So Much to Tell

23 May 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Bible, Faithful, Family, Food, Friends, God, Happiness, Spanish, Summer, Travel

Friday afternoon, bus up. Saturday evening, bus home. Barely 24 hours in Michigan, yet it’s Thursday night now, late, and I’m still fighting to tell you about it. School hardly over, my room just emptied, I got on a bus with The Jen and her sister, Katie, and we went to Michigan.

I want to tell you all about it. I do. I want to tell you so much and tell you so well that I’ve thought myself, planned myself, into a corner. I wrote a post, just now. Part of one, anyway. About my time in Michigan. But there’s too much to tell and I wasn’t telling well, so I stopped. Began again. And here I am.

I told you, in March, about Jen’s sister visiting school. Remember? I told you about our shared love of Spanish and school and children and the way I stored our conversation away in my heart; a woman who loves the Lord, and His Word. This same sister, Kristen her name, graduated from New Tribes Bible Institute last weekend.

The Jen, sweet girl two dorm doors down, stopped one day last month, outside my door. I was on my computer, typing. Looking up, looking across my bed, across the room, I smiled at her. She dimpled back. This is routine: I like my desk there, the door open, so that I can see the hallway, see those who pass by. Jen passes frequently. She stopped this time, and in our brief conversation, she said graduation, Michigan, Kristen. Half serious, mostly joking, I said I’d go along.

Joke turned serious and later, sitting on Jen’s bright yellow sheets, I clicked to Megabus, bought a ticket to Michigan.

Katie, Jen, me. Four hours, more even, on a bus to Michigan. They sat behind me, the two sisters; one older, Jen the younger. I sat one row up. Backpack next to me, feet against the window, I watched Michigan fly past the window. Trees and grass line the highway; long, tall, strong grass that seems to glow in the sun. The trees are green, too. Wide and thick and many. It’s just trees, bushes, grass, but I breathed tight in, held my breath at the clean, brilliant, freshness of it all. This I love about Michigan.

New Tribes Bible Institute- students call it NTBI, roll it around their tongues, quick- is one building. Used to be an elementary school, maybe a middle school. Now it’s classroom building, dorms, dining hall, offices, all in one and walking the hallways feels like a little bit of everything. The voices down the hall, in the dorms, are adult, mature. They talk about missions training and the Bible and where God is taking them, and this is a place of leading and prayer and faith and I soak up every word while I’m there.

There’s a world map in the downstairs hallway. It’s big, tall: I’m eye-level with Brasil. Kristen gives a tour when we arrive; her dorm room is on the third floor. We climb up and down those stairs, together, in groups, pairs, alone, all the day long, and my heart, mind catches every time I pass that map. Think of the lives who are here, now. Think of the hearts that are growing, the minds that are learning. The Lord they serve, He has plans, big, for them. The Word they love, it will bring hope, much, to people all over that huge wall map.

The school, these students, have so very much.

The ceremony is the next day, then a reception in the dining hall at the school. I line up with Jen, and a brother, tall, and we stack miniature plates with cheese, crackers, thick little cubes of meat. Students, graduates, families, overflow the dining hall. They are in the halls. In the foyer. In the yard. Children, little boys in collared shirts, little girls in sundresses, run in and out of the adults, play on the park. There are more siblings now, and cousins- first? Once removed?- and friends and friends of friends, and introductions are short, conversations long.

It feels like family. Family when we’re upstairs, getting ready. Jen and sisters and friends and we’re all putting on dresses, earrings, makeup. Feels like family afterwards, when we sit around in the sun and drink fruit punch and talk. Feels like family when there are hugs, congratulations, thank you for coming, see you later.

There’s more to tell, no doubt. More about New Tribes and the graduation ceremony, and Jen’s brother driving to the church with the windows down, my hair and Jen’s whipping in the wind. More about the 5k the graduates ran on the morning of graduation, or the night before, driving slow at 10pm, stopping at corners to mark the 5k route with chalk. More about The Jen and Katie and Kristen and sisters I don’t have, who made me feel another sister, at home. More about God’s will and God’s plan and how great He really is.

There’s so much more to tell, but I’ll leave it there for now.

~Natalia

Can Only Be Good

20 May 2013 3 Comments

by nataliaria in College, Friends, God, Remember, Sleep

Thursday night. Last night in the dorm, last night living the school life I’ve grown so accustomed to. Many things will be the same in August, when school begins again in
three short months. Mar and The Jen will still be two doors down, The Neighbor still between us. The four lovelies at the end of the hall, Nelle still in the middle. Things will be different, too. The Roommate’s an RA now. Two floors down is not far, but it’s not my room. New roommate, new floormates. New faces, new hearts, new stories. New sisters.

The last night of the school year should be memories, reminiscing, cherishing, we say to each other. But instead, the hallway is lined with boxes and doors slam shut as we rush up and down the crowded hall: it’s Room Check Night. Leaving tomorrow? Room must be spotless tonight. Packed, cleaned, as if you never lived there. But we did live there, and I paid $10 for the chipped paint above my bed, Mar another $10 for the unidentified black spot on her carpet.

10pm, Room Check Time, ticks closer. I throw extra bits of garbage into the near-bursting bag in Mar and Jen’s room. The Neighbor, pushing box after box into the hallway, calls my name. We work together to seal her storage bins: I sit on them, fighting to keep lids down, she work fast, hurriedly taping them closed, both of us praying that they stay shut.

Even at 11pm, when cleaning checklists have been completed and fines have been doled out, still we work. Boxes downstairs, garbage to the dumpster. Then it’s midnight and this last night, four of us sleep in the hallway-end room, on beds, on the floor, on cushions pulled from the lounge couch. Friday morning, I wake up to three alarms, none of them mine. We start awake, then sleep again through Mar’s, then Jen’s. Ellie Rose has the Newsboys as her alarm, and I jump awake, and stay awake this time.

Enthusiastic wake-up call aside, Friday morning feels funny, sluggish almost. I shower, with a borrowed towel because mine’s already at home, and then ride the elevator down to street-level. Yesterday, the elevator was slow, full. It’ll be busy later, too, but this morning, I ride by myself. Outside, the air’s beginning to feel warm, and a man in a flooring company truck yells good morning to me as I wait to cross the street. I’m tired, yet content, and I wave, smile, as the truck drives past.

There is more, of course. Friday afternoon, barely 24 hours after my last final, finds me curled up on a Megabus, off to Michigan for my first adventure of Summer 2013. I’ll tell you about that sometime, I’m sure. Before that, though, there are goodbyes, see you laters, hugs. We stand, four of us, in the hallway, suitcases and bags all around. We are quick, short even, maybe. We’ll see each other in August, we say. We’ll be in touch, we wave our phones at each other meaningfully, smile.

And the school year ends. Slowly, but suddenly. And the classes are no more, even though I find myself, often, thinking back to assignments due, project completed. I begin to remind myself, make a mental note, only to remember that there is no homework right now. I’ve thought, today, that the school life feels like the normal life. Classes, homework in the afternoon, open doors, calling for friends up and down the hall. That’s the life that feels settled, routine, normal.

But the school year’s over, and I’m home now. I’m not unhappy to be here, not discontent. But it’s different, really, and sometimes, I’m not sure what to do, what is my purpose, my rhythm, my routine here at home this summer. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do, where I’ll be, who I’ll be with, talk to, befriend. But a summer is a big thing and God’s even bigger; this summer can only be good.

~Natalia

Tired

09 May 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in God, Grace, Tired

I have determined, friends, that I am tired. The determination of this fact was a lengthy, highly scientific process that involved me having a meltdown while wrapped in a towel in the bathroom, as I tried to see my phone through my tears to select a good Pandora station for my shower soundtrack.

Ahem.

I’m physically tired. Someone this morning apologized for her own exhaustion, telling me she was “moving in slow motion.” I would have responded, but I was moving and thinking in slow motion, and didn’t come up with a comeback quick enough.

I’m academically tired. Next week is a week full of finals, and today seemed like a great day for every stressful thought I could imagine related to exams to plan on repeat in my mind. I worried today about things I’ve never even thought about before. And finals weeks doesn’t even start for four days.

I’m relationally tired. I’m tired of letting people down. I’m tired of feeling as if I’ve let people down, even if I haven’t. I’m tired of saying too much. Tired of not saying what I should. I’m tired of apologizing. I’m tired of wracking my brain, wondering what I’ll have to make amends for this time. I’m tired of dreading leaving my school friends- family, really- in a week.

I’m tired spiritually. I’m tired of working, working, working. Doing, doing, doing.

Just tired.

Don’t read a downer post, friends. I didn’t come here to drag you into my woe. Read my tired, and then hear this: I’m gonna get through. There’s a big world out there, and these are small things, and do you know the biggest thing? God. Really, truly.

He is wise and strong and sovereign and gracious and His love is less determined by what I’ve worked so hard to do and rather more by His own depth and mercy and grace.

Him and I, we’re getting through.

~Natalia

I Thought

08 May 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in God, Sovereign, Trust

I thought I’d post a picture for you.

But nothing looks just right for tonight.

I thought I’d be less worried.

But finals are next week and worry grows heavy and dark.

I thought I’d be exhausted.

But God gives strength, rest, grace, and I’m plugging right along.

I thought I’d miss my friends, my school family, over the summer.

Now I know I will.

I thought. I know. I’m worried. I’m hopeful. I’m sad. I’m anxious.

I thought, passing the black night water of the river, rolling fast past Lincoln Park Zoo, that I’d rather just control it all.

But control is synonymous with worry, and God is so sovereign, I can only trust Him.

So I know. I believe. I trust.

And I’m getting through just fine; I’m doing so very well.

~Natalia

The Child Turns 8

30 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Beach, Birthday, God, Little Sisters, Photos

birthdaywee

Dear Wee,

I remember eight. Seven, not so much. Eight: yes. I’m not sure why; maybe because eight is the year that little child turns slowly into preadolescent, older child, little lady. But I remember being eight.

I hope you do, too. I hope when you’re twenty, twenty-one, older even, I hope you look back and say, “I remember eight. Eight was good.” That’s my birthday wish for you.

That eight truly is great.
That you begin to push open the door of all the learning that’s ahead of you.
That you dive deeper into developing the talents that you have.
That you try things you’re a little scared of.
And that you have fun trying them.
That you fall down well, gracefully.
And that you pick yourself up, let yourself be picked up, and try again.
That you let yourself be taught, be trained, be shaped.
That you smile, which you already do so well.
That you fall in love with the God who made you and who adores you.

Happy Birthday, Glendy! Welcome to eight.

~Natalia

I’m Sorry

28 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in God, Grace, Hurt

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Six time in half as many days. Not little sorries, either. Not apologizing for stepping on toes, for not having gum, for an oversight. No, this is bigger.

I’m sorry for yelling at you.

I’m sorry for ignoring you.

I’m sorry for hurting you.

Say it because you’re supposed to say it. Sometimes. Say it because you mean it. Sometimes.

I went to church today. Mostly because that’s what I’m supposed to do, and also because my mother would have had words for me, had I not. I thought, as I was walking home, that I’d not apologize. At least not then, anyways.

Too stubborn.

But I came back and before I had time to harden my heart, to balk at obedience, I realized that I had apologized. I meant it, too. There was forgiveness. And it was done.

Relationship restored.

But it’s not undone, unsaid.

Because sorry doesn’t wipe away already said. Already done. Already not done. Those things happened. And their memory holds strong, unbidden.

It’s said that God doesn’t remember these things. Doesn’t remember when I yell, at her or Him. Doesn’t remember when I say what I shouldn’t, don’t say what I should. When I hated. When I fume. When I withdraw. When I ignore.

This is fascinating because it’s also said that He forgives them all. Or, is willing to, when I repent. When my heart breaks over things I shouldn’t have done. Forgives it all, forgets it all.

It’s a perfect set-up to keep on yelling, hurting, falling. To keep on saying I’m sorry.

It’ll all be forgiven, forgotten, anyway.

But instead of giving me freedom- license- to say what I know I should not, and do what I know ends in hurt, this forgiveness offered free turns me away from what I know is wrong.

I suppose it’s because this forgiving, forgetting, came at the price of a death on a cross, and it seems a petty, petty thing to hurt so hard the same ones who come with me to drink in forgiveness.

We’re all together hurting, wronging, receiving forgiveness, and to hurt one of them seems a little thing and a very big thing, all at the same time.

~Natalia

Quiet

22 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Chicago, College, Feel, God, Quiet

It’s a rare experience, this quiet. School is a loud place, I’m accustomed to it. Doors open and close up and down the dorm floor, voices call out, shout out, laugh out. Classroom buildings hum and bustle, professor and student voices mixing with elevators, janitors, printers. The library is a quiet study place, of course, but people walk, books open and close, keyboard fingers type, type, type.

Even in the dark, when I lie with blankets pulled up around me, staring out at the city-lit sky, I can hear the city. Sirens blare past, cars honk, people yell at each other, at the bus, at passing cabs. It’s never quiet around here.

But it’s 11pm and I’m sitting downstairs, in the second floor lounge. This is a place for those who need refuge, who need quiet, who need free space beyond their own floor. I’ve come down here before, when upstairs wasn’t conducive to focus, and the library was too far away.

I’ve come down here and I sat tucked in the corner, fingers pounding out a paper, while ten girls did an exercise video across from me. Girls come down here to work, and they all sit around- chattering to each other occasionally- moving, working, writing, reading. They sit around on the couches scattered across the big room, and the sirens and the trucks rumble past outside, and conversations sound almost clear from the street outside, and I put my headphones in, turned the music up loud, to tune it all out.

It’s loud around here; the only way to escape is to make your own soundtrack louder.

But I came back tonight, almost by accident, and I’m sitting in a room on the side, tucked into a sinking, fuzzy blue couch, and the noises down here are quiet and few. I’m on the inside of the building, rooms away from busy streets, two floors up from conversations wafting in. The late hour has settled the masses, the girls who sift through this study lounge throughout the day: most of them are gone. They’ve taken their studying and their noise upstairs, outside, somewhere else.

And I’m here in the thick, insulated quiet, and I remember why I like the noise.

I like noise because it’s something to think about. Noise is people, places, voices, actions. Noise is going somewhere, doing something, being something. I like noise because it means I don’t have to think about the other things, the small, quiet things that hum gentle, undetected under all the noise.

It’s hard to escape the quiet thoughts when the noise leaves.

The noise is still there, of course, but it’s a little noise, just about swallowed by the quiet, the noise-less. Some would say quiet is peaceful. And it is, sometimes. But so many times, it’s in the quiet that my fears slide close; worry that can be noised-out is inescapable in the quiet. It’s in the quiet that bittersweet sadness comes; four weeks is a very short time, and this school year will be over in a blink. In the noise, we laugh and exclaim about the way the year flies. In the quiet, it all feels too fast, too soon, and I want to stop the clock and stay just where I am.

It’s in the quiet that God is feels so very close. He’s here all the time; eyes, heart, hands deeply involved in everything I say, everything I do. But His words, His will, grows loud in the quiet. The noise dulls His voice, not so the quiet. His words can’t be missed when it’s just me and the still. I can hear Him and my heart shifts, uneasy with the quiet and the close.

I’m not scared of Him. I’m not scared of the One who made me, saved me. But take away the noise, the busy, the loudness and the action, and the quiet is so still and His voice becomes loud and He’s so very big, and I’m so very small.

~Natalia

What Matters

20 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in Birthday, God, Grow

I’ve been working on writing a post for an hour.

An hour of computer in front of me,

writing, deleting, thinking, writing.

Over and again.

I thought about writing many other things,

some of which I’ll tell you about later,

no doubt.

But then I remembered that today I celebrated

seventeen years

of Jesus working in my heart,

making me more like Him everyday.

There’s been so very much

that’s happened in between that four-year-old day

and today.

But I don’t think I’ll talk about all those things,

because what matters is from death to life,

from dark to light,

from alone to with Him.

And I’m never going back.

~Natalia

Back to Him

14 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment

by nataliaria in God

I’m not exactly sure what I’m to write about right now, which rather makes me think I should write nothing at all.

It’s been a long, lovely, occupied weekend, and I’ve enjoyed the past couple days quite well.

But I’ve spent so much time with others, with homework, with a schedule, that rather feel as if I’ve lost a bit of my identity as with Christ.

I haven’t read my Bible, and I didn’t really pray these past days, so I suppose it makes sense that I’m feeling anchor-less and not quite myself.

I’d like to end this day with Him, like to start next week knowing just who I am: a Child of God, a follower of Christ.

So I’ll not write much, just a bit. Because I’m bringing it back together tonight, back to Him.

~Natalia

Growing Out of Fear

11 Apr 2013 2 Comments

by nataliaria in Fear, God, Grow, Trust

I get scared.

No, for real, I do. I suppose I’m telling you this now because it’s been a couple of weeks since really scared, since tight chest and rapid breathing, since frozen with terror and anxiety. It’s been a couple of weeks, and I’m feeling a little more confident. But confident or not, scared or courageous, I want to tell you about it.

It started when I was little. Maybe it was a movie, a dream, an invention of my own mind, but it was big and dark and lived at the end of the long hallway that constitutes the backbone of my house. The bathroom is also at the end of the hallway, and it didn’t take long to build a habit: use the bathroom, wash my hands, and then flee down the hallway, back to front room safety, as fast as I could.

It started there, and grew, little by little. Still in elementary school, fueled mostly by movies that I saw, my propensity to imagine fear grew. There were wolves in the space between my bedroom and the bathroom, mutant boars in the laundry room, orcs in the front basement, the same tall dark monster in the hallway. I never confronted these terrors, these imagined haunters of every place I went. I didn’t confront them, but rather pandered to them. I didn’t know how to control my thoughts, control my fear, and I watched as sources of fear multiplied before my eyes.

Crime shows, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings- I knew I shouldn’t be scared, but as soon as the movie was over, as soon as it was time to go to bed, the same feeling fell cold and still over my heart. Mind over matter, nothing’s going to happen, I told myself. I was in my own home, simply walking from the front of the house to the back. I was safe, I told myself. Sometimes I even believed it.

The problem, instead of getting better as I matured, gradually worsened. While the same frozen, petrified fear still gripped me, my imagination and life experience had expanded and by the time I was in high school I had a vast repertoire of real-life scenarios to be terrified of whenever the fancy struck me. Never mind that I have never been in any true physical danger; I was scared. It didn’t occur to me to fight back against the control of fear. So I walked fast when I walked alone, became wary of bushes and other suspicious-looking plants, and sunk a little deeper into the grips of fear.

And then this semester arrived. More than a year of riding the train for six hours a week had worn down my love of the Chicago public transit system, and my growing knowledge of the darkness in the world left me more on edge with every train ride. I dreaded those hours sitting on the train; I couldn’t read on the train, rarely remembered to pray, and instead spent my time like a tightly wrapped coil, waiting in breathless anxiety for what fate would befall me.

And every day, God was faithful to bring me back to school safely, where I would run from the bathroom to my room least the zombies/grim reaper/tall dark thing get me, and then curl up in bed with the blankets over my head, wincing and holding my breath every time something thudded in the hall. Fear ruled me, and I had no idea.

And then I had nightmares. Two of them, a week apart. The second one vivid enough to send me wandering down the dorm hallway, where I got in someone else’s bed like the child I used to be, and I cried while she prayed, until we both fell asleep. Now I was scared, scared of being scared, and slowly beginning to realize fear’s power in my life had gone far beyond normal apprehension. Someone said spiritual warfare, and I was rather inclined to believe them.

That last nightmare was almost two weeks ago, and when I woke the next morning, something had changed. I’m still growing, still shake and doubt sometimes, but I’m not a slave to fear anymore. There are Bible verses next to my bed that talk about fear, and the power that God has over it, and I’m starting to believe them. I might not be confident on the train, but headphones in, I listen to Chip Ingram sermons all the long ride, and I’m not scared, either. I don’t sleep covered up anymore, cowering under the blankets. The night after the nightmare, saturated in the protective prayers of those who knew, I laid down confident, blanket up to my chin. I could see the ceiling, hear the hallway, and I fell asleep. Safe.

I’m not saying I’m done with fear, because battles aren’t won in a day, but I can say that fear doesn’t rule me quite like it did. I’m falling deeper into the grip that God has always had on my life, and I’m growing stronger in saying no to the temptation to distrust, to fear. People are praying and God is patient, and I’m growing.

And the real proof of my growth? I walk back from the bathroom now.

~Natalia

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