Video Junkie

It's official, I am becoming a video junkie.  I absolutely LOVE making videos!  You tell me you want me to video an event, my mind immediately starts brainstorming, thinking of different shots that I want to capture, different angles that I could shoot from, all the way to the final product, what music to use, how to organize the final product, what transitions to use between clips.  I'm a little bit insane about it, actually.  

This past weekend the women at my church back home did their own version of the Amazing Race.  At the last minute, my mom asked me to come home and be one of the videographers for the event.  I didn't think much about it beforehand, but as soon as I had that camera in my hand, the ideas started flowing.  I started thinking about how I was going to put the final video together, and I made each of the teams introduce themselves to the camera, I started thinking about what shots could show that it wasn't just a game but a community-building activity, I was a busy bee of activity, trying to get as many different angles as I could.  I was assigned to be at one leg of the race where they had to row a boat around a small pond, and before each team got there, I envisioned in my head how many different places around the pond I could shoot from, and thought of creative ways to capture what each team did, so that all of them didn't end up looking the same.  I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!!!  

Man, I wish I was rich and could buy a video camera and some good editing equipment.  Sigh...

A Different Kind of March Madness

I'm going to be an Aunt!!!!  

Just found out this morning, and I couldn't possibly be more excited!  The little bundle of joy is due in March.  I can't seem to get over the urge to call "it" "she."  Maybe that's a sign.  :)

Life Verse

Last night at bible study we looked at a passage of scripture that was talking about love and how that should play out in our lives.  There was one verse in particular that really got my attention.  It's only a few words in length, but it packs in so much meaning, that I honestly think would take a whole lifetime to fully understand.  A lot of people seem to have favorite verses, or what some people call "Life verses," and I think I want this to be mine:

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."  -- Romans 12:12

It seems simple enough, but every word holds such profound meaning.  Last night, I was trying to describe my reaction to the verse, and I really couldn't find the words to express the reality that this verse portrays, or the yearning that it awakens in me.  

But if I had no access to any other portion of the Bible for the rest of my life, I feel like this verse would be enough.  If I can strive to make these commands the most basic reality of my being, then I would forever be in the will of God.  No matter what happens in my life, even if things are dark and show no promise of getting better, if I can still joyfully hold on to the hope that is found in Christ, find patience in the midst of trials, and cling to my savior and fight for His kingdom in prayer, then what else do I need?  To me, this verse encompasses all that the gospel is, and I want to make it the goal of my life to reflect the beauty that is written here.  

Maybe I'll try to unpack it more later.

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."

Forever Faithful...

I recently read an article written by Alex Kirk entitled "Tent Duty."  The article talks about Exodus 33:11 - "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.  Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aid Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent."  Guarding the tent wasn't exactly a glamorous job, but he argues that tent duty for Joshua was a time of being formed by the Lord, being prepared for his future position of leadership to the nation of Israel.  We all have times of being on "tent duty," and we often don't understand what those times have to do with the work of God in our lives.  There was one part in particular that really stood out to me.  It hit me like a ton of bricks, actually:

In any case, we are seldom given a clear explanation while we’re in the midst of tent duty itself. In that respect it is always a faith-stretching exercise. And the string of questions will lead us to the place we nearly always end up if we have the courage or foolishness to follow the trail long enough: do we trust God to be good? Do we believe that he puts us exactly where he wants us? Have we genuinely given all our days to the Lord to have him order them as he sees fit? Do we trust that it’s all for our good and his glory? Embracing tent duty means looking at odd, discouraging or dry seasons of our lives and leaning into the grace of God. It is a reckless abandonment to the goodness and sovereignty of God. He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all; there are no other choices.

those are all sobering questions.  And they basically sum up the questions that have been swirling around in my head since I got back from Vietnam.  I thought Vietnam was going to be a talking with God "face-to-face, as a man speaks to his friend" kind of experience, but it turned out to be more of a tent duty experience.  It was definitely an odd, discouraging, and dry season in my life, and I'm still asking God what it was all for.  

"He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all."  That's a hard phrase for me to believe, but one that I want to believe with all my heart.  It's still difficult for me to believe that God was completely faithful to me in Vietnam.  Somehow, it's hard for me to believe that it was all for His glory and my good.  But I want to believe.  I want to have faith in the promises of God. 

Maybe more on this later... 

Thinking about the future

There was a girl who came into Wilson Library yesterday who got me thinking about life after college. She's a rising senior, and is thinking about going into the Peace Corps. And get this: she's already filling out the application. Ahhhhh!

Que freaking out.

This encounter made me realize that I really need to start thinking about what I'm going to do when May comes around. I started looking up some stuff at work (because I have nothing else to do), and it is making me really nervous. I feel anxious, excited, restless, etc. And I hate feeling that way.

Here are the things that I'm thinking about:

1) IV staff - there are many different possibilities within this option

• Regular Campus Staff - a recent idea/interest, not sure what I think about it yet.
• International Student Ministry Staff - I started thinking about this last summer, and I was really excited about it at the time, but it's starting to lose some of it's pull with me. I'm not really sure why, I'm just not as excited about this option as I have been in the past. And that's hard because there are several people who think that I should do ISM staff. But it's still a possibility, bouncing around in my head.
• IV Link Staff - This has been in the back of my mind for a couple of years now, but I'm just now thinking about it seriously. It's kind of at the top of my list right now. It is the option that makes me the most excited, and just looking into it makes me want to go NOW! The only thing about this is that I'll be right out of college, and I'm not sure how I will handle that kind of job right after I graduate, with no real ministry experience, save the leadership positions I've held in IV. But right now, if I was given the opportunity to join Link, I'd leave today.

2) Seminary

• I'm definitely sick of school, so I'm not sure if going straight to seminary would be my best option. And, I'm in debt enough as it is, thanks to my undergraduate loans. I'd rather not jump right into another source of serious debt without having my previous debt taken care of.
• But I definitely want to go to seminary at some point, and I definitely think it can help with ministry. It could also give me a few more years to decide exactly what it is I want to/am called to do.

3) Regular 9-5 job

• Getting a job, any kind of job, that I will work at for a few years to pay off my student loans before going overseas.
• There's also the option of getting a job for a few years with a missions agency, so that I will at least be part of cross-cultural ministry, even if I'm not the one who is going.

4) TIMO from AIM

• This is a 2-year program with African Inland Mission that involves going to a rural area in Africa with a small, multi-cultural team. You spend time learning the language and the culture before beginning ministry that will bless the community. Cultural immersion is emphasized, and the teams do everything exactly the way that the people in the community do it (housing, cooking, cleaning, etc).

5) Peace Corps

• I've been thinking about this for a little while, but not really seriously. I've heard lots of good things about the Peace Corps, and there are a lot of benefits to doing it. But the only downside for me is that most of their programs require specialized degrees and experience, most of which I don't have. So I don't even know how this would work out for me.

One of the main things that I have to consider with all of these is how they will affect me being able to pay off my student loans. I know that IV, at least to some degree, will work with you to raise support to pay off your loans. But I don't know if that also goes for Link Staff, and I have no idea what the situation is with TIMO and the Peace Corps. So that is something that I need to consider.

Not the most exciting post, but I just wanted to get some of these thoughts out there.

More thoughts on Being White

I think the side of my genetic make-up that is the most puzzling to me is the 1/32 part that is Native American (what does it mean to be 1/32 something anyways?).  But sometimes I think, what exactly is the story of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  No one in my family has ever really talked about her.  Heck, I don't even know what tribe she was from.  But I just wonder how she became part of my family.  How did she meet my Great-Great-Great Grandfather?  Was the family okay with them being married?  Did they make her completely leave her culture behind?  Or did she choose to leave it behind?  Or did she actually leave it behind, or did her kids just not own that identity?  

And that's something else that has been puzzling me recently - choosing your own cultural identity.  I didn't even realize until college that choosing your cultural identity was even an option.  And I've been thinking about it a lot more recently after reading Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, where he talks about consciously deciding to self-identify as black.  And I started to wonder what makes people do that?  He could have just as easily identified as white, or even as mixed.  But he chose black.  And that is what he is.  He is black.  No one has to tell him that he is black.  He made the decision, and now there is no question about it.  

As I think about this idea of self-identification, I wonder what happened with the children of my Native American ancestor.  What happened in the lives of her children, mixed Native American and white.  Did they make the conscious decision to identify as white?  Were they forced into identifying as white?  Or did they actually identify as Native American, and it was the next generation that dropped the cultural identity of their grandmother?  Whoever first decided to identify as white, did they do it just because they looked more white than Native American?  Or did they identify as white because they would benefit more from being white than being Native American?  None of these questions really have any answers, but all I know is that somewhere along the way, our "Native Americanness" was lost.  

And I wonder, did I even have to opportunity to identify as Native American?  I mean, there's so much mixed up in my blood, but in some tribes, even the smallest amount of native blood qualifies you for membership.  Could I have identified as the tribe of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  Could I still now, even though my whole life has been built around my identity as a white American.  

All of these percentages are kind of confusing to me anyways.  "I'm 1/32 Native American."  What?!  What the crap does that mean?  And I believe that I've heard somewhere that you have to be 1/8 to claim minority status for applying to colleges, etc.  Why does a person who is 1/8 have more right to claim minority status than someone who is 1/16?  Or even 1/32?  Why do we always have to speak in numbers?  How do you reduce a racial or cultural identity to a simple fraction?  

And what does all of this mean for me... the Scotch-Irish-British-Native American?

Being White (or Scotch-Irish-British-Native American)

I'm currently reading the book, "Being White," by Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp. It's a really interesting book, about how as white people, we need to recognize that we have a culture and a history that shapes the way that we interact with people of other races, and the need to learn how to interact with them in a way that celebrates our differences and redeems our relationships with each other. The first three sections are about cross-cultural encounters, cross-cultural relationships (of all kinds), and cross-cultural displacement. But I recently started reading the fourth section, which is on the subject of White Identity.

I've always been of the opinion that white people don't really have a culture. In America, we're made up of so many different things, coming from so many different backgrounds, how could we ever have one, collective White culture? How could all of white history be considered my history? But Paula Harris suggests that we come to a face-to-face acknowledgement of our past. That whether or not we as individuals are personally responsible for the atrocities that white people throughout history have committed, we have indeed benefited from their mistakes. Whether or not we personally, or someone in our family, owned slaves, we are now operating in a system that gives us privilege simply because we are white, and denies certain things to others simply because they are people of color. She asks the question, "Will I have the humility to admit that I may benefit from other white people's racial sin? Will I take spiritual responsibility for my community, even if I don't see how I bear personal responsibility?" (123). Whether or not I see myself as a part of the larger white community, or as personally responsible for the history of white racial blunders, I am white. Other people see me as white. In our society, I benefit from being white. And I see the need to acknowledge that.

But even that acknowledgement is complicated. What does being white mean, anyways, for a person who is a mix of Scottish, Irish, British, and even Native American blood. How do I come to terms with the past of "my community" when that community includes the Scottish; the Irish, who banned the immoral practice of enslaving British prisoners of war in the 12th century, but who played a role in keeping slavery alive when they came to America as immigrants; the British, who played a huge roll in demeaning the darker races through both the slave trade and colonization; and Native Americans, who were oppressed and killed in unspeakable ways by first, the British, and then every other group of white Americans? Where is my identity in that? Which history do I relate to? Which community do I call my own?

More thoughts to come...

Finding Neverland

I just finished watching "Finding Neverland."  If you've never seen it, I would suggest renting it right now.  It is by far one of the best movies that I have ever seen.  And it's a little difficult for me to describe why.  There's just something about it.  In the movie, Peter, one of the main characters, describes the play "Peter Pan" as magic.  And I guess that's it.  The movie is magic.  

I think I've always known that there is this hidden place, like Neverland, that is just for me.  A place where everything is right, where I'm free.  A place that is beautiful and glorious and timeless.  And even though I know that such a place exists, I don't think I've ever actually been there.  But there is something about the magic in this movie that almost takes me there.  

And it's not just this movie that brings me nearer to this nameless place.  I sometimes get a hint of it in a song, or a sunrise, or a child's smile, or in a painting.  The beauty in those things reminds me that there is something even more beautiful that I haven't yet seen.  And it's when I experience these things that I long to go to that special place.  I long to shake off all of the vain and empty things in this world and go to this place where I was created to be.  But no matter how poignant the movie, or how beautiful the song, sunrise, smile, or painting, I can never quite get there.  And I'm just left wondering what it's like...

This is something that I wrote after I got back from Vietnam, and it was the first time that I ever put these ideas into words:

"I left Vietnam early, and got home just in time to see the caterpillars.  Now, home is not my house, or my town, or Chapel Hill, or North Carolina, or even the US.  Home is this place that I go to sometimes, and it's beautiful.  The sky is the perfect shade of blue, the grass is green, the flowers are bright, and there's not a cloud in the sky.  There's a tree on the hill, and the soft wind sings a symphony as it blows through the tall grass.  Whenever I go there I feel like a kid again, without a care in the world.  And I'm alone.  But not alone, exactly.  There's someone else there, too.  But I can't see Him.  I can't touch Him, or smell Him, or hear Him.  But somehow, I know He's there.  Somehow, everything that I see is Him.  And everything that I touch, or smell, or hear, is Him.  Every breath that I take... is Him.  And it's only when I lay there in the grass under that tree, taking it all in, it's only then that I realize that this is where I belong.  I am loved, and this is home.  He is my home."

---------------------------------------------------------

My heart is longing for a great escape

It's threatening to flee this crowded space

Something's telling me to jump

but everything else says no.

I've a restless spirit inside of me

And it's threatening to fly away with me

To a place I've never been before

But a place I almost know

So, I'm about to make my great escape

Leaving behind this crowded space

Something's telling me to jump

And this time I'm gonna go

And that restless spirit inside of me

finally taking flight, set me free

to a place I've never been before

but a place I almost know...

"It doesn't hurt here..."

Disclaimer: If you're looking for a pick-me-up, stop reading now.

I just watched the season finale of House. I don't know how many of you watch the show, but Amber, one of the more recent main characters, died at the end of the episode. It was an extremely unexpected death. One of those deaths where you're searching for someone to blame, hoping that it will console you. But in the end, nothing can ever bring the person back.

Death seems to be following me lately. And I'm not saying that to make light of it, or to ask for any kind of pity. It just makes me think about things, about life.

I got the news about Eve Carson while I was studying abroad in Vietnam. I didn't know her personally, but I have friends who did, and others who had a hard time dealing with her death. And even though I was half a world away (quite literally), I was affected by it more than I would have expected. It was one of those things that just made everything around me stop. That even took my breath away, though just for a moment. And for a while, not much else seemed to matter. There's something about the news of death that takes the blinders off. All of our striving and all of our distractions lose their meaning, and life seems like a much more serious thing. I couldn't even begin to imagine how her friends felt, how her family felt. It is literally impossible for me to imagine how it would feel to lose someone in such a sudden and tragic way. All I can think is that the pain must be unbearable.

A couple of weeks later, while still abroad, my Granny passed away. It was the first day of a 10-day tour through central and northern Vietnam, and I was at a hotel in Hoi An. Vi and Phuong were heading out to check out the town, and I wanted to check my email before I went out to join them. An email. That's how I found out. My mom had a hard time getting in touch with me by phone, and so she finally just had to send me an email. More than a day had gone by since she passed away. More than I day that I just continued with life as usual, and she was gone. There I was in the lobby of a hotel in Vietnam, reading an email about the passing of someone that I loved. And I wondered, what am I doing here? Why am I not there? Why did I not get to say goodbye? Why couldn't I be there for my mom while she was grieving the loss of her mother? Why is now the second time that I've been out of the country and been unable to be there for my family when someone significant died? Kevin came down to check his email, and to let me know that they were about to go explore, if I wanted to come. What was I supposed to do? My Granny was dead, and I was here. I was here, where no one knew her, and really, no one knew me. I needed to cry, but where? And for how long? I didn't just want to sit in my room all day by myself, but I didn't want to go gallivanting around Hoi An like nothing had happened, either. I just wanted everything to stop. I wanted everyone to disappear. I wanted to be completely alone. But that wasn't possible. Life doesn't stop for grief. And so, neither did I. I went to my room and cried for maybe 30 minutes. And then I went out with Kevin and Phat. I got measured for a jacket and a pair of pants. We rented bikes and rode to the beach. The only thing that really made the day any different was that Rylan stopped for a second to tell me he was sorry for my loss. I never really got to grieve. Sure, I cried a little bit throughout that week. I cried my first night home, almost a month after she had passed. And today, more than 2 months later, I was walking by a cemetery and saw a gravestone that read "Franklin," and I sat down right there on the sidewalk and started crying again. Partly because I wish she were still here, but mostly because I wasn't here to see her one more time before she died. Because I wasn't here for her funeral, and I wasn't here for her family. And those are things that I can never get back. Opportunities missed forever, no matter how much I might want things to be different.

A couple of weeks after I got back from Vietnam, my friend Meredith called me to tell me that our friend Lori had died the night before. It sounded almost like a joke. No, she was only 22. 22-year-olds don't just die. She had invited me to go with her to Africa this past Christmas break, to visit her family. If I could have afforded it, I totally would have gone with her. A little while after she had gotten back from the visit, apparently she hadn't been feeling well, and thought she might have contracted malaria. One night, she called her parents, and apparently was in so much pain that she could barely talk. Her friend took her to the hospital that night, and they tested her for malaria, told her it would take 10 days for the results, and then sent her home. Her housemates found her the next morning, and she had died in her sleep. Now they know that she had malaria, an infection, and a couple of other things as well, and her body couldn't handle it. The doctors think that she went into a coma around midnight and then died around 4am. It took a long time for all of this to sink in, and I'm not sure that it really has even now, several weeks later. I went to her funeral. They had an open casket. I could barely look at her. It just unsettled me too much. She looked too much like she was sleeping. It seems like a lot of people think that seeing the person makes it finally seem real. It's not true. It almost made it seem even more unreal. She's lying there, asleep. She's going to wake up. Any minute now...
I wasn't really sure how to react to it all. We weren't very close, but she was still my friend, and a girl my age. When I didn't feel very upset about it, I felt guilty. And when I got really shaken up by it, I wondered why. I cried when I told my mom, but not for long. I cried all through her funeral, and I cried myself to sleep that night after it was over. There have been so many times when I've seen someone who looks like her, and for a minute I almost believe that it really is her. And then I remember...

Just last week, a girl was hit by a bus and killed right here at UNC. She was an exchange student from Scotland, and was going home in a week. The irony is unbelievable. One more week, and she would have been home with her family and friends. She would have been back in her country and her culture. But instead, she crossed the street at the wrong place and the wrong time, and it was all over. Her family and friends are never going to see her again.

A young woman, and most people would say the last person who deserves it, is taken in a senseless murder.

An old woman, a woman who I've known my whole life but now feel like I barely knew at all, taken slowly by a disease of her mind.

A young woman, who I regret not spending more time with, taken suddenly in a way that no one could have predicted.

Yet another young woman taken in a single moment, just before being reunited with family and friends.


What does all this mean? How do we even begin to process this? How do you grieve for someone months after they've passed? How do you grieve for someone who you can barely even believe is dead? How do you process a death that you find completely unfair and entirely premature? So many questions, but not really any answers.