One year. No matter how I look at it, I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that all that time has passed. When one studies abroad, five months seems to last forever, because everything is new and exotic--family life has a totally different dynamic, the food seems to take on a whole new dimension, the colors and construction of the city hold the mystery of an age-old blend of peoples and their festivals, arts, wars, values and pastimes. And the language. Oh, the language! It is like slow magic, meandering through callejones and discovering, one conversation at a time, that you, too, can communicate with a group of people that before seemed distant and foreign. And find that you're the same.
Coming back to the U.S. was a little difficult for me after all that. I couldn't stop listening to música de la banda, I longed for roadside quesadillas and fruit as I stared down the cold, white aisles of Wal-Mart, and went to great pains trying to be all in the U.S. while pieces of my heart still roamed the streets of Guanajuato. Of course, time and the sweet Lord heal all things. Thank God!!! And it has been SWEET!!! All this year, God has been taking me down His road of discipline and grace, and I don't believe I'd have followed Him down it had I not lived some of the things that He let me live in Mexico. My stubborn heart needed to be sifted like wheat in order that I could see once again that one day in His courts is better than a thousand elsewhere!
Before Peter betrays Jesus, Christ says to him, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers."
And that he did. And that I pray God will do through me! Where sin abounds, Grace really does abound all the more, but the intense grief that sin causes also teaches us that we never want to go back to it again. To go back to it is to be a dog returning to its vomit, and we can't waste our time on that while Abba has a great feast awaiting us! Hallelujah, He reigns, and...
"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them [we] may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." -2 Peter 1:3-4
I feel that Mexico will look different this time around, and I can't wait for the continued healing and revelation that the Holy Spirit affords when we abide in the True Vine, seeking to obey and glorify Him with our whole lives.
This one's for Jesus:
And a poem.
Música Nuestra
All here is color, all
is sky—
in the distance,
a band of trumpets
and strings.
Johanna and I walk
the streets to hear it—Days and days
of cafés and theatres, buses and backpacks
and pockets full of pesos.
We stop at a fountain
and she cups her hands
to drink—
Dear México,
we long to know your tune.
So many dusks
of crepes in the plaza, sweet tamales
on the Santo bridge, and life below just
a taxi with a dangling rosary,
benches strewn with swooning lovers,
desert dust on the soles of shoes.
She is Alemania, I am Estados Unidos,
and we watch and speak
in a tongue not our own—
at once, it is all we have,
and we dance in time with the band.
“Ya somos mexicanas.”
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