i suppose everyone has their own definition of what life as a roller coaster looks like. so here's mine. 

may 1 - may 10 : haiti

may 20 - 25 : home in NC

june 1 - june 9 : rwanda

july : places that shall remain unnamed until i am certain they will be visited

freshest in my mind is home. it occurred to me today how beautiful it is that my trip home was sandwiched between two rather intense overseas escapades. it's not like i'm chilling in europe for a week. 

(actually, side note, i get to spend the day in amsterdam on the way to rwanda. so excited.)

thoughts back are reflections. thoughts forward are perceptions. you need time to process both. home was a lovely place for that... quality conversation and time spent with each member of my family, and a good number of friends. and i have this week, semi low-key in seattle, to do laundry, make passport copies, eat normal food, sleep, charge my gear, make travel playlists, exercise, and essentially live like a normal human being before catapulting my body a million miles an hour through the air in a winged metal tube, continent hopping until i reach a place i've never been to do a story i never imagined. 

the weekend at home was full of bike rides, motorized and non, thunderstorms, more food than i thought i could fit inside me, presents, snuggling, youtube videos, parties, warm weather, prayer, nertz, being outside, dresses, excellent conversation, and lots of love. just what i needed. despite all the travel, i've felt extra full of energy this week. 

REFLECTIONS: HAITI

there's too much to say. it wasn't sad. it wasn't shocking. it was everything i remember, except port-au-prince was worse and leogane was better. so beyond that, here's some photos. you've seen the pain, the destruction, the ugliness enough. i want you to know that haiti is beautiful. beautiful beyond imagination. and these hills remain one of my favorite places in the world.

and two notes: 

the craziest part: 4.4 earthquake the 3rd day we were there. mom and i were on the second floor of a concrete church and i was lying on a bench with my eyes closed. when i felt the shaking start, i thought it was someone who snuck up behind me and was shaking the bench. i opened my eyes and mom's were wide — "that was an earthquake. we have to get out." and just like that it was over. we heard later that more buildings fell in the city and a few more people died. 

the best part: i have two. 

1. i spent my 24th birthday at the orphanage in leogane:

 

2. do you see this beautiful man? he may be the most beautiful man i've ever seen. his name is dubreas sereme and he lives on the backside of a hill in rural leogane. you'd never know his house was there unless you were looking for it, or happened to fall over the hill on top of it. the kids took me up into the hills to find mangos, and we ate from his tree. i didn't know it was his, and when i heard him coming up the hill to meet us, i thought he might be angry. instead he walked straight up to me with his arms full of mangos — 10 or 15 — and dumped them all in my lap. he was so generous, giving the best and the most of what he had. i didn't have my camera with me, so the next day, my birthday, we went back to find him because i needed a portrait of this man. we found him sitting outside his house, braiding rope for his goats. it took me a while to work up the nerve to take his picture... i don't know what i was so nervous about, but i finally did and showed it to him on the back (praise the lord for digital). when he saw it he said, "oh, bel bagaye," which means, "oh that's a beautiful thing." i wondered if he'd ever seen a photo of himself. 

 

 

PERCEPTIONS: RWANDA

at the moment, i'm feeling a little overwhelmed with packing, cleaning my house, making sure i'm taking all the right gear, paying my bills, etc. compounding the hectic nature of preparing to leave the country is the fact that i don't have internet at home for whatever reason. fortunately, there's the sweetest little coffee shop across the street that has it for free, so long as i get some tea, etc. so here i am, running my last errands on the interwebs before i leave the country.

anyhow. i've been reading a lot about rwanda, but it's difficult to find anything to read that's not about the genocide. those who have been there before are sometimes a better resource than anything published, and over and over i keep hearing how beautiful it is. the land of a thousand hills. 

it's hard to say what i'm thinking or feeling at the moment. under the rush of stuff to get done, there's a lot happening in my head and heart. i'm not sure if i know how to put that in words yet. i'm sure i'll have much more to say when i come home. 

i've never visited this great, busy, beautiful, diverse continent of africa. a new adventure. 

also stopping over in amsterdam on the way there, as we have a 12 hour layover and i'm not trying to stay in the airport that whole time. have never been to this great city either, so i'm excited for that. this gets me excited: 

anyhow. that's life right now. this blog brought to you by cafe ladro, a few hours of sleep, jared gourevitch, mamma metty, dubreas sereme, and world vision usa. it was also written over the course of this entire week, as my internet has been patchy (as i mentioned), so forgive the truncation. the roller coaster, remember? 

xoxo, back soon. 

i'm fascinated by missionary kids. not modern ones, not ones i've grown up with, but people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s whose parents decided to uproot their family and plant them abroad. the kids didn't have any say in that. and now they are adults, and its so interesting to see who they are and what they've become.

i work and meet a lot of these grown up missionary kids at world vision. my boss's parents were missionaries in northern india, essentially in the himalayas. i met a woman the other day who went to the high school in port-au-prince where my mom taught in the 80s. one of my mom's friends from her time in haiti was himself a missionary kid, with a dutch father and a swiss mother, who grew up in indonesia until going to boarding school in switzerland. i don't think the term "third culture kid" even applies to people like this. are there any books written on people who grew up like this?

been thinking about jesus a lot lately. well, yes, of course i have. but i'm talking about the sad swedish jesus that is the mainline image most of the world has of him. how ridiculous is this? truly.



i mean, props to the renaissance and all (rembrandt, you changed the way we think), but you guys really messed it up here. in my modern life, with real people i can see and touch, i don't gravitate towards sad people. if you walked around wearing one of these expressions all the time, i probably wouldn't be your friend.

while i think jesus, as a human, did experience much sadness, i think he was also full of joy. if this is true, maybe the painters just caught him on his PMS days.

anyhow.

i think i keep expecting life to get boring. to settle, to get less scary or intimidating or that i'll coast into another comfort zone and stay there for a while. i'm thankful that that hasn't happened.

one of my new year's resolutions, which i made rather tounge-in-cheek, was to "continue to do things that scare me." it's now april, and that continues to be the case. some of it is self-inflicted, some not, but i don't remember what a comfort zone feels like anymore. honestly, it sits just fine with me. if i can learn now to overrule the fear that comes when i try something new or i get thrown a curve ball, i won't have to struggle to apply the principles when i have other people in my life to take care of, when every decision i make matters so much more because it's not just me anymore.

for example: tomorrow is my last official day on my current contract at world vision. several weeks ago, while i even still had time to find other employment, i had minor meltdowns in my cubicle multiple times a week. i felt frantic and completely out of control. "what am i going to do?" who knows what the real fear is, but it was comprised of 1) i won't be taken care of, 2) i'll be a failure to everyone around me, and 3) i will have to accept defeat by leaving seattle and world vision and return to NC broken because i couldn't follow through with my dream. regarding the first, my imagination is so ridiculous that i had visions of myself as a bag lady feeding the pigeons on the streets of seattle in the rain. pathetic.

i'm going to preface this by saying that i think the new yorker is the most pretentious piece of publication of all time and those who read it regularly probably have a steady diet of grapefruit, tofu, and mojitos and spend their days at bridge clubs espousing the works of moliere (is it too late to say "no offense" to those of you who read it?). but, i confess, i was reading it a few days ago and came across this short story. it's rather long, and not entirely applicable to my situation, but this resonated with me:

"He feels like a man who has fallen asleep at the wheel and has awakened to find his car lurching off a cliff. He has applied the brake, he has swung the wheel to the side, he has offered up a silent prayer, but it is too soon to see whether he has done these things in time. He can only wait for the next moment to come, and hope as hard as he can." -Ben Loory, "The TV"

that's where i felt i was. i had done all i could do; the only thing left was to hope as hard as i could. and the meltdowns subsided and gradually faded away, as they always do, and i'm left to the last second still not knowing what will happen... but being either completely indifferent to it, or totally at peace (depending on the day, i think).

back to jesus again (not the sad swedish one, but the swarthy happy arab one)... i've known the story of peter walking out to meet jesus on a stormy lake my whole life, but it had been a long time since i'd read it. if you care to read it yourself, its in matthew 14. what i found interesting about it though was that jesus didn't tell peter to come out and meet him on the water, peter asked jesus to ask him to come out there. and jesus did, right away. its as if he was waiting for peter to initiate, and gladly responded when he did. and even when peter, who got himself into a laws-of-nature-defying situation in the first place, began to sink in the water (as all good humans should), jesus immediately pulled him out. the word immediately is used 3 times in that short section of scripture. also interesting.

doing these things that scare me is a way of life that i don't think i'll be giving up for a while. i saw a quote somewhere the other day from dorothy thompson (whoever she is) that goes, "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." and it resonated with me: a resounding NO. it couldn't be more false! if i stop being afraid, that means i'm doing things that are logical, possible, attainable, easy. if i'm afraid of whatever is coming next, it means that its too big for me to do on my own, which means its more likely the right thing than the thing that is easily grasped because i'm unwilling to reach higher.

so the short story is that april 18 is the day i've been dreading for months, because its the last official day of my contract. but i have a feeling that tomorrow is bringing good news.

whatever the case, life is beautiful and i am in love with it all the more in the springtime.

Zach + Jenny from Abby Metty on Vimeo.

(speaking of doing things that scare you, i'm reading this book right now and it scares the CHEESE out of me. i don't know if i'll ever do something THIS extreme, but i like reading about those who do) >>

things in my brain right now:

1. i don't understand taxes. how to do them, what the money goes for, how much i owe, how to even fill out the forms.
2. world vision loves acronyms. and when people send me emails with a lot of letters like ADP, 30HF, OVC etc etc i'm more inclined to think they are new kinds of sunscreen. it's all part of the learning curve.
3. waterfront running at sunset... west coast, i love you.
4. trans-siberian railway.
5. buying a gun so that my luggage will never be lost again.
6. how lists are such a useful way to catalogue life and remember where you were when you look back on them later (examples: "life goals" from age 12, circa 1998, and "qualities to find in a husband" from age 16, circa 2002. quality lists, both).
7. how much i love getting mail. real mail, not email. thanks, kate.
8. china. white jade. claire de lune. VPs. being in motion. rain. editing myself. melancholy.
9. vampire weekend.
10. skis on my feet tomorrow. happy happy happy.
11. "that's what boys were made to do. throw rocks in the water." -mom



12. lights will guide you home and ignite your bones. i'm flying east into the sunrise, home.
13. how sometimes the air in the evening in family neighborhoods smells like pot-roast and well-groomed lawns.
14. i love living by the water and the mountains. it does my soul good.




(both views from my bedroom window. not kidding.)

15. haiti.
16. jon is back from haiti/yucatan/cuba/pirate-infested waters. my family is awesome.
17. foods i didn't like as a kid: peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly, chocolate cake, pizza, bananas. what kind of kid was i!?
18. regina spektor and the beach.
19. abby's BFA.
20. the imminent arrival of and reunion with jessa.
21. how much more exciting life is when you don't have a padded bank account.
22. fear is an enemy. but i will win.
23. i'm 23. its the time of my life. love it.

i apologize in advance for the rambling nature of the following blog. it is a result of my fragmented brain, which has been trained for several years (not the entirety of my life, or at least i like to think not) to hop between bits of information, processing many things at once, juggling them all in the gray matter of my membranes and realizing at every 15th synapse fire the connectedness of them all.

there's a glut. we are bombarded. we need headspace.

i took a little headspace this week, didn't check any sort of social networkingness at all, and i didn't miss it. when i logged back on today, i found myself thinking more than once, "the internet is weird." i kept seeing all these names of "friends" whose names i couldn't remember at all... tell me again why we are facebook friends? i also feel like i lost some brain cells somewhere along the way after a return to this strange cyber society... this could also partially be due to 4 weeks of holiday, filled with plenty of bad food, ridiculous movies, high blood pressure card games, and general hilarity and love and snuggling. brilliant.







another part of the headspace was fasting. i didn't realize how much i would enjoy it. how fun can not eating be? maybe fun isn't the right word, but the definitive word of the week was clarity. i felt clean; body, soul, and spirit. i can't think of a better way to begin a new year. a new decade.

it focused my mind and heart on what's necessary, eliminating the unnecessary.

what i'm finding, what i've been finding for several months now, is the good news. growing up in church, it's easy to lose sight of what brought you there in the first place. your parents are christians, so you're pretty much born a christian, right? it's in your genes. and what i'm realizing is this:

step 1: i am fundamentally broken.
step 2: there's no way in hell i can save myself from this brokenness, no hope of being a "good person."
step 3: jesus.

this is my very crude explanation of the gospel, but again, clarity... the simplicity and beauty of it is dawning more and more day by day.

i am broken, yet i am meant to be with jesus. i can't make this happen. he specializes in rescuing.
i am not rescued once, but he saves me from myself and redeems my malignancy day by day. it never ends.

it's a truth you have to get for yourself, because i could go on all day about how incredible this is, but you won't understand until it dawns in your heart.

meanwhile, the doubts, the frustrations, the uncertainty remains. there's no shame in that, because he is patient. i've always been able to relate to this song, and any song that is honest about the conflict between seeing and not seeing, the difficulty in knowing this very strange and wonderful truth.

other things that emerged from time getting headspace and clarity:

i need two things to stay sane each day: nature and books.
reflections on 2009 and thoughts for 2010.
2009:
inauguration / special olympics / graduation / cross-country relocation / oregonian / seattle / world vision
2010:
lots of questions marks. lots of thoughts to write on paper and not in bloggage. question marks equal uncertainty but do not equal anxiety. that might have been the biggest takeaway from 2009. all i know for now is that i'm committed to staying in seattle for a few more months, and then we shall see where necessity, relationships, life, and jesus take me. hopefully it's still here.

momma is going to haiti for a week tomorrow. she and dad began a story a quarter century ago, and the journey still isn't over. i'm amazed at how it's continued, how it's involved each member of our family and drawn in so many other lives. it's the kind of story that begins "long long ago in a land far far away" and has plenty of long slumbers and dragons and beautiful faces and wicked rulers and sons of kings in it. it's a good one. i'm glad to be part of it.

i'm living in a new place in seattle... i have no complaints about looking out my window and seeing ferries crossing the sound at night and the olympic mountains during the day.

2010. this is going to be good.



.

something else i'm learning: everyone starts small.

i found this great article about a guy who has a super successful coffee business in austin (a place that i'm beginning to realize is probably AWESOME and i would love... why have i not been here yet?), and i love how he tells the beginning of his story... the part where he dropped out of the naval academy, lived in a shed and worked odd jobs while he pursued his dream.

i love to hear the beginning of things... how people knew what they loved to do, and knew what they might want the end result to look like, but didn't really know how to get there. they just sort of started feeling it out. unless your last name is hilton or kennedy, i think it's kind of hard to have a clear path laid out for how you'll succeed... or if you will. even then, i sure wouldn't trade my family name for either of those.

anyhow, the beginning makes the end better.

there's no reason to despair that i have no furniture, am not making a salary, don't know if i'll have a job in the spring, and am living off the kindness of strangers and friends. i'm living in a city i love, surrounded by people i enjoy more and more each time i see them, and pursuing this dream to tell stories.

and you can't tell a great story unless you live a great story, right?

this has been a thoroughly excellent week.

nothing grand to report, just that my heart is full.

hope yours has been just as lovely.

i read somewhere once that "seattle" is an indian word that translates to "sea elf," but i really can't remember where i saw that. you'll have to take my (very probably errant) word on that.

anyway, i live here now. i'm staying with old family friends for a few months... they've just moved here from scotland with their 4 kids, and they are a blast. here are scottish words and phrases i'm learning from them:

bairn (children)
trousers (what elise calls jeans)
wee (c'mon... you know this)
bletherer (chatterbox)
out of sorts (just funny when elise uses it to describe her play makeup)
shame (instead of, "too bad")
den (base, when you're playing tag)

and the kids lift their voices at the end of a question in an accent that is decidedly un-american. its very cute.

this is my new tiny sister elise. i call her tiny instead of little because she is. she's tiny. and adorable, and talks a lot. my first morning here, she opened my door at 7:15 and, wriggling next to my bed, said "good MORNING abby! i always run down when we have guests and wake them up before mommy and daddy get up!" she then got in bed with me and talked and talked and talked. when she stopped for breath, she said, "you're a CHATTERBOX!" um....



when i'm not applying lipstick, coloring my little pony pictures, or drawing ice cream castles, i'm helplessly wandering around seattle getting lost, because my GPS seems to be getting senile. i swear, she never knows how to get me anywhere. i need to get my exploring done because next week i start at world vision in the photo/video departments, which i'm so excited about i could run around with jazz hands all day.

so let me just tie all the loose ends together and close this blog by saying, there are two things i really want in life:



failing that, i will settle for a gigantic library (though if there is a way to put one in a treehouse, that would be optimal).



who's with me? let's build a treehouse.

i never thought i'd become a tattoo artist and run a health clinic in the same day.

but sunday, that's just what i did. i volunteered at the "Step Into Africa" exhibit put on by World Vision at the puyallup fair in washington. it's similar to WV's AIDS Experience (which, by the way, travels, so you can see it somewhere close to you), where visitors walk through rooms set up like african homes and villages, and can perform tasks that show them what life is like for millions of children in africa. at the exhibit on sunday, visitors came in and received a passport and folder with a child in need of sponsorship and filled out information about the kids along the way. visitors carried oil cans and other plastic vessels filled with water, planted seeds, learned words in swahili, and lay on cots beneath mosquito nets. which is where i came in.

my job was to slap hundreds of temporary tattoos of mosquitos on children (and some adults) while telling them about malaria and how it kills more children than HIV/AIDS in africa. after four hours, i grew weary of my spiel, but it went something like this:

"i'm giving you a mosquito tattoo because mosquitoes carry a yucky disease called malaria that kills lots of kids in africa every year, more than even AIDS. but there's a really easy way they can stay safe... do you see that mosquito net over that cot in there? if kids sleep under those the mosquitoes can't get to them and they can't get stung and they can't get sick. you can get two nets for $6 and four kids can sleep under that and stay safe!"

then i'd hand their parents the info about how to donate $6, sometimes while asking the kids, "how much do you get for allowance? four dollars a week? wow! you could buy a net and help save two kids' lives!"

and, deep though that is for a 7-year old, lots of eyes would light up... "i heard about malaria at school! we raised money for kids with malaria!" "mommy, do you have $6? can we do that?" one girl told me she heard about malaria on animal planet. they seemed to get it. these are kids like them dying because of a mosquito bite. what's annoying in america is life or death in africa.

and i posted this oh-so-realistic picture yesterday that had some of you fooled because you believed that i actually harbored and killed a mosquito this large on my arm. no, but it's a reminder of what's more than skin deep in africa.

here's how you can give $6 to get 2 nets (or link here to learn more):
text BEDNET to 467467... you'll get a confirmation text and then a phone call


 

i waited all day for a kid to ask me to put one on his forehead. then i scored.

there were a few sour spots in the day... people always have interesting ideas about africa. one lady came up to me and said that she read somewhere that african health clinics run by baptists wash and reuse sterile gloves. "are you affiliated with them?" she asked suspiciously. "i saw actual picture photos of these reused gloves in a bin with a sign written in AMERICAN that said they were taking used glove donations." i really didn't know how to respond to this, so i just turned to the next kid... "i'm giving you a mosquito tattoo because mosquitoes carry a yucky disease called malaria..." she eventually left.

another woman, a grandmother, who's daughter and grandchild were interested in the life-saving ability of the nets, said to me behind her hand with a wink and a nod, "i already sponsor a child, so i think i'm good." as if $6 more would break her bank.

maybe i'm being too judgmental. but i was surprised by the widespread health concern about malaria in africa and how simple it is to combat. we're not fighting AIDS here. we're not spending millions to find the cure to a horrible disease. we're giving kids nets to sleep under safe from the venomous mouths of mosquitoes.

how much more simple could it be?