 |
| That's nice, but I think I'll go take another nap instead. |
Thankfully, all of those things went about as smoothly as you could hope for (many more details to come). The welcome day at East 15 was wonderful as well. Here are a few snapshots of the place I'll be spending the majority of my time for the next two years:
 |
| And that's just the outside of stuff. |
I was in quite a happy little bubble. But as my fantastic week went on, things in the world got sadder... and sadder... and sadder. Finally, I was scrolling through my newsfeed when I saw these two posts from a friend:
I remember feeling like my breath had been vacuumed out of my chest. Those statements break my heart. Regardless of what your actual feelings about the case are, when you have friends, neighbors, fellow church members who legitimately fear those above sentiments- things begin to look irreparably wrong. For me, this creates a tiny stone of hopelessness in my pocket that grows just a bit bigger with each article, news story, and social media update that lack the sensitivity and grief awareness a story such as this so desperately needs.
And hey, I'm just a white girl. I wonder how much more I would be affected as a person of color?
I obviously didn't make this blog to discuss issues as heavy as this. I wanted to document silly London happenings like "The 10 Most Obnoxious People You Smell on the Tube" or "How to Survive Your First Actual Winter as an Expat Texan." For the past week though, this story has made me question how appropriate that might be. As in, are all these fun, lighthearted moments I document just a veil so I don't have to think about or confront the fact that racism is still rampant in this country? Sure, I could go on and on about how pretty Hyde park is in the summertime or make ten or several jokes about the podunk-ness (technical term) of the Waco airport, but what about the fact that my faith in this world has been slipping at an alarming rate? That I'm traveling down the scale to cynic way too quickly? Isn't that slightly more important and maybe even cancels out all above jokes?
And an even scarier question - what could I ever do to make a real impact?
I mean... I vote. I retweet Obama. I recycle. I've "adopted" several orangutans through the World Wildlife Fund. I do all those things that you're "supposed" to do, but I've felt pretty helpless as to how to be a part of any significant change.
So fast forward to yesterday. (Is that sentence an oxymoron? It feels like it might be.) My dad's up in DFW to load my washer and dryer into his car to take to Waco to keep while I'm overseas. He had a dolly and somehow we managed to get both machines downstairs without anyone dying (praise the Lord). You might think- oh, down 17 stairs, hardest part's over right? Aha! How wrong you'd be. Seeing as I'm 26, you can do some basic math and guess that my dad's not the youngest of all the spring chickens (I'm not even sure if that's how you use that phrase) and I've got a bum right shoulder. I'm looking back and forth between this dryer and the lip of his trunk, which is several feet off the ground, and thinking, "ahhh, here's where the back injuries come into play."
All of sudden, two men get out of a nearby car and ask if they can help. Within a couple of minutes, Walter and Jose had both the washer and dryer tucked neatly into the back of my dad's Highlander. Nothing was requested of them and they weren't expecting anything in return (heck, they tried to leave before I could shake their hands).
Sure their audience was only my dad and me, but in one gesture of compassion, they made that real impact I had been fearing was impossible from an individual. They showed undeserved grace and affected me in the best way possible.
Fast forward again to this morning. I'm at the long-awaited "official" launch of the Village Church's Fort Worth campus. Matt's sermon focused around the Great Commission text which ends with maybe the most comforting sentence a believer could read:
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
This reminds me of another wonderful spot of solace found in John:
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
My blind spot throughout the week was in my forgetfulness of humanity's brokenness. We are - I am - irreparably damaged. This life will always give us troubles and it won't distribute them in any logical or fair way.
Some of us will be Trayvon's mother and lose our son in the most tragic of ways.
Some of us will reach the pinnacle of worldly success, but be unable to overcome a deadly addiction.
Some of us will have to deal with far less.
So maybe instead of automatically distrusting those different than me (for any reason) I can dig deeper and get to know their background and where they come from as a fellow human being. The more love - the more grace - we show those around us, just like Walter and Jose did for me, the better we all can overcome and look past the world to bigger and greater things (pro tip: Jesus).
To hoping that any of my future classmates who read this understand that you can be a Christian and a serious theatre artist too,
