Month: August 2013

Sisters

One by one, my friends from home are slowly parting to their different schools around the country. I’ve been looking back on this summer and seeing how incredibly important each one of my friends have been to me.

They are a safe community: where I can come and share my struggles and things that I just couldn’t share at school.

They are a tough community: helping me to understand how and when I have hurt or wronged them and how I can be a better friend to them.

They are a thoughtful community: sparking conversations and pulling open doors inside of my brain that I may not have even known were there.

They are an inviting community: inclusive, whether we’re going to free yoga on Saturday or eating frozen yogurt.

They are an encouraging community: telling me not to give up and telling me that I belong and I am enough wherever I am.

They are a teaching community: sharing their desire to know more about God, and their knowledge of Him already.

They are a loving community, even when loving someone else is the hardest thing to do.

They see me when I’m sad, happy, angry, rebellious, joyful, suffering, and they just love me as I am.

These are my friends. These are my sisters. Image

Impossible Is Nothing

Last week, I attended The Global Leadership Summit for my very first time. It was incredible to be surrounded by some of the greatest leaders around the world: Colin Powell, Bill Hybels, Patrick Lencioni, Bob Goff, Henry Cloud, Brené Brown and many more. More incredible than these speakers was the thought that a leadership summit reaching over 100,000 people globally happens every year in my home town. The intrinsic desire of every person who attended to learn more about being a better leader, even just a better version of themselves, fills me with joy and motivates me to be the best leader I can. It has been such a gift to learn from some of the greatest leaders in the world throughout the last eight years of my life, and I feel that God is going to use me to write and share stories as a way of giving back the wisdom that I have been so blessed to receive.

The Leadership Summit reminded me of a few things about myself that have felt dormant or they were the wrong way to think about myself, but to make things short and sweet, I want to share with you one particular story from this weekend.

To give a little background on this story, I have to share with you about last summer. I was meeting with my small group leader from church and she told me (as she always does) that I need to let me emotions be real. She also told me that I needed to watch the Brené Brown Ted Talk titled The Power of Vulnerability. When I heard that word, vulnerability, I rolled my eyes because that’s how indifferent I felt about it, but I knew I should watch it because first, I love Ted Talks and second, Kristin would be asking me about it the next time we talked.

I watched it. I watched it again. I laughed, I was angry, I was sad, I was so glad that Brené Brown is a real human being and admits her imperfections. Brené addressed that human beings need two things: love and a sense of belonging. Not only did I have a better understanding of myself, but a better understanding of other people and how important vulnerability is to each and every one of us. After seeing that Ted Talk, I told every single person I met that they too needed to watch this Ted Talk. Seriously, I was so annoying about it, I subtly shared it in one of my communication classes this last semester. I didn’t think I would ever meet Brené Brown, so I shared her with as many people as I possibly could because I believe that every person can benefit from watching her Ted Talk. In May, my dad sent me a list of all of the Summit speakers and Brené Brown was on that list!

Finally, it was the week of The Summit. I was so excited. I checked the event schedule and saw that Brené would be speaking in the morning on the second day. The day finally arrived and I was so excited. After the first session on the second day, there was a thirty minute break. During that break, I decided that just hearing Brené Brown would be cool, but being able to meet her would be sublime! I took the stairs down to the first floor and went into the main auditorium. I waited a while, because there weren’t that many people there. The entire time, I was thinking to myself: ‘Oh my gosh, I am such a creep right now.’ and  ‘I should just go back up to my seat. Why am I even doing this?’ Then I saw not only Brené, but Shauna Niequist, one of my favorite authors, just walking and talking together. Two role models in my home church (well technically it’s Shauna’s home church more so than mine). I began to take little baby steps closer to the front of the auditorium. Baby steps turned into long strides and before I knew it, I was right in front of them both.

I could have said a million things, asked a million questions, but I was so humbled to even have gotten to this point, and all I could do was say thank you. I’m sure they receive thank you’s over and over again, and my thank you was no different and yet entirely different all at the same time. These two women have inspired me to be courageous rather than comfortable, vulnerable rather than closed off, that it’s not the critic who counts and to be myself over anyone else even when being myself makes me cringe. It was great to talk to Brené about her struggles with vulnerability and know that I am not the only one and that she is the voice of the millions that I just haven’t heard yet.

This experience has taught me impossible is nothing. We can achieve anything if we are persistent and persevere.

I believe there are times when God holds something out for me to just take a bit, and sometimes I do just take a bite, and then there are other times where God holds something out expecting me to take a bite, but is so satisfied seeing I swallowed the whole dang thing. This experience was a bite that I swallowed whole and I am so glad that I did. God knows my potential but more importantly He knows my heart.

This picture is blurry and quite silly because I was geeking out. But I know that one day I will be writing and sharing my stories just as these two wonderful women have done and continue to do:

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Language Bridge

Here I stand, surrounded by Ugandans, Cambodians, Congolese, and Burkinabes. These partners of Warm Blankets have spent twenty plus hours on flights and are here learning to be better leaders in their own countries at the Global Leadership Summit.

It’s beautiful to see how the English language is able to bring our partners together. During our picnic today, I was listening to the African partners share about what happens when churches in their communities have great pastors. They were all telling stories of different people from their towns bringing money, chickens, watches, anything valuable to give to the pastors if they really liked what they heard. After talking and laughing together for a long time, everyone at the picnic began to worship together.  I loved in that moment being reminded we are all here for the same purpose: to serve our Heavenly Father. One day God’s Kingdom will be restored and I don’t doubt we will all be able to speak the same language: sharing stories of our times on Earth with one another.

This has been a summer of different cultures for me. I have really loved getting to know Vero and Sophoan, from the Congo and Cambodia, and it is so encouraging to see young women my age from around the world whose hearts are so on fire for God. It is bittersweet that I only have five days left of my internship, but am so thankful for all that I have learned about Warm Blankets Orphan Care.

I am beyond thankful for the ways God is moving in my life and teaching me to simply be faithful to Him. This summer has been quite the gift.

Bicycles.

For the past few months, I have been able to get to know and become friends with one of my closest friend’s cousin who is from Caracas, Venezuela. It’s been beautiful to be a part of her life-even if just for little snippets- and see how she continues to grow. At first she was quiet, but as her English progresses, she continues to share more and more of her life with me. At this point, she isn’t entirely sure how long she will stay here in the United States, and she is persistent about doing certain things here while she can because she had been unable to do them in the past.

The list includes:

·         Go to a horserace (and wear those big fancy hats).

·         Learn to ride a bike.

·         Learn to drive.

At the beginning of summer, my friend came up to me and said “My cousin wants to learn how to ride a bike, she never had the opportunity to learn how when she was younger. Can we teach her how to ride a bike?” Being the amateur cyclist that I am, I said yes.

After two months of being home from summer I finally taught my new friend how to ride a bicycle. On an incredibly hot Saturday evening, I picked her up, pumped up the tires on the bike and made my best attempt to teach this 18 year old how to ride a bicycle.

It took a while for her to get used to the bicycle, and it took me a while to put into words ‘how to ride a bicycle’ because I had been riding once since the day my dad taught me how. This wasn’t the case for my friend and it broke my heart to think that her dad was not around to teach her how to ride a bike when she was a child. There we were though, having surpassed every obstacle however different or similar each on may have been in our lives so far,  and my friend persevered to ride the bike. I walked along side of my friend, holding on to one handle and the back of the bike while my friend practiced pedaling.

Twenty minutes went by of balancing and pedaling, she began to pedal faster. I stayed alongside of my friend, and finally I let go of the bike. She was pedaling all on her own! I could tell in that moment-though it only lasted a few seconds- she felt free from the anxieties and limitations in her life that she had been carrying with her. This was a moment where she had no obligation to be strong for anyone else, but she was strong, empowered by our Lord and the infinite hope he fills each and every one of our lives with.

This young woman is so strong and although I have only known her for a few months, I know that she has experienced hardships on a level that I sometimes can’t fully understand because I have not had those experiences. I am thankful for her, because she gives me perspective that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I really look up to her for her strength, patience, and trust in the Lord.

My friend has been able to overcome the pain of her past, which has been washed over by a new, unfamiliar present that keeps moving her into the unknown future. She continues to move forward: living with her Aunt, Uncle and cousins in the U.S., making new friends, learning to drive, practicing her English, and even learning to ride a bicycle.

Although she will return to Venezuela in 22 days, she is already planning on coming back to the United States to study English and I know that no matter where God puts my friend, she will always be safe with Him.

Your past and present sufferings should never limit you.