Closing the books on 2009

I think you’ll forgive me for being a bit tardy in my year-end reflections, given recent developments. I find myself today watching the meandering flurries while thinking that this kind of moment might not be so readily available soon.

And so I think back on the past year and realize that 10 years later I might think the same: This was the most unbelievable year of my life.

It’s easy to say that now, but the sheer number of experiences — to say nothing of their depth and quality — coupled with my mostly awful 2008 make a pretty convincing argument. Consider:

1. January-June: I covered state government for my hometown newspaper, having started my career there less than three years earlier. I saw the sausage-making up close, and despite the tomfoolery, absurdity and snail’s pace that characterized most state legislatures last year, I genuinely enjoyed it. What can I say? I worked in a newsroom. I was a glutton for punishment.

2. April/Mayish: I told Lindsey I wanted to date her. This happened after only a year of failing to not like her, and then finally working up the courage to tell her.

Of course, she said no.

3. June: Lindsey told me her side of the story, which can be summed up as, “I was tired of waiting on you.” She offered to give us a chance.

I said, “What the heck?”

Then I said, “Well, what the heck.”

I was mostly confused.

4. Less than a week later: Lindsey and I started dating. Aforementioned confusion disappeared.

5. July: I quit my reporting job for an opportunity to work with university students at a small Baptist church in São Paulo, Brasil (the reason this blog was born). I had thought about it for nearly a year, ever since Chris Julian showed up in my church and talked about building relationships in one of the largest cities in the world. I thought, I could do that.

6. Also in July: I went to Colorado with some of the craziest friends a guy could ask for. If they can get me — the guy who compares camping to going on vacation to live like a hobo — to sleep in a tent next to the Rocky Mountains, then you know they must have some sway over me. Or at least blackmail material.

 

The full story, in five minutes or less

So I got married this past weekend to this girl.

You might have seen the video. (If not, you can also see it after the jump.)

Some people knew this wedding was coming. Most people did not. That made it kinda fun.

But why did we do it? Why did we get married less than a week after I came back?

We were never going to be ready, and our not-readiness wasn’t going to change between now and next year or the year 2045. So we jumped in, all not-ready, because we knew that we would rather spend the rest of our lives figuring out how to be married than spend the next ____ months/years figuring out that we would never actually figure out how to be married when we weren’t.

Are you still following?

 

That whole reflecting business

I knew that at some point after I left São Paulo for Santiago Wednesday morning, there would be one night where I would be up early in the morning with a lot of thoughts and nothing better to do than write them down.

I suppose tonight is that night.

I am halfway through a debriefing session that is probably more necessary and productive than I would like to admit, because I just want to go home. Once I said goodbye to the five guys in the airport who stayed up all night with me just so we could go to Fran’s Café at 3:30 in the morning, my mind walked off and hopped on a direct flight to Nashville, and the rest of me went to Chile. I have slowly dragged my focus back across the continents to join me, but it has been hard.

It has been hard because I shouldn’t be in this weirdly paneled kitchen with no microwave. I shouldn’t be able to look out the window and see the Andes. Heck, I really shouldn’t be able to wake up in the morning to a cloudless sky that stays that way. I should be dragging myself off my lopsided mattress to the sound of rain and a Blackberry that has served as a very expensive alarm and address book the last four months. I should be seeing guys in various stages of dress making coffee, reading e-mail and greeting me with a hearty Bom Dia. And I should be heading off to university campuses, and Starbucks, and a bakery, and an English school, and an outdoor açai restaurant/car wash.

 

Brothers and sisters

While Jesus was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)

 

Christmas ZOE Café

 

Relational leaving

It’s Dec. 1,  80 degrees and sunny, and I’m sitting next to a box full of coffee. That means two things: I am in Brasil, and I’m coming home soon. In these final days, I have been thinking about authentic relationships. What are we more likely to do: grow our relationships, maintain them, or let them die if the other party doesn’t take initiative? And what do our decisions say about what we value?

I sometimes fear that students here think that when I leave, our relationships will go with me. I’ll go back to that mythical land known as the United States, where no one works and everyone has money and we all just sit around in coffee shops and talk about sex, and forget about the last four months of my life. It seems silly on its face, but students’ apprehension of building relationships is borne out of experience. Too many times Americans promise to keep in touch, and we don’t. Too often we say we’ll see them again, and we won’t. Add in a healthy dose of Paulistas’ homebred form of relationship neglect – a combination of isolation, busyness and a very un-Brazilian protection of privacy – and you’ll begin to understand the biggest obstacle to friendships that I have faced during my stay.

And so, as I move toward my inevitable departure, my message to São Paulo remains the following: To leave is not to forget. I’m hoping the same is true for everyone here.

 

Further proof that I have a self-deprecating sense of humor

Yours truly, zonked out as I wait for Chris B and Chris J to finish their physicals at the doctor this morning. After I woke up, I drank coffee and ate cake at the doctor’s office. This is the hard life of an American in São Paulo. (Photo courtesy of CJ)

 

Scenes from Rio

See more at my Flickr

More from Chris

 

Goodbyes

It has been quiet here at the house today. The sun pulled the clouds over its head today and let the rain steer the short-lived day into the darkness. The only other soul in the house is Chris, as the rest of the lot has taken off to the beach for the weekend. I must have told them goodbye a half-dozen times before everyone finally spilled out the door last night.

There have been a lot of goodbyes lately.

Last night, I also was saying goodbye to my friend Sean Nestor, who had been with me throughout this journey. We were three weeks from ending our time here in São Paulo when Sean got word of another goodbye he would have to make – to his older brother. It was an unexpected end to a life lived too quickly, and Sean was left to pack up and bear a burden no one should. Please pray for Sean, and even more for his family. I learned strength from Sean, and I hope that those around him can do the same.

It’s not easy to say goodbye to those you love, but sometimes it’s harder to watch the people you love say it to someone else. As I write this, Lindsey is saying goodbye to her grandfather, who taught her what a man should look like. I never got to meet him, but I know she will expect me to live up to his example. I am thankful he gave her those expectations.

Soon, I will say my goodbyes to the wonderful people I have had the privilege to meet here. Until then, I have had quite my fill.

 

A review of books and perspective

I read two books in the sofa-ridden, over-caffeinated vacation I took within the city this weekend, and I have fooled myself into thinking that I might have some great thought to impart regarding them. The two works should not share the same bookshelf, for reasons both practical – one is fiction, the other presumably not – and thematic. Although they are of similar length, the first took me two weeks to read; the second, I completed in a couple of hours. Perhaps accordingly, the first would be considered high literature among people who know such things. Those same folks label the second with that most odious modifier: “mass-market.”

I could go on, and I will. Just give me time.

In Dubliners, Joyce paints Dublin as a most awful place, with the most pitiful people. I hope its residents have found something in the last century to console them. Albom, in his Have a Little Faith, takes two of the most depressing places in America – New Jersey and Detroit – and finds happiness, hope and God among its people.

But both address death, and it is there I wish to pause. In the final story of Dubliners (titled, “The Dead”), we see Gabriel conclude he is blessed, if not wholly fulfilled, among company at a holiday gathering. But when he finds his wife listening to an old tune that recalls her tragic young love, Gabriel discovers that his suppositions about his standing among men mean nothing. Death will soon rob him of his family and even himself, and yet he will never experience love like that of an already-dead boy. Emptiness suffocates.