I say "might have" because she could be lying too, a lying and manipulating mother, who seems to be clutching on to that last bit of control she has over life and over you. She has been dying for a long time, perhaps too long, perhaps just long enough. You threatened her for reasons unknown to me, but I can speculate. You threatened her because she and your father hit you, because aggression ...

Holy ground, sometimes we get to walk on Holy ground. I love the passage in Exodus 3 where God tells Moses to take off his shoes before he comes any closer. God is asking for an outward symbol of an inward attitude. Hey Moses, make yourself vulnerable and humble, you are about witness how Big. I. Am. Once Moses realizes what this means he hides his face as well. I feel like that a lot these days. I walk into a patient’s home, into the circumstances that surround their death and I feel like I’m walking into something sacred. Sometimes it is terrifying, sometimes there is so much emotional pain that you can feel it strangling you, and other times it is SO peaceful as you watch that person get ready for something enormous. I have cried tears of happiness, sadness and overwhelming fullness at least once a week since I got this job. There have been days of insanity; a patients eye rupturing, cleaning gangrenous feet, and holding an inconsolable sister after the quick passi...

Wintertime in S. California. The few weeks out of the year when Southern Californians marvel at the layer of frost (which they we call ice) that has formed on our windshields. The kids in the streets breathe enthusiastically on each exhale as their breath freezes around their faces. And we bundle up in layers of cotton, because wool is too scratchy (not to mention practical). On my hands and knees in my front yard "weeding" my flower beds, I felt the cold soak into my hands and numb my toes and fingertips. People say you are supposed to talk to plants and play them classical music in order to foster the proper growing environment. Does swearing at weeds when they break off in your hand count? I heard my next door neighbors yelling at each other inside of their house, and my body tensed up. A visceral response. I've been having a lot of those lately, quick and sudden responses as if my body just reacts to whatever is happening and I have to quickly moderate/check my...

This morning I looked at my journal and realized that I've been neglecting all the stuff that is swirling around in my heart. It's cheesy, and I know a lot of people don't journal any more, but for me my journal is a place where I realize what I'm feeling in my day to day life. It's like talking to a close friend. It's the most honest place of my prayer life. It is full of mistakes, bad spelling, terrible handwriting and sometimes bad words, but I know that God can take it. He already knows all of that anyways. The problem is that for the past week, I haven't been journaling very much. It's more like I have been bullet pointing the things that happen in my day to day life, and avoiding how I feel about them. I arrived in Lima on Thursday afternoon and got settled in to my guest house in San Miguel. This guest house was a surprise plan. Which means, I thought I had a plan and then SURPRISE, this happened. I had originally planned on staying with some ...