“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.”

— Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary

Six days. I am leaving for East Africa that soon. It’s coming soon, it’s bearing down. I will fly over Africa’s broad, pied, noble landscape. And then, I will touch down in a ramshackle airport the size of your local Ford dealership. And then, the playwriting adventure with International Theater and Literacy Project, ITLP, begins.

And what will this day, the first day, in class be like? I find myself wondering, a la Julie Andrews. I have had so much fun anticipating and putting together our three-week long writing and theater curriculum with my lovely teaching partner. I am sure that we will have to be flexible and adapt our ‘best laid plans,’ but going in prepared  feels good. And besides, I don’t believe work is ever wasted.

ITLP is covering most of my costs, but I still need to raise several hundred dollars in order to go. I am leaving very soon (next week) and hope to reach my goal of $1,000 before I leave.  If you are able to sponsor me any amount at all (50, 500 or 5 dollars!), I’ll send you five issues of Stew’s News, a gazette about our adventures. The easiest way to sponsor me is via Firstgiving. Or you can check out other ways to sponsor here. If you can’t contribute, but want to send me off with love and prayers, send me an email and let me know of your interest in the project. I’ll add you to the subscription list.

I mentioned in an earlier post why this project so excites me – here are some other reasons I’m compelled to teach with ITLP.

• In Tanzania, less than 6 percent of the children have the opportunity to advance beyond elementary school. ITLP pays its participants’ school fees to help make possible the students’ education.

• At St. Margaret’s Academy, the school where I will be teaching, many of the students are AIDs orphans and from socially vulnerable situations. (Learn about how the school began here)

• ITLP pays for hot lunches for the kids throughout the program.

• Theater is play, and more than play – it helps children to think specifically and gives them confidence in speaking their minds.

• In East Africa, English is the language of commerce, and literacy is key to gainful employment.

More personally, writing is practical, but also magic. Writing helps me affirm others’ humanity,  and connects me to people I love. Writing helps me listen to my own story, and to imagine possibilities beyond my present circumstances. I want to share this with others.

Also, I am looking forward to modeling physical freedom through theater. Gender inequity in East Africa is rampant, and seeing systemic oppression of the ‘girl-child’ has left a mark on me. I believe that theater can level the playing field and allow boys and girls alike to try new things grow in confidence. Lastly, I’ll add that I am excited to do something FUN with kids – even if it is for a short time, I hope that they can look back on the play we make together, and remember feeling JOY.

“And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner of just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.”  - Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis

“If you are free, you need to free somebody else” – Toni Morrison

The Minnesota sky is silver-streaked tonight. The air is warm. Lawn mowers hum in a chorus. I see our neighbor dog bounding around, his tawny tail slap slap slapping. He is giddy that spring is here. So am I.

Since my last blog entry, so much has happened. I have come home to the States. I have been accepted to writing school, and decided not to go. I haven’t known what to do, really, except to try learn to be nobody, and to listen and to pray. I have worked at a government job downtown. In the office, everyone accuses one another of stealing food from the office fridge. “Did you eat my banana?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “Positive.”

I have yearned to feel like I am doing something important again, to march into a dowdy newspaper office with a press release in hand, to sit down with an exuberant client, to pray fervently with the IJM office staff again – to pray with others for justice.

Somewhat selfishly, when people say, “so what do you do?” I want to have something cool to say. I want to say, “As a matter of fact, I work to raise money for widows and orphans.” Or, “I’m glad you asked. I work and pray to set people free from oppression.”

But beyond wanting to feel like my life counts, I have thought of Judith, and Kate, and taken this year to pray about how to really, really love people. When you are in East Africa, you see a lot of Westerners striving to make a difference without really listening. I want to listen and learn and reengage deliberately.

At night, I sleep next to a bowl of hydrangeas in an eerily quiet suburb. I dream of the African rainstorms. My mind replays the widows’ stories I found waiting for me when I careened into the rural villages. I remember, in particular, three old wizened sisters, rising up out of the forest to greet me in their traditional dress. I remember them as princesses or queens in exile. I could never quite believe someone would dare threaten them.

—–

“Tanzania! Well well well.”

The doctor’s receptionist had a miniature face and an azure ring that matched her eyes that matched her shirt. She wore a lot of eyeliner. I read her name tag. Why hello there, Judy. She reminded me a bit of a panda, not just in the eyeliner, but how she chewed her nails, hungrily, frantically, and with wide eyes.

“Why would you want to go there?” She asked, smiling. So friendly. “I don’t even know where that is!”

“It’s in East Africa.” I said, trying to keep the contempt out of my voice – trying to remember that, two years ago, I might not have known where in Africa it was either.

She handed me a pen with a huge plastic flower taped to it. “We have enough problems here in the States. Look at the tornadoes.”

“Yes, it’s terrible,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Awful,” she agreed. “Yes. Well, you’re ten minutes late. We’ll have to reschedule your appointment.”

—

People, I am going back to East Africa. I’ll visit Uganda for two days, then I’ll fly to Arusha, Tanzania to serve as a teaching artist with International Theater and Literacy Project for three weeks. This weekend, on my birthday, I fly to New York for training.

I am so grateful for this opportunity. First, I long to find myself back in East Africa. Second, I am so excited to help young people write and imagine. Imagining sets people free, and in that, it is linked to justice. Let me explain. In interviewing brave widows and orphans, I noticed that, even when hemmed in by poverty, they were able to imagine a better reality in which their perpetrators were brought to justice. Their ability to see beyond present circumstances made them strong, determined, and willing to fight for something better. “Without vision, the people perish.”

I am thrilled to work for an organization that presses into the link between imagination and justice. ITLP “brings theatre artists from the United States to developing countries to conduct community-based playwriting and theatre workshops for secondary school students and teachers, nurturing their creative voices to enable them to express their ideas and stories.” You can check out their website here: www.itlp.org and see videos of past projects!
. And read Rebecca’s fantastic story here: http://www.gravelandstardust.blogspot.com/

I’d add that, practically speaking, English is the language of commerce in Tanzania, and key to getting a good job.

ITLP is covering all my most costs, but has asked that we fundraise and let our friends know about the organization. As you may know, I raised money to go to Uganda. I dreaded that, but the notes, emails, and messages of support floored me. Since then, I’ve daily considered all the people who prayed for me, supported me, and wrote me while I was in Uganda. I have felt overwhelmed, at times, by that cloud of support. I will forever look back on that and say, Woah. That outpouring really happened. Still, now I feel a bit embarrassed to ask people to give again.

But I do really believe in this mission and in the abilities of the artists with whom I am travelling – they are amazing Wheaton women! If I am to encourage boldness in others, I must cultivate it in myself. If you want to make a donation in my name to help cover our workshops this summer, please let me know and I will send you more info! There are many ways to give.

Also, let me know if you would like to receive blog or email updates. I want to share what I learn in East Africa, if you want to hear it. I hope you will consider coming along with me on my journey.  I am so very thankful for you.

“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.” – John Milton

On my way to IJM training in D.C. last September, I borrowed a book from my parents for the plane ride. “Consider This, Senora.” An urgent, almost bossy title, I thought then. On the cover, a chalky sun rose over a dusty desert. I put it in my carry on bag. Maybe I’d read it, I thought then, but maybe I won’t, either.

Book in hand, I left Minneapolis for D.C. at six a.m. Despite the early hour, a “Chatty Kathy” in cat-eye glasses talked my ear off. As she spoke, I tried to listen and at the same time muse about what the IJM training would be like. I glanced at the towering clouds out the window. I remembered then, as I always do on airplanes, the disappointment of having made the discovery as a little girl that I couldn’t sit on clouds.

Chatty Kathy dozed off. I opened the book. “Consider this, Senora.” I sipped on V8 and read. It was good, not great, I thought. Then I came to a certain section which gave me pause.

It went like this. A very elderly lady is pressing her fingers into avocados in a Mexican market, trying to find the ripest ones. She is thinking about her husband, who has recently died — how good he was to her, how kind, and how tender. And she knows “surely, she had brushed against the hem of Love.”

I found I liked this phrase for a few reasons. “Brushed” has both a sound and a touch to it — I liked that. I also recognized, and responded to, the idea of a transformative encounter. I myself have had them, and I’ll bet you have too. You know what I mean– a brief burst of emotion takes you by surprise, but even though fleeting still leaves you with the certainty you have touched something infinite. You try to talk about it with your friends after, but you fumble with your words. In the aftermath of such an experience, words seem vaporous as clouds, and inadequate.

Throughout IJM training week, as I went from here to there in my newly acquired business suits, I kept thinking about that phrase — “brushed up against the hem of love.” I thought about it when I learned about young girls being rescued from brothels. I thought about it when I saw pictures of enslaved families walking free from quarries. I thought about it when I heard tales of innocent men fleeing prison cells where they’d languished for years. For all these victims, the moment of actual rescue is momentar . Intense, and then gone. Yet, in the aftermath, everything is different. The big and powerful force behind the rescue, the muscular love that prompted people to intervene for you, changes your life forever.

Since coming to Uganda, I have had occasion to think a lot more about this phrase. I have seen love expressed in new ways all the time, so much so that I’ve been rendered speechless . Haven’t known what to say, blogosphere. Whether it is a tiny girl in a ragged princess dress kneeling in the dust to share her tiny lunch with me, or a widow giving me all her pototoes, or my friend MS-K helping me move all my worldly possessions time and time again –or my friend AW pouring himself out for devastated communities in the Congo — I have encountered love in a heightened way. My senses are more finely attuned to it. The landscape has shifted for me.

Have you had a period in your life like this? When have you seen something and thought, “There. Right there – that’s what love is? “ And it made you laugh with gladness — or maybe shook you to the core.

One final thought The ‘hem of love’ reminds me (as it is perhaps intended to) of that woman in the gospels who couldn’t stop bleeding. Society rejected her because of her disease. She was an ‘untouchable.’ Then, one day, she saw an unremarkable looking man. She had a feeling about him. Jesus. She knew she had to get to him, and not sometime, but right now. So she wended her way through a crazy, sweaty crowd to touch the hem of his clothing. Just a corner would serve her purpose.. She lunged forward, just grazing the fabric. And felt something go through her — only she knows what it felt like. Peace, maybe. Lightning. Jesus went away, then, and she maybe never saw him again. Still, who he was — and how he regarded her — as worthy of healing — as a child of God — worked in her for the rest of her life.

As I prepare to leave this place in six weeks, I realize that I am clinging to the euphoric moment when I’ve grabbed the savior’s hem. I want to be caught by the euphoria, not to be talking about it after. These days, I feel like I am watching a loved one’s back get smaller and smaller in the distance. I am clutching a bit, clinging. God has done a big work in me this year, and I know I’ll always be different because of it. I’ve slipped the bounds of my fixed life, and found love more extended, multiple and various than I had imagined. But I still don’t want to say goodbye to Uganda so soon.

Dear blogosphere,

I wanted to let you know that a piece I wrote concerning V, one of IJM Uganda’s clients, and some pictures I took of her and her adopted children have been placed front and center on the IJM website!  I am over the moon that this courageous woman’s story is being shared with the world.  In a society where land-grabbing perpetrated against women and children is common practice, V stood up to the bullies who threatened her.  She risked her life to protect her niece and nephew’s livelihood.  She refused to be cowed.

My friend Ray and I filmed a video interview with V a few weeks ago in her tiny home in a rural village.  Before the interview, I got pretty nervous.  I so desperately wanted the film we were shooting to be ‘good’ — I knew the film would be shown to thousands of people in Washington, DC, at a conference.  Trying to be ‘good’ is a deadly and stultifying motivation in artistic endeavors, and anyway, I needn’t have worried.

While we interviewed V, she laughed and raised her hands to the sky with joy.  V was animated.  She spoke about despair.  She spoke about being ‘tossed by worry.’  She spoke about her incredulity when she gained free legal assistance through IJM.  She gestured.  She grew serious.  She smiled.  She rocked back and forth in her chair.  She was herself, her wonderful, expressive self.  And her joy at having a home again was palpable.

As I watched her be herself and tell the truth, I heard a voice say, kindly, but firmly, “Get out of the way.”  And I did, I hope.   At least I tried to.  I want to step aside and let V share about how God showed himself strong for her.  Please do read her story: www.ijm.org.

-L

Judith tires me out. She makes me want to take a nap and not get up for a very long time. But, oh, I do love me some Judith.

I’m pretty sure Kate’s father put her up to it.  Sent his shy, quiet daughter to approach the mzungu [me] and ask her for money.  Since the time Kate made her bashful request, and I fumbled for the words to say no (just say NO, Laura —- you can do it!  you can do it!) we have become friends.  Whenever I round the last bend on my walk home, I find her waiting.  She stands and looks out over the hills, at the city blanketed in smog and the dust.    ”Kate,” I say, and she turns and smiles.  Looks at me with those quiet, warm, dark, beguiling eyes.  And we talk awhile, red mud sucking at our feet, wild dogs watching from a distance.

“How is today?”

“Today is fine.”

Last week, I found her trembling.  Her neighbors’ house had burned to the ground, and her now her little friends are left destitute.  They had to leave, move back to the village.

“You can cry,” I said.

“I cannot,” she said, swallowing sobs, drawing herself up.   “They told us not to talk about it.  They told us not to cry.”

While I talk to Kate, Judith, my second little friend, inevitably comes clattering down the hill.  When Judith sees me coming home after work, she flies down, shoelaces untied, making clicking sounds with her tongue.  If Kate is all eyes, Judith is all mouth.  You hear her before you see her.  As she talks, she chomps that formidable and beautiful set of white, straight teeth, her lips whirring like some unstoppable mechanical toy’s.

Judith’s hands, like her mouth, are always in motion.  Sometimes, her hands are like whizzing knives.  They slice the air.  Sometimes, they are like birds.  They flutter and swoop.   Anyway, Judith tires me out.  She makes me want to take a nap and not get up for a very long time.  Sometimes, when I’m with her, I feel breathless and compressed, like  I’ve been run over by a bus.   But oh, I love me some Judith.

Kirsten, my wonderful roommate, and I had Judith for tea last week.  Kate was supposed to come, too, but she got sick.

So just Judith came.  She arrived an hour late, plopped herself down on our lawn and proceeded to talk our ears off.  I have never known such a girl.  I could never dream her up.

“My heart was what, my heart was banging,” Judith said.  She smacks her chest with her palms.  Judith frequently employs this Ugandan storytelling device of asking questions mid-sentence.  This technique increases suspense, and compounds my confusion as I try to keep up with her mile-a-minute chatter.  ”My heart was what?  banging as I stood before your big, black gate.”

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“The children said what, the children said you would not really have me for tea.  And your dogs, your dogs, I feared.”

“Ah,” I said stupidly.  ”Well, you don’t have to fear.  and of course you can come for tea”

She smiled, charmingly, teeth flashing.  The first pause she’d allowed for a long time.  Then, all of a sudden, she darted forward.  I very nearly jumped, and then gaped at her in fascination.  Judith was  pouring sugar, straight-up from the sugar bowl, directly into her tea.   After having ignored the food in favor of talking for nearly an hour, Judith had quickly, almost violently, snatched up one of each cookie, then shoved one in her mouth.  Kirsten and I exchanged bemused glances.  Earlier, Judith had declared to us that she did not like sugar.

I felt quite guilty that I would be sending Judith home to her mother even more riled up than normal.

“My favorite color is green; why?” she went on between mouthfuls.  She did not wait for an answer.  ”Because green is everywhere, everywhere you see.  So much –” here now, her hands are wide, fingers taut.  The hands shake.  Jazz hands!  ”of Africa is what, is green.”  Apple juice glistened around her mouth; a small shower of crumbs fell on her lap.  ”Both boys and girls can what, they can like green.”  She took a swig of juice.  Bats her eyelashes.  ”Green is best.”

(You have to imagine a small girl saying ‘best’ the octave above ‘green is.’  Luganda is a tonal language, and speakers carry that dramatic inflection on over to English.’

The next day, I walk home after work.  I find Kate and Judith waiting for me.  Kate says she was sick and she’s sorry she couldn’t come.  I am curious about her favorite color, and ask her what it is.  Judith interrupts to tell me she likes green, because green is everywhere, how can you not like, what, how can you not like green, you would be what, a fool, to not like green.

Then Kate says that red is her favorite.”  ”When I wear red, you can see me from far away.  You can see me, among many, and you can find me.”  She looks down at the ground.   “There is not much red here.   I love some red in my life.”

I am touched by Kate’s eloquence, her love for what is rare and precious, as well as her longing to be seen.  She is so unlike friendly, loud, clumsy Judith, who dominates, and whose internal monologue comes bursting forward like a spilled purse.  Kate is quiet and has many, oh so many things, she could say.  [See Sonnet 23 by Shakespeare]

Just then, a large Ugandan man wearing very tight spandex comes huffing along the path.  He exhales mightily — woosh - and strains to push a bicycle up the steep hill where I live.  His large backside stretches and gleams in the bright sun.

Judith takes one look at this man, then erupts  with laughter.  She literally spins around in her glee.  She is howling.  She is rolling in the grass.  Kate giggles too, eyes squinched.

“Judith!  Kate!” I admonish, looking anxiously at the poor man who can certainly hear us mocking his choice of sportswear.  But then the girls’ delighted howls begin to work on me.  And I find myself laughing too, even wiping tears from my eyes.

“Those shorts, they do what?  They catch your bums,” Judith says.

Sometimes, I get nervous to take pictures in the village because I am afraid of upsetting a Muslim.  Followers of Islam believe, and I think there is a morsel of truth in this, that taking someone’s picture is taking away part of their soul.   I do always ask permission, yet I am terrified of accidentally snapping a Muslim in the background, and causing that person distress.

Furthermore, and more generally, taking pictures feels like a heavy responsibility.  I want to honor the people I photograph, and never, ever take their consent for granted.

I loved this little boy as soon as I saw him.  On a dusty, gray day the bright yellow of his shorts, the electric blue of the chair, and the bicycle wheel spinning round and round next to him immediately drew my eye.  He seemed completely unflappable to me.  His gaze was steady and unafraid.  In this, he seemed almost like an old man, as if he had seen all sorts of goings on under the sun, and as if nothing I could do or say would surprise him.

On my hilltop, I breathe easy.  I can run.  Mornings come, bright and beautiful.  From my apartment, I see the thick smog-blanket below, and I am deeply thankful for clean air and for physical safety.  (Simultaneously, I’m devastated for the thousands who sleep, wake, walk and play in that brutal dust and heat).

No question that I’m very fortunate in that I live in such a beautiful place.  However, a small series of unfortunate, yet funny, hygiene-related issues occurred yesterday where I live.

Yesterday afternoon, K (my roommate) and I decided to make tahini sauce and roasted cauliflower.  It was a bright, lazy Sunday afternoon.  The windows were open.  The sun shone through, and sort of stuck to everything like butterscotch.  Cauliflower simmered on the stove.  Bon Iver crooned.

“This is a gorgeous day,” K remarked.

“It really is,” I said, thinking about how much I need these periods of rest, how necessary Sabbath has become to me.

“Oh,” K said suddenly.  “ AR [a woman who used to live in our apartment] mentioned we need to clean our water filter regularly.”

Now we did not know this.  I guess we’d assumed that the filter cleaned the water …. seeing as that is the point of a water filter and all.  We popped open the top.  Lo and behold, here were little mounds of mold and a nice maggot colony lifting their white bellies sunward.  They squirmed in the lukewarm shallows, enjoying the pleasant afternoon.

“Gaaaah,” I said.

“Ecch,” Kirsten said.

We have been drinking this water for two months.

I think we responded rather well, given the circumstances.  We poured the water out — and well, I couldn’t help but notice that it ran chocolate brown and left a moldy residue.  Even then, we did not panic.  We took deep breaths.  We paced the kitchen a little.  “Calm,” K said.  “I feel calm.  Yes, this is good.”

That’s when I noticed a hideous spider crawling in her blonde hair.  K, I said.  Do not freak out.  Stay where you are.  I want you to stand very still.  I am going to remove a spider from your head.

I flicked the spider, and he crawled away.  At which point, K shrieked.

We gathered ourselves together once more.  We even managed some shaky laughs, and went back to preparing our lunch.  We listened to the strains of worship music coming up the hill (the hill where we live is home to many clubs and churches, which means techno music or hymns are always playing).

A few seconds later, my phone rang.  K shrieked again, this time louder and longer.

“What?  Oh my gosh, what?”

“Ah … the noise startled me.”

We were certainly on edge.

Five minutes later, after preparing our cauliflower and tahini, K remarked that there is lizard poo festooning our walls.

I looked around.  Indeed there was.  Why, there was lizard poo as far as the eye could see.

“You know,” I said.  “I am just going to decide not to see this lizard poo.  I don’t see it.  I don’t see it, I don’t see it.”

Sometimes in Uganda, denial is the best way to go.  This tactic works well with lizard poo, but not so well with cockroaches.  Big and fat, fast and mean, cockroaches  demand instantaneous reactions.  K and I are both now quite good at killing them.  We smash them dead on a daily basis, using our sandals as clubs.  Sometimes, we chase them around the apartment, dousing them with Doom until they quiver, shudder, curl up and die.   [The Doom fumes are probably slowly killing us as we sleep as well].

K and I have even started a little graveyard outside.  We deposit carcasses into the shrubbery.  We hope this nice visual will deter other maggot and cockroach perpetrators from infringing upon our lands rights.

The lizards can stay, I think — they are kind of cute.  Now if only we could potty train them?

For Wes, breakfast took place at 7:45 p.m. in Seattle.  For me, breakfast was at 6:45 a.m. in Uganda.

We made the necessary arrangements a few days ago.  “This will be brinner,” Wes said.  “Dinner for me, breakfast for you.”

“Ha!  I like it.”  Then, “What should we eat?  The same things?”

“Of course” he said.

We settled on scrambled eggs, mango, and coffee.  “I can put flowers on the table,” I said.

To which Wes responded, “You can have a flower.  I will have  a man tree.”

The picture below is grainy and gray, and completely fails to do justice to the breakfast.   The picture doesn’t show the delicious food  — pale, creamy yellow mango (which was just a lee-tle crunchy) or the steaming coffee.  Furthermore, the Skype camera distorted Wes’ face.  Sometimes, as we chatted, he was suddenly missing his nose.  By turns, he became a shadow.  But the shadow’s movements were Wes’ movements, and the voice was unmistakably Wes’.  And best of all, he could still make me laugh, even from across the ocean.  Yay.

I tell you what, this “Information Superhighway” stuff is just unreal.  Connecting like this is very helpful when you long for old, familiar friends.  Maybe some day (oh, happy day!) technology will advance so far that you will be able to email me breakfast pastries as attachments.  Imagine!  And perhaps — who knows — you could even email yourself to me.

So I say, in the midst of a rain storm rocking the office and a sudden bout of missing people, yay for technology!  Yay for old friends and the instant comfort even the general impression of their faces can bring.

In Colorado hot springs last year.

This weekend, I’ve thought a lot about my dear friend Erin K, affectionately known to many as “Special K.” Except now I think I’m going to have to call her “Special B,” since she just married Ned B.

I first met Erin my freshman year of college.  We lived on the west wing of the third floor of Fischer Dorm.

She threw discus, I did theater and choir.  She was from New York and spoke quite loudly.  I hailed from Canada and spoke quietly.  Despite our differences, or maybe because of them, we connected.

Erin had precariously stacked her modular, ugly, college-issued bunkbeds into this sort of dorm room‘cave.’  The whole contraption looked like a giant game of Jenga.  I loved it; it made me feel like a kid again.  We would hunker down in the fort and watch What Not to Wear, sometimes talking to her suite-mates through the shared bathroom.

“How’s Bio?”

“It sucks, it’s a beast.  I was up till three last night.”

“So I hear.”

[sound of toilet flushing]

We made kettle corn all the time because it was cheap and delicious.  We brewed raspberry and crème de menthe flavored hot chocolate from a gargantuan Sam’s club stash.

E and I did not have to talk; we could be quiet together.

We lived on the curved inside of a U-shaped dorm.  The West side was for women, the East, for men.  Whose bright idea this fishbowl dorm was, I don’t know.  Sometimes we would catch glimpses of very sincere, lovelorn boys strumming guitars, and looking longingly into the women’s rooms. We laughed at them. I should clarify that we didn’t escape implication ourselves.   Our own awkwardness, our own fecklessness, were frequent topics of conversation.  As we struggled through love and life, we wiped out often.  We skinned our knees.  But at least we could talk about it, wonder at it.

Erin lived with a sort of all-or-nothing approach, devil-may-care attitude, that I really envied.  Sometimes, she would literally roll out of bed with her hair messy and poofy like a lion’s mane, wearing sweat pants.  “I don’t even care this morning,” she would say, and really mean it.  Off to class she went.

Other times, she would put on a leather jacket and mascara and look amazing.  I liked that about her.  All or nothing.  She said what she meant, meant what she said, and did what she wanted to do with her time.  She put her money down, so to speak.

Erin’s way of life—“yes meaning yes,” “no meaning no,”—carried over into her  social interactions.  At a place like Wheaton, it’s all too easy to spread yourself thin and say yes to every passing acquaintance who wants to have a ‘SAGA date’ in the cafeteria.  As a hopeless people-pleaser, I said yes far more often than I should have.  Consequently, I was forced to scurry around, burdened and overwhelmed.   Erin, by contrast, would yawn and say, “There are like five people here that I care about.  You are one of them.”  [Or, in the case of one poor gentleman who could not take a hint: "you aren't one of them"]    Her loyalty reminded me then, and reminds me now, of Ruth saying “Where you go, I will go, and your people will be my people.”

In a sea of perfect, buttoned-up Christian girls, I could always count on Erin to speak her mind.  Sometimes, I would look around campus and think that the people we were all beautiful violins shut up in cases.  Everyone lived so timidly.  We were so afraid of expressing anything other than ‘niceness.’  Erin stepped out and played real music.  She walked with sass.  I loved that.  I loved her loud truthfulness, I loved her spice, and perhaps, to some extent, lived vicariously through her daringness.

We decided to live together.  She was a great roommate.  When I got sick – as evidenced by my sickly pallor in this picture – Erin would care for me in a way few self-absorbed college students could.  She brought me armloads of juice, magazines, and princess balloons.  Sometimes, she would say, “Gross, this room smells like sick people,” but she cared.

This is me just after I had thrown up.  E and K brought me this amazing balloon (read the caption closely … they edited it).

We ate a lot of Snyder’s honey mustard pretzels.  We listened to Michael W. Smith as we sketched out maps of the Holy Land for Old Testament.  Lying prone on the floor, Erin would swear at her Bible map.   Juxtaposed with Michael’s soaring violins in the background and conversations about prayer drifting through the open window, her well-placed curse words always amused me.

Our senior year, Erin graduated a semester early.  She left to work at a house for addicted and convicted teenagers in California.  Lots of college’s details elude me today, but I remember this particular goodbye in vivid detail.  Me, Kara (her maid of honor) and Erin went to Caribou coffee for a last hot chocolate.  The wind was deathly cold and characteristically vicious that day.  It sliced our cheeks like knives.  We had to tread carefully on the treacherous Chicago ice.  A  gray sky hung above us like spun wool.  The metra train rattled by, those green windows gleaming a little through the cold.

Erin came back out to see opening night of Hamlet!

Erin wore a light blue North Face.  We all cried a little.  The years had been startlingly good to us.  “We’ll see each other soon,” we promised, and then we pulled away in Kara’s car, leaving Erin at the curb of O’Hare airport.  And she was gone.  And just like that, our college years together were over.

Erin knew her new job would prove challenging, but she wasn’t quite prepared for what met her when she arrived in San Jose.  Mismanagement and disorganization abounded at the girls’ home.   Erin received no support from the administration.  The girls she lived with were volatile and unpredictable.  Wounded tigers.  Their pain, violence and constant drama never ceased and Erin had no respite from any of it.  Without the help of two other co-counselors (they’d quit), Erin had no time off to recuperate or recharge.

On the positive side, Erin did get to learn new, juicy phrases, like “hella tweaker” and “why you gotta waste my flava.”  She drove around a van of teenage girls listening to, “This is why I’m hot” blaring from the speakers.  At  AA meetings, she had to watch her girls vigilantly.  They kept trying to instigate trysts with male participants.

Like most dramatic experiences, Erin’s stint in the rehab center  made for good stories later.  Yet of course the prospect of a good story provides little comfort in the moment.   San Jose was rough, and Erin was slowly unwinding in it.  When I talked to Erin on the phone — she tried to whisper, but she doesn’t really have an ‘inside voice’ – I could tell she was very, very tired.

Soon after, a very very sad and sudden thing transpired.  I remember when I first heard.  I was singing on the worship team at Church of the Resurrection.  As I sang and looked out over the congregation, I noticed that our friend Ashley (a bridesmaid in Erin’s wedding) was leaning out into the aisle looking at me worriedly.  That’s funny, I thought.  She never comes to this church.  Why is she here?

After the service was over, I came down the steps laughing at something someone said.  She was there, waiting, a grim expression spread across her face.  She grabbed my arm.  “Laura.  Laura, Erin’s dad died.”

We flew out to New Jersey to see Erin.  The funeral had just taken place.  We borrowed Ashley’s aunt’s car and drove through the suburbs.  When we arrived at Erin’s quiet cul-de-sac, I remember pressing the doorbell and being struck with leaden helplessness.  What do I say, God, what do I say.  Please tell me what to say.  I have had such a happy life.  I know nothing about death, please help me.

The cul-de-sac stayed quiet.

Erin arrived at the door with a sleepy look on her face, wearing a black velvet track suit.  Lion hair today.  We sat down on her living room couch.  Her jubliant and rosy-cheeked father beamed from photographs on the walls.  His arm was wrapped tightly around his wife.  Ski mountains shone behind him.

Erin proceeded to tell us how she felt. Her heart was cracking open, she said.  Over nine hundred people had come to her Dad’s funeral, he was so loved.  I feel numb in this house full of fruit-baskets and books about grieving, she said.

What had occurred was undoubtedly, searingly awful.  To search for “God’s will,” in this event, as so many well-meaning Christians always try to do, would have constituted a sacrilege.  Erin was wise in that she knew her own smallness.  She knew that anything she understood about God is very tiny in comparison to who He actually is.  So what could she do but wait and be quiet and give her grief to him?

Ashley and I clumsily tried to be supportive that week.  We picked over the fruit baskets.  We watched a lot of tv.  We got pedicures–my first.  The girls laughed at me when I squirmed in that muscle-y, boxy black massage chair.  “Lean back into it, Laura!  Lean back!”

“I can’t!  This chair is alive!  It’s creepy!”

We bought too many cappuccinos and sipped them in the car.

We were quiet.  What do you say, anyway.

Erin moved home permanently to be with her mom and to look for work.  The next year proved difficult, and the months stretched out bleakly.  The job search was tedious.  Erin was always brave on the phone.  Forging friendships proved difficult.

Pain inevitably affects relationships – we all know that if we tell people about our personal sorrow, chances are high they will turn away.  Maybe they’ll stay, be our friends despite it, but who can know?

But then, God blessed Erin with a great job.  Today, Erin heads up a pregnancy and health clinic for young teenage moms.  She is going to school (Fordham) to get her Masters of Social Work. AND she met a great guy.

Enter Ned, stage right.  A bit of a swagger — the nice, endearing kind of swagger.  Boyish grin.

He’s Brazilian, gentle, kind and very funny.  I got to meet him in New York right before I came out here, to Uganda. They picked me up in Ocean Grove, on the beach.  I saw them walking down the pier, and before I knew it was them, I sez to myself I sez, that is couple is in love.  Something about the way they leaned into one another gave them away.

On the car ride home, we bought out the McDonalds drive through.  Ned made her laugh, her loud, genuine, boisterously delightful New York laugh.  I grinned in the back seat.

They got married this weekend in an icy, snowy New York wedding.  Thousands of miles away, on the top of a hill where I live in Uganda, I trod red dirt roads and cleaned our flooded apartment.  I killed cockroaches and deposited their carcasses into the shrubbery.  I made mango crumble.  I studied for the LSAT, and paced our porch.  The sun beat down.  I went to a party to welcome back four biker friends who’d made a trek through East Africa, and successfully avoided angry mobs, dodged steaming piles of elephant dung, watched lightning bolts strike the horizon.  What adventures.  (And I wished myself a man so I could go).

All weekend, I felt a lump in my throat– selfishly, probably, because I couldn’t have something I wanted.  I wanted to be able to go home so I could Erin’s bridesmaid, as I’d said I would.  Missing her day hurt a lot.  Days like Erin’s wedding day are irreplaceable.  I missed this day, and it’s not coming back.  I will never be in the pictures.

Comforts I have given up to come to Africa – hot showers, jiffy peanut butter, etc. – have barely registered with me,  because they don’t really matter.   I really don’t care about hot water or peanut butter.   (OK, sometimes I care about peanut butter).  Missing Erin’s wedding, however, is in a different category because Special K is a once-in-a-lifetime friend.  I should be there, I kept thinking as I scarfed down salsa at the party.  I should be there, I thought as I tried to focus on ‘reading comprehension questions.’  I love Erin so much.

Gradually, I think — I hope, maybe — my sadness has changed into thankfulness.  The way God binds up the broken-hearted floors me.  He gave Erin, my beautiful, tender-hearted friend, Ned, a strong man and a super fun companion.  He knew what she needed.  Who would have thought three years ago, in the midst of such numbness and pain, that something so beautiful, strong and splendid as their love would ever come.

So, from Uganda, I guess all I can say is – Congratulations, Hallelujah and THANKS BE TO GOD.