watching toucans and publishing Hindi

The rain pounds down outside making everything wet and very like my hometown. I’m only a continent away, but that hometown seems a world away right now. I’ve never been that homesick girl, but my parents come to visit me here in four days, and all of a sudden I can’t wait another hour.

There are times when your world slows down and you’re left in the catch trying to find your balance. There are other times when your world is moving so fast you have to slow yourself down and see what’s really happening so you don’t wake up a lifetime later like you’d been dreaming.

This is one of those times.

I graduated six months ago, spent two months at home hiking WA, skyping with my best friend, praying through a church split, loving all growing things, and reading my first non-theological works after two years of study.

Then I left for South America, and the months since then have been a blur of meeting to-be friends, eating far too much pão de queijo, laughing endlessly at myself as I attempt to speak like a five-year-old Brazilian kid, waking up in one place and going to bed in another, taking thousands of pictures, and learning more about web design, international ministry, and the publishing industry than I ever bargained for. It’s been a full four months, and as I come to the end of it I realize I’ve barely begun to process everything. .

Yet some things have begun to solidify in these past days—mostly ordinary things I thought I already knew.

First, people are far more important than. . . than anything else. I feel as if I’ve been learning this for years now, and every time I turn around I’m learning it over again. Then my phone breaks and all of a sudden I can’t do anything to distract myself. I miss being able to take pictures and stay in touch with family, but otherwise, spot on. People, if you’re planning to travel overseas, take a broken phone along.

You will receive more than you give. Period. There is always more sacrifice involved in welcoming someone from another country into your home and your life and your kitchen than is at first apparent. The people here in Brazil have shown magnificent hospitality.

Just try it. The food, the complicated sentence, the week with a stranger—and another, and another—

Know what grounds you. Hint: it’s not stuff, no matter how much we live like it. When you live out of a suitcase and a backpack is the only constant in your life, when dinnertime varies by a range of about four hours and you rely on other people’s washing machines (and generosity), it’s easy to feel like a vagabond. But vagabond or no, there is One whose presence is the same. I can wake up under rainy skies in my own bed or in a hammock in Florida or in a room with three little Brazilian children and I can open the Word. I can ride on a crowded bus through the streets of São José and call on my Father for strength.

Long-distance friendship is an art. This, and know those who seem as if they’ve never been gone after you spend months apart. Midnight tie-that-binds ice cream runs build friendship, but it does not get more real than praying for someone and knowing that they pray for you.

Know how you process life, and do what you need to do so this happens. This can easily become “me time,” which I was warned against from a young age, but a believer collects thought-baggage just like the next person. Write, talk, listen to music, draw, take pictures, be.quiet. This has perhaps been the hardest thing about living here in a culture where relationships are so pre-eminent and the medicine of quiet alone-time is underestimated.

Roll with it. Be inconvenienced. Plan ahead and be okay with none of those plans happening. Just eat dinner at 10pm if that’s the thing to do.

Do all the walking you can. Get to know the streets, the shops, the faces. Find routine in the crazy. Find beauty in the drab.

Have a friend who knows everything, to whom you can tell anything no matter how insignificant or monumental; someone who will pray for you when everything has run out, who will laugh at stupid things you did. Find that person who isn’t afraid of life without makeup and who honestly needs you.

Lastly, there is One who knows all our desires. Perhaps that is the thing that most amazes me as I see the span of these past months. I’ve become semi-professional at things I never considered more than a hobby, and seen doors opened that I’d never looked for. Always, the Giver gets the glory. It’s a humbling thing to see your life turn in a direction you never wanted or intended but one which is perfect and planned nonetheless. He give us passions and interests, and the fruit will not fail to come as we cultivate and surrender these over into His hands.

So for now, I’m here in Brazil where a toucan just flew past the window and I had açai for lunch. I ought to be to publishing a book in Hindi, but instead I’m writing this and texting Bekka and Becka—both dear friends, one in Brazil, one in the States, both have-been or will-be housemates. My last full day of work is tomorrow, then packing, traveling, more packing, more traveling, and home.

I’m a fool if I can’t open my eyes and see the design in all these unpredictable months.

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