Surrender

I saw my hands, shriveled and blackened, clenched around the shame and fear of what had happened to me and what I'd done. Love looked at me.
"Let it go," He said. "I'll fill that place." He showed me mounds of fruit, so vibrantly colored they seemed to glow as light refracted off of them. The skin was clear and the liquid inside the fruit was effervescent - moving and sparkling. They were like growing, tender jewels. He showed me other living treasures, and I saw, as a picture, my hands made whole as the treasures were placed in my arms one after another until they were overflowing. The picture faded. "But you must let it go."
I looked down at my burned, closed fists. I could just see the light glint off my "treasure" between the fingers of my right hand; it was like black obsidian - dark, cold, and dead. My left hand cupped my right, supporting the oppresive weight of the dark stone from underneath.
I tried to separate my hands, to uncurl my fingers. I couldn't do it. It was as if my flesh was burned together. "Jesus, it's stuck. Unclench my hands. I am willing to give it to you." I begged, helpless, my voice tight. "Please take it."
He smiled at me, picked up one of His living treasures and placed it on my hands. It rolled off my blackened fists. The smile never left his face. He continued to place the fruit in my arms - such beautiful and varied treasures - so quickly, so joyfully. There was something earnest and strong in His movements, something similar to urgency but without any anxiety or panic. Instead, His face was radiant; His smile was child-like in its pure joy and exuberance. I smiled and laughed, trying to catch the glowing, sparkling orbs as they fell from my arms. Love's eyes glittered with mirth as He watched me. Before long, I caught a living ruby, and something heavy thudded against the floor. My hands were whole; my arms were full of living treasures. The black stone had become dust and was dissipating in the light from the fruit. Love was smiling at me, still adding treasures to the pile in my arms. I laughed and threw my arms around Him, the treasures falling in a shower around me, and He embraced me, echoing my laughter with His deep, rich, reverberating laugh.

Glory

I saw a great expanse of beauty -

I ran over golden, red, pink, warm grasses and grains on a high hill and leapt into a deep green valley. Branching across the valley ran deep-cut veins of frothing blue water bordered by thick green vegetation. In the distance, I saw misted purple and pink mountains shaded in deep navy. Across the valley to the right, I saw a high cliff covered with blue-green vegetation over which fell a thin, sparkling, white waterfall into a deep circular pool below.

I flew as a bird across this valley through the mist of the waterfall, above the shining blue veins. I was joined by another bird, and we flew in a weaving helix towards the sky. There seemed to be an air current higher up, and as we rode this current, I heard a voice: "You are my inheritance."

Then, I stood as a woman at the edge of the blue-green cliff, looking over the valley, the golden hills, and far off, the mountains, my hair blowing back from by face and off my neck. He stood next to me and said, "Over all this, I want you. You are my inheritance."

Attention

Waiting for the Medicine to Kick In

My thoughts are
milling around like
passengers waiting
for a train, clutching,
thumbing, absent-
mindedly twirling
their tickets,
picturing their
destinations and -
many other things.

Transference

Pawn

We all need some thing to fear:
a tangible object to hold
the terror of all the
abstract haunts that
catch us and pull us
taut - the tension
of a strand of cells,
striated, tight, isometric,
supporting the weight,
the strain of heavy
space - empty, infinite
- and worse - blank
but teeming with control
and lack thereof, intimacy
and loneliness, breaking
force, noise and
silence, mock
sincerity and strangeness
writhing
with an awkward,
uncomfortable
inconsistency; movement
hindered by its own
matter filling its own
vacancy, smothering
and cold.

Spiders are small and finite.

Grief

I found the ungrieved grief in me today.

I feel that sense of being abandoned and having things taken from me. My hands feel empty, and I still feel stunned at their emptiness. It feels like when you have been holding someone's hand for a long time, and suddenly, their hand is wrenched from yours. Your hand is cold, and you feel the coldness and the emptiness more profoundly because the memory of their hand is so recent it has left an imprint upon your nerves. And you look at your hand, not really knowing what it is for, if not to hold that someone's hand.
I have been given so much more than I have lost, and yet, the loss is real.

"As he stood looking down on her, what was most with him was an intense and orphaned longing that he might, if only for once, have seen the great Mother of his own race thus, in her innocence and splendour. 'Other things, other blessings, other glories,' he murmured. "But never that. Never in all worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real.'"

Perelandra, C.S. Lewis, excerpt from chapter twelve

I feel it now.

Inward

I am bent.
The things that I want to do, I do not do, and the things which I do not want to do, I do. The things which I value the most are the things which I believe least readily. I am not saying this to be poetic or to make Pauline allusions. I am being honest - more honest with myself than I have been in a long time.
I want to smile at strangers and greet them cheerfully in that same familiar way that some strangers greet me - as if they've met me and known me before in some dream of God's. Sometimes, I even feel that way about people - that I've known love for them before meeting them - but I walk past them, close-lipped, eyes averted. I don't want to resent the people I love for not meeting my every expectation; I do not even want to have these expectations! But I disappoint myself.

Incurvatus in se. I am turned inward on myself.
Fingers curved in toward my palm, my heart is - I am - clenched into a fist. I turn everything in on myself. Everything I know is defined within "me." I know that this is not because I am more self-centered than any other person, but the pain of becoming ingrown still eats at me. It confuses and isolates.
I turn anger, pain, loneliness, longing in on myself. I act on my inwardness. I speak indirectly about my thoughts and feelings. I deliberately write poetry no one can understand (what a fruitless objective. . . ). I punish myself by denying myself things I like. It is like clenching my soul-fist so hard, curving my fingers in so markedly, that I dig into my flesh with my nails, breaking the skin. I break trust with myself.

I am bent.
I am not a terrible human being. Humans are fallen beings, and I'm unfortunately good at being a human being. I try to be perfect, to be unfallen, but I am not any good at that. I don't even have a word for unfallen except unfallen. I prove that I am fallen and tainted and bent by not having words (I mean, real meanings - words can be a metaphor for this, if you like) for the opposite conditions except unfallen, untainted, unbent. A perfect God is terrifyingly strange to a mind that cannot conceive of holiness and righteousness and perfection as anything more than nonsinful and unfallen. The words themselves are not meaningless but imply a meaning beyond my own understanding, and that is what shakes me.

Unaffected

Free from Affectation

His mind is flexible -
it bends and
is bent by thought and theory;
just as each natural breath
opens and fills
the chest cavity to full capacity
without intention or force,
he doesn't reach to grasp -
he floats on the tacit and
on musings, on math,
on pictures, on paint,
on literature, on science,
on fact and fiction,
lithely and blithely
moving through each and all,
transported with lightspeed
across galaxies of knowing -
the stars appear to move slowly
past him -
ideas don't have to be novel
to entertain.

Resource Withdraw

1. Earth

I come behind
like the leaf after the color,
like the child after the mother.
I get the remainder,
the left-over life-blood,
the note between the lines,
the sigh,
and the headaches.
I come behind
like the hand behind the wrist,
like the chair beside the first.
I sink down beside your schedule,
beside your study stimuli
and shiver and
count the distance between.
I come behind
like the lights after nightfall,
like the shower after the comet -

I watch you going ahead.

2. Space

I'm on the periphery,
the rings of Saturn,
floating with the other
particles of dust.
It seems far away,
the glow, the warmth
of the planet,
your smile.

Redemption

"'You have a traitor there, Aslan,' said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he'd been through and after the talk he'd had that morning [with Aslan]. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn't seem to matter what the Witch said."

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis, excerpt from chapter thirteen 

I have just finished reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for probably the eighth or ninth time. This was the first time I had ever noticed the significance of the paragraph.
In the face of his Accuser, Edmund didn't look at her, didn't take notice of her, and he didn't pull away into himself to stare into the face of his guilt or shame - "he just went on looking at Aslan."
Lewis describes the children meeting Aslan for the first time:

"But as for Aslan himself, the Beavers and the children didn't know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly. ... His voice was deep and rich and somehow took the fidgets out of them. They now felt glad and quiet and it didn't seem awkward to them to stand and say nothing."

excerpt from chapter twelve 

In the face of so much majesty and love, "it didn't seem to matter what the Witch said."

Small Things

Earlier today, there was a cricket on the break room floor. I poked at it with the tip of my shoe, but it had lost the ability to use its back legs. It seemed really weak. I made a little noise - combined pity and disgust. James, one of the programmers, was pouring coffee into a paper cup.
"Oh, crap," he said. He sounded concerned that it had bothered me. His voice was soft and empathetic. "Yeah, that was in here earlier. I think he might be poisoned. You know, like a spray."
"Yeah, its legs aren't working." There was a long pause while we looked at it. "I feel kind of bad for it," I said.
"Yeah, me too." He paused. "It's probably dying of some residual poison. Or maybe just life. . . . Doesn't live long." He walked away slowly, careful not to spill his coffee. He walked with his head down as always.
"Yeah. . . ." I said.

Miracles

On May 29, 2011, I left my home to volunteer at Give Kids the World Village in Kissemmee, FL, a resort for families with children who have life-threatening illnesses. If a child with a life-threatening illness wishes through a wishing foundation, such as Make-A-Wish, to go to Disney World or Universal Studios or any of those places in Orlando, their family gets to stay at GKTW, and Give Kids takes care of everything for them. The following is an abridged version of an essay I wrote about my experience there.

I would not describe my week volunteering at Give Kids The World as a life-changing experience. It wasn’t like getting baptized or being paralyzed after a bad car wreck or getting married or having your first child in that I probably won’t ever point back to this experience and say, “my life was drastically different after this day.” Instead, the week that I spent volunteering at Give Kids The World was self-changing – or rather, self-refining. I learned so much about myself. I have a natural capacity to help, support, and serve, and I experienced the effort and initiative it takes to make use of it. I became aware of expectations and stereotypes I didn’t know I had. Mostly, I just learned about other people and the value of time. I experienced compassion in a way I hadn’t seen before through Give Kids The World – through its founder, the volunteers, and the families.
A few weeks before I left for Orlando, FL, I read the book, Gift of Life, written by the founder of GKTW, Henri Landwirth. It was, honestly, a very hard read. It was difficult imagining everything that Landwirth went through as a child during the Holocaust and his time spent in concentration camps and as a young man fighting with anger and pain as a result of the atrocities he endured; it really is beyond imagination. Reading Landwirth’s difficult questions about life and God and humanity, and in turn, asking them alongside him was the most painful challenge of the book. How could a good God let humans do such horrible things to their brothers? What exists in the human heart that could allow for so much evil to exist? Why do bad things happen to good people?
Landwirth responds, “Where does a heart truly broken, a spirit hopelessly abandoned, find hope? What exists within a human being that allows for survival amidst such devastation? It must be God. We might not know it, or believe it, when we are in the middle of the fire, but it must be God. Who else could it be?” As hard as it is for me to imagine having so much pain and suffering inflicted on me by other human beings and living to tell about it, it is even more difficult to imagine being able to live a truly fulfilling life afterward. It is hard to imagine what it would take to have an attitude like Landwirth’s – focusing on the good in human hearts and in the world, seeing things like hope as evidence of a good God. He writes so much about how wonderful people are and what a wonderful country America is; I take opportunity, education, freedom, kindness, compassion and so many other things for granted. I am humbled by his perspective and by how much he cares about people who are in need – in need of clothes or in need of smiles; I feel so small. I am inspired and challenged by the way he starts doing something as soon as he sees a need – even in the hotels he managed, he sought to do everything he could for other people. When he started GKTW, it was because he heard about one family, one little girl who died before her wish came true, and he was touched and determined that something like that never happen again. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard about a situation or an ongoing problem, and I’ve been moved and wanted something to change, but I haven’t done anything to change it myself. Maybe I didn’t believe that there was anything I could do that would actually make a difference.
I read Gift of Life to prepare myself for volunteering at GKTW, but I don’t think that anything could really fully prepare me. Before the trip, I expected the first few days to be really difficult. I thought it would be really hard to be around families whose children’s lives are at risk because of illness at first, but I would adjust after some time. Reflecting on the trip now, almost nothing happened the way I expected it to.
The morning of the first day at GKTW – Monday morning – we worked in the Gingerbread House. Mostly, we carried trays of food from the buffet line to the tables for each member of the families. It was a little awkward for me at first. It takes me a little while to get comfortable in a new environment, and it was intimidating not knowing exactly what to do or say while taking the trays and walking with the families. I was slightly relieved when someone called me over to help serve pastries and waffles. While standing there and talking with the two men who made the waffles, I got to observe the families. It was interesting – you could tell which families were the newer families and which ones were probably about to go home by their behaviors and responses. Some of them knew that the volunteers were going to take their trays to the tables, and they would pause for a second so someone could pick it up for them. Some of them acted surprised when someone would offer to take their tray.
I realized, sort of suddenly, while watching them that this could happen to anyone. Anyone's child could become life-threateningly ill. There were people from all walks of life and places, and they were all different. Some of them were the sort of people you'd expect to find in a Methodist church in a rural town, and some of them looked like they might live in a less-than-savory part of a big city. There were big families of seven or eight members, and there were young, single moms who came with their only child and a brother or sister or mother. I was a bit shocked when I noticed that this surprised me. Somewhere deep inside me, I think expected all of the families to be sort of the same – clean, sort of poor, but still middle-class, with two or three children – but I was not conscious of this at all. I was also surprised by how normal the families seemed to me. As I said, I expected that being around these children and their families would be really hard at first, but it wasn't. It was practically impossible to imagine what they were really going through; I really didn't have a grid for their experiences. Seeing them at Give Kids, they just seemed like any other family on vacation: happy, smiling, sunburned, the kids excited, the parents a little tired. It was wonderful. It was one of the best ways that reality could contradict my expectations.
Monday evening was Kids' Night Out. I remember sitting and waiting to be picked by a kid to be their companion for the evening. I waited a long time. Even Bill Allan was chosen before me. Finally, I was chosen by a four-year-old boy named Tondy (short for Thomas). My friends, Jessica and Andrea, were chosen by Tondy's twin, Nick Nack (short for Nicolas), and their older brother, Joseph, so the six of us spent the evening together. Before he left, their dad explained to us that Nick Nack and Joseph were both autistic. During dinner, Joseph showed us all his Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean action figures. At first, he didn't really want his little brothers to play with them, but after only a moment, he handed his Jack Sparrow figure to Nick Nick.
“Nicolas, did you get to see Jack Sparrow at the parks today?” I asked. He nodded, saying, “Jack Sparrow is my buddy.”
After a while, Tondy started to act disinterested in his food. He said, “No, please,” to having any chicken, and when he refused his cake, Joseph turned to him with a concerned expression and asked, “Are you okay, Tondy?” Tondy said he wasn't okay. I'm pretty sure that he was alright, but that's what he said. Joseph asked, “What's wrong?” I don't remember the conversation after that, but Joseph's expression when he asked Tondy what was wrong is hard to forget. It was such a soft, compassionate look. I later leaned that Joseph was the wish child of the family. Knowing that, I am so impressed with and inspired by the way that he got down on his brother's level and cared for him over something so simple as not wanting to eat cake, even when he could have just as easily resented Tondy for getting worked up over “nothing” since he must’ve been facing health difficulties every day. Joseph responded before my friends and I were even alarmed.
As we went through the evening with these boys, I started to notice a pattern with them. Whenever I asked Tondy or Nick Nack what they wanted or what their favorite color or game or anything was, they would invariably tell me about what their twin's favorite thing was or they would choose something because they knew the other one liked it. For example, I asked Tondy, “Do you want an orange or green balloon?” He replied, “Orange. Nicolas likes orange.” It was kind of amazing – they were all thinking about the others.
During Kids' Night Out, Joseph volunteered and was selected to participate in a game show on stage in front of all the other children. He answered trivia questions and enjoyed himself and smiled the whole time. When his father came to pick the children up, he asked particularly about Joseph, and I told him about how he was on the winning two-man team for the game show, and his dad responded with moderate shock. “That's amazing,” he said. “Joseph has autism, and he has a really hard time coming out of his shell sometimes. I wouldn't have imagined that he would do that.” It was a small miracle. I feel like that is what GKTW is about – it's about giving kids an opportunity to do something that they wouldn't get to do in their normal, everyday life, not just by making it possible for them to go to Disney World and the other parks, but also during the time that they spend at GKTW. Every moment matters to those kids, and it's beautiful the way that Give Kids sees that and makes the most of each of those moments. I feel so fortunate to have been a part of that, and I don't want to stop making moments matter now that I'm home.
On Tuesday, we helped clear out a very large storage barn filled with Christmas decorations. Probably because of the heat and dehydration, I began feeling weak and dizzy. Even though for me, it was such a little thing, I felt disappointed and frustrated that I couldn't help as much as I wanted to because I was feeling sick. It made me think about how much more these kids must feel that way sometimes (for example, one of the boys that we met there couldn't ride on certain rides at the parks because of his condition, and his dad expressed some regret about; there was a definite sense of loss), and how, because of that feeling of being left out or unable to do something they want to do, GKTW and wish-granting foundations must mean so much to them and their families. It was humbling to be a part of that.
Later in the day, while we were visiting the gift shop, we met a small family of three. Their son was probably only three or four years old. The father asked for a picture with the whole group. While he was explaining how much everything meant to them and how amazed and grateful they were that twelve people would come from Kansas to make these kids' wishes possible, I looked at the mother – she had tears running down her face. It never hit me before how much something like that could mean to someone. Before the trip, I thought that it would be a fun and good thing to do; I also thought, “It's not really changing the world or making a big difference” – not like going to Africa and helping make sustainable agriculture a reality while teaching people about God's love and providing revolutionary medical care for AIDS patients. But when I saw those tears on that mother's face, my whole attitude changed. An action doesn't have to change the world or make a big difference for it to be incredibly important and necessary.
That night, while working in the pizza kitchen, I drove Arlen to deliver some pizzas. At our last stop, he began having a conversation about Give Kids with the woman who ordered the pizza. He told her about the life-threatening condition his daughter had as a small child and about how his family came to GKTW as a wish family. Her daughter had a kidney issue, she said, and they were waiting for a kidney transplant. She told him that there had been several times that the doctors didn't think her daughter was going to make it through the night. She said that she went into the hospital room during those times to say goodbye to her little girl, and her daughter would tell her, “I ain't going nowhere, Mommy. I'm staying right here.” She said that her daughter was her hero. I realized then that these families really experience something more difficult that most of us can imagine. I understood this with a weak understanding before the trip – meaning, I understood it in rhetoric. Once I heard this mother's story, saw the tears well up in her eyes, and listened to her voice shake when she talked about how proud she was of her little girl, I understood with a totally different kind of understanding – much deeper and more real.
On Wednesday morning, I worked in the Ice Cream Palace. While I was there, a British family came in to get some breakfast and ice cream. They had a son who was severely handicapped and buckled into a wheelchair. His name was Charlie, and he was absolutely the most charming child I met at GKTW. He couldn't speak, but he was so happy, and when his parents and his sister talked to him about the parks and what they were going to do that day, he would get very excited and shout and move so much he’d shake his wheelchair. He was strapped into his chair with a safety harness, and still, he had the most unbridled enthusiasm I've ever seen.
Thursday night was Christmas, the absolute best part of my time at GKTW. My favorite moment and the moment that I most often relate to others happened during Christmas. After we paraded ourselves through GKTW in our Christmas-themed costumes (I got to be the Snow Princess!), we had a totally awesome dance party near Julie's Sarafi Theater (where Santa was giving out gifts). There was one audacious little girl who gathered many of us into one large circle to dance. Charlie's mother wheeled him into the middle of our circle, and Charlie, with all his unbridled enthusiasm, danced better and more energetically than all of us, and it didn't matter that he was in a wheelchair. His face was absolutely glowing. I tell this story to people who haven't been to Give Kids because I think it epitomizes the miracle of GKTW. At Give Kids, the kids get to do things that they hadn’t been able to do before, things that they wouldn't get to do normally, and it means the world to them and their loved ones. There was a couple volunteering whose granddaughter had been to Give Kids the World as a wish child. She had died sometime afterward, but her grandparents said that while she was at GKTW, she forgot she was sick. That's the miracle of Give Kids The World.
On Friday, I worked in the LaTiDa Spa. I was the tattoo artist (I did airbrush tattoos for the kids). The wish kids were often afraid to let me give them a tattoo because of the airbrushing tool, even after I demonstrated how it worked on one of their family members. One little girl was very frightened and cried to her grandpa in Spanish. He apologized to me and explained, “She thinks you are a nurse.” It was a very sobering moment – to think what these kids go through every day.
Friday was my last day at GKTW. I really didn’t want to leave. Coming home was the most difficult part of the trip. It felt crazy. For some of those kids, time is very short, and for all of them, it is incredibly precious. If time is so important there, why was I leaving while there were still children there? It didn’t make any sense; it felt backwards or inside out. I would still go back in an instant if someone gave me the opportunity.
In every way, Give Kids The World exceeded my expectations, but not only that, it often challenged my expectations and stereotypes in the most beautiful way. It expanded the way I saw and understood human services and compassion. Compassion is seeing a need and being moved to fulfill it – then and not later. It is something active and unyielding to hesitation or setbacks. I learned this through Landwirth’s efforts to start something as incredible as GKTW and through the volunteers’ efforts to continue it. Compassion is also showing someone kindness and respect and warmth when they are going through a difficult experience, and I think that it is showing others those same qualities when you are going through difficult experiences of your own. I learned this through the families and watching the way they treated each other.
I recently read The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, and he writes that grace is all around us and miracles happen every day – we just don’t take the time to recognize them. During this trip, I realized how I often take people and time for granted. Give Kids The World showed me the miracle of compassion and the miracle of time – how important it is to notice them! Life is the most precious and beautiful miracle.