Cappuccinos and Red Balloons

I will always be an advocate for international travel. To see how someone lives on the other side of the world, to walk on their streets, to glimpse their joys and their struggles - all this gives us a new perspective on how we live in our little corners of the world.

Just before Christmas I spent 4 days in France visiting with my friend Meghan and experiencing a bit of this new country through her knowledge and love of the culture. This was by far my favorite international experience to date, primarily because she and I are similar travelers. We take every opportunity to experience the culture we are in, after all, why not? Why wouldn't we want to make the most of a chance to gain a richer appreciation for the beautiful diversity around us?

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." {Mark Twain}

On a beautiful, warm, (8 degrees celsius!) Saturday afternoon, Meghan and I stopped at little Cafe Esmeralda, appropriately located directly across from Notre Dame Cathedral.  We slid into delightfully delicate wicker chairs, positioned not facing one another, but looking out onto the street. (French culture encourages people watching, so cafe chairs are usual set like this!) Around us life in Paris was business as usual. French teenagers strolled by, giggling and chattering in impossibly fast dialogues, tourists darted back and forth, stretching like professional contortionists to get just the right picture of the massive Cathedral standing guard silently over our heads, and several artistic looking young adults (film students?) were in the process of shooting a commercial on the sidewalk to our left. As the cheery serveur materialized with our order, 2 shots of espresso for Meghan and a frothy cappuccino for me, we settled back to rest our feet and take in the bustle around us. I wondered then how I would ever go back home, spend Christmas on an upstate farm, visit Lancaster County, and then resume school in rather unremarkable Erie, Pennsylvania. But maybe, I quietly pondered as I sipped the decadent foam from the top of my cappuccino, that was the point. What is the good of experiencing life if we don't allow it to change us, and in turn, how we live in the everyday moments?

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." {Terry Pratchett} 

On my final day in France we yet again caught the train into Paris, this time to the south end and the Champs-Elysees. As we migrated through an expansive park, the object of our wanderings at the far end, we were arrested by a peculiar spot of color above us. On one of the bare trees lining the walk, someone, (human or faerie folk?) had tied bright red balloons to the uppermost branches. We lingered only a moment to snap a few pictures before resuming our rapid march, but the memory of that sensation lingered even as I boarded my flight home the next morning.

Why, I wondered, would someone go to all the trouble of stringing those decorations high up in a tree along a fairly untraveled walk in a solitary park? Was there something special about that tree or place? [Insert American indignance] Who even has time to inflate that many balloons?

But then, I think that may have been the point. While that city and that park were new and fascinating for me, they were someone's ordinary. Someone lived and worked there, probably passing that park on a daily basis out of routine, perhaps dreaming of a visit to another country far away. But the point is that someone stopped, stepped out of the ordinary, and made something beautiful. They allowed their perspective on the world to influence how they lived in the everyday.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." {Marcel Proust}

As I prepare to head back to another semester of grad school, I want to have learned far more from my travels than how to say "bonjour" and the trick to maneuvering the metro system. I want my new perspective to impact how I live in the everyday. I believe that I will be held accountable for what I do with my little piece of the world, and so I want to leave a few "red balloons" behind me, so that maybe one day someone from another time and place will stop and say, here someone found something extraordinary in the ordinary.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not." {Ralph Waldo Emerson}

Thank You for Letting Me Go...

"Only know you love her when you let her go...and you let her go." (Let Her Go, by Passenger.)

As I spend my first evening of the weekend before my first grad school finals packing my room and suitcases for the next crazy adventure, (France here I come!), I am surprised at some of the things that come to floating to mind along with dust and wisps of lint. Chief among these unexpected thoughts are the memories of those relationships with friends and family that have changed or ended over the years. At one time I was so afraid of this very thing happening, and would hang on with both arms and legs to the relationship despite the kicking and screaming of circumstance. Yet looking back, it occurs to me that I owe a very real debt of gratitude to the people who came and went in my life.

You see, they had courage to love me for a time, and a love courageous enough to let me go.

This is an incredibly hard concept to grasp. I continue to allow memories reside in my heart and mind, whose unresolved voices whisper "why?", "what did you do wrong?", and "why couldn't they love you enough to stay?".

And in truth, some relationships end because of a foolish blunder or selfish misstep on the part of one or both persons, but the easy majority of these seasonal relationships in my life came to a close because they needed to. Because in order to grow, we needed to be pruned.

Pruning hurts. When fruit trees are pruned they bleed sap out of their raw wounds, in an attempt to heal themselves and cover the scars. But the following season, it is these trees that underwent such pain that produce the most glorious fruit.

So while I may from time to time wistfully think back to family members that I never seem to see anymore, boys that married other girls and started other families, or friends that I miss hearing from and relating to, I realize it is because of each of these people that I am myself in this moment.

So thank you. "Thank you", to the family members that realized new wings need space to spread. "Thank you", to the boy who broke my heart and told me my dreams were too big for him to follow. And "thank you", to the friends who recognized the fork in the road.

And "thank you" to those friends who continue to impact my life today. Those friends that Shakespeare describes as someone who "knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow."

You have each been such an integral part of my journey. I wouldn't change any of it. Not even the painful stuff; not even the pruning. Because of those seasons, I am pursuing my dreams and continuing to grow into the woman that God has created me to be.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me go.

"To Let the Oppressed Go Free..."

"Sometimes you are so hungry that the only way you can be fed is to fast." -Susan Gregory

So this month I am trying something new, the Daniel Fast. While this particular concept of fasting is new to me, it has been around for thousands of years, namely, since the time of the prophet Daniel in ancient Babylon. In a nutshell, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attached Jerusalem and took many young men of Israel back with him as captives, including Daniel and his three friends, Hanahiah, Mishael, & Azariah, (the three dudes of fiery-furnace fame). As these guys were being prepared to appear before the king, they were served the same food as the royal court. But Daniel and his friends asked to only be given vegetables to eat and water to drink, in order to avoid being made ritually unclean by the richer foods offered to them. God blessed these young men, and they found high favor in the king's eyes, and became members of his court.

The notion of a "Daniel Fast" has become more popular lately, largely due to Susan Gregory's book/devotional on the subject. I have always loved studying the spiritual disciplines, especially the different types of fasting that were observed throughout history, and I had been looking for a significant way to observe the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, (Nov. 3). It has been heavy on my heart to spend more time in intentional prayer for persecuted believers around the world, as the number of attacks on Christians grows by the week.

So for the next 21 days, I will be fasting and praying for the church around the world. In week 1, specifically for believers in Asia & South America, week 2, Africa, Australia, & Antarctica, and week 3, North America & Europe. All continents experiences universal persecution from a world that stands in direct opposition to Jesus Christ, and each region faces challenges unique to that cultural and political system.

From a fast inspired by the prophet Daniel, to the words of another great prophet, Isaiah, I truly want this time to be consecrated to seeing the Lord work in a powerful way in me personally, and around the world in the lives of believers everywhere. I want to hunger for their deliverance and their encouragement.

"Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am'.
....
Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In."

{Isaiah 58}

This is the fast that I have chosen - one of power and of promise. Can you imagine what would happen to our world if Christians just in the United States put aside a period of time to really pray for other believers? To fast for their provision and protection? To intercede for their families and their churches? Can we dust off the foundations that previous godly generations laid for us, and actually rebuild a strong, selfless, power-filled Church?

Will you join me?