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the atlanta skyline
southern sunset
hopefully i will be here in the next two years!
the methodist children's home
yeah-yuh.
So moving to Georgia is kind of random, but I feel a sweet peace and a goodness about it. There is the kind of anxiety that comes before a big swim meet or a play -- you want to do well, but more than anything you want to do it because you love it. That's what I think of when I think of the Methodist Children's Home, of Candler, of Atlanta.
The motto of the Decatur Children's Home is this:
Our
mission is to provide redemptive,
healing
services that bring
meaningful
change to the lives of
children and
families. Grounded by
scripture and
the tradition of the
church, we
seek to bring the wholeness
of God's love
to persons through Christ.
"grounded by scripture & the tradition of the church, we seek to bring wholeness of God's love to persons through Christ." grounded in the very Word of God, which was and is and will be, and by the tradition of the Methodist and catholic church, which historically has fought racism & classism, they seek to bring the wholeness of God's love -- to bring the shalom, the ubiquitous blessing of God -- to the children & parents, all through the only One who could do it truly -- Jesus.
I am excited about that. I am excited to be positioning myself in a place to bring God's love into dark places, and to experience God's love in meaningful, heart-changing ways. I am excited to get a chance to be love, to bring love, and then to watch the response to that love, and the outwardly directed love that I know these kids have in them. I have seen them love each other, and I have seen them get excited to love the world. Rescue is possible. Love is.
Candler's mission is this:
Candler School of Theology is grounded in the Christian faith and
shaped by the Wesleyan tradition of evangelical piety, ecumenical
openness, and social concern. Its mission is to educate—through
scholarship, teaching, and service—faithful and creative leaders for
the church’s ministries in the world.
A boring way of saying that we do good things, we do them like Methodists, like academics, like people of God who love both learning and thinking & serving and doing. I ain't about to argue with that.
I feel like I have been meeting so many people from Atlanta, all who attest to its goodness, sometimes particularly its suitability to me . . . it just fits. It fits like Isaiah prophecies fit Jesus, like Kent School fit into my hand, like Alloy pants fit me, like Liza fits into my arms for good hugs, like good things fit.
It is hard to leave other good things. And it will get harder. That's part of how I know they are so good.
To quote a verse that I used to hate people quoting because I thought it was slightly misusing the Biblical text:
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
No, this verse isn't about me. It's about Jeremiah. But it fits. :)
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my brother craig and my new niece, carolyn sue!
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she's pretty precious like me. :)
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| I know now that there is real hope, and that it isn't "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." It actually tends to come up when you are facing, even allowing yourself to feel what is most hopeless and painful for you.
At least for me. It's been a little over two years, but sometimes the pain of not having my Dad still wells up fresh, as though I only lost him yesterday. My boss from camp told me last summer that the death of a parent never goes away, and even though that seems pretty obvious, considering the finality of death, it's not so obvious in my heart. There are times when I can forget, and remembering again is harder, it seems, each time.
I think about it a lot now. I'm not sure why; it just seems to come up. And there is something hopeless about feeling pain that can't be comforted by the thought, "It'll only be for a little while, and then it'll be over." My friend Mel said that it is weird to her to think that she didn't even live half her life with her Dad, and she wonders what she will remember about him when she is 60. It is weird and difficult to think that ever major event of my life, from high school graduation on, will be without him.
And I don't think I would really know how to deal with it, except to cry every morning that I wake up and remember, unless I had comfort that is just as eternal, and even moreso, than death. I have comfort from a living God, who works among us, and that is probably the one thing stronger than the pain of seeing a father go, whether mine or my closest friends'. His comfort shows itself in many ways. Listening to Mel talk at camp about her father's last days and how, when it all came down to it, what was left for him was love. Telling 14 fifteen-year-old girls about my Dad, and how I really believed that God saved him through cancer, and how they should take comfort that God does work good through the bad things. Finding pictures of us in the drawer in my room, and finally feeling ready to take them out and frame them. Hearing my step-mother say that she loves me, and that she is so glad to have me back, and that she never lost me in her heart. Laying down next to my brother, feeling his tears on my cheek, and telling him that there is something to live for here without Dad. And being able to trust that that is true.
To be alive here when such things as cancer happen, and to have hope, I think, is kind of a miracle. Maybe a small one. But one still.
Mel always was better at articulation:
So it's got me thinking…maybe the miracle is
something different. Maybe the miracle is that people still believe in
them. That the human spirit is broken but not destroyed. That people
care enough to pray for something seemingly hopeless. That I am not
alone. That a man with a brain tumor can still speak with clarity and
wisdom on God's presence and take care of his family. Beth Moore
perhaps puts it best when she says, Perhaps the most profound miracle of all is living through something we thought would kill us."
There are those moments in life that are, at least for me, a
seemingly random smattering of split-second confirmations that
everything really is going to be ok. No matter what I'm doing or where
I am, I occasionally get that euphoric feeling that all is right with
the world, to use a cliché. And then it passes. There is no rhyme or
reason, they just come and go. CS Lewis calls these moments joy. This
past year, when those moments show up it feels a whole lot like hope.
Maybe sometimes joy shows up as hope.
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| i wish the world was flat like the old days
then i could travel just by folding the map
no more airplanes or speed trains or freeways
there'd be no distance that could hold us back
there'd be no distance that could hold us back
there'd be no distance that could hold us back
death cab for cutie
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| peel the scars from
off my back
i don't need them anymore
you can throw them out
keep them in your mason jar
i've come home.
-radical face
love. be love. <3
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