This last Sunday we had another triathlon, a harder one in Almeria, on the very edge of the Almeria desert on the coast. The sea was choppy, and the distances were longer, and it was hot! The "sensations" were the same, nerves, anticapation, excitement...the transitions went well, but the swim wasn't very much fun, I didn't enjoy it it all. The feeling of being surrounded by so many people and the choppiness of the sea and too much sediment and algae made it for not so fun of a swim. I also had to run up 400 meters barefoot to get to the bike, that made it not so fun either. It was hot running, I almost passed out as I passed over the finish line. And I was last. The medic poured water over my head, and I almost felt human again. This time, our friends raced after us, and so they loudly cheered us on. I mean, loudly. I think one guy, Enrique was omnipresent. He was by the sea, the bikes and the finish line. Believe it or not, it was incredibly humbling to h...
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First Race
I've had any number of people ask me about our first race in Sevilla, and I've promised some more details, so here they are for anyone who would like to know. Both Andrew and I returned from the US two years ago absolutly drained after watching his mom slip to the next life. I returned 10 days before Andrew, and my friend April realized it was not good for me to be alone. So one day, she dragged me out of my house and said, let's go sign up at the new gym. We had a wonderful time exploring the gym, going to the pool and jacuzzi and steam room and so I signed Andrew and I both up without telling him. I didn't tell him for weeks how much we were paying, becuase I knew how important it was for us to go. Two or three times a week, we'd find ourselves there and it really helped us through those first blurry months back in Spain. As we started to go, we realized that one of our friends from church, Julian was a trainer there. His wife Liz and I attended a bible stud...
It's holy week again. In our part of this world, it's a huge todo. Lots of floats, parades, processionals, people in the street, statues of virgin mary and jesus died, alive, tortured and crucified. It makes me sad because the Jesus I know, came into town not with music and fanfare and carried by 50 men, but on a donkey. The children cut off palm leaves and cried, Hosana! Which means, save us now. And the Jesus I knew was pulled in so many directions. They wanted him to save them from their political and economic crisis. They wanted bread and a new governement. He didn't deliever. Instead, he died a wretched death on a horrible instrument, and then suddenly, people said he rose from the dead. He had over 500 witnesses, and he didn't do huge massive miracles as a resurrected Jesus, he just appeared and ate bread and fish. I'm not here in Spain to convert people, I can't do that as a human being, only God changes men's hearts. But I am here to talk to pe...
First thoughts for my MA thesis. Emotion is a strong element in our perception of the world. It is difficult to ignore and harder to quantify. One of our strongest and most powerful motivating emotions is shame. Shame is the first emotion mentioned in the Bible, that has Adam and Eve realized their nakedness, they covered themselves out of shame. Wars and conflict and battle all have been fought over honor and shame. Strangely enough in this modern world, we neglect the existence of this most base emotion, and instead we often move blindly through our world motivated to protect our honor and compelled to the beat of its drum to always avoid shame.
I wrote a note to a friend today, and thought this would make a good post. Edited for public viewing and expounded upon. Sometimes we think everything is supposed to happen instantly, work, job, cultural adapation, friends, family, etc, etc, and everying is limited to this thing we call time. Its awful, but something I've learned specficially when Andrew's mom passed away two years ago, that there is a time and place for everything. For us, there was a time of intense grief, and then a time of healing, but that doesn't mean that we still have grief and still need healing, but there are times and places for it all. Yesterday, I sat church, with my own grief. Grief of time lost. Grief of loss of relationships. Grief of saying goodbye to my aunt and uncle as they move onward to Cyprus. I stood and sat in church as I used to watch my uncle do, and let everything wash over me. When I first watched him, I wondered why, and yesterday, I completely understood. My collegues i...
Last year, I found myself in a new group of friends, triatheletes. They are a werid bunch I tell you. Working out 3-5 times a week for fun and then they go on 100 km bike rides over the weekends. Sheesh. And I wondered why. So last year, Andrew and I started to take their pictures. There is nothing more educational about a group of people than suddenly whipping out a camera. As they got used to us, we began to learn why they do this. I'll never forget the sensation of walking amoung the atheletes as they prepped for a half ironman or long distance race in the Sierra Nevada, the mountain that towers over Granada. You could feel the buzz of adreneline, and the excitement was palpable. We stood with Liz and Juli, the trainers of this club that are some of our best friends. Juli usually actively particapates, but this time, he was an organizer of the race, and so he was just an observer and a coach. As everyone got into the water, and stood there waiting for the minute warning, h...
Sometimes we have this idea that God is supposed to make sure we have enough. Enough food, enough clothes, enough friends, enough family, enough of everything... But what we measure is enough, and what God measures...are sometimes imcompatable in our minds. But that's why He's God, and I'm not. I was reminded today in very small ways. Today, my husband needed the car. His back has been sore, and we've both been grumpy as it makes life harder. So, instead of driving to school like I did on Monday, I took the bus. As I got ready, I forgot to ask my husband for money. My usual 20 euros for week (bus, a night of tapas and coffee for the week) was gone. I had had to use it for gas, as we've used the car due to my husbands back, and for parking fees, as my husbands back....you get the picture. So I get to the bus, panicked, realizing I have no money. I have maybe a euro in small coins. I find two bus cards and pray hard that one has at least one ride left, because...
I'm coming home i s a song that has felt very relevant to me this year. Below are the key lyrics. I’m coming home I’m coming home Tell the World I’m coming home Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday I know my kingdom awaits and they’ve forgiven my mistakes I’m coming home, I’m coming home Tell the World that I’m coming...(home) I've never been a massive fan of P.Diddy, but this one seems to wrap up what I've felt most of this year.....and today, as we return back home to Granada after some much needed time away, I'm excited to return to our friends and family in Grana'. Its a hodgepodge group, Spaniards, expats, people who follow Jesus and those who aren't yet, men and women, atheletes and couch potatoes, but they are our group of people, and we are coming home. More than ever, this place is our home, and its a good thing. We are looking forward to this school year as we, "come home."
And so we continue with our theraputic time of listening to music, watching yet more MASH, and recharging our batteries, emotional, physical and creative for the coming school year. One of the things that's stuck with me this summer is the intense power of words, and on the contrary, the lack therof. Something that was said to us this summer was, "You guys are survivors." And that person probably has no idea that by saying and writing us that, how much those four small words have encouraged, sustained and kept us sane. You see here, the war, is a spiritual war. We remind ourselves weekly, sometimes almost daily, that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers and princes of this world. But in the same thought, we also get weary of fighting the war against the war. In a MASH episode, Hawkeye starts having serious nightmares, waking up screaming, and starts walking in his sleep. His fellow comrades and doctors have a discussion behind h...
Andrew and I big fans of the show M.A.S.H. For those unfamiliar, I will sum up rapidly, said television show was taped in the 70's and 80's about the Mobile Army Surgical Unit 4077 that was placed during the Korean Conflict. You can read more about it here... M.A.S.H. Essentially, it was the first sit-com to deal with a more realistic plot, following the ups and downs of this MASH unit, both hysterical and realistic. The comedy is darkly believable, the depressing moments resonate strangely with both Andrew and I. Even though he and I don't perform actually surgery on patients in a war zone, the homesickness, the boredom, the loneliness, the depth of relationships formed in a short time, and the sadness of certain situations always seem to resound in our souls. So several summers, we pull out our dvd's and have long extended marathons. I call it our therapy. We are working our way now through the early season, and one of the episodes particularly struck a chord wi...
Love your God with your Soul Passage for tonight… Deut 6:1-7 “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, 2 so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. 3 O Israel, you should listen and [ a ] be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. 4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 These words, which...
I feel like the summertime for me is always a return to creativity. Often, during the school year, my energies are poured into my students, my relationships with people that are only here for a short time, and more importantly, my marriage and family. After that energy is spent, I'm spent. And all I can bring myself to do is write a bit, poke around on Facebook, and maybe take a few pictures that are fun and entertaining (sometimes only to myself!). So, today, I've cracked out the paint, the crayons and the pastels, and determined to do something, anything, to engage my creative self, even if it just means taking a piece of art off my own wall and copying it into "my version". Halfway through, it barely looks like the original, but its mine. I really don't do well at drawing or painting, but I do it for me. I do it to process, to think about something else besides work, and to find a few moments of getting my fingers dirty to see what my heart tells me. To...
This week both Andrew and I went to a flamenco benefit concert for Japan, and ironically enough, there was an earthquake that rocked Southern Spain just 24 hours before the concert. A sizable town called Lorca, its located about 200 kilometers or 130 miles east of Granada, in the province of Murcia. A brief google search yields the info that at least two evangelical churches exist in the town of about 91.000 people. 13 Catholic churches exist. There were two major earthquakes in a period of about 2 hours, and than about 30 aftershocks. The nine people who died were outside due to the first earthquake and squashed by falling debris. Two of the nine women were pregnant. The 13 Catholic churches suffered such damage that no one can enter them. Crumbled, shaken, semi destroyed. Is this the church ....on whom Christ's rock will stand? Wow. The images are startling, as many of these churches have stood for hundreds of years through thousands of tiny earthquakes and the one day this...
I took Andrew to "work"today. He's currently in the midst of English classes that he's giving to a photographer, one of the best here in Granada, in exchange for photography classes. So, once a week, I actually kiss my man goodbye as he takes the bus, or drive him to the other side of town, and come back home and get to be alone in my house. I know that sounds funny, but since Andrew works out of the home, and I go to work, this is a rare moment that I'm savoring this morning. On the way home, I drove slowly, loving the moment of "commute"from La Chana to Zaidin, where Andrew and I live. Its only like 5 miles, and with traffic, took me about 15 minutes. Today however, is one of those incredibly clear spring mornings, when the sun rises over the Sierra Nevada and the snow glistens on the peak, La Veleta. All I could say was, I live here...and enjoy the moment. Why do we live here? For the last two or three years, our live has been rather topsy-tuvy, b...
This weekend Andrew and I wandered down to a town called La Linea, a town across the way from Gibraltar. A friend of ours, one of "our" students that was here 3 years ago, got married. The youth from our church had retreat this weekend, so many were unable to go. We went as representatives to a beautiful wedding, but I get ahead of myself. Tamary, the bride, had been in Granada for just one year. Her dad would come and visit every chance he got, and he was so dynamic, so fun, we just adopted him as one of our own. He would come to every event he could, and joyfully stood and worshipped. They came with us on church retreat, and rejoiced with us as we baptized new believers. 10 months after that great retreat, Tamary's dad was brutally stabbed while walking away from the doctor's office. A case of mistaken identity. A senseless death. We had always wanted to go and visit the family, but we were unable to do so. Our own family drama was unfolding. Finally, we w...
Today we officially enter the Lent Season. I grew up Protestant, and so distinctly Protestant that somehow I missed the whole, what is Lent season, until after I went to Bible College. I even sneaked through a course on Western Civilization without having it properly explained to me. After I went to Bible college, I started work for an incredibly pagan man in the catering business. I became a server first and then ended up working in the office when they realized I had more than half a brain like a lot of the servers that were working for their next pot fix. I worked for them for almost 8 months when Ash Wednesday rolled around. Since we always had tons of food (catering) we could eat lunch free. That Wednesday our mostly Mexican chefs served us fish and only fish. I didn't realize what it was until one of my office collegues said, its Ash Wednesday and had to explain to me that today, we eat fish and we will eat fish every Friday until Easter. I found it strangely ironic tha...
Perhaps it seems to a regular reader of this blog is that all I ever write about is suffering and death. I have begun to feel like a broken record myself on this topic, but I want you to know that my desire is for my audience to understand the everlasting hope I have in an afterlife. Yesterday our little church in Granada said goodbye to one of its pillars, a woman named Isabel. Isabel was only 78, in Spanish standards of life expectancy, is fairly young. However, for most of a decade she had suffered with various aliments, mostly heart related. Right as Andrew and I started to attend and particapate in this little church, she had a heart valve replacement, and we all thought that we would lose her. However, God gave her six more years, and she lived those to the fullest. She saw her daughter married,and both of her married daughters had children, all boys! Finally, after her daughter had a baby last December, Isabel began to slowly fade, and for the last two months she has been in...