Contentment

So I discovered a couple weeks ago that this blog still exists, but haven't had much inspiration to write until now. So, the last 2 and a half years of my little journey have gone something like this ...

I graduated from my Master's program (yay!). Didn't move to Puerto Rico (sigh). Started doing therapy with Mexican immigrants...a little dubious that my Spanish would actually still be there after a 5-year hiatus (it was). Started a new relationship (woo hoo!). Adopted a cat (awh...). Started reading for fun again (finally!). Life is good.

2011 has been a tough year, though, in many ways. I love my job, but sometimes it makes me very tired. When it seems like all my clients are in crisis ... and I'm no longer working somewhere safe where I can take a walk on my lunch break to get away from it all ... I sometimes get a little down in the dumps. Then other days, I have teenage clients who tell me they want to be therapists when they grow up, and I smile and know that I'm doing at least someone some good. I'm still teaching flute on the side too, and one of my kids made it to All-State Band this year. Yesterday I was working with one of my newbies and I had a flashback to my first flute lessons and that sense of wonder I had with every new note that I got out of that instrument. It feels rewarding to be able to give someone else that experience.

I suppose that part of the reason I haven't written is that I've struggled a lot the last couple of years in a number of ways, and I didn't really have the clarity to put my thoughts into words. There was the winter of '10 that I was so ill I could hardly drive ... the questions I've wrestled through with the Lord to which I often felt I'd never get answers ... the many moments when, despite the things I have accomplished professionally, I've felt desperately behind on life compared to my peers, like there was a timeline for accomplishing certain life milestones, and I wasn't reaching any of them on time, and I didn't want to write about what I wasn't achieving ...

And finally, these last couple of weeks, I feel the fog lifting for the first time in a while. The Lord has given me a few answers that I've desperately sought for over the years. I've finally given myself permission to stop church-hunting and give in to what I've craved ... time alone with the Lord, away from the crowds of people I don't know, to connect with Him however I want ... which might be why my questions are finally being answered ... because I'm hearing straight from Him instead of just from people. In any case, I'm enjoying Him more than I have in probably 5 years. It's so refreshing.

My boyfriend moved away this summer to care for his father during an illness, and while it's been incredibly hard to have him gone, I'm watching the Lord meet his needs in really cool ways ... while we learn how to be there for each other from 6 hours away. I also kind of feel like that timeline I always had in my mind of things that are supposed to happen by certain points in my life (i.e. marriage, a family, and the picket-fence house, haha) is melting away. I'm finally accepting that sometimes life is just way out of my control. You can meet the most amazing person yet for some reason be separated because someone else needs them more. There's nothing I would have done differently along my dating journey ... and at this point I feel I've finally come to enough peace within myself that I'm bringing someone whole and mature into a relationship.

So, that's been life in a nutshell since I wrote last. Hopie's falling asleep as I write this, reminding me that I should be too... Night, all. :)

Puerto Rico

Sigh. On Friday I returned from a vacation that changed my life. I left for Puerto Rico on the 27th of February, just hoping for some sun, fun times with friends, and a nice break from the craziness that is my life right now. While all that happened and then some, I also fell in love with the country/territory/quasi-state, whatever you wanna call it. It was so half-gringo/half-hispanic that I felt right at home.

That doesn't happen very often for me. I loved Central America but couldn't really see myself living there long-term. But Puerto Rico was exotic enough to feel like Latin America, yet so American, that I didn't really feel that far from home. I loved it.

I could totally see myself living there. Now, if I can just find a way to do what I love there...I'll be all set...

P.S. Why don't they get a state quarter??

On faith and politics...

I have to admit that my faith has been shaken over the last few years...I guess since I returned from Costa Rica nearly four years ago now. I've had to wrestle with a lot of discrepancies between what I've been taught in the Church my whole life and the injustices that I've seen in society and the world.

As election year has come around for the second time since I've begun wrestling, I've often felt angered by those who would insist that, as a Christian, I don't really get a choice as to who I vote for. It seems that the Church as a whole tends to endorse whichever candidate has the most ties to itself and claims the pro-life agenda.

Now my point in writing all this is more to explain my personal journey over the last few years and months, not to endorse Obama or hail him as the perfect candidate. He's not. None of them are. My point in writing this isn't to endorse a candidate at all, although most of you know that I do plan to vote for Obama. I merely want to explain how, as a committed Believer, I've become frustrated with the Religious Right for being, as I'll argue, selectively Christian and for dictating how the rest of the Church ought to vote.

I've recently picked up a book, which, had I read it years ago, might've saved me from feeling so ostracized and crazy for questioning the Church and it's political agenda. It's called God's Politics - Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, by Jim Wallis of Sojourners in D.C. Granted, I'm only about a chapter into it, but I'm already beginning to feel like someone in the Christian community understands my struggle. Allow me to post a few quotes that highlight the tension I've been living with for a long time now.

"...the confusion comes from many sources. From religious right-wingers who claim to know God's political views on every issue [i.e. abortion & gay marriage, he says], then ignore the subjects that God seems to care the most about [i.e. poverty]" (p. 4, notations mine). After all, poverty and social injustice are HUGE issues all over the Bible, yet they often don't affect how we vote.

"Endorsing political candidates is a fine thing, but ordaining them is not--the way that some leaders of the religious Right named George W. Bush as 'God's candidate' in this election [2004] and proclaimed that real Christians could vote only for him. Just making it clear that good people of faith would be voting for both George Bush and John Kerry in this election for reasons deeply rooted in their faith was an important statement" (p. 8). He's referring here to the campaign that Sojourners propagated in 2004 that claimed that "God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat."

This is my favorite quote of all, which pretty much sums up a little smidgen of my struggle over the last few years: "Someday, a smart Democrat [or Republican, possibly] will figure out how both pro-choice and pro-life people could join together in concrete measures to dramatically reduce the abortion rate by focusing on teen pregnancy, adoption reform, and real support for low-income wwomen. That would be so much better than both sides using the issue as a political football and political litmus test during elections, and then doing little about it afterward" (p. 11).

Think about it, friends? Do your political preferences cost you anything? We can vote against abortion all we want, and maybe someday we'll overturn Roe v. Wade. But who will pay the economic price for it? Not the wealthy politicians we voted into office. It'll be the desperate woman who find herself pregnant, scared, and without health insurance...the one who struggles to know how she'll afford not only to have a baby, but to raise him or her alone. She will pay the price. Personally, I stongly believe that if I have to pay a little more in taxes to ensure that she will have the resources she needs to have her baby, that's a price I'm willing to pay.

It frustrates me that the Church loves to quote that verse about not offering to God that which costs us nothing (2 Sam. 24:24). We use it to explain why we'll generously tithe or give to missions organizations. Yet we vote based on which candidate will give us the most and ask from us the least! Friends, isn't it time that we put our money where our mouths are and vote in favor of "the least of these"?

Sigh. As this blog is entitled "Half-Baked Thoughts from a Persevering Traveler," I will be the first to admit that I have a lot more thinking to do about everything I write here. I recognize that this posting alone will offend many people, and that's okay. I hope that it at least makes you think and perhaps even sparks some good dialogue about stuff that's really important.

As my pastor preached last week, politics are unfortunately often a very divisive thing within the Church. It doesn't have to be this way. Some of us will vote for Barack Obama on November 4th...and others will vote for John McCain. And we will do so because of matters that we hold as deeply relevant to our faith.

I think that's great. It's time the Church stopped dictating who Christians "have to" vote for and allowed some meaningful conversation among its members. Maybe we'll all learn from each other instead of feeling threatened by those who don't share our opinions (or labeling them as "the backsliders"). Somehow, I think that that would show more growth and be a better testimony to the world than our insistence on cutting each other down over our political views or making everyone conform to one way of thinking. Just a thought... :-)