Alive and well...

It took me this long to sit down in one place...and find my internet login information...

The flight was amazing, and I've been getting back into the swing of things. A little too much, as I fell asleep on the bus today. Not a good sign! So, after I take a nap, I'll be blogging...

Até mais tarde!

so, what does c-cabin mean?

According to Brooke:

"You get two packets of peanuts instead of only one."

Right. I KNOW "Y" cabin. It's where your legs are scrammed up in your chest and they don't like to give you more than two blankets and you can't get out to go to the bathroom unless you climb over your two sleeping, drooling seatmates.

These rebooking passes say C-cabin.

I spent way too much time looking for that on the internet. My mother picks up the boarding passes and says,

"What does United Business mean?"

That's kind of like when I didn't know what "FIRST" meant on my Austin to Chicago flight. I'd never seen THAT word before...

So I want to take back all of my bad attitude. Because not only did God answer my prayers to see my sister and get a chance to re-pack my bags one last time, He laughed at my pleading for first class...and just bumped me up to business.

WHOOOOOWHOOOOOOWHOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

I love being a missionary!

...update when I arrive...

...arrive back in Spencer that is. Maybe I should have checked my tickets before I mentioned to God that a weather delay would be a nice way to meet up with Ellen. Because while most of my other flights to South America have left at nearly midnight, this flight left at 9:39 pm. And when your Indianapolis to Washington flight that left at seven is delayed by an hour, that makes it difficult to think about making your flight.

Which is why it's a good thing that I looked at my tickets when they announced the delay.

And then had no phone cards or US cellphone to call anyone. Thank you Mom and Dad, for having cellphones AND a 1-800 number. Because I didn't have any change on me either. It weighs too much.

So I get to spend the evening with my sister and trade war stories, and then turn around tomorrow and do it all over again. Lugging my heavy, heavy bags around. Explaining to the agent that yes, Brazil and the Philippines are the only two countries that are still under the 70 pound weight limit for bags and that yes, I would like to use every available ounce. (I actually had to do a little switching around today; my heaviest bag was 1.5 pounds overweight. I guess the bathroom scale isn't quite as accurate as I thought...)

So please, pray for me again...tomorrow!

It's time to say goodbye...

I'll be getting on a plane at 6:55 pm unless weather delays us, which wouldn't be entirely terrible, as that would give me time to see my Canadian-gang-member-befriending-
lives-in-the-hood-and-gets-
propositioned-weekly missionary sister , whose plane touches down as I'm boarding...

We didn't do such a good job of coordinating the airport reunion!

Please pray for my travels...mostly that we don't get turned around halfway over Guatemala, which is what happened maybe a week ago, when the radar systems went down over northern Brazil and the air traffic controllers went on another strike...

Safety too, no seatmate (I'll trade companionship for extra leg room...or first class. That would be nice, again), no over-limit baggage fees, and a long nap with a little help from Tylenol PM...these would all be nice things!

I'll do a bit of blogging after my arrival...

Kristin let me borrow it...

I DO love orange! I'm going to try to be a hat girl. I've always envied the women who walk around with jaunty little caps balanced over a head full of curls. Never had the self-confidence to do it myself...but maybe the guts comes with the wearing...

Less than 36 hours to go...

I leave for Rio early Friday evening. This will make for a grand total of something like 12 flights in 2 months. I will be so very glad to leave airports alone for a few months at least! Travel only keeps on getting worse; there's going to come a day when I'll be booking passage on a boat...

The reason for such a poorly updated blog month is that I spent much of it traveling. These last ten days were spent at the WMF staff retreat, held in swinging Nebraska City, Nebraska. Swinging, that is, if you like trees. All that green was relaxing: my hideous back pain issues melted away after a few nights in the hot tub...

The best part about these retreats is the family-reunion feel, as we reconnect with friends we haven't seen in three years, marvel at how the kids have grown up, and then settle down to late nights after the sessions, sharing our loves and woes and laughter and tears over a couple of beers or a tall class of...chocolate milk. (Not together, of course!) The worst part: the lack of sleep. It seems somehow traitorous not to stay awake as much as possible, to squeeze every drop of life out of these ten days. Because once they're gone...it'll be another three years. I, unfortunately, came drained, and could have used a full week of sleep in that giant queen-sized bed to catch up!

Our sessions were on contemplation, prayer, and spending time in God's presence. For an ADD procrastinator who worries too much and can't ever get her brain off of memory-scanning mode, sitting silently with God for even five minutes was supremely challenging. Our first scheduled "quiet time" I spent screaming in my head, as the many voices within me writhed in agony at their forced silence. No planning, no lists, no thinking about what's happening next, or what someone said...no rabbit trails off into the dark forests of my mind, no imaginative flights into other worlds...

I am not a Zen person. I wouldn't consider myself contemplative. But it is so absurdly difficult for me that I have come to believe it is essential. I watch people I know become less and less connected to the world as they retreat ever more deeply into their unstoppable lives. The more there is to do, the less time to breathe, to see beauty, to enjoy pleasure and say "it is good." They, I, become so busy there is no time for other people, not really. There is just too much to "do."

That's not the person I want to become. I'm tired of doing. It makes me feel fractured and split into hundreds of incompatible pieces, each vying for a space to have a say in my brain, each one trying to convince me that their particular place is my life is the most the VERY most important. And they aren't. The most important is now. Because the present is all I have. And if I can't enjoy it because I'm locked into wishful thinking about the past, or stressed about the future, then I'm not really living, am I? Nor am I really following at all the teachings of Jesus, who told people not to worry about the future because (so optimistically!) the present already had enough problems of its own.

So, all that to say...the retreat was good, I'll try to post some pictures, and I have a Word document some two pages long full of blog posting ideas. So if I'm not writing here, it's because I'm procrastinating, and feel free to write me hate mail until I cave in and chain myself to the computer!

The creepiness of Facebook

Does anyone else find Facebook eerie? It's amazing to find people that I've lost touch with over the years...but there are some people that you lose touch with on purpose. There's all these requests for more information. If I answered every one, the details would basically let Facebook write my biography, map out my whole life up to this point, and let the NSA/CIA/FBI/INTERPOL/PF or whoever have a heyday. I kind of miss the days when people had to get to know you to know you, not just spend half an afternoon trolling through online networking sites.

And another thing. The photos...the tags...I LIKED being anonymous! It's disconcerting to see a picture in which you've been tagged. Not only has someone posted a picture of yours on the internet without your permission, they've also prominently displayed your name to the rest of the world. Or maybe only people in your friend groups can see the names...I don't know. This is way beyond me, but I do feel as if my privacy is somewhat intruded upon. I guess this is a call to my friends: put all your personal information you want to on the internet, but leave me out. I want to be your real and virtual friend, but does everyone need to know that I'm the chick in that Thanksgiving photo? Or the gangly teenager with poufy bangs?

Am I just getting grumpy in my old age? Does this bother anyone else? Comments, please!

I took a walk after breakfast

When I was younger, I had a collection of books about woodcraft and Native American practices, how to skin hides the old-fashioned way and immobilize prisoners without rope (this was incredibly useful with my siblings!). I remember, for some reason, that some Native American tribes used to meditate under a blue sky. An unbreakable blue sky, when the sun isn't high, is an amazing thing. If you lie on your back in a field, all you can see is this peaceful expanse...and there are no distractions between you and God. (Unless you lie in a patch of fire ants...)

It's hard to do that kind of meditating in Rio. There are power lines all over the sky and kites flying and nowhere to lie down without getting run over by a motorcycle. I'm excited about this Nebraska emptiness...

My after breakfast walk through the trees put me face to face with the beauty of creation. I walked a path through tangled woods, saw squirrels flying through the treetops (and reminded myself that they were not monkeys!), and stood ten feet from a gorgeous doe and her two fawns. She didn't notice me, and I was downwind, so I had several moments of bated breath watching her not notice me standing on the bridge. Even when I finally walked away, she didn't bolt, just fixed me with a "now where did you com from?" stare and didn't budge as I waved goodbye and slipped off towards the lodge.

It's been so long since I was in nature...since I was quiet...since I listened. The 12 year old girl still living inside me is desperate for the crazy busy adult to stop doing so much and just climb a tree...

The Sunday Scribblings topic this week is: hair.

I'm not going to write about hair. I'm going to write about how I've been procrastinating away my blog writing time, partly by catching up with overseas friends on instant messenger, and partly because there's not been any down time during these crazy weeks of jetting across the country to speak to supporters and visit churches and family and friends...no down time to process anything. Not the truly amazing experiences I've been having. Not the really funny stories I'm dying to share. My brain just wants to go to sleep. My body is literally so tense that I feel like someone is constantly twisting, twisting my muscles into little abacus beads that can be used to count how long it is since I just sat. Just breathed. Just didn't worry about the to-do list that reaches to infinity.

I'm at the Word Made Flesh retreat right now, and I'm looking forward to ten days of exactly what I've not been getting since, well, I can't remember. Silence. Time to stare into a blue sky and talk with God without a cellphone somewhere blaring or an appointment hanging over my shoulder. And rest. Lots of sleep in a real, honest to goodness, bed that's long enough for my head AND my feet. So after a nice dip in the hotel pool and hot tub, I'm going to bed. With wet hair...

It's July

I had one of those Blogger moments, just now, when the last five minutes were wiped out in one quick and simple Ctrl V command. Apparently, copy and paste will erase your old information...and Blogger's automatic saving means what was there is now obliterated for all eternity.

It wasn't that good of a post.

We're without a television in our home, which is a novelty. The LCD screen went bad, and so while we wait for the new box o'fun to arrive, I can see myself and my father struggling with what to do with ourselves. Four weeks and I've become soft, addicted to mindless entertainment...

Which is a wonderful excuse to relive some of my favorite childhood summer memories. And at the top of that list is tromping through our 100 acres of woods and fields. As I type, my fingertips are stained a deep mulberry red. I went for a berry picking excursion for lunch, our black cat trotting alongside, giving me a quizzical eye when I stop to remove my shoes and feel the cool grass and moss under my toes. He walks around barefoot pretty near everywhere; but I haven't forgotten how delicious it is, especially after a rain.

Something I miss about living in the city is the ability to walk outside and feed myself. In the spring, summer, and fall our Indiana woods are awash with edibles: dandelion, mushrooms, mulberries, raspberries, blackberries, honeysuckle, violets, sassafras leaves, and so much more…the garden is stocked with tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, zucchini, corn, asparagus, greens, beans, etc… As the USAmerican food culture becomes more and more adulterated (I actually understand the FDA is approving cloned animals for food purposes?!), it’s refreshing to know exactly where that sandwich or salad or steak came from. And there's something deeply satisfying about the whole process of gathering. Humans just seem to have a connection to the ground. Call it a result of our hunter gatherer roots or an innate longing for Eden...

It's too bad I can't keep plants alive.

Look who greeted me in PA!