freedom

There is freedom in humility. I feel like I’ve learned more this month even just about myself than I have in the last 6-7 years. I’ve always struggled with pride—that should be no secret to anyone. I made sure I was always strong, at least in appearance, at everything I put my mind to. But now, everything I placed my pride in pretty much just doesn’t exist here. I’m not in school so my grades and studying doesn’t matter at all—in the clinic there is no pride to be really placed in independent study and curiosity. Athleticwise I always pushed through walls and typically was fairly competitive. Here, women just don’t really do sports. Me and Ashley usually just merely walk (with some sprinting and skipping intermingled when no one is in sight) and people don’t admire us for our discipline but merely think we’re all the more crazy! I have no wisdom here or understanding of how things work or what should be done in any given situation. There's no place for my pride in India.

And it is freeing. Everyone expects us to be crazy and weird anyways. What really do we have to prove? I sing a lot here! I actually love to sing to myself, with my friends. Randomly to burst into offkey Disney, patriotic or praise songs gives me so much joy! I’m not a great singer, but I don’t really care! Today I started drawing. One of my good friends Ashley picked up the hobby on coming here and I was admiring her journal/sketchbook/scrapbook and decided, why not?? So I spent an hour drawing pitchers and vases and most likely will persist in this endeaver ‘cause I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I am not intrinsically artistic and have never nurtured that part of my mind! I don’t think I ever really even so much valued it as something I could ever enjoy, yet when I didn’t have to be great at it, but really could just do it ‘cause I felt like it and wanted to try something new—it was so joyous!

I'm attempting to discover the boundary of building walls around the heart and letting myselves learn from mistakes and hurts. But its somewhere in the middle, while previously I think I believed it to lie very far to the former. Its ok to expose ourselves to potential hurt, ‘cause without that vulnerability there cannot be much vitality to life. Isn’t it better to live life fully and work though the pains and hurts that it brings with it—to grow and mature and draw near to God through hurts and disappointments—than to just live steadfastly in low expectations, constantly talking ourselves out of what we truly desire? If we really believe that God is molding our desires, that shouldn’t we let ourselves desire?

I feel like a month ago I would never recognize the above paragraphs as something I would ever think to write! God is working so much in my heart and mind and I can see how much I’ve grown and matured in one months’ time. I can hardly imagine where he will guide me in the next 9! I know that these might seem random and disjointed from lessons I'm 'supposed' to be learning overseas, but I guess God's just surprising me in the very strange ways he's challenging me to step out of my comfort zone and wrestle with issues of the heart.


I went to the zoo with the kids from the pipe village--two of my friends work there regularly and asked me to help 'chaperone' the field trip. The pic above is my favorite little girl Depali.