Torn

Sometimes, when I'm walking down the street, it hits me. I realize for the hundredth time that I am living in Spain, in Europe. My adjective of choice is freaking; as in "I'm in freaking Spain!!!" or "This is so freaking cool!"

Perhaps that is because I do not swear and "freaking" is the most intense modifier in my vocabulary.

Yesterday it happened lots: when I was walking through Zahara de la Sierra, wading in the lake in the mountains, and poking my head around every whitewashed corner. Today it happened again when I walked outside into the morning, which smelled of rain and was very warm. I continue to think of rain as a spring smell, though Jerezanos have corrected me and said that it does not smell like spring but like fall.

These moments are like beautiful flowers that crystallize into glass in my memory. They enchant me and entice me to stay longer, to be fully present, to breathe and run and laugh and play. When I have them, I make myself promises about staying forever, about planting myself here, burrowing deep into the Andalusian soil until the line between "them" and "me" blurs and Spaniards become my people, Spain my country, and Spanish my language.

And yet, there are moments that comprise a different part of my life. These are stolen glances at the life that could await me across the deep, blue Atlantic. I absentmindedly browse the Jacob's Well website. I listen to the Walt Bodine show podcast and learn about Ripple Glass, the latest restaurant closings, and hear the news. Whereas my "freaking Spain" moments are like prisms of glass, sharp and bright, these moments are much more hazy. It's like looking through the dim glass at what could be and what has been. I look at grad schools with an ESOL program. I notice that Donnelly College needs ELL tutors and I ache for my students from this summer. I imagine them and I understand their need for a friend, someone to be patient with their linguistic mistakes, someone to be friends with their children, someone who doesn't simply come to deliver "stuff" like clothes and food and toys, but someone who comes to be in their presence.

I find potential roommates and housing "in the midtown area" and imagine the small houses with hardwood floors and a dilapidated porch on the front. Once a month or so, I imagine First Fridays in Kansas City. I think about the menagerie of people attending: rockers in tight jeans with metallic jewelry, young families pushing babies, middle aged yogis wearing hippie clothes, fluorescent leggings and Christmas sweaters, trend followers and people with no trend all united in downtown Kansas City by art. It is equally as beautiful as the tranquil lake beneath the town carved into the mountainside I visited yesterday. It is slightly less foreign, less exotic, but only slightly. It is a different cross cultural experience.

In this foggy world of "could be's and has been's", I remember words like "brokenness", "reconciliation", and "presence".

I think it is much easier to nod off and sleep in your own culture, especially when that culture is in the north part of Iowa or the suburbs in Missouri. I think though, that being present is essential. Fight for it friends because it's worth it. Try to spend more time in the moments that are crystallized as flowers rather than in the hazy world of "maybe someday". I have a feeling that my heart will be forever divided between the countries where I have been present. I'm learning to live within that tension and enjoy the things that make them what they are. I wish for you the same.

May you be filled with the grace and peace of Christ.

(advent is coming !!!)