borrowed light

i am suddenly aware that lots of time has passed since my last note! i didn't realize just how long it had been, until i went to check something on an old post, and saw that even that last silly post was from almost 2 weeks ago.

epic fail in the update once a week department. guilty as charged.

things have been really interesting around here. i'm sure now that interesting is the best word for it. for the most part, i'm really just trying to settle in and figure out how to live here. the good news is, i'm actually getting really excited about the chance to make a life and be out on my own again. not long ago, i was almost certain that would not be possible. but the lord hears even our smallest and most seemingly insignificant requests and desires.

if you know me at all, you know that it would be a vast understatement to say that i am a little independent from time to time. i think the thing that was killing me most in the beginning was my inability to do anything without help. i couldn't really leave alone, and even if i did, how would i know where to go? what trufi to take? how to find my way back once i got to wherever it was i wanted to go. and what if i got lost? would my spanish be good enough to get me back home?

when i lived in wichita, i was always running about. scheduled down to the very last minute before i'd creep in to my sleeping house with my already sleeping family, and throw myself into bed exhausted. i love being able to decide where i'll go and what i'll do. i love choosing my own work and making my own appointments. i cut hair, give russian lessons, wait tables, and volunteer at my coffee shop. and at any moment, you could find me anywhere, any cafe or bar, with anyone. that's what cell phones are for. but here, even with a cell phone, i felt....trapped. after all, we live outside the city quite a ways. think.....goddard. not just in extreme west wichita....but not really justifiably in wichita at all actually.

to my great joy, i've been enjoyed a great burst of freedom lately. i suddenly developed nerves of steel and some mean spanish skills, and i started trying things alone. half way to bible study alone. meet a friend for lunch in a place i haven't been before from a direction i haven't come from before. getting lost and finding myself all in time to meet someone for coffee at a place i've never been. all the way to bible study alone. and finding my own favorite coffee shop from as many different angles and directions as possible. i even managed to make it to the irish pub on my own to meet my new friends, and never got lost once. i was early! shocking, i know...

but all these advances and victories, albeit small to those who know their way around here, have meant everything to me. it means that i really can do this job and be a grown up here. i really can start a business and have a life. i really can clean up my spanish and be fluent, communicating effectively and consisently. consistently being the key there, not only with brilliant flashes and great disasters. it means that i don't feel trapped anymore.

today nicole and i had a beautiful lunch with a friend, and some amazing coffee. then we walked around and found a great shady spot to watch the parade and drink tumbo juice. hours afterward, as we were leisurely searching for our trufi home, we picked flowers and talked about life and all kinds of things. tonight when we got home, i taught luis to play a song on the guitar in russian. then we wrote it in spanish too just for fun. and then in dutch. four languages if you count engllish, which i already knew. afterward, when everyone had gone to bed, i got a strange wild hair, and decided to make banana bread for the family. and for my bible study tomorrow too. and as i danced around the kitchen in my pajamas to over the rhine, and threw flour all over myself, the floor, and probably many other places to be discovered later, i couldn't help but smile. i'm so amazingly, gloriously free.

tomorrow i'll take my martha-stewart-quality banana bread to bible study, to which i will go alone, for the first time without help. i might meet a friend for lunch. i might stop to read for a while at my favorite cafe. i might dance with the gypsies again.

but whatever i do, i will enjoy it, and everything it means to really live.