A Voice of Hope

My Life as a Lobster

Ow.

I am redder than the Red campaign. It was the (now) annual trip to Georgia for Reynolds Rendezvous charity event this past weekend so my friend KatRose and I drove south on Wednesday morning to help prep for the Saturday event, which went off very well, by the way; thanks for asking! Beautiful weather, lovely people, amazing old restored wooden boats, and kids who've survived more chemo and operations than any adult could handle and yet are still so excited just to be alive. It was gooooood [insert my best Bruce Almighty voice here].

However.

We had a beautiful warm "autumn" day (ha! the calendar says "autumn" but the weather certainly doesn't. What the---?!), temps in the low 80s, not a cloud in the clear Georgia sky, sun reflecting brilliantly off the water.... and fair (and I do mean fair) Lu with absolutely no sunscreen on at all. None. All day. Nada. Nope. Zilch. Zero! Doh.

I'm such a dork. I didn't even think about it until, oh, about 3:30pm. Long after the damage had been done. And it's not that I just forgot to put it on. I forgot to even bring any with me into Georgia. I didn't even pack it. I'm such a dork.

Life as a Lobster. It's always a joy.

So how was your week?

The Stalker In Me

I could so easily become a stalker. I've figured out many of the in-and-outs of "Googling" someone and checking those background report sites without actually having to pay the $50 to get a report. I don't have great success with really common names like John Smith. But I don't do too bad, if I do say so myself.

Yesterday a friend I haven't seen or heard from in several years came to my mind and just stayed there. The desire to hear from her and know what's up in her life became so strong I not only sent an email to her last known email addy, but I Googled her as well. Let me just say, she has a very common Asian name. I didn't realize how common till I googled it. And got about as many pages as I might for "John Smith". Whoa. And yet...

Within the first few pages I was able to find a blog of someone who had my friend's name all over it. The guy recently moved to Asia and my friend (and former roommate), true to her amazingly generous spirit and major gift of hospitality, greeted him with open arms and showed him all around the city. There were even pictures of my friend! Not only that, but the reason I found the blog to begin with is because another friend of ours from Los Angeles was also named: as my old friend's (now) roommate. It was a dead give-away. Otherwise, I would have been searching through hundreds of pages of search results. Not the way I wanted to spend my evening.

The coolest thing is that my friend is back in Asia. She had come home from the same city a few years ago because her job had ended. There was a guy she'd dated off and on before leaving LA and now he wanted to try again. They were going to spend the holidays with his family in 2005 and that's the last I heard. But that's not unusual for my friend; neither she nor I are the greatest at keeping in touch with people (why do you think I have a blog???), so I never thought too much about not hearing from her regularly. I figured eventually we'd catch up. Although, I do have to admit shock when I realized just how long it has been (since early 2006). I usually try to check in with people once a year, at least.

Anyway, my friend and another friend of ours, who was longing very much to move to the city in which they now live, are apparently sharing an apartment. It's obvious by reading the blog posts of the author -- who is not someone I know, but looks very familiar; I'll bet anything I knew him back at Mosaic LA -- that my two girlfriends are doing great things for Jesus, building wonderful relationships with people and having a wonderful time. I know my friend well enough to know when her smile is forced and when its genuine. It's all real. And the smile on our other friend's face is, well, priceless. She looks like a little kid at Disneyland for the first time.

I cannot tell you how excited all this made me feel! My friend back overseas in the thick of living life for Jesus; doing exactly what she loves and has wanted to do for years, and in a city and culture that desperately needs Him. I'm so proud of her for doing it and for what she's accomplishing. Not only that, I'm so excited to see pictures of her that are only two months old. She looks amazing! I think that's what happens to you when you live the life God dreams for you. Your whole countenance changes.

Anyway, back to me (because it is all about me, you know). Now I have a sticky dilemma. I don't want to email my friend (again), even though I'm dying to tell her how proud and happy I am that she's back in Asia and that she looks absolutely terrific. I'm too embarrassed!  I don't want to admit I was "stalking" her on the Internet with the help of Google.

So, like, how far gone am I, anyway? Is it time to call the cops on myself yet...?

Summer Dreamin'

Okay, I'm done. I'm over the fascination with cold weather and "seasons". I want my California weather back, please.

I am so stinkin' cold it ain't even funny. It hasn't gotten above about 40 degrees in weeks. Weeks, people! How do people in the north do it??? How do they take the cold??

I am so not made for this. My feet are freezing. My hands are freezing. My whole body's cold. And I'm inside, people! Inside!! Where the temperature is a balmy 68 degrees. While outside its freaking 31 29 degrees and dropping. But, oooo, we're supposed to get a "great warm up" tomorrow, say the weather people. All the way up to 40 degrees. Woohoo.

Look, I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but, well, I guess I got completely, perhaps even too acclimated when I lived in India. Because ever since, anything under 75 degrees is not comfortable to me. And anything under 68 is just plain cold. Anything below 55 is inhumane and unlivable.

Yeah, so India was six years ago... so what's your point? I can't help it if I never re-adjusted to American weather. And I did live in the Med for a year. That didn't help the weather re-adjustment, either.

Speaking of the Med, I want to be here, in this picture (perhaps even with this man...hmmm, yum!)!! Right here on this beach. I can't believe that I actually long for a Cyprus beach, but I guess that's what desperation does to me. Makes me long for places that I have very little happy memories of. Just so I can get out of the stinkin' cold and finally feel warm.

Here's another spot I'd love to be. Hawaii. Oh, please, God, send me to Hawaii!! I can't take the cold of Middle Tennessee anymore. I want to live on a warm sunny beach and play in the sand. All year long. I want 80 degree temperatures and the smell of summer rain. I want thunderstorms and warm breezes. I want summer, people! Summer!

But instead, I get to go out to the movies tonight in 20-something weather and cold, cold wind. I have to put on so many layers and wrap up so much just to be comfortable that I feel like Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story: "I can't put my arms down!"

I am so ready for summer.

Why Nashville? Why London

It seems I started a fun little trend with my last post. I guess we are all just looking for the place where we truly belong. The place we really fit it, with our true selves, not the people we pretend to be -- whether purposefully or not -- or the people we wish we were. But who we are, really, under all the masks we've learned to wear through pain we've experienced in baring the Truth of our souls.

The question that's dug at my mind as I've watched the flurry of comments at Alex & Niza's place is why London? Or for that matter, why Nashville? Why not where I was, my home, LA, where all my friends and my community and my passions were? Why do I feel compelled to move, and move, and move again?

I could point to the fact that I spent the whole of my childhood doing just that. I moved every two to four years until I was in high school. I think I'm the only one of my siblings to graduate from the same high school I started. I went to four different elementary schools, three different ones in fourth, fifth and sixth grades respectively. Two different junior high/middle schools round out my edumacation -- I moved from Northern California to Southern California two months before 8th grade graduation.

My sister and I often joke with each other about how we don't have a "seven-year itch", we get the "three-to-four-year itch." An itch to move. Not so much move to a different city. Usually a move across town or to a different house will do just as well. When the move doesn't happen, well, we get itchy. And just like a mosquito bite, we're not satisfied till we get a good scratchin' move done.

However, After having spent most of 2001 in one country, most of 2002 and 2003 in another and then the rest of 2003 homeless and carting luggage from one friend's home to another till I found a place to park, I was ready for a very long stay in one place. My moving itch had been scratched raw.

But God -- gotta love God's buts -- But God, in His infinitely confusing and crazy love, had other designs on my life. He made sure I wasn't content in LA. Oh, I had my friends. I had my cherished home church again. I had my beloved City of Angels and Adventure. But I had no peace. I no longer "belonged". Like a puzzle piece that's the same color but not the same cut I just didn't "fit" anymore. And everyone close to me seemed to know it. My Life Group, the God-send of my life, the first time I'd found such an eclectic group of people who really did just fit like family, a Mosaic version of "Cheers" where everyone knew my name, in that soul sense of the phrase, they all knew I was restless in my spirit, that I wasn't in the right place, though none of them wanted me to go.

All my relationships and yet no "belonging". I thought that was what belonging was all about, relationships?

God moved me to Nashville. Here I struggle with relationships. I'm not used to the Church Belt culture of everyone going to church yet so few being followers of Jesus, or the shallowness of spirituality or interest in spirituality.

Yet I Belong. Every fiber in my being shouts that this place was made for me -- or I was made for it. I'm not sure which. Even when things have been screamingly painful, I loved Nashville. I never had a thought of abandoning it. I knew beyond knowing that I belong here.

It was the same with London. A very, very hard year came to a joyful and fulfilling end with my visit to that amazing city of lights. Even when every train I took was delayed and kept me from seeing most of the sites I'd planned, and my umbrella broke into three pieces as I emerged from my first underground stop, leaving me drenched in the constant rain of the day, I still danced under Big Ben's resounding chimes and shouted praise to my Jesus for such creating such an incredible city. I belonged there. With everything in me I knew it. I belonged there.

I cannot define what it was, exactly, about London. I just felt like I was home. Finally home. It was one of the greatest Christmas gifts God has ever given me. Our time there, His and mine, was magical.

Just like Nashville. Magic. Magical cities. Where I belong. Inextricably, inexplicably, undeniably Belong. I am home.

So why? Why Nashville? Why London? My heart wants to say God created them just for me. Why not? He once told me He created the stars and flung them into space just because He knew I would spend my life staring up at them in awe and wonder.

I know life with Jesus is about more than just belonging. There is a mission He longs for me to accomplish. But I've found that mission is a lot easier to live out in the hardest of hard times when I am enchanted with the world around me; when I know I belong there, that I fit in not just in color but in shape.

Does that make sense?

What do you think? Do you Belong in your city?

Walking in Memphis

I spent last weekend (30th-2nd) in Memphis with a couple of friends from LA. We had such a blast! Not so much because we were in Memphis as that we were finally together again after six-odd years. I had not seen one friend in that long - she moved from LA in 2000. And the other I'd not seen in three years.

We spent most of the weekend talking and laughing and crying together. Catching up on each others lives and dreaming of the future, both near and far.

But we also got in a little tourist time. Memphis is such an interesting city. It's got a rich history and incredible rhythm. I highly recommend taking a horse-drawn carriage ride through downtown. The guide we had was very knowledgeable of the city as well as just a wonderful person to get to know.

I also highly recommend eating at Cafe 61. BEST food I've had from a restaurant in quite a while. And while you're downtown, definitely stop by The Peabody Hotel and wander through their lobby a while. They've got several areas where they tell of the history of the hotel and Memphis.

Lastly, you can't go to Memphis without a little trip down Beale Street. Talk about a wild street party! Three blocks of nothing but club after club after club. Some are just dance and drinkin' places but most are music clubs -- kind of like Nashville's many honky-tonks, except these are jazz and blues and a little rock. Great music. Cuh-razy vibe on the street. We didn't go in any place. I'm not a big fan of clubs like that. It's nice for about 5 minutes and then I get tired of having to text-message the people I'm with because no one can hear a thing. Loud music is one thing, but, yikes, club music is in a whole different decibel category.

The best part of our time, in my opinion, was spent at the wonderful Bed & Breakfast we stayed at, Magnolia Grove in Hernando, Mississippi. Tom, the owner, and his wife are wonderful people and cook up an incredibly tasty breakfast. They are also warm, welcoming people who treat you like royal guests in their home. There's no standing on ceremony or legalistic sticking to the "rules". Just a smile and a "turn off the lights when you're done." I will definitely stay there again.

They seemed to get a kick out of these three 40-ish (okay, Conna's not there yet, but you will be soon...!) women talking and crying and laughing and carrying on like three teenage girls at a sleep over.

What a blast! Good times with good friends. God is indeed good to me.

Can You Believe...?

...it's been four years since I went to India. Training began four years ago today in Denver. Still seems like yesterday. My, how time flies...

Addendum Redux

What if we just moved Tennesee and the Carolinas overseas...? Do you think anyone would notice...?

If I could just find a way to have the beauty and majesty and culture of these three states (well, sans the overdeveloped, undernourished "churchy" stuff) and still be in a foreign place....

Oh, The Places I've Been!

create your own visited states map

Here's a tidbit of my life... the following are all the state I've lived in:
Kansas
Washington
Texas
Wyoming
California (Northern and Southern -- there is a difference between the two!)
Tennessee

And the states that I've "lived in" for 4-6 weeks:
Colorado
Virginia
South Carolina

Looking at the US map and seeing how much of it was covered in red, indicating just how much our beautiful country I've seen, I started feelin' perty dang proud of myself.

So I got cocky and thought I'd fill out the map seen below..."Heck!" I thought. "Everybody always says I'm such a 'world traveler'. This will prove them right....

After all, I've even lived overseas....
4 months in India
1 year in Cyprus

So, my world map will surely be quite red too....

uh.....


create your own visited countries map

Yikes! I've only seen 4% of this amazing planet we live on. I have got to get busy!!!

.... Sheesh... I know Wendy's gonna do this... and her world map is gonna be all colored up. Man, that's gonna make me jealous.

PS -- I thought about including Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and the Netherlands on my "countries visited" list... but I was only in the airports in those countries, so I don't really think that counts...

I'm Home!

Nina and I arrived in Nashville early this evening with a U-Haul full of my stuff... things I haven't seen in over a year! Tonight has been like Christmas... unwrapping all this stuff! There are some things I'd forgotten I still had, and others I discovered got sold, or thrown out..... Then there was the mirror the movers ripped out of the vanity top to my dresser and wrapped separately... that will have to be replaced... ugh. There are so many more boxes to open, furniture to put together, things to put away... Where do I start??? I'm exhausted.... Nina's already in bed and I think it's time for me to hit the sack too.

Aahh, to finally sleep in my OWN bed! It's only been a year and 3 months, but who's counting, right?

G'night all. Sweet dreams. I know I'll be having some!