My very first blog post (January 2005 on Xanga)

My first blog was 2005-2013 on Xanga

My second blog was 2013-2019 on Blogspot

Now I have a website (oooooooo). But with the beginning of 2020, I wanted to look back at my very first blog post (and a couple others), back in the day when blog posts were just journal entries…

January 15, 2005

I am looking down at my pink slippers with their green flowers in deep satisfaction. Because Bugg gave them to me for Christmas and it was really sweet of him to remember me. My sister and I packed in the car and headed to the U.P. for New Years. By 3:00am, I was popping in hot fries and Nerds to keep my eyes open, but we made it in one piece.

Some people in this world just inspire you. I came together with people of like mind who wanted to have deep conversations about the greatness of God and tell how He was writing their lives. I needed it. Because sometimes you only live your life by others’ expectations. And as long as those expectations are low, your life is easy. Their purity of life revealed not only my sloppiness, but also that it is not about keeping up with others, it is about following the Highest Standard--Jesus Christ.

 We reopened the youth center on January 3rd, although it sure was not finished. There was so much rain that the office was flooded and we had to walk across the gang planks laid out as the youth center area was turned into a mote and covered in water. Everyone was stuck inside because of the rain and had a ton of nervous energy, which meant basketballs were being bounced off my head *literally.*

Mr.James (who just had a baby boy tonight) is the new director. He is big on visitation, so twice last week I got to go out and see some kids. We were trying to find this family that moved--Shenequa and Micalya, because they had more Christmas presents given to them. I banged on quite a few houses and got strangers looking at me like I was selling something.

Donald wanted to buy some bread, so when we went into the store, I stuck out like a snowflake in the rain. Donald kept shushing me, so I pinched him. Donald turned a nice pink (for him) and then grumbled all the way home how I was so embarrassing and how he would never take me any place again: "Imagine me, having a white girl beatin up on me.”

Here is my verse for this year: John 15:16 "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name He may give it to you."

May 16, 2006

I know the feeling. Wanting to be alone. To be somewhere where no one knows, and, for the moment, no one cares or realizes. I would not want it to stay that way. I like being noticed. But for now, obscurity looks inviting. To watch without being seen. To listen without being heard. To make a sudden change of decisions just because the idea suddenly passed through my head. To untie yourself from all that normally holds you and have space to move and breathe and trip on the sidewalk without anyone pointing and laughing. To think the thoughts you’ve had to push aside all week. To forget about how you look or do and just rest. Refuse to look at your watch. Take pleasure in the passing time. Watch the shadows move, the fly alighting on your leg. This is you. This is who you’ve forgotten to be. This is a moment with no expectations. With no callings. Where is God? Is he with the birds singing? In the person passing by? The warmth of the sunshine on your skin? The gentle wind brushing past your face? Is He beside you, pointing out the beauty, in front of you watching your beauty? Is He resting, with His head in your lap? What is He saying? What does He want you to hear and know before you break the moment. Before you stand up and walk back to the struggle, to the job, to the smiling because it is the right thing to do.

Will they wonder where you were? Will they ask you what happened and not really listen when you tell them? Would you even be able to explain why—why you were not satisfied to say, to continue on, to leave your heart locked up and to accomplish just a little more business…a little more work. Maybe they won’t understand. And that is alright. Because you’ve been there. You’ve practiced His presence.

Let the beauty hurt and ache and burn your soul. Let the silence speak and shout and rage at the injustice of this world. Let the burden of pain and grief and accumulation of little things slide off your heart. Alone. Naked. Empty. Present yourself anew. A living sacrifice.

March 7, 2007

i bought a coconut. and sipped my coconut while walking around town. but i didn't look all "native" because no one in Brasil does that. because walking around with a coconut is rather heavy.  i've learned that i am looking for a place. that is quiet. beautiful. alone, empty. where i can't hurt anyone and no one can hurt me.a place where i can go when i am tired. a place of rest.
i've learned i am looking for a person. someone who wants to sit down and listen to my day. whose face lights up when i come in the room. who sees the little extra things i do and says "hey girl, that's good." who sees my mistakes and hugs me and says "hey girl, that's okay."
i am learning that that person is God. the place is somewhere with Him (until heaven). He's enough. so i am learning again. and again. and i will still be learning tomorrow. i've been staring at the stars alot lately. there was a lunar eclips the other day. red moon. sweet.
Last week i decided to teach the kids the alphabet. i didn't realize that kids in Brasil learn how to write cursive. most of them don't even know printing at all. so what i planned for as teaching 26 things turned into teaching them the whole mechanics of writing and so on and so forth...what is funny is that they will never forget the letter "x". because of x-men. they mumble through the whole alphabet and then come to x and all the guys get excited and say "X!" in their power positions, imagining they are wolverine or something...
my goal for this month is to talk to more strangers

October 1, 2007

A memory: I love that church. I had just gotten home from Brazil where all I had learned and seen was jumbled up inside me. We walked into the big church and my heart began to bulk at the religiousness and affluence. Then a man walked up to me, my little brother squirming in my arms. He reached into his pocket and presented a stuffed animal to my brother. A quick smile and he walked up the podium and began to preach. In that moment, i realized it was not about what people had or did not have, it was about those who GAVE.

A poem: In fourth grade they laughed
and said i was not their best friend anymore
In sixth grade they taunted
and called me four eyes
In eighth grade they left me alone
only conscience of themselves
In tenth grade they glanced around
and said maybe I would be some fun
In twelfth grade I flew away
and realized I was enough

February 16, 2008

Raining during the sunshine is called "the wedding of the widow" in Portuguese
happiness is:
*sand so clean that is squeaks.
*eating random things. Like leaves. and fish with pointy noses.
*spending a whole afternoon in water.
*eating mangos in the ocean. eating popcicles in the ocean. eating peanuts and cheese puffs in the ocean. eating darn well anything in the ocean. i guess they don't worry about getting cramps in Brasil.
*best friends
*seeing the bottom of the ocean when you are neck deep in water--so clear the only dark spot is your own shadow
*driving in the back of a pickup truck. stopping when you see mangos. (Nando climbed the tree and shook it until it rained mangos) filling the pickup with mangos. sticky, yellow fingers.
*waves that pull you in and raise you up and then gently put you back down on the soft sand
* taking pictures of "banho de lama" (literally, the bath of earth)
*doing dust donuts in a pickup
*reading poetry on the beach. star gazing on the beach. three shooting stars.
*a picnic of rice and beans. and more mangos
*having a tanline from my ankle bracelet. somewhere, i do have some melanin.
*a long shower after a day of salt water
How can i account for the time that passes so naturally...like it was meant to be lived, and not recorded? i got sunburnt until my eyebrows stung and my wrists were stiff. the salty water busted my lip and it is still growing. My friend asked me...what would happen if you got really sick? and i thought about it...i guess they would buy a ticket for me and send me back to the US. to my family. thinking about that made me miss my family. deep saudades stirred inside me. because they are there. So present in my life. ALWAYS. and it also hurt, and ached...will i ever really be at home here?

January 6, 2009

I am just here. Just here. Empty. I can’t feel anything. It is all gone. All of me. All I want, don’t want, desire. I know what is right, and I know every old decision like the back of my hand. So I guess I will live off of them until I find myself again. I am stumbling through. Not half bad, but not all there. And only I know me enough to know it is missing. No one else knows me well enough to know I am not here. Not here really. And not there.

I alternate between thoughts of how can I return and how could I have ever left. And neither one sticks to me. They all flake off and float down on the floor around me. Nothing is real. Nothing stays. What is mine? Allow me a moment more to think only of myself, to be surrounded by the music and tilt my head back to receive it all. Just receive and be filled.

I am so empty.

Oh God. I feel far away. I feel like it has been awhile since we’ve had a good talk. How have you been? I ache to make you more human, to put flesh on you and have you hold me. I want to be held by someone who isn’t scared to get my snot on their shoulder. Someone who I feel no barriors with, just blind trust and open arms. Someone who I know the answer is yes. And then what? Oh God, and then what? Part of me wants everything, but I know it is only because I want nothing that I can have.

I can almost imagine myself washing the dishes outside the kitchen. Singing some random song. With the wrong words. “don’t break anything now!” comes a call from some where, between cell phone calls. A kiss on the cheek. A good hug and “minha Linda!”

* 

Anna was the one asking Johnny the questions. i was just giggling on the sidelines.

A: Where do babies come from?

B: the egg comes from the mommy and meets with the sperm from the man. Then it grows and becomes a baby.

A: Where does this happen?

B: that part is kind of gross.

A: Really?

B: yeah, it is where you go number one.

A: and where does the baby come out?

B: that is where you go number two.

A: can you have a baby without a mommy and a daddy?

B: no.

A: are you sure? Why not?

B: well, maybe you can, but I don’t know how that works.

*

It started snowing.

the nice fluffy snow. but it is still cold. cold cold. my little brother and i got in the car and i started it up...gathering my courage to get out and wipe off all the snow on the car so i could see. "Please please please can i do it?" he asks with a hopeful smile.

"i think so." i reply, a little more disinterested than i should have been. And he puffs around the car, stretching his eight year old arms as far as possible to get the windshild cleared...then goes to the other side, still leaving a strip of white in the middle that little legs cannot raise up to.

and i wish...i wasn't old enough to know it isn't fun to wipe the snow off the car.

January 20, 2010

Why did i put on red socks today? And other questions that cannot be answered after a long day of academic excellence. welcome to the world of being a senior in college. consisting of not being able to find a parking place, wishing you would have brought your scarf, and weighing out the pros and cons of eating broccoli in class. yes i did. eat broccoli.

Get up and hit snooze until you can't hit it anymore. shower and eat and pack your backpack too full and pray for parking spaces. Fiction writing with a teacher who judges boxing matches. Philosophy with a typical golf-sock wearing professor (where i eat broccoli), and a little snoozing while multitasking in Abnormal Psychology. The other days are Editing and holding my breath that i don't get called on because my books are not in yet, and professional writing with a teacher that might just be a pushover. and then i go to the youth center. and run the tutorial program. and play air hockey.

"You've gotta be mixed, mz.Rachel...you sound so black." and other such things that get said to me daily. flashback to 2006 and i wonder if i have grown any older...back at the same center, but it isn't the same me. and the things that are different...were not in the places i thought they would be. Sledding and snowballs, mostly in a skirt, sculpting snow, capture the flag, fooseball tournaments, writing contests...

All my old kids are not kids anymore. most of them are mommies and daddies. or just about to be and i am invited to the baby shower. I still love girl's Bible studies. more than ever. We were talking about who God is, and i read a verse about how God doesn't abandon us. Diamond, due in April, asked if it was a sin to give your baby up for adoption. or abortion. I wonder what kind of pressure she (at 16) is getting. We changed what we were talking about for the rest of that Bible study...

so i have filled my life up to the brim again. homework claims the rest of my nonexistent social life. oh, and just got a second scholarship to help with IUPUI costs. and a nagging question tugs me: am i overcompensating for feeling empty? or the idea that if i left it empty, there would be nothing to fill it?

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history." --Mark Twain

February 15, 2011

Remember the adventures. The ones that don’t have to be, they just have to feel like it. Like when the cows chased us—or maybe they just could have. Or running away—or maybe just taking a walk. Or buying everything you wanted in the whole mall—because you realize you don’t want a bit of it.

The shadows you mistake for something else. The stolen moments you can’t explain. Writing by candlelight. Let the pen move fast as time crouches down on you, telling you there’ll be no more adventures. Adventures? Yes. Even in the middle of the work week—especially when I am busy. Adventures where I open my eyes and see the beautiful architecture of the city I have lived in all my life. 

The sound of rain on a hot tin roof and sizzle as it cools. These adventures are free but they capture your soul at the price of mediocrity—you can never go back—your dissatisfaction will slowly kill you. Adventures are hearing God’s voice or seeing God’s beauty or feeling God’s presence wrap around you finger by finger.

A moment, she cries, I would give you anything for a moment!

Louder, louder, it grows, and my skin cannot stay still. It is beauty, in all of its forms, calling me—and I ache. How have I stayed away—how have I turned away from adventures? The price of the world to save my soul.

Why can’t you paint in shadows and fleeting moments? I would have the perfect picture. Raindrops pour through candlelight. I’ve missed you, lonely part of my soul. I am glad you are here to say hello. The loudly quiet echo has done me good. I carry some of you back to the land of the living. It does them good to see a pale horse.

I’ve sat here long enough. Enough to say “I love you” to anyone, and mean it. To see adventures in every corner, for they come with me.

November 12, 2011

I’m catching the wings of the sunset, the clouds passing below me. The brilliant fire bursts with smoke tales of burning sugar cane fields remind me that I am still in Brazil, and not leaving this time—enjoying. Blue to green to yellow to orange, the red horizon line will soon be gone. They will offer me a beverage, but I’d rather hold on to the beauty. How can I have forgotten myself already?

I’ve found the first star of the evening. I’m sure my little prince has returned there. The clouds line up like mountain ranges I wish I could climb. The sliver of moon appears as we travel alongside the horizon, not into it. I want this forever, but keep looking down to write rather than enjoy. I’m trying to transcribe experience to paper. They announce dinner and I am surprised how hungry I am. I am flying and starving. Fill my belly with something other than air.

It’s been so long since I’ve written like this. Like me. Where have I been and why did I go? Was I simply looking for beauty? I feel so close to the little prince on planes. With the dark wing siloetted against the sunset a second star appears, but it is no rival to the first. Why don’t I have a place to lay down and watch the stars come out? I think my life would be better if I did.

The red grows more brilliant as the blue closes in. I see every color of the rainbow, shining under the moon and wishing star. I breathe in haggardly, for the beauty kills me slowly. That is why it cannot last—I couldn’t stand it. The rustle of sandwiches behind me makes my tummy ache. But I dare not look away. Must life be recorded to be validated?

Orange, yellow, and green are being squished to a sliver. Purple is looming. The colors grow bolder, but the stars stay shy. I don’t know if I can watch any longer, distractions are calling me from this most lovely evening. I wish for him once more, my little prince who has returned to his rose, with his pet sheep safely in its box.

I was born to feel things, but once I do they flee so quickly. The sky begins to relax and we pass the small lights of a city below, twinkling like a spider web in morning dew. We are flying, and not even the screaming baby can take away how amazing that is. Don’t lose the wonder.