My Love-Hate Relationship

Bolivia is wondrous.  It is wispy morning clouds partially masquerading magnificent mountains, city lights perched as high as stars, fantastical dream-like landscapes, and pink dolphins gently gliding in the Amazon.  It is juicy ripe mangos year-round that melt in your mouth.

Bolivia is beauty, but it does not boast.  It is humble and simple, and for that is unknown.    

Bolivia is disastrous.  It doesn't know efficiency.  Bolivia is a bus that is lost in the middle of salt flats and rocking on the edges of cliffs.  It is worker strikes and corruption and violence in the streets.

Bolivia is stubborn, but it does not care.  It is traditional and stuck, and for that it lags behind. 

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My love-hate relationship with this country has grown stronger this past year.  It reaches out and loves me or hates me and I love it or hate it back more than I did before.  A reciprocal love and hate, I think.  And this of course results in stronger attachment.

I've always diminished in my mind the amount of give and take, love and hate I can have with a place.  And I've diminished in my mind the way a place can have a hold on me, can reach out and take my heart sometimes just as much or more than a person can.  

I think it's because a place holds inside it moments.  Moments that can happen in day and night, sickness and health, solitude and fellowship, and in praising and cursing.  

Now, I don't want to glorify "place."  I want to glorify God for giving us places to hold moments and stories and for allowing us to feel this strong relationship with place.  I want to glorify God for allowing places to change us, to mark out seasons of life.

When I think of Bolivia now, I will not think of a country in South America.  I will think of a season of endurance, of self-discovery, and of grace.  Upon hearing the word "Bolivia" I will now recall feelings of love, anger, frustration, jealousy, joy, and grief.  It will evoke memories of blundering Spanish, 6-year old chubby faces, and good friends.  "Bolivia" will make me think of conversations, laughter, cooking, playing, singing, reading, writing, running, and teaching.

I thank God for this place that has burrowed its way into my heart and taken root.

And now, may I begin to grieve and rejoice and grieve some more over the loss of this wondrous and disastrous place.

Body-Surfing

A couple weeks ago, I found my soul's new home in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. It was glorious and exhilarating to be next to the ocean, the sound of the waves easing me each night into the most peaceful sleep I can remember having in a long while, and the enticing water inviting my body (which I think was a fish in another life) to swim in its refreshingly cool depths.

                 

On one particular day, my friends and I got caught up in the splendor of the waves towering over us and crashing onto the shore. Laughter abounded and our swimsuits began falling off from the force of the waves, and we were forever grateful we did not bring men on this trip. (Of course, we also didn't know any men we could bring with us…).

                  

I've always loved playing in waves. My many Lake Michigan experiences, of course, are a little different from my few Pacific and Atlantic Ocean experiences, but in any case, I have come to know that you have to beware of the undertow. And on this swimsuit-shifting wave day, it got a little scary.

                 

Now, we were trying to ride the waves, you know, like body-surf. I've done this for years now when I play in a body of water, however, I can't say I'm very good at it. I often jump too soon, or am met with an unexpected wave and jump too late. When this happens, inevitably, you get sucked under the wave, its undertow somersaulting you and doing what it wants with you. When that happens, there's no way of fighting back, no way of gaining the slightest bit of control. The wave has all the power and you're being tossed and turned at its will.

                 

I could take a few hits, at first. I was only being sucked under momentarily. But then one wave caught me off guard and sent me swirling as if someone were shaking a bug violently in a bottle of water. It's a scary phenomenon if you've never experienced it; it left me shaken and sent me walking back to the beach.

               

In my shaken state, for some reason I began to connect the waves with God. Maybe because God has left me in a shaken state many times, much like the waves had just done.

                 

It got me thinking about God and his power and control: When we move with him, we'll be riding with him, just as when we move with the waves, we'll be riding with them. He'll carry us and we'll enjoy his pleasure just as we do the wave's pleasure. But when we jump too soon, not waiting for his timing, or ignoring his voice, or not seeing the need to jump and thinking we can withstand the wave, we inevitably lose total control.

                 

There's an art to body-surfing just as there is an art to listening and feeling and moving to the rhythm of life and God.

                 

In body-surfing and in life, I doubt I'm ever going to get the hang of jumping at all the right moments. But just after the wave crashes, it stills. And so life will feel like its crashing down on me—I imagine many more times than it already has—but it will result in stillness. It will result in me seeing the error of my jump or my avoidance of the wave and then prompt me to move when God moves with me the next time. 

                 

Thankfully, looking back on my life and my past decisions, it seems I'm getting better at mastering the art of body-surfing, metaphorically speaking. I know in the past I've jumped too soon in relationship decisions, and I know I've stood still when God was prompting my heart to move or speak. But I know I jumped at the right time in my decision to come to Bolivia, and I feel like I'm moving with the wave once again in my decision to go back to the United States.

                 

I think, and hope, that our body-surfing ability just keeps getting better with time. That each wave that comes crashing, whether we ride it or not, brings more wisdom. And maybe by the end of our lives, we'll do a little less gymnastics in the ocean and our suits won't fall off.