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“Just a little line. And yet it quickly feels like a huge rope that binds. A rope of stigma, injustice, discrimination and judgement.”
“. . . if I’m honest it’s my human nature to draw little lines.”
I would like to share this brief post by my friend, Melissa.
I haven’t thought of HIV/AIDS in awhile. Just Friday I had mentioned to a coworker that one of the men was wearing hearing aids, just a random thing I’d noticed as I sat at the back of a workshop bored during one particularly circular conversation. Later on, we saw this man outside and I nodded towards him and told her he was the one ‘with the aides.’ My friend immediately thought I was talking of HIV and gave me an odd look. It was then that I realized what I’d said.
(Where IS my brain sometimes?)
I am a different person than when I went to Africa, but not always in the ways I and others think I should be.
Where are my lines? When is it OK and even good to cross them? When should I run screaming and flailing across the line and help people erase the line all together?
Dear Lord, please help me to see the lines that need to be crossed and show me the way to stop making them in the first place.
I’ve updated Pray With Me.
I feel like I need to make a decision about my blogging. I have become a definite facebook addict and love keeping up and catching up with friends and family that way. However, regardless of how much I live to write a good ’status’ I really miss blogging sometimes.
Now, do I keep blogging or just do it all on fb via the notes section? No, that’s not enough.
Do I keep both this blog and my previous blogger blog? I only started this one for my work in Kenya and have really let the other slide. I think it may be time to combine the two. You will see randomness far greater than previously, I’m afraid, but what fun, right?!
I think it’s also time for a name change and I’m taking suggestions. I’m a fan of alliteration so ‘Amy in Africa’ worked great for me. It doesn’t have the appeal now that I’m not there and ‘Amy in Lamar’ isn’t rockin’ it for me. (did I really just say that? for Pete’s sake)
Anything you looking for on my blog? I know that there are still people reading, bless your hearts. THANK YOU!
I know I’ve been absent, please forgive me. I have a new job, praise the Lord! I’m working as the Coord. of International Programs and Services at Lamar Community College in Lamar, Colorado. I’ve only just begun but it looks to be a great job. I am renting a sweet little two bedroom in a beautiful neighborhood. Unfortunately, there are mice. It keeps me on my toes! I’m mostly unpacked and down to rearranging and decorating. I’ll be off to church and the laundromat later and then back to organize my scrapbooking stuff – hooray!
I wanted to share this with you from my friends, Larry and Linda. I have shared from them before. They worked with me in our Malawi office and attended SC, so we had a couple of connecting points. I try to think about this a lot and thought it was well worded and simple so wanted to share. I hope you enjoy it as I did. And I’ll try to be back soon. Facebook is just so tempting and easy these days!
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This morning on the way to church we followed a bus down the main road. Laden with passengers headed for Blantyre the bus spewed black smoke – and bits of detritus from the windows. A candy wrapper flew out one window. A banana peel flew out and slithered across the road. A wad of chewed up sugar cane arched over to the side of the road. A plastic big with the remains of a take-away meal floated down to the middle of the road, under a car passing in the opposite direction, swirled around, flew up into the air and settled to the earth in the ditch – joining several months collection of wrappers, bags, discarded rags, and all manner of other stuff just waiting for the first rains to wash the ditch clean – and carry the stuff down to sparkling Lake Malawi.
What are we doing to this place we call home, this world where we live? Do we think we can trash it and then move on to a more pristine place? And where would that be? Why are we so callous about the way we treat the earth? Just because we don’t SEE what we are doing to the earth, just because WE don’t have to clean up the mess we leave behind, doesn’t mean the mess isn’t there!
Ideas have consequences. The ideas we have about how we live in the only place we have to live – this earth – have consequences, too. Whether you buy into the impact of human activity on global climate or not, if you extrapolate the way you live out to the extent of your life and that of your children and grandchildren, are we living in a sustainable way? Are we being good stewards of the resources that are at our disposal? Are we using those resources in such a way that acknowledges that they don’t really belong to us?
Stewardship seems to be a strange idea to many people. Yet it was not unknown many years ago when God was moving King David to record the songs He was putting in his heart. Take a few minutes to read and ponder David’s song in Psalm 24. What does this song have to say about how we live in this world? Why should we live this way?
Through this song God claims ownership over not only the physical world, the work of his own hands, but also over all who inhabit the world – you and me. And because he claims ownership, there are certain expectations and results.
God expects that those who will approach him in his world must be those who live in a way that glorifies him; lives that acknowledge that he and he alone is Lord over all. This involves not only what we DO (hands), but what we worship and what we say – the whole of our lives. God isn’t interested in Sunday worshipers but in those whose whole lives proclaim his lordship.
When we live in his world as he has designed us to live there will be blessing, vindication – and worship! We will acknowledge in all our ideas that God and God alone is LORD, King of Glory. Those glorious ideas must be expressed through the way we farm, what we grow, how we eat, how we treat our neighbour, what we do with our trash, what we wear and how we wash it – EVERY area of our lives is holy before the eyes of God for as we live on this earth, we stand on holy ground – His world!
Lord Jesus, teach me how to live so that ALL I do proclaims YOU as Lord!
For further study: Dt. 10:14; 1 Chron. 29:11; Job 41:11; 1 Cor. 10:26
A friend posted this on facebook and I thought it was interesting. I’d like to know what you all think.
Here it is and it’s not very long.
I just had a flashback to Kenya.
I was watching TV and The Mentalist just came on and it is theme song just zapped me back to my couch in Nairobi. So strange what will ‘toss’ me back into my ‘former life.’ Sometimes it is a smell or a word or in this case, a song.
It’s a good way that people can remember, don’t you think?
I am sooo tired. Have I developed an allergic reaction of sleepiness to Minnesota? Who cares, because my friends, tomorrow I’m off to the Great Minnesota Get-Together – the STATE FAIR! Fried food-on-a-stick – here I come!
I have updated my calendar page (just adding new dates at the top so you don’t have to scroll down) and prayer page.
I pray that my posts do not offend. I used to have everything checked prior to posting and that is no longer a requirement as I am no longer working with CRWRC. It was nice to have that buffered opionion to help me reword things is needed. I apologize if I offend, sound confused (I probably am) or spell things incorrectly. Please do not hesitate to let me know (hopefully in a loving way).
I attended a week-long debriefing in Colorado last week. I was really excited and anxious to attend but it was soooo worth it. I really picked out two or three things that touched me most. Two or three things that I learned that I will share with you over the next week or so. I hope you can relate.
Relating. That was certainly a highlight of the week. I was surrounded by people who relate to my experience of the past two years because they have been living something simliar in various places around the world. Several have even been in Nairobi off and on which was fun (one gal wore her Java House t-shirt once!).
I didin’t realize how important it is to celebrate and comissurate with fellow missionaries. What a gift.
To help you understand why this important, let me share a few stories with you.
I ws on the road back to KS talking with a dear friend who has adopted and recently moved into a new neighborhood. As I was explaining this sense of relief at not having to choose my words or think of the right ones at all, she immediately understood. She feels the same way. Her new neighborhood is filled with families who have also adopted and there are things that they just ‘get.’ Because these families have adopted they have a similar experience and can better relate on some levels.
Another example is that whilst at the debriefing I was talking to a gal who was going to be driving with her family home to IN via I70 through KS. We were talking about where they might stay and she mentioned Salina, pronouncing it Sah-lee-nah. I offered her the correct pronounciation and she laughed saying “Thanks! I don’t want to offend the nationals!” We continued our conversation a moment before she corrected herself, “Not nationals, I mean locals!” We thought it was pretty funny as neither had realize she had used the ‘wrong’ term. No one looked at us funny. No one made fun of us for using the wrong term. No one rolled their eyes as we tried to think of the correct term or mentioned our host country ‘one more time.’
Africa was my host country and it was my world for two years. It is my perspective on all that happened in that time. Just as when I lived in MN for four years and that was my perspective, I often pull on that experience when in conversation. I am not trying too show off or be weird. Africa was just my world and it only makes sense to me to incorporate that into my life now. I cannot eliminate it and I shouldn’t have to try.
So if you see me in town with some mail and I say I’m heading to the ‘posta’ for stamps or I can’t think of a word and say ‘nini’ instead of perhaps ‘thingy’ or maybe even say ’sawa sawa’ instead of ‘alright’ or ‘ok’ please cut me some slack. Feel free to ask me about it or just ignore it as a part of who I am now. But please don’t harass me. It hurts my feelings and makes me feel like the last two years of my life are invalidated and should be forgotten.
I have no desire to spend the rest of my life living sequestered with other missionaries or people who have lived internationally. I love my family and friends and desire to be near them, in dialogue with them, on new adventures with them and sharing past adventures with them. However, there will always be something special about getting together with my fellow missionaries. I hope you all understand.
