In case you haven't yet heard, Michael Wong has asked me to be his wife and I have accepted. We will be married on March 20, 2010 and are busy planning the wedding!
Michael started a new full time position at a bank as a special projects manager, as well as a few other things there, that no one else knows how to do. (I have somehow found someone to marry who is even more inquisitive than I am...)
School is going ok for me. The kindergartners are learning a ton and it's amazing to see these little people forming! It has been very tough the last few weeks, but I am constantly growing and refining and am very fortunate to work on the staff that I do. I will soon be applying for teaching programs so that I can get certified.
I have been working to help develop new and effective systems at our church with my roommate and maid of honor, Lori. We are very excited about starting to implement and I have discovered that I have a real passion for healthy church systems! (Wait for the phone call, Nancy Lindroth!)
RefugeNOLA, the non-profit (501-C3) that we are trying to give legs helped to pull off a rather large event in Central City for Halloween. (More in this update following, as well as a newsletter that will come soon to all of you!)
Please pray for...
Please pray for me, as I am feeling stretched especially thin lately. Pray that I would learn to set good boundaries for myself and for my future husband (whoa, that sounds weird!) Also, please pray that the people that are feeling snubbed by me would no feel hurt and that I would be able to find the time to make them feel loved and appreciated.
Pray for all of the things I mentioned above!
Pray that true community would develop with our church, that we would be able to come together to bring impact to other parts of the city--God is doing something at Sojourn Lakeview Baptist Church (soon to be Harbor Community Church) and we are very excited about it. Pray that the leadership would continue to seek after the heart of God in all matters and that they would make decisions that will bring about community and love.
Sit down and rest a while
Well, the weather in New Orleans has finally taken a turn for the better. October brought us some still humid temperatures, but for the most part, the season of "Fall" settled in about halfway through the month, and there was a sigh of relief that was heard around the whole city.
I heard birds chirp for the first time since I'd been down here.
I thought I saw a tree near my school start to change colors. (Ironically, I was then informed that it was actually a flower that blooms in the tree in the Fall...)
It has been no Wisconsin Fall, but nonetheless, I have found some amount of Beauty in it.
The beginning of October was hard. As the month set, tension just seemed to build. My disdain and selfishness against this city kicked in and I began to become discontented in regards to the physical location that I now found myself. I have spent the last month trying to figure out why and I believe that my questions have finally been answered:
Solitude.
In this city, there seems to be no solitude. Sure, there are times that I find myself alone, but never times when I feel really alone. You know, that feeling when you are standing in the middle of the woods at down on a rock, feeling the sun warm your face as it shows itself at the dawn. The feeling of walking down a train with all of the colored leaves of the Wisconsin Fall around you, crunching under your feet. Standing on a hill that looks out over a lake.
In New Orleans, there are no woods. There are no large rocks. There is no Fall. There are no crunching leaves. And there definitely isn't a hill that looks over a lake unless you go to the levees, which are brown and dull looking.
Solitude is where I find beauty. Because solitude is when I commune with God best. It is my respite. Believe it or not, I think I have become more of an introvert since I've been down here. I hear that is what working in a school will do to you.
Either way, there is a deep connection between God, solitude and my ability to see beauty.
But I'm coming to realize that I may have something backwards. Since solitude is so hard to come by now, perhaps I need to redefine beauty, if that is when I commune with God best. Or maybe when I commune with God best, I see beauty more.
I guess I don't have it all figured out yet.
But something tells me that I need to redefine beauty.
Sure, there is something to be said for the typical beauty of the Wisconsin Fall. For the solitude of the trails. For the hills and the trees. It is creation...How do you not find God in that?
But I'm guessing that He wants me to start being a bit more creative like He is... Being a bit more imaginative, if you will.
Plato said in Symposium:
"Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."
Or, rather...
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
This past weekend, we (RefugeNOLA.org) and a slew of other partners hosted a block party-type event for Halloween in Central City and were floored by what God did with it. In a neighborhood full of broken homes and broken relationships, teenage parents and rampant drug use, we saw a community come together. The event was just a simple block party that enabled kids in the neighborhood to trick-or-treat with the reassurance of safety, as we organized houses and games, even giving houses candy that couldn't afford to buy it.
We expected to see kids out and about, running around, getting candy, but as 5pm came and went, we got a little worried that they weren't going to come. And then, as the sun slowly went down, they came out...but not just the kids. Their parents, with strollers and trick-or-treat bags in tow, were out with them. Teenage fathers with their kids on their shoulders bobbed for apples.
My favorite story of the night:
A mother was trying to do our reverse bobbing for apples game (reverse bobbing for apples is when you hang an apple from a string and you have to try to bite off the apple in the air). She was having a heck of a time and her kids were all joking with her about it. Her cellphone rang and the typical language that you hear in the neighborhood came out as she described to her friend across the phoneline what she was doing: "I'm trying to get the damn apple off the stick!!" I can only imagine what her friend thought, but I laughed so hard at that, I didn't know what to do with it! Even more, striking, though, was that the mother kept trying and soon, her daughter chided that she could do it better. So teenage daughter gave the apple a go...and still failed. Soon, mother and daughter were attacking the apple together, one on each side, and were, eventually, successful!
It was such a normal thing to see...if you weren't in Central City. It was something my mom and I would do.
I have yet to figure out whether that fact reminds me of my own brokenness or whether it reminds me that these broken relationships still have a way to be redeemed. I'm sure that it's both.
But isn't that the real reality of beauty? Something that reminds us of how small we are, but at the same time, gives us hope?
And so, I am being made to be more creative. I am being made to be more imaginative.
I am being made to be more like Christ--finding the ability to see value and beauty in everything that He has created.
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