My idea of Jesus started out as a fable. Like most born-agains, I can look back on my life and see with new eyes the situations where seeds were planted. I also remember times when well-meaning Christians tried to share the gospel with me and it went over my head completely. I went to a Presbyterian church while I was in middle school--never with my own parents but with someone else's--because they had this cool breakfast service where you could eat while listening to the sermon. It was real family-friendly and I remember enjoying it a whole lot, but through all that experience singing songs and saying the Lord's prayer, no one ever told me about Jesus.

I was never against the idea of a God. It was always something I sort of wanted to believe in but it was "out there" and I was too busy trying to survive high school on my own to look into it. All four years of high school sucked. I don't remember trusting anyone or having any people I could call true friends. I felt like a social outcast and did the best I could do be invisible. When I talk about the nightmare that was highschool, it seems that being borderline suicidal was kind of normal. My greatest joy that ended after freshman year was dancing. I was on a dance team that competed and won several awards around the state. We had themed productions that tended to last about 8 minutes, and while I was dancing with them our themes were "A Chorus Line" and "Cirque du Soliel". At 12 and 13 years old, dancing was most decidedly my idol. I thought about it constantly, upon waking up and going to sleep. The pain and withdrawel I dealt with upon having to quit the team was comparable to the heartbreak when my best friend from second grade moved to Japan with her family. They ended up coming back to states she and stayed at my house the first night back, waking me up at 3am and begging me for a sandwich. As happens with many childhood friends, we began to grow apart (this was a serious crisis at the time) and eventually we didn't even talk to each other anymore. It didn't have anything to do with vindictiveness, but I always missed her. When we were kids my dad would set up a tent in the backyard and we'd spend the night creating shadow puppets and sharing our dreams, which included marrying brothers so we could be sisters and going to the same college (not necessarily in that order). As it happens, we did go to the same university, and one summer afternoon I was walking through the quad and ran into her. Now that I think about it, the quad was nearly empty on a sunny day, and I don't remember where I was headed. She had cut her hair short and was wearing in little pigtails, clad in flip-flops, a T-shirt and cargo pants. There was no awkwardness about the encounter, we just sat down in the grass and started to chit-chat, neither of us was in a hurry. Tears sprang to her eyes when she noticed the cross around my neck and she looked into my eyes and eagerly asked if I was a Christian. God had taken each one of us in our respective places and drawn us to Himself. We became sisters, though not in the way we had expected. She came to see me baptized, I watched her play violin during worship at her church, and I met her in the Barnes & Noble to study once, and then we lost touch again. I hear that she's married now, and I'm happy for her. She'll be among the first people I look up when I get to Heaven.

2:18 PM |

It had been raining for months, it seemed. And we're not talking about about plain-jane Seattle drizzle. What I'm describing is a constant deluge, a downpour that was exciting for the first day and then just got downright depressing. Most of the norteamericanos in my group longed for a change, and since most of us had left the US in August and had our fill of sun, we chose another weather medium that just happened to be more accessible. Snow.

After a few intolerably wet weekends, I was off to the Andes. The first leg of the busride was a series of hairpin turns through the mountains. Things got interesting when we finally reached the border crossing. I was one of the few students who went through the trouble to get a student visa, even though a tourist visa would have sufficed. As it happened, the student visa only created problems. I had already been in Chile 3 months, and only when I tried to cross the border was I told that, because of my status, I should have registered with local authorities within 5 days of arriving in Chile. The official told me he could not grant me access to Argentina. I started to cry. I'd already been on the bus for 5 hours and I had made this trip on my own. Though I was prepared to return to Valdivia, the official took pity on me and let me pass, warning me that if I didn't register with the Chilean police within two days of returning to Chile, I would be deported. He was Argentinian himself so I doubt that he even cared if I bothered to register with the police.

Two more hours brought us to Bariloche. At the time, this little mountain town was still one of the best kept secrets in Argentina. I referred to my guide book to find a little hotel it recommended (I later moved to a hostel it failed to mention), and after securing my things I decided to take a look around. One street was lined with chocolate shops and I immediately fell in love with the little gnomes in each store window. I tried to make conversation with a few German gentlemen over hot chocolate but the entertainment was fleeting, and after dark I decided I had better make my way home. It was on that walk back to the hotel that I vividly recall God calling me for the first time.

The trek took me past a little Catholic church. People were singing inside, and the sound was so beautiful I was drawn inside. I don't remember making the decision to go in. It was as if I were being guided by some unseen force. I meekly peeked in the door and a small, kind-faced lady gently pulled me in out of the cold and gestured for me to stand next to her, handing me a song sheet. I was standing near the back of the building but still felt all eyes on me. The looks were warm, and I felt welcomed. Suddenly, the worship ended and all these little women ushered me into line to take a wafer from the priest. I had only the faintest idea what the wafer represented but I obliged just the same. It was at this point that I realized that I was at least one foot taller than everyone at the chapel. When communion ended, the priest stood at the entrance to greet everyone as they left. He looked me straight in the eye and smiled. " Chao mi grandota". I walked the rest of the way home in a daze, my heart swelling. I watched as the residents of the town invited each other into their homes for tea, wishing that one might extend that grace to me, an alien in a foreign land.

1:53 PM |

Believe it or not, I have not forgotten the blog nor the faithful readers still subscribing to it. It shall survive dispite the lack of posts from Sarah, Dana and the other more talented writers of the jovial clan.

There is no news. Most of you already know that I was laid off again after working four months at the post mentioned in my last blog. My title, by the way, was Account Executive. I was hired by WaMu (again) as a branch employee, and my new title is Personal Financial Representative (PFR). When explaining my career saga to friends I tell them that Washington Mutual is one of the top 100 companies to get fired from. I got a 50% pay raise for doing the same work, I'm just face-to-face now. I'm also only 3 miles away from home. Still, the job has a lot more stress to it than I'm accustomed to. It's all about goals, which I never had a problem with before because whatever team I worked with was always exceeding them. As a branch, we're one of the least productive in the region, and as soon as we get the newest PFR trained we will be going out in the community trying to drum up business. We just hired a new guy straight out of the military and he starts next week. This should be interesting. He was hired not because of his salesmanship but because he just oozed professionalism. I wonder, was he an officer or an enlistedman?

I'm still working at writing my memoirs. I'm starting it in middle school, when I became self-aware, and little bits of my childhood that are significant will hopefully fall in. I can't imagine how people write autobiographies when there's so much to tell at only 27. That must be why blogs and journals are so popular.

1:29 PM |