Misunderstood.

(a long ramble during unexpected moments of process & personal lucidity.)

Misunderstood.

I 

Just 

Hate

The feeling

Of being 

Misunderstood.

I’m 30 and 2 years of age.

I have been the “strict” teacher

And found the courage to

Speak hard truths.

I started a business for the first time,

Something I never thought I could 

(or wanted)

To do.

I’ve admitted I’m wrong 

To my spouse, daughter, friends, family (although probably not often enough). 

Years ago someone said to me, about a relationship that needed to be released:

“Your compromise in this situation might be that 

you’ll need to be okay with being misunderstood.”

Okay, sure.

But you know, it actually sucks.

I’ve let it go when students have 

Flown off the handle for grades they didn’t 

Think they deserved.

I’ve almost genuinely not taken it 

Personally when students (or their parents)

Have said hateful things to my face (or in emails).

I’ve lived through the pit-in-the-bottom-of-the-stomach

Feeling—

The times when you hear or see or experience something

That you can’t believe is happening, 

But realize it is,

(Or maybe realize that you were wrong and sigh a deep, deep, deep gut-based-sigh-of-relief.)

I started seeing a therapist a few months ago. 

It wasn’t intentional until it was.

I still don’t know exactly what I am expecting to get out of it,

But I know I want to be the best version of myself—not just for myself and God, 

But for my Boo and for the little girl we are raising—

I deeply long for our baby girl to grow up internalizing courage, bravery, strength, confidence,

Soul-fire, authenticity, genuiness, kindness, sweetness, humility, love, and hope and faith!

And I want these for me, too—I want to fight to embody them each and every

Moment,

Because, 

Well, it’s not just about you and it’s not just about me,

It’s about all of the lovely people breathing, sighing, crying, cringing,

Remembering, forgetting, regretting, and somehow finding the will

To live another day.

Sometimes, lately, I take things personally when I shouldn’t,

Or I find myself feeling easily offended.

It makes me think twice (although not as often as I probably should)

About the times my tone or word or reaction

Might be leading someone else down a path they want to 

Not go down.

And so, in all that I am, in all that I say

And do,

And think,

And hope for,

I want to BE authentic.

I don’t want to be a shadow,

Or a shadow of a shadow,

Or a slice of something nice,

But that’s not quite me.

By now, my rant is rambling rapidly through the

Keys I’m pressing, and these words are coming forth. 

A dear friend and sister recently reminded me

(when we spoke of loss),

To just give myself space to think. 

To think and process.

Not to let the busyness crowd out grief.

Because then we really can’t embrace it,

Ebb and flow with it,

And walk through it. 

And I’m busy. 

I’ve crowded out some things

And now here come some of inward workings.

Back to why I started rant-writing tonight…

I received feedback on an assignment 

And it ruffled my feathers:

I felt misunderstood.

I also felt like I don’t have the right to 

Feel this way, probably,

But I just did feel it.

I felt like the interpretation my professor had of the assignment I turned in,

Was so far from my own personal and professional moral and ethical code,

That I was embarrassed for myself,

To be perceived in such a light!

I emailed her, 

She responded,

And it was quite redemptive.

So, the diffusion happened even in the span of these

Passing moments.

How quickly I can be to get on edge,

To react

Rather than wait,

Think,

And I’m not talking about over thinking,

But just to sit on something.

Sometimes I feel rebellion rise up

When something appears clean on the outside,

Because all I can think of are white-washed tombs,

Of hypocritical spiritual leaders,

And I have a desire to spew forth

Messiness, for the sake of sharing something

REAL. 

Sometimes I have the urge to say something about myself,

That probably won’t look too great, simply 

Because I know it will be true, with no sugar

Or spice or anything nice.

And I want that to be a connecting point between

Us.

Because if I am not sharing something that is real,

Then what is the point?

What is the point of being in the presence

Of other human beings 

If we cannot truly open parts of who 

We are—to dine together,

Cry together,

Share together,

Laugh together,

Remember together,

Grieve together,

Fight together,

Be together? 

I feel full of hopes and dreams—

Full to the point of almost bursting.

There are so many things I want to 

See, hear, know, experience, learn.

Do you ever feel that, too?

I have so much to learn. 

Do you ever feel that way? 

About life?

Love? 

Faith and religion?

Friendship?

Significant-othership?

Parenthood? 

Career-wise? 

And just, well, as a human being?

Tell me.

This Year (2020)

(Background on Dad's phone 
when he passed)

It’s the last day.
It’s the last day of a year
That came and is now going.
There is heartache, joy, peace, dissension, death, and life
In each year that comes and goes.
 
In 2020, our darling, sweet baby Marabelle Marie-Ève joined us
In this big, wide, world.
Her sense of humor and constant changes
Energize and inspire us.
We pray for her future and dream
Of the life we have ahead of us.
 
In 2020, we lost my dad—the only one I had on this earth.
A long journey of grief, that accompanied his illness,

Including his passing after 9 years of being sick and in pain.

 
In 2020, we lost my last grandparent: my dear Grandma Lind.
People in my family always say we have a lot in common:
Wide thumbs, love of travel… 

(Belle meeting Great-Gran)

 
In 2020, we lost my uncle. He sent Marabelle a sweet pair
Of shiny golden shoes. I’m glad she has them to remember him by.
 
We lost one of my cousins, too. I didn’t have the chance to know her well.
Our family grieves her unexpected loss.
 
Three of these four precious ones passed within a span of 30 days.
 Marabelle,
Our dear, sweet Marabelle,
did not have the pleasure of meeting any of these
significant and irreplaceable people
In person.
 
In 2020, we took our first international flight with
Our baby.
At 10 months of age, she met her dear
Granmè, Granpè, grantati li yo, tati li yo, tonton’l, kouzin li yo, ak yon kouzen.
Laughter, hugs, kisses—these were a treasured gift
That we now hold onto in our memories and photographs.  
 

(Tout fami)

Seasons come and they go.
Throughout unpredictable ebbs and flows,

(Tout fami)

I extend my arms to embrace a new year,
Marked by the calendar,
That calls me to respond in gratitude, reflection, sadness, joy, anticipation, and yearning.

 

Living Between

Today, I opened a package for my master’s: it enclosed book #1 for my program. I was thrilled. I’d followed the tracking status, considered following up with the campus mailroom, and was frantically checking our mailbox for the book that said it had “arrived.” 

I’ve wanted to “continue my education” ever since I graduated with my BSE in 2011. I love learning. I love classes. I love books, textbooks, assignments. 

My first textbook revealed itself inside of the generic packaging. It looked familiar. It looked familiar in a good and somehow sad way. Where have I seen that before? A few minutes later, I remembered that I own the book already. I bought it years ago. I never made it the whole way through, but that wasn’t the point when I saw its cover today. 

Today, this exciting book, representing the first class of my new program, also reminded me that I live between worlds. This is something so many of my friends (and my husband) live with daily. 

That book, that I own, that is sitting (as a rental) on our kitchen table, is a book that I left behind. It’s not on the bookshelf in our two-bedroom apartment now. I double checked. It’s stashed away in a box at a friend’s house (waiting for me for when I move back) or already gotten rid of—during a lucid moment when I probably processed through moth and rust and the insanity of storing paperbacks, for years, untouched, in a tropical climate. 

Missing one thing leads to missing other things, other people—family, loved ones, favorite places to go to, to visit.

That’s all to say: I’m sad. I’m being reminded of the self I embody and how it’s not all in one place all the time. I’m thankful for this little family of mine who is always with me. And I’m thankful that my life is more dimensional and complicated--that it's not just flat and level, but sometimes it can be a bit painful.

Patience & Complexities

I often listen for a word for the beginning of the year.
I’m not into the New Year’s Resolutions where my perception
Is limited to imagining people setting unreachable goals,
And then, oh, somehow still feeling surprised when the
Passion and stamina run out before February.

I’ve been so negative lately. Why am I like that?
I used to be one of the most positive people I thought I knew.
My parents usually talked more positively about people
Day in and day out than the combination of other people I knew.
But somehow I’ve gotten "judgy"
and negative and self-focused.
I actually started pressing “delete” on that last adjective. But,
I can’t erase something just because I don’t like it.

One of my deep desires is to be authentic,
Even if I don’t like what I see.
Even if I want to print a better, more lovable version of myself
On paper:
I can’t do it.
And I somehow don’t want to.
I can’t connect an inauthentic part of who I am with someone else
Because it’s like oil and water.
I might try to stir it all around and pour it out before it separates,
But it does.
It always separates, eventually,
So I’m forced to process and re-evaluate.

So, one thing I do as the New Year approaches, is I ask God
To give me a word for the upcoming calendar year.
It doesn’t have to just be one word, but that’s usually what it is.

This year, the word was “patience.”
I didn’t like it.
It sounded boring, and I didn’t want
To have to go through that thing that happens when
You’re developing a new character trait—which is
Refinement by fire—finding myself in situations
Where the most natural reaction would be impatience,
So that I can grow more patient.
I don’t want to be in frustrating situations or around
Frustrating things.

So, as I’ve been developing this year—
In the midst of infant cries,
that I am unable to
interpret just as quickly as I
think I’ve figured out how to translate them,
I’m finding that I’ve become stale, boring, negative, and impatient.

I tell stories about the student essays that suckkk,
And the parent emails that are driving me crazy
Because they are sent to me one after the other
From frantic, stressed-out parents who want their kids
To succeed more than the kids themselves do.
I get stuck on the idea that
Everyone is just living enough to get by and that
Few people really value being true to anything anymore—
Other than the selves we’ve propped up in front of the cameras
That are flashing in our hands.

So, maybe these stories and thoughts,
more than I realize,
are more
A reflection of the impatience that has grown inside of me.
Maybe I’m supposed to be learning how to really embrace a
Whole-milk version of patience,
Rather than a 2%, 1% or fat free option.
Maybe the patient response I send to a parent doesn’t
Mean much if I’m internally scorning them for the bad vibes they sent
Through to my inbox;
Maybe it’s all about the storm outside
And inside.

How calm am I?
How gentle is my spirit towards the ones I am around?
How life-giving are my thoughts and attitudes towards
My neighbors, my students, their parents, my friends, my
Husband, my daughter, myself?

Patience seemed like a disappointing focus for the
Year set before me,
But now,
Halfway through this double-twenty,
The scales are starting to fall off of my eyes,
And I’m seeing more than specks
Reveal themselves before me, inside of me.

My plate will always be a mixture of the enjoyable,
Lovely, delightful, strenuous, boring, and unlikeable moments
And tasks.
I desire to develop an internal calm and peace
And patience in and out of all of these things.
Lord, keep molding me, don’t give up on me,
I’m listening, and I want to grow.

* * *

Trusting God With the Whole Timeline

We are taught to trust God.

We are taught to be patient.

This means not freaking

out, trying to do everything on our own, etc.

On Wednesday, Sadrac and I showed up

for a Bible study that

went over James 5:7-12:

“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming

of the Lord. See how the farmer

waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it,

until it receives the early and the late rains.

You also, be patient” (V7-8).

Today it struck me:

Patience and trust mean

fully giving myself to the plans of the Lord.

We are in the midst of a visa battle.

I call it a battle because it is a long,

drawn-out saga that includes $100’s of dollars,

paperwork, as well as falsified documents given by the government, etc.

We have battled the government for papers,

and the Embassy for answers.

We thought we’d be spending our 9^th day in the States today,

instead we are barely further now than where we were in January.

We both finished our jobs by the start of June—

planning on moving countries less than two weeks later.

Lately I’ve been rehearsing stages of our process in my brain,

and when I do it’s overwhelming.

But I just realized that maybe trusting in God and having patience

in His plan means

NOT doing this—

not replaying how things could’ve gone differently,

what we could’ve changed,

so that we’d be further along now.

Maybe letting those things go

is part of that magnificent and

beautiful struggle of placing

everything back into God’s hands—

for real.

For weeks now, I’ve been able to express

my heartfelt conviction that

God knows what we need and He hasn’t forgotten us,

and that we just need to trust him.

But last week I went into past-exploration mode,

where I mentally listed all the things

that relied on us: turning in this paper,

translating that paper, etc.

I searched the nooks and crannies of all the things

we did in between turning papers in to the Embassy,

and I interrogated myself:

What if we’d turned in that paper sooner?

What if I’d taken off an extra day of work to do that?

What if we’d thought to ask this question?

It was exhausting and horrifying.

I was smothering myself in my own self-reliance.

You see, I’m an expert at control,

aka thinking I have control.

Reality check: I have no control over what already passed

yesterday, last week, last month, last year.

We did what we felt we needed to do at the time,

then we put things in God’s hands.

Yet the temptation to flirt with what me, myself, & I,

could’ve done better, faster is strong.

If I can accuse myself, or someone else

(yeah, what about that guy who gave us fraudulent

papers in the name of the government,

or the mean people I’ve talked to on the phone,

or the Embassy who is short-staffed in the department

we’ve applied to),

of why things aren’t where we hoped they would be,

then at least I have a victim to blame.

Maybe this is also a substitute

for the blame I really place on…God?

I’m not sure,

but today I saw for the first time

that living in those moments

reflects my distrust

in the One who I long to trust.

What I need now is

to simply wait—

in the present moment.

I stressed this past week because I applied

for a bunch of online jobs and didn’t hear

back. I spent hours applying and

updating my profile.

Maybe trusting God is doing what I’ve done

and then just waiting.

Hounding the site, obsessing over checking for responses,

is this another form of my

distrust and impatience

in His perfect timing?

I’m putting this in writing,

and I’m making it public now,

because I tend to neglect

finishing my writing until the

situation has been resolved.

This, right now, is a practice of my faith,

during the waiting,

proclaiming that I trust in the Lord’s timing,

and I desire to desire to wait patiently as He does His thing.

Loss...

(Written across the time span of 12/10/17-2/5/18)

I was on edge at church today,

The first Sunday after finding out a man,

who used to sit in these pews, was a long-term

child molesting, Mennonite missionary,

who came to this country, grooming young boys

for later sexual exploits.

My eyes kept shifting through the pews;

my peripheral didn’t stop performing.

You know they always say child molesters

don’t always look like glassy eyed old men who give you

the creeps; you can’t dismiss warnings

because “She doesn’t look like a child abuser” or

“He doesn’t look like…”

Monday’s news of the foreign missionary’s

exploits, was a sucker-punch because

“He always looked like such a kind, gentle, reserved guy,”

says my conscience. “How?!”

I couldn’t feel at home in church today,

and I didn’t feel safe at church today.

A row of probably orphans sit behind us in the pews.

Three white people are interspersed among them.

One is a young teenage girl,

whose behavior seems surprisingly strict,

whose touch (although culturally appropriate)

seems too familiar on the backs and arms of

the children next to her.

My potential accusations sound deplorable and offensive—

even to me,

so, I’ll let them rest there.

But I’m sitting in my place of worship,

surrounded by unfamiliar white faces

who inevitably visit with a flock of young orphans.

And my husband came home from work just last Monday

sharing the despicable news with me.

I couldn’t believe what I heard, the picture identifying the accused,

as my husband relayed the story in a distraught and heartbroken tone.

What level hurts the most? I’m trying to identify it.

Was it that one of the children targeted was a five-year-old

pastor’s son?

Was it that there were over 20 young boys targeted—

forever scarred, damaged irrevocably

in their naivest hours, in their childhood innocence?

Is it that this happens every day, in every city, in every

part of the world?

Is it because the accused “didn’t look evil”?

Is it that the perpetrator was a do-gooder missionary—

financed by well-meaning, oblivious Christians?

Is it that he is Mennonite, and I have such high hopes

(both in my lineage and experience) for this sect?

Is it because he is a foreigner to this country,

an American “god” who betrayed those who took him in?

Is it because I am an American foreigner,

and I can’t imagine how he felt the right to

cause such destruction in a home that he was a guest in?

I am left with the agitations of my

heart, mind, soul,

and I feel anger…disgust…fury.

I am stirred up and unsettled.

And something must be done.

To mar a child in this unforgiveable way

is to mock that which is right and pure in this

temporary realm.

It is ill-gotten, loathsome, sick

perversion,

in which a twisted fulfillment is found.

It is to gain pleasure through

a young child’s corruption.

It cannot be undone.

The consequences and justice are heavy—the

penalty clear to all God-fearing ones.

The Pure One who is Righteousness, Love,

Justice, Mercy, Grace, Holiness, Peace embodied,

declared, in human form:

“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones

that believe in me, it is better for him

that a millstone were hanged about his neck,

and he were cast into the sea.”

(Mark 9:42, KJV)

Although I am hung up on these words,

and tempted to march all over

perpetrators with them,

Holding onto unforgiveness,

I can’t deny the conviction the same

Leader proclaimed to me, an imperfect

one, just like the rest:

“Let him who is without sin among you

be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7 ESV)

And my heart churns inside at the tension this

uncovers:

that justice is due, 
yet judgment is not mine to give.