Sunday?

04 May 2013 4 Comments

by nataliaria in Chicago, Church

I realized this afternoon that tomorrow is Sunday. Sitting in the back seat of the car, I watched the city skyline slide past on the other side of the tinted window, the lake rolling gently over the beach, on my left. I sat in that red SUV, brother and mother in the front seat, three empty car seats with me in the back, and Sunday occurred to me.

I didn’t have to think about it long. Soon, we stopped at Starbucks and we talked about school and summer and travel and I called for a change in radio station seventeen times. I was distracted. And then we arrived downtown and the mother pulled over behind a bus and the brother and I hopped out, onto the curb, into the movie theater. Bought tickets, ran to Jimmy John’s, scuttled back to that huge theater complex, found seats, found friends, enjoyed the film.

And then there were four of us and we walked back to school, snaking past the Saturday night rumble of restaurants, bars, clubs. We passed hotels, frozen yogurt shops, the brother dragged us into 7-11 so he could buy a sweet tea, which to our amusement, was sold to him in a paper bag. Skipping through crosswalks because the countdown to red is ticking fast and the light’s turning soon, we wished the brother good night at the Red Line and the three of us continued back to school.

There was a stop to see Mar at work, two stories up, across the plaza from my room, where we ate Goldfish and I listened intently to a conversation about basketball, of which I understood not a word.

But now I’m back on the floor, in my cozy cloths. It’s quiet. I’m thinking about Sunday.

I don’t like to dread Sunday. Don’t like that the weekend sinks heavy with a sigh when I suddenly look up and realize that it’s Sunday soon. Maybe it’s not in the Bible, but it might as well be: Sunday is a day of rejoicing. A day of extra-special God time. A day to meet with individuals of all walks of life and be together, praise Him together, in the unity that only church brings.

I’ve been running from Sundays, these past months, because people go to church on Sundays, of course, and I’m just not sure where to go.

It sounds simple. Just find a church. Go out, ride the bus, take the train, walk, and go to church. There are hundreds of them in this city, or at least, it feels like there are.

So I go. I walked to Moody Church, wet snow slushing into the holes in my boots, the sun shining cold and bright in the February afternoon. Later, I rode the bus and then the train, northwest. The Jen and I went together, dresses, toting Bibles, on an adventure, almost. The next week, we went to another church, again a train and a bus, then a short walk across a park, to a building full of singing, preaching; full of people.

Then we came back to campus, because that’s where home is, that’s where comfortable, safe, feels.

Maybe it shouldn’t be like that. Maybe church should be the highlight of the week. A haven of safe people, familiar faces, a beacon of encouragement and refreshment after a long week. Maybe, probably. I wish it was like that, really. But it’s not, and I don’t know what to do.

~Natalia

Four Pennies

10 Feb 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Church, Family, Money, Weather

I’ve got four pennies in my coat pocket. There used to be six cents in there, but I threw my coat on my bed last week in an exaggerated display of exhaustion, and two pennies fell out. They rolled under the bed, and they’re still there, along with four hair pins, seven vitamin C wrappers, and a whole lot of dust. I know this because I pulled the drawers out from under my bed and checked.

Stevy and I went to the bank together one afternoon during Christmas break. Walked there and back, and then there and back again because my mother is co-signer and we both needed her signature to activate online banking. And we’re about to cross the street, the street that cuts right downtown with the green line painted for the bicyclists, and I turn to the tall brother in his puffy black coat.

I always hold onto the stuff in my pockets, I tell him.

He laughs a bit, and pulls his hands out of his own pockets, into the cold whipping wind, Me, too! He says, and there are tissues and receipts and some dollar bills in his fists. And we stand there waiting for the light to turn, and a guy on a bike whizzes past in that green bike lane, and I hold six pennies in one fist and some vitamin C in the other.

But I’m down to four pennies now, and I ate those vitamin C a long time ago. And I stepped off the Red Line today, on my way to church this morning, and there are two flights of stairs up from underground train to street level walking. Hands in my pockets, I push through the turnstile, shuffle my boots up the wet stairs with little piles of salt on each step left over from last week’s snow. I’m not even to the top when four pennies in my fist suddenly feels very small, very few. What can I do with four cents? Nothing, really. Just hold them in my hand as I walk along the Chicago street, the rain falling light and balling little beads of clear down my sleeves.

They took two offerings in church today. The normal one, and then a special deacon’s offering, an emergency fund of sorts, for when needs in the congregation arise. The service is almost over on this second offering, and there’s music playing in the background, singing Jesus’ name over and over and I pulled all the cash that was there out of my wallet. A five dollar bill wrapped around two ones. Carrying cash has never really been one of my strengths. I told the mother that it’ll be less to worry about if I ever lose my wallet, but she remained unconvinced.

The basket wobbled hand to hand down the aisle and I pulled the ones out of the little green fold, and I dropped them in my pocket, and the five rustled quiet into the basket.

So I’ve got $2.04 in my pocket now.

I could do something with that. I could give it, use it, leave it. I’ve got power in my pocket, in some small way.

But the rain fell harder on my way back from church and dollar bills don’t fit in a fist, but pennies do, and I held on tight to those four pennies in my coat pocket, as rain dripped off my bangs, and trickled down my neck.

~Natalia

No Reason to Leave

27 Jan 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Chicago, Church, College, Death, God, Hurt, Moody Bible Institute, Need, Train, Trust

I didn’t want to go to church this morning. I woke up to my phone under me and my Bible still open next to my pillow and my first conscious thought was that I didn’t want to go to church. But it’s really not an option, so I got up and got dressed and I like to think that I was quiet, and for once it was her alarm that woke The Roommate up, not my scuffling around the room. I brushed my hair and putting my little notebook in my purse, wrapped a scarf around my neck, pulled on my coat, and went downstairs. And I went to church.

But the feeling I woke up to settled stronger in my heart and I stepped fast down the sidewalk to the train stop and I suddenly realize that I’m scared.

Because I’m three blocks from Michigan Avenue but who’s going to be out at 9am on a Sunday morning? I can count the people I pass from school to the train on one hand. Because someone’s discarded Starbucks cup rolls back and forth in the wind, the spilled contents splashed dirty brown on the already filthy piles of snow. Because the train’s underground and the urine smell is strong today and I’ve never noticed how much garbage lies heaped down there on the tracks.

And yesterday on the train back from a lunch date with The Roommate, I sat at one end of the train car and halfway back to school this train car full of people headed deeper into downtown for an enjoyable Saturday afternoon is struck silent by one man in the corner. I looked at him, I listened to him, but he dropped to his knees as telling became pleading and it seems so ludicrous that I took time to think that it’s illegal to solicit on the CTA. But he’s not soliciting anything, he’s absolutely begging and he says he can’t go on living the way he is, and my cheeks are prickling with emotion I can’t name and I got off the train with my head down and carried my shame all the way back to school, where I put my sweatpants on and crawled into bed.

And I was so relieved to be back in the safe nest of my bed, my room, my dorm, my school.

But The Roommate texts me not two hours later because a freshman from this school, a young man whose sister lived just around the corner last year, has died. And Moody was never a perfect place, never a safe haven, but any illusions that I had come crashing down and I’m frozen in my bed with my computer on my lap, mechanically typing out a paper, but I can hear sobbing in the hallway and the same prickling crawls up my face and suffering is so uncomfortably close.

And I woke up this morning and my first thought was to stay here. I didn’t want to ride the train because you know who else rides the train? Broken people who need Jesus. Broken people who fall to their knees and beg because they can’t keep living this way. And I balked at the dirty in the streets and the dark selfishness of my own heart, the black terror of distrusting Christ, is something I’ll never be able to hide from.

And I don’t have answers and I wished last night that I was little again, when I had much more faith in the world, and much less exposure to the raw pain of a broken earth.

And there’s so very much that I don’t understand, and the human, selfish desire to hide from the fresh, broken, utterly uncomfortable pain that rubs raw everywhere that I turn is so strong. But I think somewhere I’ve heard a command that I trust Christ, and I’ve read before that His grace is sufficient, and I have to believe that He has a plan in everything.

And I hold to trusting Him, because if I don’t, well then, there’s really no reason to leave this dorm.

~Natalia

So Are We

06 Jan 2013 1 Comment

by nataliaria in Church, Family, Friends, Remember

My parents and I rolled into the Chicagoland area sometime in late 1993. I know because I’ve been told; eighteen months old, I don’t remember a thing about the cross-country trip from California. But the parents know. They remember, and they told me.

First Sunday in this lakeside college city and our little family of three attended the church my family still attends. Handful of years later, I’m four years old and I can remember now. Daddy carried me to church once; we’ve never owned a building, we’re always renting and Sunday School was in the basement then.

It’s always been in the basement.

Maybe I’m five now and I brought my Polly Pockets today. I don’t remember the Polly Pockets, what they were like, but I do remember that I showed my Aunt Min. I guess that makes sense; it’s the people who make the memory, not the things, not the toys. And she looked, and she cared, and I do remember that.

The same church building, Sunday School downstairs, they moved away long ago, but we still know them and fifteen years ago, they were my teachers. I don’t remember the lesson, don’t even remember the craft, but Rob snipped the tape just right and Karen taught me how to make tape rolls. Lifelong skill and I stuck a poster on the wall in my closet yesterday: rolled the tape up, stuck it on the wall, and who would have thought a tape roll how-to would leave such an impression on a child?

But it’s not the tape is it? It’s the people. The care.

Families, students, people settle into rows and pews and it’s been a couple of years now we’ve sat in the front. Another family sits three rows back, one section over. Just this morning, I can see them if I turn my head a little bit. They’ve got five littles and it’s not hard to miss a pew full family. Stevy and I were in their wedding, years ago, and I sat on Miss Tammy’s lap all the way to the reception, and the groom ate Cheetos, teasing the bride with cheesy orange fingers.

But even before a post-wedding limo ride, reach back a year or two more, she was single and she came over to help around the house and I thought I was brilliant because her last name has “kind” and it works because early elementary school, I’m watching life and what I saw in her was kind. And now at the end of the service, her little boy shows me his missing tooth, and her oldest is getting close to my height.

And last Sunday met a new family, we’re always meeting new families, and my father said “more than 19 years” and I guess it all works out because we’ll be in Heaven one day, and the point of Heaven is the glory of God, but that’s the point of earth, too.

And church, too.

And it makes sense, maybe it’s even biblical, that church memories, church people, shaped a childhood, shaped a heart, because Pastor stood on stage today said body of Christ and He was One and so are we. And the family of people passing through the church doors are flung far across the globe now; His glory crops up everywhere His people are.

~Natalia

Help Me Pray

04 Jan 2013 2 Comments

by nataliaria in Casa Hogar, Church, Family, Prayer

I sent an email to my mexican family;

Manuel and Tere and their five children,

and the 40 hearts living at the Casa Hogar.

It takes longer for me to type Spanish that it does English,

but it’s not too bad.

It’s been a disgracefully long time since I wrote to them,

and I apologized for that.

I wished them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

and updated them on my family here,

and asked about the family there.

I told them we loved them, missed them,

look forward to seeing them next time…

whenever that is.

At the very end, I asked what we can help them to pray for.

And blink, memory’s a strong thing sometimes,

and there’s a prayer time on Sunday morning, kneeling on thin blue carpet.

Pray alone, pray with partners: Hermana Tere doesn’t just say “pray for”,

she says Help me pray.

Help me pray for this child,

help me pray for this situation,

help me pray, help me pray.

It’s a partnership because we’re on our knees next to each other,

and it’s a partnership because help me means we’re in this together.

You and I, we’re carrying this heart to Christ.

Between the two of us,

we’re laying this situation down at the foot of the Cross.

Help me pray is an invitation to join,

to be a part of this conversation with the Creator of the World.

And once, twice, three times I heard her say it,

but Help me pray is lodged tight in my heart,

and it doesn’t take much digging to uncover memories

emblazoned on a soul.

A reminder, a word, a call to prayer in another church,

another country,

another language,

and I’m kneeling at a pew,

when she says, Help me pray.

~Natalia

Wax Museum

22 Dec 2012 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Bible, Church, God, Love, Teach

It’s a rare day that there aren’t extra hearts, visiting smiles, in this house, and one extra is three little girls running around. We’ve finished nails and I’m not fixing them anymore, so please just sit still for a moment more. But they’re off and ready to play again and the tall one, the neighbor child, has a list of games as long as my arm.

I nix Sardines and Freeze Dance and Hide and Go Seek. I shake my head to running around and an accident waiting to happen, but then she’s waving a hand in the air, freshly blue nails gleaming, and what about Wax Museum?

And suddenly, she’s not the third-grader anymore, I am. I’m nine years old and I’m nine years wise to know that this might be the best Sunday School class I’ll ever be in. It’s the best truly, but it’s so very different, too. Because we’re not sitting around a table, and this room is painted dark, painted Narnia.

There’s a pond in the corner with real water and Aslan’s on the wall, eyes bright because there’s glow in the dark paint and black lights on the ceiling will do that. It’s a fun classroom to be in, but I’ve been there during the week and the people make the class.

An older couple, his beard is long and white like her hair. He’s tall and she’s short, and nine years old there are few people I respect more in that church body. Third, fourth, fifth graders in that woodland magic classroom, and maybe I don’t remember the Bible lessons, but sometimes real life, real hearts, teach much more than a curriculum.

Because we sat in a circle by that tiny Narnian pond, and the buzzer passed around beeps faster and faster. Hold your breath, it buzzes on you; these teachers love the LORD and they adore the Word and do you know the verse? Because we’ve each got a stack of little yellow papers, so very many verses, and I’d rather be in this class than any other, but these two people of God take Him seriously and I’m motivated by their passion for Him because I want to know Him, too.

And they invite us over to their house for a movie; elementary school students packed into the TV room to watch. Pizza and soda and even their dog is excited. Because do you know the weight of value, the weight of worth, settling on third grade shoulders because these two, these two who led by serving, these two love us and we can feel it in everything they do?

They taught humility in action, respect in their own, love in every word and deed. We learned and we played and we trusted and we grew. And sometimes, at the end of class, we played Wax Museum in the dark, the strobe light flashing white over two faces whose love was tangible in that Narnia classroom.

~Natalia

Why I’ll Teach

20 Sep 2012 4 Comments

by nataliaria in Beauty, Casa Hogar, Church, God, Grow, Kiddos, Mexico, Moody Bible Institute, Swimming, Teach, Writing

I wrote the following last night, as a part of my application to the Elementary Education program at Moody.

Twelve years old, and it’s Sunday morning. From where I’m sitting in this basement sanctuary, I can see the front; the worship team, the pastor. I can see them, but they’re not all I see. Two rows up, three rows over, even to the very end of the sanctuary, I catch glimpses of the children of the church. Little ones, younger ones, that I’ve known for weeks, months, years. Little ones whose hearts and minds I’ve come to know and love.

An hour later, the service is over and I’m not in the aisle anymore, not seated on the blue padded chair anymore. I’m in the church lobby, a chubby toddler named Emma balanced on my young adolescent hip, her older sister, a lean kindergartener, clutching my hand.

Individuals my age are hard to come by in this church body, but that’s okay; I look up to the college students, relishing the time they spend investing in my life, and I spend my after-church community time where I most want to be: in the children’s classrooms. The adults in my life, starting with my parents, are showing me how to love, how to teach, how to train a heart, and I’m knee-deep in the practical application of the life lessons I’m soaking up from them.

I’m in the Sunday school room, playing and interacting as the children wait for their parents to come collect them. Balanced on a child sized chair, I listen to Isabelle tell me about her craft project, her frizzy braids bobbing up and down in her excitement. A pull on my hand and Elijah fights to capture my attention, his four-year-old cowlick sticking up rather comically from the top of his head. All around me, little ones, precious young ones, are growing and living and learning, and I’m head over heels in love with their hearts, their lives.

Twelve years old and people ask me what I’ll do when I grow up. I don’t know exactly, but something with kids, I tell them. I know it’ll be something with kids.

Years have passed, I may be older now, but my answer has not changed; something with kids. I attend Moody Bible Institute and list myself as a children’s ministry major; there are young ones, growing and developing hearts and minds, all over the world, and when I finish school, I’m going to minister to them. Minister to these children because that’s what I’ve felt called to all my life. That’s what has brought me the greatest joy. I know what I’ll do.

But slowly, another thought begins to take shape. An idea, a vague conviction, that’s been pulling at the back of my consciousness for years now.

The majority of the young ones I interact with daily are no longer church-raised children, but rather young individuals that I coach on the youth swim team, or fatherless children at an orphanage in central Mexico. Some of them have the Holy Spirit working in their hearts, some of them don’t, but they are still growing, still learning. Jesus in their hearts or not, someone is still teaching these children, training their minds, molding the way they think about the world, the other souls they interact with daily; molding the very way they see their Creator.

I’m still deeply entrenched in their lives and stories, I still love them with a love I now recognize only the Lord could give, but something pulls at my heart. These children, Christian or not, need someone to teach them. Their schools are teaching them facts and information, but they’re also teaching them so much more.

Day in, day out, the precious ones here are learning, learning because they are always watching. Watching teachers, watching role models, watching peers. They’re picking up on worldviews that come naturally; humanistic, individualistic ways of thinking, of living. They don’t know the names of the beliefs that they’re subconsciously making their own, but what is being taught explicitly and implicitly in their schools, whether Christian or otherwise, is affecting the way they see the world, the way they see everything.

There’s deep beauty in their own hearts. I didn’t know the word for it when I was 12, but I do now; it’s the image of God. These precious, God-created children bear the image of God in them. It’s what makes them, makes all individuals, beautiful and at the same time deeply tragic. Tragic because this image we bear is a scarred, marred image.

We’re fallen and need for the Redeemer to heal our hearts, to heal the way we think and see.

Does the way children are being taught the world over teach them to see the Redeemer? To see Him in their peers? In the creation we’re utterly surrounded by? In themselves?

I’m fallen and marred, too. I don’t always see the beauty, the Creator, as I should, but part of being a Redeemer is that He chooses to use individuals who are broken, who are marred, and yet who have chosen to serve Him. He chose me, I chose Him, and I choose education. Because these children, these students, need someone to show them the image of the One who made them; someone to show them, and to teach them to see Him everywhere.

~Natalia

Little Slice

03 Sep 2012 3 Comments

by nataliaria in Church, Family, Friends, Heaven

We celebrated my church’s 25th Anniversary yesterday.

My home church. The church my father visited before we moved to the Chicagoland area.

More than 19 years ago, interviewing for the job he’s had since, he stepped into this church community

and we’ve been there ever since.

Nineteen years of living, learning, growing, experiencing life alongside the community of this church.

It’s the 25th Anniversary, a momentous occasion, so it’s easy to wax poetic about the good, the great, the memorable.

A church, a body of individuals who love God and love each other, isn’t stained glass and china plates.

There’s realness in this community. Dirt and mud and raw life.

We’re living together and working together and doing ministry together.

What you want isn’t always what I want, and I don’t even know what she wants.

But step back, blink your eyes, and look what you see.

We are a community, a family, drawn together because at one point or another, we’ve all called the same congregation our home, our family.

25th Anniversary and people are here who I haven’t seen in years; decades.

We come from different states. Different walks of life. Different ages, races, schools and families.

And we’re all a part of this church, this community, but that’s not what draws us together.

Jesus Christ draws us together, because we’re all followers of Him. Worshippers of Him.

We love Him, and we love each other. He enables us to love each other.

And when we’re all here, in this room, praising Him with words, with songs, with community,

that’s when they can say that this is a little slice of Heaven.

Because it is.

~Natalia

This is Summer {#45}

22 Jul 2012 1 Comment

by nataliaria in Church, Friends, Kiddos, Photos, This is Summer

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Here we go again,
some pictures for you once more,
this time after church.

~Natalia

Bullet Point Post: Roach Alert

18 Jul 2012 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Bullet Point Post, Casa Hogar, Church, Family, Friends, Humour, Kiddos, Mexico, Prayer, Spanish, Teach

• I’m once more sitting at the dining table in Manuel and Tere’s house, my second home. My legs are crossed on the seat, my trusty Old Navy flip flops kicked helter skelter somewhere under the table. This specific sitting position has two advantages: 1) I’m comfortable, and my posture is actually pretty good at the moment. 2) Feet up = no roaches touching me tonight.

• I’m alone in the dining room, but Manuel and Tere and Karen are in the bedroom. I can hear their voices. This is reassuring because it means that, in the event that a cockroach does salir, I don’t have to worry about waking them up to kill it.

• Not that I’m above waking someone up in order to dispose of a roach…

• Talk about something else, shall we?

• Ana, with whom I share a room while residing in this Mexican home, is currently serving as a counselor at week-long children’s camp put on by our church here. Beki, the resident little sister, and Manuelito, are also at camp. They’re having fun, yes, yes, but we’ve been counting the hours until they return since they left.

• 11pm last night found me in the backseat of the car, as Hermano Manuel sped up the dark freeway, on our way to deliver an urgently needed antihistamine to the camp. I seriously underestimated how excited I would be to catch sight of familiar faces amidst the swarm of campers. Casa Hogar kiddos, friends from church, my Mexican siblings; our reason for visiting the camp was not optimal, but we all enjoyed the brief visit.

• Upon arrival home last night, Hermana Tere offered to lend me Karen’s little dog, a cotton-ball-colored toy poodle, since Karen was also away for the night. I kindly accepted the proffered creature. Actually, to be slightly more honest, I was so desperate to not sleep in the bedroom alone that I not only accepted Dory’s canine presence, but pulled her little bed as close to my own as possible, and I may or may not have spent a little bit of time talking to her… Maybe.

• I then failed to take her to the bathroom in the madrugada and began my morning mopping up a puppy mess.

• Being Wednesday, we went to church this evening. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m bullet pointing my pensamientos as they come, so I might as well remind you that, in addition to my church in Chicago, I’m completely enthralled with the church I attend here. The preaching, the way God uses the lessons and music to grow me and reassure me and teach me, the community, the emphasis on prayer; I’m so thankful.

• On a related note, Ana recently recounted to me a story involving someone from the church. I was almost sure that I knew who she was talking about, but not positive, and I told her so. You’d probably recognize her if you saw her, Ana assured me. I nodded, adding that, while I don’t know their names, I would probably recognize much of the congregation por vista. And they all probably recognize you, Ana laughed. Yes, the tone of my skin and my hair does not exactly lend itself to anonymity.

• It recently came to my attention that my ability to speak Spanish, which is completely a gift from God, and not at all something I could have conjured up on my own, is directly related to my mental/emotional/spiritual state. Distracted, worried, emotional, and my ability to communicate declines rapidly and rather instantaneously. Thankfully, while I don’t think I’ll ever escape the teasing and jokes about my mistakes and mispronunciations, those I interact with here are very patient with me, supplying words when my story turns into a blind search for a word I don’t know, and correcting my mistakes when they really matter.

• Karen just flicked the kitchen light off and took the dogs back to bed. I haven’t seen any roaches yet, and I think I want to keep it that way. I hope your Thursday is bright, encouraging, and roach-free!

~Natalia

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