Hello there! I have just send out a new update. If you want to read it click here: Heading Back To IndiaIf you don't want to miss out on the next awesome update please subscribe Subscribe to our mailing list

Your Normal is Not Really Normal

I think I am going through pre-culture shock.

There is something rising up in me that is saying "your normal is not really the goal. I am setting before you a new goal." 

I hate admitting this but there is something deep inside of me that expects and craves the American version of "normal:"
the sweet pretty wedding with all the family and friends there celebrating (and gifting),
the husband who goes off to work five days a week,
weekends,
house full of kids with beds, toys, and cute clothes enough for all,
a place to craft and somewhere to buy supplies,
grocery stores down the street,
Super-Target,
a vehicle to take the family places,
the library,
instagram,
internet everywhere,
coffee every morning,
an oven to bake things in,
a couch in the living room,
carpet on the floor,
air-conditioning in the summer,
heat in the winter,
fall leaves,
spring flowers,
closest family and friends within 3000 miles.....
this might all be just a dream that I have to let go.

India is tugging at my heart. The Lord is calling my name.
It is impossible to say "no."

In September I am going to India. I will stay nine months (well that is the plan so far). This time I will not just be visiting: playing with the kids at Asha House, drinking tea with lepers, buying some pretty stuff, and leaving. This time I am going to have to set down some roots, continuing the journey of learning how to live in India.

There are many unknowns about what the next year holds for me. I know that I cannot approach them with fear but with faith, trusting that God really truly knows what I need better than I think I do, trusting that his way will lead to his glory and my good.

But this process is still a tearing. Tearing down the old "normal" replacing it with the Kingdom normal. Tearing down my expectations and replacing them with Kingdom expectations.

Oh but I am so selfish and full of pride. It is not easy. In fact it is really convenient to believe the lie that tells me that I will loose my true self in this process. But it is just a lie. The amazing truth is that I am finding my true self in giving myself over to The Lover of My Soul. The Author of Life, The Older (and so much wiser) Brother over All Creation.

I am going to India nothing can stop me. I am always going to say "yes!" to God no matter the cost, even if the cost is a little heartache.

Hey there....

I have been gone from this blogging scene for a while. I have missed you all. Hope you have missed me too.

Since October when I got home from my second trip to India I have been developing the social media for Back To The Roots, the backing organization for Asha House. It has been wonderful to blog about what I love and discover new social media avenues, but that has made me not want to blog personally since blogging has become my job. Who wants to spend their entire life blogging?

It has been growing on me. This feeling that I need to write, that I need to pick up blogging for myself again.
Well here I am.
I am back.

So what is God speaking to me about?

I spent quite some time this morning lamenting to him about all of my issues and problems, weaknesses and frustrations. The things that are pressing on my mind and spirit. His response to all my uncertainties and worries was this:

I want you to love me and to be loved by me. 

So simple. Almost too simple.

It is so easy to believe that I have to do things to win the Lord's love, or that I have to prove my love for him.

So powerful. Almost too powerful.

As we grasp the unconditional Love of the Abba Daddy, our response is immediately to love. We become love machines.

Satan does not like that. He wants to keep us trapped in our futile thinking that we need to meet God's and other people's exceptions. That we need to be "good little Christians." That we have to always be in fear that we might say or do the wrong thing.

The amazing truth is that we can never chase away the Love of God, nor can we screw-up the Lord's plans. He is chasing us with his sweet love and always working things together for the good of those who love him.  We cannot stop him or his love. It is impossible and prideful to think we can mess up God's plans.

The honest truth is that I have known this beautiful truth for quite some time. I have learned to dance and rejoice in it. I have learned to find freedom in it. The other honest truth is that is is so easy to get caught up in life and wander away from the rest I have found in the arms of love. Today I am learning to return... "to know and rely on the love God has for us." (1 John 4:16)

Pariwar

 discovered a new family
where biology is nothing
what binds is the blood of Christ,
as I look into their faces
reflected back is the image,
the same image of God I see
when I look in the mirror:

lepers and prostitutes,
tiny weather-worn women,
naughty dirty beautiful
children running in the street,
a man who sits on the floor
in his humble brick dwelling
speaking of the peace of God
as the thing he treasures most,
orphan girls who whisper songs,
strong young women who gently 
teach me how to hand wash clothes
then serve me chai and biscuits,
the rickshaw driver who speeds
through the dusk safely toward home,
cow herds dressed in their finest,
the old corner-store owner
who is caught dancing with his
grandson in the dusty street



 









(the Hindi for "family" is "pariwar")


-first posted at my other blog

Up Dark Streets in Udaipur

I haven’t written for a while. I haven’t quite known what to write, even though India has been on my mind almost constantly. I was telling this story to one of my friends the other day. It is one of my favorites so I thought I would share it:

It was one of the last days we were in India. Our team was in Udaipur, Rajastan for a week of debriefing before heading back to the states. This night we were all going out to dinner together at this really nice restaurant that had a rooftop that overlooked Lake Pichola and the Lake Palace. We had all gotten dressed up and were all very excited. This was going to be one of the few indulgent things we did.

So the 12 of us got into 4 autorickshaws and Katie and Amy told the drivers where to go, and we were all off…well sort of. I was in an auto with Jenny and Rebecca. At first our driver seemed to know English pretty well, but we still couldn’t really understand him. All we could tell is that he was talking us to “Lal Ghat,” which we assumed was the restaurant we were going to (Katie and Amy had been keeping the restaurant’s name a surprise to make things more fun, and boy did it make things more exciting). After a little while we realize that our driver might be drunk and then all of a sudden our driver pulls over on a pretty busy street, and gets out. He told us something (again we couldn’t make out his English, not to mention his Hindi), and then went to a shop to go buy something. I thought maybe he is getting more to drink, or hopefully he is getting something to sober himself up. None of us girls moved we were all a little freaked out. He got back in and pulled forward a few feet, and then turned around and somehow communicated that he would not be going any further and that we needed to pay him and get out. We paid him more than he deserved just to make sure he didn’t come try to harass us for more money. We got out and found ourselves in what seemed like an old part of the city which had the most narrow and dark streets we had seen in out whole time in India. They were lined with many tiny shops and bustled with foot traffic, autorickshaws, and animals.

Every Indian has a cell phone: lepers, people in the slums, rickshaw drivers…everyone. We had the cell numbers for Katie, Amy, and Wilson so we tried to find an India who will let us use his phone. Because we are not in Delhi and all three of the leader’s numbers are Delhi ones, no one would let us make an out-of-area call. Finally we found an India who was in business clothes and spoke good English. We told him we needed to somehow to get to “Lal Ghat.” He asked “the hotel or restaurant?” Good sign! We told him we needed to find the restaurant and asked him if it was close enough to walk to. We could have tried and catch an other rickshaw, but we gave the last guy our allotted team money and we would have had to dip into our dwindling personal money, plus I think the three of us were ready for some adventure.

We got this Indian guy to give us directions to “Lal Ghat” restaurant. They went something like: go right, turn left, at the clock tower turn right (but for some reason be careful here to stay on the right side of the road), go up until you get to the Buddhist temple and then ask the police officers where to go. Simple enough right? They ended up being pretty easy directions to follow, but remember we were three American girls on the dark narrow streets, Indian men gawking all around, not having been out after dark without a male present for three months. I think we were all a little scared, but in the back of our heads thinking that we were going to have a great story to tell.

Finally we got to the Buddhist temple, the largest one I had ever seen, with stairs that climbed higher and higher. Crazy enough at the foot of these stairs we found two police officers. We asked them where to go next. They pointed for us to go up the street to the right and then said, “go up.” We were not quite sure what “go up” exactly meant until we started walking and came to this street that went almost straight up. We figured this is what they meant and trekked up. All along the way we had been asking people ever so often if we were going the right way by pointing and saying “Lal Ghat?” hoping for a positive answer and finally we found “Lal Ghat” restaurant. We started to go in but the doorman stopped us, and then proceeded to ask us if we were looking for our friends. We immediately said “yes”, and he told us to keep going up the street. We were really confused but we knew we had to be the only large group of white people around so we continued up. We turned a corner and with a ton of relief saw Paru, the Indian lady we were living with (she and her husband, Wilson, joined us for our time in Udaipur). She was out looking for us along with Wilson, Katie and Amy.

Our restaurant was tucked away almost in a corner, up the street even more. Once we got there we climbed all the way to the rooftop to have an amazing dinner with the rest of our team. The view and the food were great and the adventure was definitely worth it. 

 Above is the view from our table

Below is another persons video in daylight of the streets we walked in darkness

See Video

Weep for my Babies

Remembering is so beautiful yet still so painful...my heart breaks and tears overflow for the babies, God's babies. So much beauty, so much darkness. I want to be back there so bad I don't know what to do with myself.
I need to be there. My heart is there. I want to walk the dirty streets and bow to old women declaring "Namaste- I see the light in you, God sees the light in you." I want to shake the tiny hands of each one of the children that run up to me and say "hi, hi, hi, hi, hi," or "my name is?" I want to hear Hindi. I want to haggle and once the deal is made to see the smile of surprised pleasure that a white girl can strike a good deal. I want to walk through the gates at Asha House and hear "good morning Auntie" from many tiny voices. I want to take a nap on the floor in the girls room, squished between the metal bunk bed and a little warm body, uncomfortable but loving every minute. I want to hear Ragina whisper songs in my ear, and Jyoti yell around the corner "Auntie" hoping to get chased. I want to look at Metulish and see myself reflected back in the deep brown of his eyes. I want to sip chai out of tiny metal cups and spin Perchant on the swing made out of an old sarree suspended from the ceiling. I want to smell cooking, incense, and burning garbage all mingled together in the dusty air of dusk. I want to hear peacocks and bicycle bells, and the little girl across the street scream as her mother bathes her on the roof top.

I want to be home.

Jyoti-Tiger

The first day we visited Asha House we met all the kids. We played games with them and sang songs until we worn our selves out. My first memory of Jyoti is from that day. We both were sitting on the floor against the wall in the church room. I motioned for her to come to me, but she looked at me shyly. I scooped her up and plopped her on my lap.  She acted very timidly but began to warm up to me. She counted her toes and fingers in English and told me the English name for the colors on the clothes she was wearing. "ret, grean, bloo...won, do, tree..."  We sat there together for a long enough time that she fell asleep in my lap. Once she did I began to pray for her. I didn't know anything about her except her name, but I prayed for her to grow up to love God, for her to find a godly husband one day... and for healing.

After lunch that day all 11 of our team squeezed on to the 5x5 floor of the boys room at Asha House. Victor, the director of Asha House, was out of town but we were introduced to Simini, his wife. She told us the story about how Asha House came into existence (which I will tell you all another day). She also told us the stories of some of the kids. The one that stuck out to me that days was Joyti's: She has a older brother and a twin brother, neither of which live at Asha House. When she was a baby her father ran away with another woman and left her mother and to take care of the kids. This is an every day occurrence in the US, but in India there are very few options for single women and no good options for women who have been left my their husbands. Joyti's mother probably sold herself to make money to feed her children, until a man came to live with her. We are not sure about the sort of relationship they had, but it wasn't a good one. Jyoti ended up watching this man murder her mother. Her father came and took the twin brother away, leaving Jyoti and her older brother to beg on the streets.

A pastor in the slums found Jyoti and brought her to Asha House. She was very shy and reserved, especially towards white people (this is pretty common in new kids, because most of them have never seen white people).  Jyoti began to get very ill and Victor and Simini took her to the hospital. They found out that she has worms in her brain, that developed because when she live on the streets she had to eat dirt and whatever else she and her brother could find to stay alive.  She is being treated with a medicine and regular visits to the doctor. The worms should be gone in a few months from now. You can still be praying that she will be fully healed. I had no idea about this when I prayed healing over her sweet little sleeping body.

Victor, Simini and the rest of us were very concerned that Jyoti's condition would affect her ability to learn.  It hasn't! She is one of the brightest children at Asha House. During the time we were there she mastered writing her name, the upper and lower-case English alphabet, colors, numbers 1-20, months of the year, days of the week, and the names of fruits and animals. All of the younger kids got "animal names" to help them learn the English and Hindi names for animals. Jyoti is the tiger.  We would tell her "tiger bolo" (bolo means "say"), and she would make the cutest little raspy growling noise.  The only thing she has a hard time remembering is she life before Asha House...and for her, that is a huge  blessing.

Jyoti's name means "light." She truly embodies light coming out of darkness. This really stuck out to me one Sunday during church. We were worshiping and the Hindi speakers were singing a song in Hindi. We can't all fit in the church-room, so the younger kids sit on mats just outside the door. You can't see them, but as we were singing I was listening and could pick out Jyoti's sweet little voice. She was singing with all her might. It brings me to tears when I think about she singing because it is such an example of how God works all things together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28), and how He turns darkness into light (Isaiah 42:16).              
(the last four pictures were taken by various teammates, only the first one is mine)