The Day that Shopping Changed My Life

I don't really love shopping.  When I go, I go fast and only buy what is necessary. My dad will be a witness to the fact that I am one of the most frugal people that you will ever meet.  So, it is funny to me that my job here involves so much shopping.  Never would I have thought I would say that a day of shopping changed my life, but it did...

There is a group of ladies here that intimidated me like I had never been intimidated before.  I honestly did not know what to think about them.  I always felt awkward around them. I never knew what to say.  My spanish would get even worse when I was nervous so that made having an intelligent, meaningful conversation with them basically out of the question. So, I often just stood around or played with the children with little interaction with this group of caregivers.  They seemed a little bit brash to me.  I had to interact with them a lot and ask for keys to get into the auditorium while we were making plans for Wendy's quinceañera.  I always felt like they were just waiting for me to mess up. But then, we went shopping and my life has never been the same...

  Jenn and I decided that, even though I was intimidated beyond all get out, we wanted to be their friends. So what do women do when they are friends?  They shop.  In preparation for the quinceañera we decided to go shopping with the caregivers so they could look just as fine as all the kids were going to look in their new clothes.  I was really excited, but also super nervous. We started out at Walmart looking for dresses and I remember thinking "Oh gosh, this is going to take FOREVER!"  The ladies were just kind of walking around looking at a few things (which, in my opinion, there were actually some really cute clothes), but didn't seem to have any direction. After about 15 minutes of people running their hands along the sleeves of shirts we still had nothing, not even anything to try on...  For me, because I hate shopping so much, I am usually in and out as fast as possible.  I could already tell that this was not going to be one of those shopping trips.

We moved on to the next store and I decided I was going to be a bit more proactive.  I grabbed some different dresses and matched them up with the different ladies and tried to herd them toward the  dressing room.  However, I think I was successful with getting maybe one not even into the dressing room but just to hold on to a dress that potentially, she just might wanted to try on, maybe.

sharing tea and cookies at our apartment

But then, I don't even really know how it happened, we were all in the dressing room and the ladies were showing off their different dresses and I was showing off the dresses I had picked out. We were posing, giving our opinions ("Does this make my butt look big?" "Should I go with the blue or the black?" "What kinds of shoes will I wear?"), laughing, and trading dresses just like the best of friends.  At the end of the day every single person had a dress that made them look beautiful and ready for the party!

These women put up with all the craziness and the attitudes and the brokeness of the children that so many visitors never get to see.  These women are there, day in and day out, fighting and caring for these kids' lives.  These women see group after group come in and love on the kids while they stand to the side with hardly anybody truly seeing them for who they are and what their lives are like. These women are my friends.  These women are some of the people that I feel closest to here in Mexico and who I feel like truly care about me.  These women will always hold a very special place in my heart and in the story of God's redemption of my time here. These women have changed my life.

And to think, it all began with one trip to the mall...

the product of our shopping trip

Never Stop Dreaming

I wanted to share with you all a blog post that my roommate, Jenn, wrote about the quinceañera that we planned a few weeks ago. If you want to read more about life from Jenn's perspective, you can check out her blog at: http://www.jennholden.com.

"It started with a Chinese buffet. She had never tried Chinese food before and the endless supply of egg rolls and ice cream was a lot for her and her young teenage friends to take in. At the end of the dinner, we concluded that they actually didn’t like Chinese food, but they sure knew how to eat bowl after bowl of ice cream and they absolutely loved being out and about, window-shopping and walking around the mall arm-in-arm. Something about the whole experience just seemed so normal, and everyday, and that mixed with their giggles, teenage girl chatter and massive ice cream consumption made it beautiful. We vowed to make a habit of it, these spontaneous girls’ nights on Fridays when our schedules aligned and the girls had behaved well all week. 

Fast forward to the moment when we first sat down to talk about her 15th birthday party, as described in my past blog post, when I asked her to share her dreams for the day and she shyly replied “well, I don’t know. I have never been to a quinceañera before.”

It didn’t take long to realize that this day was going to reach far beyond a party or even a rite of passage for Wendy- it was going to be a celebration that connected her deeply to her culture, to her dreams and to the love of her heavenly father. That which is often theoretical became tangible in the process of a party planned just for her.

Previous window shopping experiences turned into hours poring over the shoe selection to choose just the right pair for the day of her party. 

Mentors, sponsors, visitors, family, Back2Back staff and caregivers were recruited to make her dreams become a reality, decorating the auditorium, cooking the dinner, capturing the day on film, and presenting the symbolic gifts.

A traditional quinceañera dance was rehearsed day after day for weeks leading up to the ceremony, teaching Wendy and her friends in the children’s home new ways of worshipping the Lord and carrying themselves in front of crowds of people.

Thirty three children who live with Wendy at Casa Hogar del Norte anxiously and excitedly awaited the big celebration, when they would all put on their new, fancy clothes to attend the most formal party that has ever been hosted in their home.

And on that day in mid-October, a timid, teenage girl transformed into a stunning, confident young woman as she stood on the stage, concluding the ceremony with her words of thanks to the children’s home that raised her and the pastor who shared words of wisdom for her future.

It was in these moments that a distant dream became a reality, which was sealed both by her words “Thank you, thank you. You made my dream come true” and our prayers that she would never stop dreaming."

An Update in Photos [with words to follow]

Here is an update of my life in photos.  words will come later hopefully :)


  

 

 

My Own Kind of Children's Home Part 4

More from July 17, 2013

Going back to my heart of stone… I had that picture in my head of a cold heart – of my heart being covered with stone.  Tonight during worship (where I was of course crying) another staff member prayed with me and said that as she was praying she saw my heart and saw arrows being shot at it.  Everywhere the arrows landed, my heart was turning to stone.  And that although parts of my heart where being covered with stone the whole thing still wasn’t covered. She prayed that Jesus would come and remove the arrows from my heart and melt the stone away. 

I have not allowed myself to be blown away by God for awhile because I have been so cynical and judgmental toward other Christians.  I have convinced myself that some things are corny and cliché.  I  haven’t allowed God to “Wow” me or taken delight in the little things because “that’s just the way life is… it’s nothing special.”  But I am coming to see that as the lie that it is.  Every little thing is special.  Like the sound of raindrops on the window or a tin roof.  Every hug or smile that I give and get from a child here.  Every cool breeze and every ray of sun that warms my skin.  In an attempt to be “real” and “authentic” I have actually leaned toward doing that in a very pessimistic way that led to cynicism.  But being real means that I am real about everything, and if I am being real, God has blessed me with being an optimist.  I naturally see the world’s bright side.  When bad things happen, I am not always suppressing my feelings or being cliché or insincere by seeing the good in it, because that is simply how I see and experience things naturally.  So I want to start allowing myself to get back to that person that God created me to be.  It is amazing that God gave both me and another staff a similar vision of my heart.  It gives me hope that God is at work within me. Now, if I could just get out of the way and leave him to it…

My Own Kind of Children's Home Part 3

Excerpt from journal July 17, 2013

Almost every night at worship I cry. Whether it be a small puddle in the corner of my eye or a constant river flowing down my cheeks, tears seem to always be present.  I have been thinking and thinking and trying to figure out what is at the root of these tears.

Today during worship I realized that this time of worship is the only time that I truly have to be vulnerable, with myself and with God.  During the day I can do things without truly engaging my heart.  I don’t have a Bible study or small group, so no need to be vulnerable there. But worship, worship has never been a time that I can fake it.  I can’t sing words so powerful and be in God’s presence that way while keeping my heart and spirit disengaged.  But still, why all the never-ending tears?  Why does my heart physically feel tense with sharp pains like a battle is going on inside of it? Because there is a battle going on in there, and I think there has been a war waging for quite some time now.

            

I know there are parts of my heart that I have felt growing cold – like they are being turned to stone.  God’s Word says that Jesus is the living hope that is alive in me.  Satan is waging a war against my heart.  The world with its cynicism and reason are trying to bury God alive.  I had this vision tonight of my heart being covered with stone, but Jesus’ light was still making it glow from the inside so that is appeared as either molten lava that could be shaped, or a volcano that was getting ready to erupt.  There was still a hole at the top where the stone hasn’t completely covered it yet, but the glow is getting dimmer and dimmer as more and more layers get added to the stone covering.

There are two ends to this story… either I give up the fight for hope, let go of that last bit, and let the stone cover my heart completely. Or we keep fighting; really I just stop and allow Jesus to win the battle, and in God’s power he busts every last particle of stone off my heart and shine brighter than ever.

Every part of my soul wants the second ending.  Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in me, I pray that I will live and relentlessly hold a kingdom perspective of Hope.  That I will no longer be trapped by the world’s cynicism and “reason”.  Even when it seems foolish and doesn’t make any sense in the least I will stand firmly on God’s Sovereignty and on his Word.  For too long I have lived doubting God’s involvement in every happening of life.  I don’t know how to put everything together that happens in the world, but I do believe so strongly in God’s ministry of reconciliation that He has invited us into that I don’t have to understand everything.  For a long time this has sounded like a cop-out of asking tough questions, but I don’t intend to stop asking them, I just don't need all the answers right now.  God says that to enter his kingdom we must become like little children.  Even when kids don’t understand what is going on around them, they will always follow their parents eventually.  They might ask why, they might sit down and kick and scream and ask why again.  They might say they aren’t going and even try to run the other way, but they always end up chasing after their parents or walking alongside them. That is how I want to be with my Father.  I am done with only cynicism and logic.  Give me the crazy and the irrational and the trust.

when going out means you get to take a ride on Splash Mountain

TODAY IS THE DAY! Last week the woman working at the Oxxo (Mexican gas station) informed me that the hurricane was going to hit TODAY. In case you haven't heard Hurricane Ingrid (which I have affectionately named Hurricane Oxxo in honor of the lady at the Oxxo) has been making its way toward Mexico.  It is south of Monterrey, but we are definitely feeling the effects here. So we're going to take a break today from talking about the emotional roller coaster I am on and talk about the physical "roller coaster" I get to go on every time I leave my house these days.

I have never lived through a tropical storm/hurricane before (and this one isn't really even that bad) so this is another first I get to remember in my life.  For those of you who also haven't experienced this let

where our street literally turns into a river

me sum it up for you short and sweet: WATER! MUCHO WATER EVERYWHERE AND ALL THE TIME!  Yesterday I don't think it stopped raining even for 1 minute. We have our own new waterfall here at Back2Back named Cascada de Oxxito. Streets have literally turned into rivers (see picture).  All schools were cancelled today in Monterrey. Today I had to run out to do some errands and I realized I was living in a real-life Splash Mountain (Monterrey is located in the Mountains and you can't drive anywhere without creating huge splashes hence my real life splash mountain!) It Is AWESOME!  The best part is to get to where we live you have to go down this little hill and at the bottom there is currently a river flowing through so it literally is our own miniature Splash Mountain! Skip the outrageous Disney prices and come visit me in Monterrey (offer available for a limited time only, well not the visiting part, just the Splash Mountain part)  I have included a marketing video to entice as well :)

the splash

when the man at 7/11 decides that you really need your windows
wash because the torrential downpour outside simply isn't doing
the job... and then you tip him extra of course!

My Own Kind of Children's Home Part 2

So, I suck at keeping my blog updated.  My last entry (which I posted about a month ago) started this “mini-series” if you will, about my transition here in Monterrey and how it is helping me better understand the people and the children that God has placed around me, as well as understanding myself better. I am continuing that series now:

Excerpt from my journal on June 26, 2013 (11 days after arriving in Monterrey)

           

I am a complete mess and I feel alone.  I need Jesus. I need his presence and I need his perspective. I need to know when I am being selfish, stubborn, and prideful in my thinking and my actions. I need to know that he is with me.

 I feel alone in my brokenness and what’s worse is I know it is my fault.  I have been waiting around for staff to reach out to me and recognize my pain and my needs and I have spent basically zero time in God’s Word, presence, or in prayer.  I used to be so content with just God.  What happened?  I'll tell you what happened...  I stopped living from the perspective of the kingdom in many ways and I stopped guarding my time with the Lord.  I stopped seeking pleasure in his presence alone, but I want that.  For the past little while I have just wanted somebody to take initiative with me.  I have struggled my whole life feeling like I am always the one to take initiative in different relationships.  I just feel like for once I want somebody to come to me and say “Hey, I want to be your friend.  I want to spend time with you and I am excited about it.  When there is a crowd of people I want to look for you so I can be by you.” And when this doesn’t happen, you begin to believe the lie that it is because you aren’t worthy of being that kind of person for anyone.  That you really aren’t interesting or important enough for someone to care about.

As I write this, I imagine this is how many of the children I am surrounded by feel.  They first have been dropped off in an unfamiliar place that they know nothing about nor do they know anybody there.  Living in a children’s home means they are always a part of a big group.  Their caregivers are so busy they have little time to spend individually with the children.  I imagine these kids, too, just want someone to take initiative with them.  To tell them, I choose you.  You are truly special.  I want to sit next to you not because it is the only open seat, but because I want to be with you.  I see past your front you put up and I know you are hurting and I want to listen to you. I want to ask you questions because I think you are interesting and your life is important.  Something really big and difficult has happened in your life.  I want to pray with you.  I want to affirm you and let you know you are not alone.  I might not understand you, but I care about you and I care that you are hurting right now. I am going to do more than just smile at you when I see you, but I am going to make you feel like you are on the top of my priority list.

I say all of this to say that I am coming to the end of myself and I imagine that many of the kids around me feel the same way.  We feel weak and weary and anytime things get the slightest bit serious we either close off or break down.  Sometimes it is easier to just pretend like we don’t care or don’t want to be around others, when that is the exact thing that we actually want. We can’t always identify the root cause of this, but one thing I do know is that we need Jesus.  We need the Holy Spirit to comfort and correct us.  We need the Holy Spirit and God’s Word to protect us from believing these blatant lies by reminding us of the Truth of who it is that God created us to be.  We are tired of/from life and we just need our Father.