My body is holding on to memories. Somebody should sell memory nets. They’d be like fish nets, but with tinier holes. Maybe they’d be fuschia, too, but only because I can’t think of a better color right now.
My body is holding on to music. It’s everywhere and in everything I see. When the cars race past me on the highway, I feel my body responding with a song inside me. And maybe it’s the best way to memorize songs - to absorb each note until my very muscles can replicate it at will.
My body is holding on to you. There you are, with your hand reaching out for me and I, uncertain, not really moving away (or nearer). You, and those little puffs of breath I hear when you sleep because I can’t sleep with all the confusion around us. My body is holding on to yours, in the most literal and vivid way possible. Stop holding me in with yours when you’re pushing me away with your (stupid) words.
My body is holding on to smells. Lemons squeezed by little hands. The ocean at noon, with the sun above us, and the sand baking with us on it. That living room. My pillow. My niece’s hair. Freshly-ground pepper. His lips. Laundry, still warm from the dryer. Bosc pears. Sharp cheddar cheese. Chicken broth boiling.
My body holds on to all of these things, but they slip away anyway. And I let them, and I turn to walk away, but with a sharp command to myself not to look back.
One whole step away from you, from that memory, from that song, from that haunting smell. I will one small foot over another, until the roads blur together in a grayish-brown smear.
One foot over another, until I hear the successive thuds of my running steps. And even then I feel every cell in my body reaching out for the things I’m fleeing from.
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Find out more about TRUTH THURSDAYS here. “We are all carrying so many things in our life, and inside ourselves… Where do you place the questions you carry? The sadness and the epiphanies? The quiet worries? Where can you put down the truth, as messy and new and raw as it sometimes feel?” (Sabrina Ward Harrison)
Growing up, I’ve heard a lot of interpretations about the parable of the prodigal son. How Jesus used the prodigal son to exemplify us sinners - wasting away grace, living in sin when we have an inheritance in God, our God’s joy when we return to Him, mercy, lovingkindness, etc. But if there’s anything that has tied together all those interpretations I’ve heard, it’s that this parable will always be an awesome, knee-weakening story of grace.
Lately, though, I’ve been wondering how the prodigal son’s brother felt the day after the feast. It mustn’t have been easy for him.
In many ways, I realize that some Christians (and by some, maybe I mean “me”) have the tendency to be like the prodigal’s brother. There they are, dutifully working away in the fields of their Father. They show up every sunday, they’re active in almost every possible committee or group, they attend the Bible studies, the prayer meetings, and they write everything down in their journal for reference.
Then the prodigals return.
Do we throw a party? Of course not. We test those prodigals. Are they really in earnest? Have they really changed? Um, no, you can’t really lead worship yet. Maybe talk to the pastor, right? Oh, but it’s great that you’ve finally realized all that.
We’ve become jaded. How many times have we seen people stumble and fall, get back up, and then stumble again on the very same problem? We know what it feels like to worry and be anxious for the brothers and sisters we have through faith. Especially when they’re screwing up.
And my theory is that we get jaded jaded because we’ve been focusing on the wrong things. We see the sinner, not the mercy extended to that sinner. We see the sins, not the grace at work in the sinner.
I’m not really sure why I’m talking about this. To be honest, I want to talk to you about grace and feeling like being in a wilderness despite the abundance surrounding me. There are many ways that God has been blessing me through this trip, and I am thoroughly and wholly overwhelmed that I just have no idea where to start. I want to write down the things I’m thankful for each day, but I end up throwing up my hands in surrender and say, “EVERYTHING! EVERY. LITTLE. THING. Every minute, every second, every drop of rain, each molecule of the breeze around me, everything, Abba.”
So maybe I need to start here, because this is where the story of my American Adventure starts. Right here, at this realization that I, the prodigal, have been welcomed to the fold without questioning look or doubt by my spiritual family. I would have been happy with just a warm hug and that humbling, “welcome back, daughter.” But no, God had to bless me with the fulfillment of dreams I never dared speak of before.
I’ll branch out from here, and I hope you won’t mind if I occasionally stutter through my stories. Every day is just an awesome outpouring of grace, and the truth is, it leaves me speechless.
The most surprising thing about Texas is how fantastic it is, to the point of being magical.
I come from a country that would easily fit inside the entire state, twice over. Every day, I look out and see nothing but land. Miles and miles of endless land. I drink it all in like a thirsty woman, humbled with this chance to see all this.
I’m glad that I went here in spring. There are splotches of wildflowers on the side of the road, like somebody accidentally tipped over some colors on the green. It makes for the most charming surprise.
The people here are pathologically nice. I’m learning to be careful when it comes to expressing my “I-want’s,” because sometimes, I just have to wonder about something out loud, and then they’ll get it for me.
A Nigerian man I met last Sunday told me a funny story about the difference between Dallas and New York. He used to drive cabs around Dallas. One night, he picked up three men from a conference, and the man in the middle said, “Get me outta here! I can’t stand this place anymore. If somebody says, ‘you come back y’all, ya’hear,’ one more time, I’ll scream. Come on, yell at me! I can’t believe nobody yells in this place.”
They do make everything big here in Texas. I haven’t been able to finish a meal since I first got here, and the only time I ate anything other than meat was when my cousin-in-law made homecooked Southern food for me. Even the flowers are huge. There are magnolias, too, in full, glorious bloom. Each flower is as big as my face, a closed bloom sometimes thicker than my fist. They’re like monster sampaguitas. Every time I see one, I am reminded of how far away I am from home.
I’m gonna miss Texas. I’ll miss the way people can say “y’all” as if it was one whole, musical word and not really two. For all its vastness, it really is such a small town.
“Jesus, if you are in the train, please go to the back to join your party.”
My uncle and I were riding an express from Stamford, Connecticut to New York. It was a little after three in the afternoon, and it was raining. It was also freezing. That morning, it was ranging around 5 degrees Celsius (I still can’t think in Fahrenheit). I had a thick jacket, and was wearing a new pair of brown Chucks, bought that morning from the Stamford mall. It was a tiny mall downtown, half of which seemed to be Barnes and Noble. My jeans felt like ice.
“Jesus, if you are in the train, please go to the back to join your party.”
Wouldn’t it be funny, I told my uncle, if Jesus really was here. He laughed, these people would freak, he said.
“Jesús, si usted está en el tren, va a la posteriora por favor. Sus amigos le están esperando.”
I have always made it a point to visit cities where I couldn’t understand a thing (i.e. Cebu, Hongkong, Singapore, Bangkok). It was my first day in the U.S., and I still felt unnerved hearing people talk in English around me.
I thought that a trip to New York would mean finally going to a city where I wouldn’t need subtitles.
I thought wrong.
So here I am in the transit lounge of the Vancouver International Airport. Here, it’s 12:05PM, 14 degrees Celsius outside. At home, it’s 3AM, probably around 28 degrees Celsius (if they’re lucky).
I’ve gone beyond jetlag. Don’t ask me what day or time it is, I lost sense of time somewhere after Hongkong, when I woke up and I saw that frost was forming outside our window. You know, those people back in the medieval times have probably got it right when they declared that the world was flat. If we knew how confusing it would be to have several dozen different time lines, nobody would’ve “discovered” new lands and brought home the natives to serve as slaves.
However, I don’t mind the confusion so much as the sitting. I have sat through ten thousand kilometers (with a slight detour around the Arctic Cap) and I can feel it. I’ve been sitting down so long my ass has turned in on itself. Well, it feels like it.
I wish I can walk around, look at this Vancouver place a bit (I remember my father waxing poetic about this city). I can see snow-capped mountains from where I’m sitting (right next to the giant windows looking out over the tarmac), and furry trees in several varying shades of green and brown.
It’s raining. Funny how it’s raining everywhere I go - I’ve been to three cities in the past twelve hours, and the rain is following me. So is noon; It was a little before noon when I left Manila, a little after noon when I got to Hongkong, and it is now noontime here in Vancouver.
I thought I would be overwhelmed by the Caucasians (sorry, my barrio mindset is coming out), but instead I am overwhelmed by Indians. Yes, Anjie, Indians. I didn’t know there were so many Indians here in Canada. Or maybe just here at the airport anyway.
