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Living in expectation(s)

Having two weeks off from work has been an incredible blessing. Considering the fact that it is the holidays, I have also gotten to spend an unusual amount of time with my family. As I’ve mentioned before, I come from a HUGE family with siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins spread all over the state and country– people who typically don’t spend holidays together, but this holiday season has been different. Because I finally walked in my teaching license commencement a few weeks ago, I have been blessed to have the majority of my family in town at some point over my winter break, which has meant a ton of coffee dates and late night chats in our pajamas.

I love spending quality time with my peeps, but this time around I noticed that something is different in my life– something noticeable and big and sort of scary… kinda like the proverbial elephant in the room that was repeatedly unleashed when a family member would pepper me with the questions that every single 20-something year old woman dreads: “So, do you have a boyfriend yet?” “Now that you’re finally done with school, have you started looking into buying a small house?” “Are you thinking of moving home to Pueblo or staying in Denver?”

You see, I come from a rather traditional Hispanic family– one where the expectation is that once you are done with your schooling (I have learned that “done” is an incredibly relative word, typically meaning once you have finished your Bachelor’s) you pack your bags and move home to be near your family in the small town where they are rooted. And for years and years, I wanted to follow that expectation; I wanted to move home and help start a Street School in Pueblo. I wanted to find a little house in my family’s neighborhood where I could watch my cousins grow up, where I could be near the side of my family that I see so infrequently, where I could learn to cook from my aging grandmother… I don’t exactly consider myself a “people-pleaser” but after being asked these same questions over and over again, I realized that part of me wanted to live up to these expectations and please my family.

But then there is the other part of me, the part that is independent and ready to go where ever God is calling me to go. The part that typically takes control of me and leads me about my daily life. After a few seconds of sadness that I wasn’t living up to my family’s expectations for my life, this part of me would regroup and I would respond to the boyfriend inquiry with a cheerful, “Nope” and the moving questions with, “I’m actually thinking of moving to Dallas and then maybe to a jungle or desert on another continent after I’m done with my Master’s Degree to work with refugees and assist with Bible Translation instead of coming home.” After that last sentence I could feel the room turn uncomfortably silent for what felt like a few decades, but what I’m sure was only a few seconds at most.

After the pause and some awkward squirming, my family’s overwhelming response was something to the tune of, “Oh, well maybe you’ll meet a nice boy before then and settle down.”

This is where my teaching training came in handy because as my mouth smiled and said, “Yeah. Maybe,” my brain was screaming, “AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

Maybe I’m just crazy and stubborn, (Okay, I’m definitely crazy and stubborn.) but I don’t want to “settle down” right now. And I am tired of my culture telling me that there is something missing in my life. I am sick of being told that as a young, single, Christian woman, I am incomplete until I have a boyfriend that I can marry, buy a cute little house with, and then fill said cute house with cute little children.

I am sick of it.

Last time I checked, I have a brain, a heart, two eyes, two ears, a mouth, and four functional appendages; I’m not incomplete. I am a whole freaking human being! And finding a boyfriend or moving back to the little town I came from won’t make me any more or less of a human being.

Okay, let me hop off my soapbox and get to the point here…

Last week, I met up and had coffee with a dear friend who is not only in the same(ish) stage of life as me, but whom God is also calling to move outside of her comfort zone and into nations on the other side of the world. As Kathryn and I were chatting, she expressed many of the same frustrations that I have been feeling and how she, upon being called to Rwanda for the next several months to do ministry through her photography, felt guilty for not fulfilling her own family’s expectations of her.

She explained that she had Skyped with her home church’s pastor months ago, and had expressed these feelings of guilt with him. After listening to her mixed feelings of wanting to go where God was calling her, but not wanting to disappoint her equally traditional family, he said some of the most simple, but sage words of wisdom that I have heard in a long time.

“You’re forgetting that God created everyone differently. Not every woman was created to pay a mortgage.”

As she repeated this story to me, all I could think was, Duh! How had I missed this? How had I forgotten that I am not my cousins or aunts? And that because I am different, I am not called to the same things.

For some reason, there was something so freeing about those nine words. For days I repeated them in my mind. Not every woman was created to pay a mortgage. Not every woman was created to pay a mortgage.

These words have reminded me that no, I’m not defective for being a content single woman who doesn’t currently want to be tied to a house with a white picket fence. Nor am I strange for wanting to move out of my comfort zone here in America to the other side of the world some day instead of “settling down” and buying a tiny house here in the States.

I am called, as is Kathryn, as are you. Maybe we’re not called to the same things, but we’re all called to something, be that singleness, married life, to live in the U.S., Rwanda, Germany, or Lebanon… We are different and therefore differently called; what a novel concept!

And who knows, maybe God will drop an adventurous man into my life sometime between now and then, but maybe not. Maybe I’ll get to partially fulfill my family’s expectations for my life and have a cute little family overseas someday, but maybe not. Slowly, I have begun to realize that at the end of the day, none of these things matter. The only thing that genuinely matters is God and that I follow Him and His expectations for me.

So for now I am learning to be genuinely content with where God is placing me instead of living under the thumb of the burdensome expectations of my culture or well-meaning loved ones. It might not make me popular with my family come the next holiday, but I have no doubt that God will work that out when the time comes. He always does…

What has God called you to? Will you follow Him or will you let the expectations placed on you hold you back?

“Are you bound in marriage? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from marriage? Do not seek to marry. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried [wo]man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 7:27,32)

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Immanuel (Even when “it” sucks)

The-Griswold-Family-Christmas

Sometimes Christmas sucks. Actually, if you’re a part of my beautiful, dysfunctional family, you know that suckage is one of our main holiday traditions. (Well, suckage and the watching of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, as pictured above.) Typically, the sucking sucks so much that I end up bawling my eyes out at some point on either Christmas Eve / Day, then sucking up all the suckage and carrying on about my holiday with a plastered on grin/grimace. This year, the dysfunction and suckage came early, and as I sit here at 4:00 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, (pre-“festivities”, mind you) I am already emotionally exhausted.

I don’t write this for pitty, trust me, I could pretty much care less at this point. Nor do I write this to bring down those of you that are having a wonderful, non-sucky time with your families. Instead, my main motive of this blog is to pass on the wonderful and snarky words of a fellow blogger & missionary, Jamie. If you too are having a sucky holiday, I advise you to read this lovely blog post on the Fall of Christmas.

I love how Jamie ends her post, and therefore I am borrowing her words to conclude my own; “Jesus didn’t come to fix it all.  He came to be with us in it all.

Immanuel.

God with us.

Blessed are the poor, the mourning, the meek, and the hungry… for The Lord is with us.”

Merry sad Christmas, Beloved. You. Are Not. Alone.
May you celebrate the Birth of Our King today and tomorrow, knowing that He came to live with and within all of us, that we might never be alone in all of our suckiness.
Merry Christmas,
Lou
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A Safe Haven

I haven’t written about work or my students in a while, and to be honest, it’s because I’m a bit crispy around the edges. By no means am I “burnt out”, but teaching “at-risk youth” day-in and day-out without seeing much change or success is exhausting to say the least.

In the last month alone, I have had students confide in me that they are suicidal, re-addicted to drugs and alcohol, being abused at home, homeless, self-harming… You name it, I’ve probably had a conversation about it with a student lately. Every time I sit and look into the teary eyes of one of my students during one of those talks, my heart splits in two.

I just want to go all “momma-bird” and swoop them up, let them live in my house, so that they can be removed from their circumstances, and love on them… but given the fact that I live in a glorified shoebox, I can’t. And thus, my heart breaks even more.

I know in my heart that God is the only one that can truly rescue my kiddos and deliver them from their circumstances, but sometimes not being able to provide a safe haven for them makes me feel like a failure as a teacher and advocate.

But today I was reminded that I am a part of a safe haven– a place that God led my boss to found and build 29 years ago– The Denver Street School.

This afternoon, my phone buzzed with a Facebook notification from the lovely and talented Kathryn Bronn. Kathryn is an art student who has partnered with the Street School for the last two years. She has provided free senior pictures to our students, free staff portraits for the teachers and faculty, and she has even poured countless hours into the making of a documentary for the school and two music videos. The notification I received today was telling me that this year’s music video had just been finished.

I clicked the link and as soon as I hit play, my eyes started tearing up and I swear I felt like I had butterflies in my heart.

The teenagers in the video below aren’t just my students– they are my kids… and they’re “playing” because they know that they’re at home.

There are felons, drug addicts, and current and former gang members singing in this video. There are kids that have been thrown out of their homes and have lived on the streets dancing. There are girls who have traded their bodies for love and acceptance, only to be crushed, giggling, and boys who have suffered unspeakable abuse smiling.

This video was a perfectly timed reminder that God is doing something in each and every one of their lives… Even when I don’t see the daily changes, I can rest in confidence knowing that He brought them into the DSS family for a reason and that He loves them more than I ever will.

Thank you Kathryn, you are a beautiful soul and I am beyond thankful for the work that you have done for our school!

11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
12 that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”

(Psalm 30:11-12)

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Thankful [2]

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I began a list of things that I am thankful for a few weeks ago (Thankful [1]). Considering the fact that it is in fact Thanksgiving Day, I figured that today would be a reasonable time to finish and post this bad boy. So, here we go again…

16. My “Other Moms”: I’ll admit it– sometimes when I listen to my friends talk to their moms about their days or recent happenings, I get jealous that I don’t have that type of relationship with my own mother… Then that feeling of jealousy usually turns to a feeling of sadness. But recently I realized that I am incredibly blessed in the “mom department”, just in a way that is different than most. Instead of having one, solid mom who I can talk to about things, I have been blessed with four amazing mothers. While only one of them is actually my biological mother, the others have taken on the roles of guiding, supporting, loving, and essentially raising me. So, I just needed to publicly say, Laura, Allison, & Rezel I am so thankful for you and everything that you have done for me. I love you all so much.

17. Travel: I’ve always been a bit adventure hungry and up until recently, dreams of big adventures were well… just dreams. But over the course of the last two years alone I have been able to travel to San Francisco (on four occasions), Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Utah, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. I am thankful for my job at the StreetSchool Network that has allowed me to travel and see the country, and for friends who have moved and graciously invited me into their new homes to stay for a while.

Post Secret 31

18. Extra-extra-extra-extra-long pants: It may seem a bit petty, but when you’re a 6’2″ athletically built woman, finding pants that are both long enough and don’t fit you incredibly weird is nearly an impossible venture. So today, I am thankful for 39″ inseam pants (and my wonderful principal who invested in me by buying me several pairs from Alloy so I don’t have to freeze my tukus off this winter)!

19. Little financial surprises & answered prayers: When you raise your own support, finances are often kinda tight and so I have been looking for a part-time tutoring job so that I can start saving up for my graduate school textbooks and the big move. But God has shown up in crazy ways these last few weeks, even in the midst of my mini-finacial-crises. Without much effort or thought at all I was able to land an adjunct teaching position at my alma mater. Then, within the same week, I was randomly given an entire box of groceries and a gift card to my local grocery for fresh produce. It has been really neat to see God provide for my needs, no matter how big or small. As my boss always says, “God loves His kids and loves to provide for us when we ask.”

thanksgivingfood

20. My “boring” life: “Miss, you don’t own a tv, you don’t have a boyfriend, and you allegedly don’t go out… What exactly do you do with your life?” “Well, I hang out with Miss S and Miss Miller a lot to lesson plan and get coffee. I go to potluck on Mondays, and Bible study three nights a week… and other than that I just walk my dog and sleep. AND I LOVE IT!” This conversation literally happens at least once a week, and I’m not sure that my students honestly believe me that I love my life the way that it is, but I do. After living through a few years that were only rivaled by the drama and insanity of reality television, I am thankful that I get to be a bit of an introverted homebody these days. It might not be the most exciting existence, but I’m pretty content.

21. The psuedo-tradition of music: I love coming from a big family, but because there are so many of us that have started with one family and then been smushed into my current HUGE family, we don’t have many solid traditions anymore. Yet even in the midst of the smush-ed-ness, we all share the commonality of music. I am thankful that I have always grown up with music playing in my house and I am even more thankful for that awesome feeling of being in the car with my parents or siblings, cranking up the volume to a ridiculous 80’s hair band, and singing at the top of our lungs– together.

22. Ice cream: Obviously.

23. My wonderful “fake roommates”: Amy, Amy, Mallory, and Julie- I don’t think that you four know how much I really love you guys. The fact that I have a toothbrush and pajamas in your house for our weekly sleepovers simply makes my heart so happy. Our late night chats, morning coffee, and 24 marathons have made such a difference in the way that I view my life, as well as in my walk with Jesus. You four are beautiful, strong women of Christ and I cherish our friendship. Thank you for being awesome.

yarrowgirls

24. The fact that I was born in America: I am incredibly thankful that I was born in a country where my freedom of religion (and most other freedoms) are protected by law. I am also thankful for the people who have sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice to secure those freedoms everyday.

25. Charlie Ray: Yes, I am one of those “crazy dog ladies” who loves her pet far too much. But I just can’t help it! There is just something so comforting about opening my front door after a long day and having a tiny white furball pounce on me. In weird ways, this pup has taught me so much about God’s unconditional love and for that, I am thankful.

Chuck background

27. Health insurance: This is one of those “you know you’re a ‘grown-up’ when” things… Up until recently, I have almost always had health insurance; and up until a few months ago, when my insurance expired and I wasn’t sure that anyone would re-insure me because of my pre-exisiting conditions, I didn’t realize how much I had taken my insurance for granted. I am thankful that my clumsy self is now insured again.

28. Friendsgiving: In the 90’s I was semi-addicted to the tv show Friends. (Let’s be honest, who wasn’t?) I always wanted a group of friends who I could celebrate holidays with and just do everyday life with. And as I sit here typing this at my “fake roommates” dining room table, the house is a buzz with my version of the Friends cast preparing pies, brining the turkey, and of course, making coffee– a staple in this household. I’m incredibly thankful for the people that I will be eating with today, both my roommates and our friends that will be joining us later, and for the blessing of absurd amounts of tasty foods. We are truly blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope your days are blessed with family, food, and fellowship.

Blessings, Lou

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”

(Colossians 4:2)

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Shaken up

snowglobe

I have a weird collection of snow globes from when I was a child. (Apparently my grandmother thought that the best thing for her clumsy granddaughter to collect was fragile glass balls of glittery water… You now know where I get my logical thinking from…) Anyway, as I sat staring at the row of snow globes on my bookcase in my apartment the other day, something in my brain clicked.

Lately, I have felt like one of the tiny figurines in my snow globes. When the globe is sitting in one place, everything is clear– which is symbolic of the state that I have been living in for roughly the last year. Last December, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was exactly where God wanted me. I thought I was going to be teaching at the Denver Street School for years to come. I didn’t foresee any big changes in my life that were going to shake up my snow globe existence and I was pretty content with that.

Then last January when I turned down a missions fellowship in Glasgow, Scotland, God shook up my snow globe by having my dear friend take me to a Perspectives class and wreck me for the broken and lost all over the world. Even though I didn’t see it then, this was the beginning of my journey toward graduate school and Texas.

Fast forward 11 months, 1 grad school acceptance letter, and several major freakouts:

This past Saturday, while having coffee and Bible study with two of my closest friends, it dawned on me: I didn’t need to be freaked out about moving to Texas next summer. After all, I’m not moving to “live” in Texas; I’m moving to live with God somewhere else. (Keep in mind that this revelation came after weeks of praying and crying while the glittery dust of getting accepted into graduate school settled in my little snow globe of a life.) It was in that revelation that I really felt at peace with where God was leading me. That afternoon the glittery dust finally settled and for the first time since this chaotic journey began, I was ready to go where ever God wanted me to go.

Not even 24 hours later, I was sitting in another coffee shop waiting to have coffee with a different friend before evening church when I logged onto my school’s website to register for my spring semester online classes when I saw it– the listing of online classes for next summer and fall. More precisely, the list showing exactly the classes that I need to take next summer and fall online.

I couldn’t believe it. I literally sat and stared at my computer screen for a solid 5 minutes trying to process what this meant. I can take my whole first year of grad school online… Does this mean I still have to move this coming August? Is this an answer to my incredibly selfish prayers to not have to leave Denver quite yet? Should I move anyway, even if I don’t have to?

In those 5 minutes, it felt like I was back in my little snow globe, except this time it wasn’t sitting somewhere while the glittery dust was gently floating to the bottom like the day prior. No, this time Someone had it in Their hand and They were shaking it up, mixing all of my carefully laid plans together.

Thankfully, my friend walked in shortly after and she was able to chat through things with me, reminding me that I need to pray through things and not freak out. So pray, we did and once again I was reminded that none of this is my decision anyway. Ultimately, I will go where God wants me to go. I simply need to pray, wait, and let the glitter settle again so I could see clearly where He is leading me.

After about an hour of chatting, we gathered our things and went to church together, where our missions pastor stood up and announced that there were still openings for this summer’s missions fellowship to, you guessed it, Glasgow, Scotland. Instantly, my snow globe was shaken up again and my thoughts started swirling along with all of the glitter in my brain.

Is this why I might not have to move to Dallas right now? Am I supposed to spend my summer working with the homeless and hopeless on the other side of the world in Glasgow? Is this another answered prayer or is this just me wanting adventure and finding it right at my finger tips?

The answer: I don’t know.

But I do know that as I write this, I have my missions application open in the other tab of my browser and I’m planning to begin it shortly. I don’t know if God is leading me to Dallas, or Glasgow, both, or even somewhere completely different this summer, but I do know that He is leading me… and He will take me exactly where I’m supposed to go.

4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long.”

(Psalm 25:4-5)