Ecuador. 2016.

“When I have lost myself,
I hear the old season of me rejoice.
How will you live now –
soul fresh,
soul anew? “
– S. Sarkisyan

I went back to Ecuador as an escape. I was running from pain, desperate to find healing anywhere I could. So I jumped around the States then onto Latin America. My thought was ‘this country healed me once, maybe it can do it again.’ My ticket was for a little over 2 weeks. I figured I’d get some relief and then be on to the next thing. But strangely, beautifully, my feet were being led in a way that even I didn’t realize.

I fell in love with people.
I fell back in love with the country that has been so intricately involved in my hearts journey over the last four years.
I found myself again.

Slowly. So slowly. And I fell in love with two people in particular who said, ‘maybe you should change your plane ticket. Maybe you should stay…’

And so I did. Almost 2 months in total. I moved into a house of Americas and let myself feel…a lot. And grieve. And laugh. And laugh until I cried. And I found myself again. So many moments I would hear the soft voice of the Spirit simply say, ‘there she is.’

And there I was. Being mended by love. And beauty. And community. And laughter.

I sat at a coffee shop one foggy afternoon and decided,
‘some people are worth jumping an ocean for. Some people are worth throwing your life into theirs, and moving states and countries and time zones, just to have a season of intimacy with them.’

So I booked another plane ticket.
Back to Ecuador in January until May 2016.

I did not see myself moving back to the country that I have loved so deeply. I didn’t see any of this coming but the older I get, the more wounds and healing I have lived and worked through, the more I realize that when you find people who make you make sense to yourself, who bring life and love and beauty into every detail of your world, you put it all on the line for that. It’s easy to say that relationships really are the most important thing in life, but to live it is risky, and terrifying, and expensive (at times) and quite inconvenient. But at the end of my life, I want to say I put it all on the line, I risked, I ran into loving arms, I spent my savings on people. On relationships. On profoundly deep friendships that heal you and grow you and help you bloom.

I’m in Minneapolis right now in that exact same frame of mind. I don’t have adult plans. I don’t have an impressive schedule for when I’m here or a long to-do list. I don’t have what most people want to hear in terms of what I should be doing, or could be doing. I’m here to invest deeply in the people I love the most. I’m willing to jump on planes last minute to see faces and listen to hearts that make my soul alive. I’m on a pilgrimage of learning to lay down my plans, my reputation, my ‘how it should look’, for the people who have stayed through the darkness, who have taught me what light in the flesh looks like.

We all want to feel like someone loves us enough to jump an ocean or drop the cash for some quality time with our inner most being. I used to just think ‘all my friends are in different places. There’s nothing I can do about that’ And that was it. But I’m dedicated, in this season, to getting to them however I can. Relationship, at the end of the day, are hands down, the most beautiful thing I have ever found.

So here’s to pouring a life out on love. To letting people love you back to life. To letting your feet be led in directions you would have never in a million years imagined.

Here’s to risk.
To hope.
And to be able to dream again with breathtakingly beautiful humans.

Speak, Even When Your Voice is Shaking

I was walking with my team through the back alleys and shady little corners in the red light district of Quito. We stopped to talk to a young girl standing alone in a dark side street who claimed she was 20 but looked much younger than that. We’ll call her B.

B was very quiet, very shy, very beautiful and very reserved; obviously unsure of us or our intentions. She held her small body, shivering in the cold night. Her eyes were kind, though nervous, as she looked quickly back and forth between us all. To be honest, sometimes the introvert in me panics a little when confronted with another introvert. The girls who are loud and outgoing and wild are so much easier to talk to – they require less, on the spot, from me and that’s easier. They talk and talk and talk, and it gives me space to tap into the right words to say. But easier isn’t always good. Sometimes being on the spot is exactly what you need in order to actually take a risk.

I knew it was time to pull on Jesus, or this opportunity to speak over this young, fragile life would be missed. And I didn’t want to miss it. Her eyes were too full of a longing for love that is hard to even explain.

I started speaking the truth that I know in my bones; the truth that Jesus loves her exactly where she is, for exactly who she is. He isn’t ashamed or angry with her. He isn’t distant or uninterested in her. He loves, with all He is, for all she is.

I took a leap of faith and spoke out things I felt in my spirit to be true about her and her life, though I did not know for certain. They were things I shouldn’t know about a stranger. Many people call this ‘words of knowledge’- attaining knowledge of someone’s life or a situation without a logical explanation for gaining that insight. It is a way that the Holy Spirit communicates many times, whispering truth into my spirit for another person. I spoke those things out to her, things she only kept hidden in her soul, not telling the world around her. Her fears, her struggle with certain things about herself, and what God is actually saying about it all. As I spoke them out, she started laughing and covering her face in astonishment, her eyes filling with tears and then laughing again in amazement that someone knew. Someone saw. Someone called out who she is deep down. It broke the timidity off her, it broke her distance and reserved being. She became alive. Her eyes settled and light poured from her face.

And do you know why she became alive? Because she was seen. Past the exterior, past the facade that girls like her are taught to perfect (maybe we’re all taught to perfect), past the hurt and shame and guilt; her soul, her beauty, her truth was seen. Her wrestling, her questions, her confusion were seen – and they weren’t rejected, they weren’t shamed.  They were calmed.

Stepping outside of comfort zones can be scary – terrifying actually. What if we say the wrong thing? What if we look stupid? What if we’re rejected? What if we fail? What….what if?

I’m there with you.

There have been so many times I’ve known I should step out in faith and haven’t. I kept my mouth closed, I kept walking. I didn’t feel like risking. I didn’t want to possibly fail. Deep down, I didn’t trust that I heard from God. So I turned myself away from His voice. And you know what? Those are the moments I look back on in life and regret the most. They’ll still happen; we’re all human and risk isn’t always the first choice for a fun activity. But it’s necessary. What if I hadn’t opened my mouth? What if I had stayed safe in that moment and just kept it surface and shallow and kept walking? She wouldn’t have gotten that moment, that face-to-face with her God. She wouldn’t have been seen. The risk to step out is so worth it; to see someone standing in front of you when they fully realize that God sees them. God understands the cries of their heart. God listens to the confusion inside of them. I don’t want to live depriving someone else of an encounter with the King of Glory, the King of Love.

Each of us so profoundly longs to be known, and that’s the utter beauty of God. He knows us, He sees us perfectly, and He longs to use us to speak worth and truth and vulnerability to each other. It’s risky to be vulnerable. It always is, whether you are standing in front of a prostitute telling her things she hasn’t ever told anyone else, or if you are sitting across from your friend opening your soul and pain and joy, or even sharing your vulnerability with God, hoping He doesn’t reject or judge in that moment. It’s all risky. It’s all scary. It’s always possible to fail. But try we must, risk we must, put ourselves on the line (over and over and over again) for the sake of love, for the sake of knowing and being known.

(This song has been on repeat in my room lately. I want in over my head. Lets live a life in over our heads. Drowning in the goodness and beauty of God.)

The Little People of Ambato

“Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcasts weep” – Brennan Manning

Around 8 years ago my co-workers sister in-law, Belen, was studying to get her degree in medicine. She had to spend a year in a small village in the mountains four hours from Quito. During her time there, she found a little family of very special people. There were 5 men, and 2 women. All related (either brothers and sisters or cousins), all miniature and all at various levels of mental retardation. The smallest hitting around 3 feet tall, the tallest, maybe 5 feet tall, all with incredibly small bone structures and features. From what we know, they were all abandoned in that place years and years ago, around the age of 10 (being the oldest) and from than on, they somehow raised themselves in a little broken down hut. We have no idea how they survived through the years, alone and so very vulnerable. After Belen found them she visited them a few months later and found one had died. So when we started seeing them six were left- four boys, and two girls~ Zoilita, Margarita, Celcio, Pedro, Alberto and Anibal. She contacted Sabri and Mela Toledo (my beautiful coworkers) and they went and met the people who we have come to call, The Little People of Ambato. The Toledo’s fell in love with them and began bringing people with them to help take care of them. They had never learned hygiene or how to take care of themselves so our team began bathing them, shaving them, feeding them, clipping their toenails, giving them haircuts, putting in lice shampoo, and cleaning their home.

The government had come in and built them a small house, but never taught them how to use it – the government’s idea of help was just this little house, not real care or concern. So it was filled with filth and grime and the people didn’t know how to use the bathroom, shower or refrigerator. So the Toledo’s kind of adopted them, 5 years ago, going every few months to be with them, and help them. Right now, three are higher functioning, able to do things like make basic food and semi communicate to us. The other three are very very low functioning, unable to speak Spanish (they speak gibberish), or bathe or do anything else to take care of themselves– right now two are unable to even walk. Apparently one, Celcio, who is now extremely unable to take care of himself, use to be the most put together, but after a rare mixture of a bone disease and Parkinson’s, his aging process accelerated rapidly. Now he cannot even move, walk or speak.

We found out both women had bore children as the result of rape. They both have daughters. One lives in Quito and never ever visits. She has abandoned her mother and we have only met her once, where she wouldn’t tell us anything that happened. It wasn’t until semi recently that we even found out she existed. The other daughter, our team met a while back – we hadn’t known she existed either. But apparently she showed up when we started bringing clothes and food to the little people. She would come and take it all. She was also using them to get money from the government. Our team confronted her and basically said in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t stop taking their money, and didn’t come help them clean their house and make sure they were okay once in a while we would get the authorities involved. She has been visiting more frequently, but we still see very little change in their living conditions and health. We believe them to be between 65-85 years old, though no one knows for sure. It is so hard to tell since the conditions they live in are so horrible, and their health is deteriorating daily.

Many times when I go, I wont have seen them for weeks (and sometimes months… once, it was 8 months) and they are in the exact same clothes we left them in. They do not use the bathroom; they simply go in their clothing and soil themselves. The littlest, most mentally handicap one, refuses to wear shoes, so her feet are covered in scars and cuts. They all crawling with lice and live in their own feces, most have horrific pain in their bodies and more diseases than we know what to do with yet, I have never, in my 26 years on the planet met such joy filled people. They laugh uproariously, clap, sing, and mimic every move we make. If you smile at them, or talk to them, they will smile back and try their best to talk back. They give love freely; to me, they embody Jesus. Never looking for what they can gain, always simply giving all the love they have. Pedrito, the one I am closest to, will look at me like I’m the most beautiful creature on the planet, he will stoke my face and hold my hands in his, gently, with his shaky little arthritis hands, stroke my hands. Giving me every ounce of love he can muster.

Currently we are trying to get them ongoing medical help; their condition has worsened dramatically in the two years I have known them. It is a delicate process and painstakingly difficult right now but we are dedicated to bringing justice to their little lives – even in they simply die in peace, we want to bring them that peace. We have looked into assisted living but that is not an option at this time. They carry joy, yet behind closed doors, there is much sorrow and pain – and we refuse to stand by and let abuse continue. We have doctors we are working with, trying to find a solution to this. It seems hopeless at times, trying to work around a system, and country that is not our own but we do what we can. We are trying to get teams to go weekly now, instead of monthly because of their horrible condition. They need us, we know their time to go be with Jesus is coming – and we want to be with them in their last moments on earth. They have been rejected by society, no one takes care of them, no one loves them – they are so alone on this planet. We want them to know they are loved, even if it has to be at the end of their lives, every human must know they are loved.

Every person I know, who we introduce to the little people, leave changed. The love they pour out extravagantly and simply, with wreck you. When you walk down the little road to their home, you are overcome with shock in the living conditions. The flies everywhere, the filth, the smell, the extreme poverty yet… love lives there. Love resides in them. They feel love, they feel compassion, they feel grief… they simply feel. And if you are lucky enough to experience those feelings with them, you are a rich person.

(I wrote most of this blog almost 2 years ago, since then we lost Pedrito. Apparently he died quietly in his sleep. We arrived the next day and had a gorgeous, achingly beautiful memorial service for him. As painful as it was to loose him, we are thankful he is finally out of the world of pain and suffering and finally free from the world of injustice around him.)

Miscarried Love Will Be Reborn

“Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.” ~ Anne Lamott

Both in the same year, my father passed away and I ended my deepest romantic relationship yet. I know the statistics of people who fall off the deep end with two major life-altering griefs in the same year, and I don’t want to be one. Depression is easy for me to fall into, and I have already wrestled mightily (and succumbed to it) this summer. I don’t want these two ridiculously painful experiences to define me for years to come. So the only way through them is to feel them. And yes, feeling every moment, sucks.

Four years ago, the first time I got my heart utterly shattered, I knew I had a choice in the moment it all fell apart. I remember laying numb, in a little ball on my kitchen floor and I knew my options clearly: I could either run from it, and push it deep down into the farthest places inside of myself, or I could face it, and feel it. Feel every part, every hellish feeling, every night that I sobbed to sleep, every time I wanted to die, every time I wanted to give up, every time I wanted to numb the pain and drink myself into oblivion or rebound to the next man to fill that void, but didn’t. Actually choose, with the fragmented pieces of myself, to feel it. For as long as it lasted.

And I made a choice.

I would feel it. And god it hurt. For months. But little by little I healed, and stayed true to my own heart. I didn’t turn my emotions off, I didn’t turn my heart off, I didn’t become someone else or a shell of myself. I bloomed. And healed. And found hope again. And got every splintered piece of that heartbreak out of my soul.

Four years later, in the middle of another even worse heartbreak, that choice is being presented to me again. Run, or feel. And I’m still in it, choosing daily to feel, even when everything in me wants to run. I know the only way out is through. So through I go. Through the sleepless nights, through the hopelessness, utter desperation, fear, through the sorrow and pain; through every moment, every wave of grief.  The little voice in my spirit whispering, “ feel feel feel feel feel.”

I refuse to let the world, heartbreak, loss, failure, selfishness and utter pain, make me hardened. I want to walk out on the other side and say, “ I never shut my heart down, I never closed myself off from beauty and yes, from pain, I never gave up on my own soul, even when I thought I was going to die from so much raw pain.”

I don’t think the world, as a whole knows how to handle pain. My answers when people ask aren’t the typical answers. They’re more like, “I’m out with lanterns looking for myself," or  "I’m spending my savings to drink in the flowers and beauty and healing that I have been dying without." Adult answers don’t make sense right now. Job, plan, life; none make sense. I’m out running with horses and looking over mountains and eating good foods and copious amounts of South American wines and crying and reading and laughing hard. I’d empty out my bank account to come out the other side with a whole heart again.

I’m going recklessly out into adventure and to recapture the dreams and desires that were so deeply shattered. I’m out fighting for the heart inside of me. Letting life and beauty wash me from the dirt and grime of grief and despair.

Sometimes you cry in the beauty, sometimes you laugh inside the sorrow. All you want to do is run. Fill the void, with whatever you can, you want to feverishly, frantically fill the massive hole that feels endless inside your chest. But don’t. Feel it. God, you have to feel every inch of it. No matter how much you don’t want to. The times the memories come, the times the sadness feels so heavy you cannot breathe, you have to feel it. Feel the jagged sides of the pain, feel the splintered pieces of hope that lay carelessly inside. Look at it, feel it and refuse to run. Even if your knees are shaking, even if you have nothing but tears streaming down, even if you close your eyes and cry out in agonizing pain, don’t run. Stand in the middle of the hell of your own heart and feel it. Feel the memories you want to forget, feel the words your heart is screaming, feel the grief. Feel it and find freedom in the pain, feel it and then release it. Feel it so it doesn’t stay trapped inside of you forever.

Feel it, over and over and over until it isn’t a part of you anymore. When you run from it, it stays in you. The man I end up with will be worth me feeling all the present sorrow so I can get it out of me. So I will not be defined by pain. I don’t want fragments to remain inside of me, to cut and hurt people in the future. Hiding in the corners of your mind and soul, hiding in memories, lingering behind your eyes. So now, feel what you need to, and release it.

Sometimes (especially) the beauty hurts. It’s so vulnerable. It tugs at things inside of us that we don’t want to look at because beauty reveals so many deep longings that we don’t know how to keep wanting. But to feel the beauty, drink in the beauty, hold the beauty and embrace the beauty is the only way we’ll survive.

I will feel. I will soak in the moments of beauty, and I will walk through the moments of pain. And I will continue to believe I will walk out on the other side, a braver, more vulnerable, graceful, tender woman who has sat in the shit of her own soul, over and over and over again, and refused to throw in the towel to numbness.

I extend my arms out to you, wherever you are in your journey, if you are in the middle of grief, loss or sadness. I know its terrifying, and risky, but feel. Your heart is worth so much more than numbing. Your heart is worth all the feelings you need to feel so you can release them and heal and be whole. Come on this journey with me of feeling. Put your stake in the ground and say, “I will feel. I will protect my heart in this most counterintuitive of ways; by experiencing all of its pain. Numbness is death. And I choose life.  I choose, each day, each moment, to feel.  And to hope.

Grief

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis

I’ve found much companionship listening to Rob Bell lately. He loves surfing and talks about it in depth during one recent podcast. He talks about getting pulled under by a massive wave that just wont stop. Feet over head, head over feet, not knowing which way is up or down or how you just can’t stop spinning. Somewhere attached to you is your board which, if it hits you, will probably knock you right out. You can’t catch a breath and the fear of that is utterly terrifying, having no idea when the spinning and crushing waves will stop. Finally you pop up and are able to catch a little breath and then without warning, pulled back under for round two.

That is exactly what grief feels like. “When the hell is this crushing, spinning, terrifyingly empty thing going to end? When will I catch my breath? Will I even be able to or will I somehow die here?” Rob talks about how the worst thing you can do is fight it and work against it, because you're only losing precious energy. You can’t fight against a bizillion pounds of water against your small body. You can’t fight against the elephant-like weight of grief sitting directly on your chest - you'll only exhaust yourself more. You must let yourself be in it and not fight against it all. You must ride the wave, so to speak until it eventually calms. Because, eventually, (who knows when; and when you’re in it, it feels like it will never end), but eventually, it will end. And you’ll pop up back into the air and calm of the swaying ocean. Your head and heart will pop back up into the sunshine and beauty and hope of life again.

Last week my therapist said (she's very much into holistic living and essential oils and alternative medicine… yes!), that her little Chinese doctor says that we hold our grief in our lungs. Physically. In our lungs. I said out loud how through the years I have wondered why my lungs feel weaker and weaker each year. She said, “Your body has been crying out for years that the weight of the grief is taking its toll on you. Listen to your body, Carly, it speaks tenderly to you.” It’s all so very connected. Doesn’t it feel exactly true? That dark feeling in grief of not being able to catch your breath? Where you’re just crying out for a deep gulp of air to get circulation going back in your brain and heart. It’s all physical. It’s all connected. It’s all tied together.

(She’s going to connect me with an old Chinese medicine man that has special herbs for helping your lungs release grief physically. Let this little Eat, Pray, Love journey begin!)

I've had Pieces by Amanda Cook on repeat the last week. The chorus sings, "You don’t give your heart in pieces. You don’t hide yourself to tease us". During another fitful night of endless longing and a tear-stained face, my spirit felt the whisper of The Spirit saying "I don’t give my heart in pieces Carly, and I don’t want your heart to live in pieces either. The wholeness of Me, will bring into fullness, the wholeness of you; let me give my heart to you."

I don’t want to keep walking this earth with a heart in pieces anymore. So, inch by inch, day by day, breath by breath, sob by sob, I’m trying to let the waves crash around me, even when I want to panic, even when I feel like they will never stop and I’ve cried and screamed over everything enough. I will lean into the pain, lean into the waves and find the wholeness and goodness of the Spirit in those places and know, someday, maybe not today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, the waves will be at peace again, and I will bob up on top of it all again.

My mom sent me this C.S. Lewis poem recently and it just spoke to me in such tenderness and truth. Even in the pain and brokenness, the truth of the Holy Spirit remains.

The Naked Seed:

My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run
With longing, are in me
Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one
That drips to find the sea.
I have no care for anything thy love can grant
Except the moment's vain
And hardly noticed filling of the moment's want
And to be free of pain.
Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep
Nor slumber, who didst take
All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep
Watch for me while I wake.
If thou think for me what I cannot think, if thou
Desire for me what I
Cannot desire, my soul's interior Form, though now
Deep-buried, will not die,
—No more than the insensible dropp'd seed which grows
Through winter ripe for birth
Because, while it forgets, the heaven remembering throws
Sweet influence still on earth,
—Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes
Still turning round the earth.