November thoughts

Hello all! Apologies for taking so long to get this blog up and running. Posts start back from September,  so that is where an intro to what I'm doing/where I'm living/general info is. Thanks for coming to read, and please do comment/email me  - I'd really love to hear how you all are!!



Thoughts for November go like this (well, some of them! All would be a bit long) ... 


I just celebrated my first Thanksgiving away from home, and it was a bittersweet experience for sure. The bitter - missing family and friends. The sweet - Nuns! Yep, that's right, amazing nuns. One of the beautiful things about being a new-ish JV in Belize City is getting to know the network of people who have been family away from family for JV's over the last 25 years. The Sisters are part of that network, and wanted a chance to meet the new arrivals (me and other first years!). They also knew we would be missing home on Thanksgiving, and extended an invitation to celebrate with them. 

I had never been to a monastery/convent/religious life community house (still not sure what the right word is!), and going helped me understand better why people choose religious life as a vocation. They welcomed us inside, and we walked right into a delicious smelling kitchen overflowing traditional Thanksgiving foods they had spent all day making. Our contributions were the salad and deviled eggs made by Gina, and a pillowcase full of challah bread made by Jaret. We prayed together, talked together, drank wine together, and ate sooo much good food. It felt like a family. The nuns are young and old, Belizian and American, quiet and loud, and it was beautiful to see the community they had created with such a diverse group. After dinner, our JV community sat and talked and played with silverware, while the nuns refused our help cleaning up and headed into the kitchen to splash each other with dishwater.Definitely good times :)

Bittersweet has been a theme for the month of November. One of the sweetest miracles on my time here has been helping a young woman decide to leave an abusive relationship. A few Wednesdays ago, my boss asked me to spend the afternoon researching domestic violence and survivor support. One in four Belizian women will experience violence in her lifetime, so it is a topic we do a lot of advocacy and outreach around. I learned a lot and gained some tools I hadn't had. The very next morning, one of the girls I counsel asked me if I had any advice about staying with an abusive boyfriend. If she had come the day before, I would have had no idea what to say, but thanks to some divinely appointed prep work, I had the resources on hand to sit down with her and work through the decision together. In the end, she decided on her own that leaving would be the best and safest choice. Sharing that process with her was a powerful experience for me, and one in which I felt God accompanying us both. Unfortunately, she is no longer able to attend our school due to unhealthy behavioral choices, and that felt really bitter, like failure.

Gina, one of my community mates, shared a prayer by Mother Theresa during one of our house Spirituality Nights, part of which reads: 

     

            People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway...

               What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

                  If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

                          The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

                   Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

                                     In the final analysis, it is between you and God. 

                                       It was never between you and them anyway.

 I am learning, yes, the prayer is true - it is between God and I; but it is also between God and them. God is the one who brought that young woman here, helped her with her choice to leave her boyfriend, and will continue to be with her wherever she is now. God is the one responsible for growing and shaping her into who she needs to become. My chance to be a part of that process was never about me seeing "lasting results" anyway. It was about being part of her journey regardless of outcome, and trusting that the results of that journey are between God and her.

God is challenging me to love into the unstable and the unknown, to love as a limited woman in a limited world held together by an unlimited God, and to let that be enough. I just need help to do that! So that's where I need your support through prayer. Knowing family and friends are praying both for me and for communities here is a deep blessing to me, so thank you so much and please keep it up. And thanks for reading this rambly blog, my thoughts and prayers are with all of you :) 

Love alla unu!

--LA

PS: Logistics update - I'm now school counselor instead of teacher!  Woah - just realized I can see answered prayers happening from my panicked post back in September...mind blown... God sent an amazing woman to YES who taught for 25 years, was bored in retirement, and decided she wanted to volunteer all year with YES! Now we have enough staff for me to be a counselor, which I like a lot. Apologies if that was confusing :)