Mexico

Ya´ll, I´m in Mexico. Good times. I´d like to update. It´ll happen, possibly in the following order: Arrival, No Idea, Tamales, Driving.

A Rather Dull Update

Minimal pizazz, and certainly nothing in the way of bells or whistles.

My birthday was a series of three days this year! Monday, Mom, Chelsea, and Michelle visited me, bringing the long-in-the-way cedar chest. I suppose it is time it passed on to the next McKalips lady. We went to Macaroni Grill where Chelsea played entertainer by questioning the waitress in the least mundane terms. August 11th dawned sultry and... well, I'm not sure. I slept in and went to work for the whole day. Becky found me at work and delivered a bouquet of picked flowers which still sit in the dining room, cheering the world. In the evening, Lachelle, Adriane, Joella, Angela and I went to the Dispensing Company for my first public drink! A white Zinfindel--as girly and flowery as they come, so I'm told.

On Wednesday, Joella and I used the gift that Lachelle and Brian had given us as thank you's for helping with the wedding: an hour-long massage at the Lancaster School of Massage. Oh my. Praise the Lord. Just thinking about it straightens my posture and helps me to breathe more easily. In the evening, Kelly and Sladana came to celebrate with me. We met BJ and Brian at Quips where I ordered the hot wings (on a five-heat scale: mild, medium, hot, ____, hari kari). It turns out the hot wings are extraordinarily hot. It is BJ's custom to order a half dozen hari kari wings for the purposes of torture to all newcomers. I was compelled to eat one. The burning began as I finished it. Then it moved through my whole body. My lips swelled up. My eyes teared uncontrollably. The nail beds under my fingernails that had touched the cursed sauce hurt until the following morning. My stomach was in ruins on Thursday. But all this and, more, all of you, have made my 21st birthday the best one so far! Thank you!

Tomorrow, Tim, Adriane, and their son Elisha and I are headed to Ohio to attend Kara's wedding on Sunday. This will be the first time that my team from Honduras will have been together since we left Harrisburg in 2007! Then, Tuesday of next week, I'll be headed to Mexico with my friends' children. I'll be there until August 30th, and consequently unreachable by phone. But I'll find a computer.

Last Names

Gary, a coworker at the deli, and I often talk about his obsession with baseball. He declares he would marry baseball, if only it were legal, or even possible. Today we were talking about women taking their husbands' last names. I proclaimed my unwillingness to completely retire my last name. I would rather hyphenate or simply have two last names. He firmly believes that it is the wife's responsibility to take on her husband's last name, since, "she belongs to him!"
"And who does he belong to?" I asked. "To baseball," he responded.

Around this time, two of my friends entered, bringing some sanity to the conversation. I asked their opinion on the subject. Carrie said that she intends to take her husband's last name, and gladly, because it is "a special way to honor him." Becky thought something similar, describing a relationship in which it only made sense that a woman would abandon her last name and willingly give her husband the honor of having her be called by his name. That was a nice way to put it.

Rejected Civility

When you come off of the subway
off of the tube
Do you wish for a natural disaster?
Something to break through?

For ears that hear engines grinding and buzzing,
never branches, never bees.
For skin that feels metal gripping, rubber turning,
never treebark, never seas.

Begone, you heathen senses! You do not know your Maker!
We may yet return to our mother's bosom.
Else clouds shall whip and wail
And break through the skyscraping prison bars
to finally touch our longlost faces.

_______________________________

We call it "shelter" where we live, and "fast" how we get there.
Was the earth ever so inhospitable as all that?
The wild is not so savage as we would like to think,
Unless it be from rejected civility:
Going in the back door to rob the house
which we may have lived in.

The Black Thing

One day, my neighbor and I were talking on the phone. We often speak Spanish on the phone, and she was asking if I would like "un mueble." After ascertaining that it was an object upon which one places one's television, I decided that, certainly, un mueble could be of use to our household. I had seen a smallish sort of desk on their porch not long ago, and quickly assumed that it was to this piece of furniture that she was referring.

Upon returning home from a walk later that day, I saw on their porch a different piece of furniture. A hulking, black entertainment center with three large shelves to the left side of the largest compartment (which was still too small for their TV), and three smaller compartments besides. Did I mention that it was massive? And this was what I had agreed to. Though cheaply made, this 55"x60"x30" skeleton weighed enough to cost four people a sweat while moving it two doors down. To our house. I felt as if it would be impossible to say no, and we paid the price in inconvenience.

There was no way for us to accommodate such a beast in either living room or dining room. And having minimal entertainment to begin with, there would be no cause if we did have the space. So the Black Thing, as we began to call it, remained in our entryway for nearly a month. Every time a friend would visit, we offered the Black Thing. We offered the Black Thing as a party favor, a keychain, a wedding gift, a birthday present; no takers! Finally Joella found a friend at her work who was interested, but in need of shipping. Joella's family agreed to use their truck, and Sunday was the appointed moving day. The only time we would have enough people was before church, however. The only difficulty was that it was raining. Hard. By the end of the loading process, we were all sufficiently wet. Joella and I, having re-secured the tarp, were drenched. After church, she and her family took the Black Thing to the friend's house. They moved the Black Thing inside, and Joella glanced around the living room, "which corner would you like it in?"
"Oh, let me show you," she replied, and took them through the whole downstairs to the narrow basement, around another corner to a small den. "Right here."

Right there. They received $10 for gas money. And nothing but the satisfaction of having removed the growing tumor of our entryway. I must repeat: this was my fault. It would have gone over much more easily if I had simply rejected the Black Thing to begin with. Yazmin would have understood. But no. Nooohooohoo. Oh no.

"It is what it is"

What does that really mean? Nothing. It's an excuse to stop talking to me. An excuse to stop thinking about what's right and what's wrong. When all the while, the reality is that it can be what you make it. But no one has ever told you that. No one has ever told you that you are capable of good. Or maybe you just never listened. I wish you'd listen now.

Keepin' it Real

Well, how do I keep my faith real? What do I keep believing in? And when do I ever need to "keep believing," anyway? I am not faced daily with the notion of needing anything. It is easy sometimes to hide behind my physical needs: as long as I am rested and fed, I am somehow complete. But it's not the whole truth, and this complete feeling is sometimes a delusion that masks the reality of my needs. I need need need Christ's assurance of my ingrafted status as a Child of God. I need it tangibly and I need it every day. I need Christ's definition of my identity again and again, solid reminders that I am full of value, enough to motivate his dying on the cross for me.

Somehow, hearing it isn't enough; it takes more to realize my identity and my dependency. And though I don't mind admitting that I am pretty thick-skulled, I've noticed that plenty of people have difficulty understanding the day-to-day implications of actually believing that what Jesus said is real: that he is the light of the world, that he gives living water, that he has come to heal the sick, that he has made the last to be first. You know what keeps it real to me? Asking Jesus to help me when I have a need.

Today I asked Jesus to calm my heart down. I was in deep need: I kept thinking about a situation that worried me, and I couldn't muster a good attitude while I was at work. A good attitude is half the reason I was hired, so it is, in a sense, my bread and butter. I went to the back hallway and paced up and down, praying for something to help--anything at all. God changed my attitude. I didn't just put on a brave face: I was transformed, I turned a corner, something... I have no idea, because it was a miracle. But that's not all. This miracle today, while it may sound minor now that I've written it down, was a pretty big deal to me. The thing is, it's just one of a lot of things the Lord has done for me! I'm serious! He's reassured my heart about an upcoming trip to Mexico, too. Mid-August, I'm planning to take two of my neighbor kids to Mexico to see their family for 10 days. I wasn't sure how I would ever be able to afford the time off work, let alone the spending money it may require. But I'm going to do it. And I feel complete confidence that it will all be fine. The Lord knows exactly what I need, and before I see it, it is good to know that He's already allotted a way to meet my needs. How does he do that? When I reassure myself with the fact that he is indeed my Provider, I wonder why are there some people starving? How can I claim this promise when others have more faith and still don't have what their bodies need? Are their hearts full?

__________________________


Poverty sometimes comes and sits beside me.
Sometimes at dinner. Sometimes as I walk to my house.
She has come to my place of work, stood in my alleyway.
She has looked into my windows, standing on the porch.

Poverty sometimes comes and sits beside me.

And sits silently. Letting me look at her eyes, sunken into a skin-covered skull.
She does not resist my kindness: she accepts my rations.
She sucks them clean to the bone.
And still she is not filled.
Her hair grows thin and wispy above temples exposed to the sun and baked dry.

She cannot be pacified with mere anything.
She must be rebuilt: refreshed with rain and rekindled with mirth.
And maybe she will show her sisters that she has been made new.
And maybe they will never go thirsty again.