My Argentina Saga (The Super Short Version)

A couple years ago I went to Quilmes, Argentina with my church youth group and ran some children's programs in a local community children's center-ish thing. It was such an incredible experience to play with the children and to get to know the community and the culture. It was an all-around great 10 days of personal and spiritual growth. That's the usual way trips like that turn out. Great bonding experiences and learning and fun.

Everyone got a chance to go visit families in their homes as part of the trip. Seeing children in the context of the community center is one thing, but seeing children living in poverty is really hard. The family I got to visit lived in a legitimate shack with garbage everywhere and dogs that clearly had diseases. A woman came out to greet us and she asked us some questions about our lives but I pretty much couldn't speak. What on earth do you say to someone who lives in garbage when you live in suburbia and have a fridge full of food and two cars in the driveway. We said our goodbyes and as we turned and walked away about half of the group burst into tears. For me, it was the guilt. I felt overwhelming guilt. What right do I have to use so many resources when her and her family get so little? How dare I spend 15 dollars on a movie ticket when 15 dollars could buy them food. Why do I get to live the way I do without thinking of the lives I could be helping? And how on earth did I not realize all of this before. I felt my heart shatter into about a million pieces. I cried for a couple hours, no joke. There was nothing feel-good or fun about it.

Later that week I had the opportunity to visit her and her family again and bring them some groceries. I told her (through a translator) how much she had touched my heart and how I will be praying for her and her family. I could see her eyes tearing up and she thanked me. Before we left I prayed for her out loud and had it translated so she could understand. I prayed for peace and rest and for her to feel God in her life. I prayed for her needs to be met and for her to find joy and to feel safe. I probably rambled on more than necessary but she seemed to enjoy it. She gave me a big hug and sort of nestled into me. (She was much much shorter than I, so her head rested on my chest) I hugged her back and I could hear her sobbing into my shirt. She just cried and cried and I cried and cried and it was a lot of crying but it was also beautiful. Because love transcends all differences. And she said God bless you and I felt blessed. I felt blessed to have met her and to have shown some love to her, even if it was super small. 

Tears everywhere.

At the airport when we were leaving, the pastor that we had been working with came to me and pointed to me and said "heart especial". And I had no words. I felt 0% special and 100% percent unsettled. How do I live now that I know people, personally, who are in real, live, hard poverty. 

I didn't really. I cried all the time. I spent every lunch hour with my favourite teacher debating how life can possibly be so unfair. I went to worship services and cried. I went home and cried. I went to school and cried. And then I started looking up flights to Argentina because like obviously I had to go back. I graduated and went to work at camp and I thought about Argentina all the time. I had conversations about it and cried. And the more I thought about the more I really felt like I needed to go back. I had no idea why or how (plane tickets ain't cheap) but I felt this strong pull. My heart was so restless. 

Summer finished and I started university. In the first month I had to write a paper about something I cared about. I wrote it about Argentina and I bawled my eyes out while typing. That's hard. Typing and crying. Your eyes get super blurry. So I started saving money and I told my parents I wanted to go to Argentina.

"By yourself?" They thought I was mildly insane I'm sure but like yolo whatever. They were supportive despite their concerns. 

I made plans with my friends in Argentina and settled dates and when I had enough money I bought my ticket.

If you've read any of my other blogs you would know that it's around this time when I lost my grip on life and shut down to the world and spent months in the dark of my mind. Which made everyone a little more concerned about my 3 week journey by myself to the other side of the world. And by the time the trip rolled around I didn't even feel like going. I didn't feel like doing a single thing anymore. I didn't feel anything. I wanted to fall asleep and sleep forever. I was broken in countless different ways and I could barely put one foot in front of the other. But I had already bought the ticket and planned it all so I went ahead and I got on the plane and then... I was there. 

I was in Argentina. Me, myself, and I...and my antidepressants. But I got there and I saw my wonderful Argentinian friend and I heard the Spanish and I saw the buildings and it felt right. And that was a big deal cause nothing felt right in those days. When I went back to Quilmes and saw the children's center and the pastor and everything I felt like I was home. I was exactly where I needed to be. Exactly. Despite the absolutely crazy couple of months I had gone through, I felt an incredible sense of peace. And for the first time in a long time, I felt God really and truly with me. I knew I was there because he had placed it so heavily on my heart. 

During my 3 weeks there I got to experience a lot of things. I met a lot of people, I saw a lot of sights, I got to be a 15 hour plane ride away from my problems and it was so good. I felt brave for doing something like this on my own. I wasn't really alone though. My Argentinian family adopted me in a wonderful way. I learned a lot. About myself, about Argentinian culture, about ministry, and just about life in general. The depression weighed in now and again. I was constantly exhausted. At night my personal darkness grew and grew. But I would still try again the next day.

When I got to go back and visit the woman I had met the year previous, I was so excited and also nervous. I wondered how she was doing and what it would be like to see her again. We walked up to her gate, she came out, and it was wonderful. She smiled a big smile and I smiled a big smile and we greeted each other and she told me how she'd been doing well since I'd seen her last. She talked about how meeting my youth group had been so instrumental in her feeling good about life again. I told her I wanted to do something to help her and she shrugged her shoulders and said "I have no need for anything." 

Right. Take that in right there. She needs nothing, she says. Talk about being content with what you have. The godly heart of this woman makes me see so many things lacking in myself. She lives in abject poverty but sure, she needs nothing. 

She admits she will accept something for her children. Shoes would be good. So, shoes it is. 

We hug and I go to let go but she's still clinging. I hear her sniffle and some tears roll down her cheek and land on my shirt. So I hold her tight and I stroke her hair a little bit and rub her back. It's an unbelievable connection. The universal language of love. The most beautiful thing I have ever been blessed with experiencing. 

When I came back a week later with the shoes, she got her kids to come out and try them on and thank me. They are 5 million times more awkward than she is when dealing with me. To them I must just be the strange English speaking girl who keeps visiting their mom. I hugged her and I prayed with her before we left for good. Without a translator this time, she can't really understand what I'm saying. But she said amen after every sentence anyway. We had another heartfelt crying session before the pastor and I walked away.

The pastor (who speaks broken English) and I walked down the dirt road and the sun was making it's way down in the sky and I felt completely accomplished. Not because I did anything special. But the unsettled-ness that had resided in my heart for the past year was not there. I felt settled. I felt like God had wanted me to do something and I went and I did it. It wasn't a big thing. But what's more lovely than reminding someone that you love them? That despite living on a different continent and speaking a different language, I want so badly to be friends. I felt good. Such a rare feeling for me those days. It was a pretty nice evening and there were some kids still playing by their houses and there were dogs running everywhere and the world seemed ok. And as we were walking, the pastor said "you," and she looked at me seriously, "will have beautiful life." 

And that stuck deep deep deep in my wounded broken heart. A ray of beautiful hope amidst all my icky darkness. It's a moment that I will never forget. That whole moment of wonderfulness, of love, of accomplishment... it's why I came back. It was all for that. It's the kind of person I want to be and the kind of life I want to live. I want a beautiful life.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8 

The Gift of Elderly People

A couple years ago I started working at a retirement home. On my first or second day I was looking through the resident files to get to know the people I would be working with. I was absolutely astounded with what I saw. Two thirds of the people had been part of the army during WW2, from foot soldiers to air force pilots to explosives engineers. There was even a elderly woman living there who had been a bomb technician. I didn't even think women could do that back then.

Not to mention people who had built business empires from nothing. Writers, painters, travellers, politicans.

I was amazed that all these incredible individuals were hiding out in a nursing home in Richmond Hill. Sometimes I think we forget that elderly people, although frail and confined now, lived really vibrant lives. And the people that accomplished great things in their younger years are still there. They're just slowed down by the effects of aging. Many of them keep to themselves and enjoy bingo and reading, but they are fonts of information on all kinds of topics if you ask them. Decades and decades of knowledge stored away, remaining mostly untapped.

I remember one man who spent the majority of his time dozing off in the common room. One day I began talking to him about his family and his hobbies and he mentioned how he enjoyed painting. I asked him if I could see some paintings and he was delighted that I was interested. We went into his room and as I walked through the door I saw paintings everywhere of landscapes from across Canada. Painting was not a hobby; it had been his profession for his whole life after the war. There were newspaper clippings scattered here and there from when he had been interviewed, or from when he had opened art exhibits or had special events. He called me over to the window where he showed me his current project. He sat in front of it and picked up his brush and began to paint. Despite the fact that his hands shook uncontrollably when he tried to feed himself or hold the newspaper, his lines and strokes could not have been more precise when he held his paintbrush and brought it to the canvas. It was such a beautiful sight.

There was another woman I spent quite a bit of time with because she was a sharp lady and she reveled in conversation. At age 96, she was mobile, self-sufficient, and full of wit and sarcasm. She enjoyed telling me about the love of her life (who she swore looked just like Humphrey Bogart), and about the travel she did by herself as a young woman. She woke up promptly everyday at 6:30 am and braided her long white hair down her back and whipped around the retirement home on her walker like a "spring chicken".

I learned more about life and the world from the aging people that I worked with then I did from my actual classes that year in high school. As they got to know me, they enjoyed talking to me about my educational and vocational plans. While my grade 12 teachers were encouraging me to be practical and make plans for my future, my old people friends were telling me to take chances and be reckless because "you never get the time back, sweetheart" and "life never goes how you plan".

Elderly people are full of life experience. They're the most learned of souls on the planet. I don't know why they aren't considered the best teachers and the people we would want to spend the most amount of time with. As a society I think we seriously need to treasure our elderly beauties more.

My New Year's Resolution Is To Eat More Ice Cream

Like all people at the beginning of a new year, I've started to exercise more in the hope of making 2014 a fitness-filled year. We'll see how that goes for all of us.

I got to thinking about how I already know I will disappoint myself. You see, I'm sort of at a steady state already. So even with my increased exercise, my body really isn't going to change that much unless I go on a dramatic diet kick for a little while. So, I was pondering what a veggie and fiber filled January I might be having when I remembered how much I hate dieting and how ridiculous of a notion it is.

If you want dramatic results right away, eat less and exercise more. You'll lose weight and be hungry.
If you want to have a healthier lifestyle, eat right and exercise more. You'll see great results in 3-6 months.

But the message isn't to look and feel great in 6 months. You're not supposed to feel great because your body is being taken care of, you're supposed to feel great because you look great and other people notice your beautiful body. And it should happen in like a week or so.

If you take a second to Google image search "thinspiration" you'll see what young women are up against. People don't need to tell us to our faces that we're fat and we should eat only kale and dust and live on a treadmill. Media images do that everyday. They glare at us and say "you're not good enough". And it's not just girls. I've seen attractive guys pick themselves apart in mirrors as well. When you're fit and attractive, people are nicer to you. You get better customer service at stores. People are more likely to smile at you. People talk to me more when I'm wearing makeup and a cute outfit. It's just the truth.

Apparently in 2014 "Strong is the new skinny". I see that caption pasted on pictures of girls weight lifting. And that's cool, I'm glad they can bench press, but it's the same girl I saw last year, and the year before, and the year before that, all perfectly lean and kale/dust eating. So, strong may be sexy but skinny hasn't been replaced. And I'm not 115 pounds like I was when I was 14, but I am strong. I know I look like I enjoy my ice cream and sweat pants but I can get a heavy brick from the bottom of a pool and portage a canoe if you ask me to. I would love to see the twig girl in the fake bench press picture try to portage a canoe. *snap*

I want people to like me and treat me nicely but I don't want to starve myself. I really like ice cream and kale tastes really gross. Ya feel me?

And actually, I don't want to be a picture on tumblr because outsides are nice but they're also just things. And I hope when people look at me they don't just see me for what I look like. Because that's objectification and it ruins people's lives. It ruins people's outsides when they try to be a fantasy. And it ruins people's insides when they appreciate only a fantasy.

People are beautiful creations in a million different ways and therefore we should have a million different ways of viewing and appreciating each other.