Compassion - 2/6 - Big Mama

And speaking of Spanish…

October 12, 2011

Do you remember when I mentioned about two weeks ago that I’d gone to get a passport photo taken because my passport was about to expire? Not that I expect you to remember. I can barely recall it myself and it’s my life. But I do remember being kind of surprised that no one asked me why I needed a passport.

I guess all my attempts to convey how glamorous my life really is have paid off. Of course I guess it’s obvious that a 40-year-old woman who spends an entire weekend by herself watching Season 1 of Army Wives on Netflix likes to live life in the fast lane.

Well I Fedexed my passport renewal application, two new passport photos, and my old passport to the passport folks about two weeks ago. I assumed everything was fine until they called me on Monday to inform me that the State Department requested that I send in two additional passport photos.

“But I sent in the required two passport photos. I’m the girl with the long hair who looks like she’s in the middle of asking ‘Where?’”

They replied, “Yes ma’am. We received those photos but the State Department needs two additional photos.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know.”

Okay. Thanks. That’s incredibly informative.

So yesterday I went back to CVS to take yet another passport photo. I knew I was playing with fire to wear my hair back in a ponytail because I wore a ponytail in my original passport photo taken ten years ago and I have never looked worse. Ever. In fact, the bright side to this whole passport expiration has been the prospect of a better picture.

I even wondered if the State Department needed an additional photo of me because the photo on my original passport was SO HORRIFIC that they didn’t believe the new photos I sent in two weeks ago depicted the same person. Maybe they thought there was some sort of international scam afoot involving an awkward girl with long hair who asks too many questions while getting her picture taken.

But, thanks to yesterday’s passport photo retake, I can rest assured that Customs Officials everywhere will continue to be rendered speechless by the horror on my passport. Honestly, I don’t know that my self-esteem has ever taken a hit like the one it took yesterday when the lady at CVS handed me my new passport photos.

The worst part is I walked in there feeling fairly good about myself. I had on makeup. And a cute jacket. It was the ponytail’s fault. Along with some unfortunate side-swept bangs that were too far to the side thanks to the humidity. In related news, my forehead is enormous.

But (452 words later) none of that is important. What’s really important is why I suddenly need to have a passport.

I’ve been invited to travel to Ecuador with Compassion International this November 7-12th. Needless to say, I am excited and scared and alternate between feeling like I can’t wait another minute to get my hands on those sweet Compassion kids and wanting to throw up. We’re going to spend a couple of days in Quito and then eventually make our way into the Amazon rainforest.

Excuse me while I go throw up.

Y’all. There are snakes there. And monkeys. Monkeys that aren’t in cages. And piranhas. Obviously Caroline is just sick that she’s not old enough to go with me because these things are her love language.

But in spite of my fear and a lot of stepping outside my comfort zone, I am beyond excited to go on another Compassion trip. When I went to the Dominican Republic three years ago it changed a part of my heart forever. It humbled me and made me grateful in a whole new way. It also showed me that so many of us walk around in our first world comforts with a poverty of spirit these kids don’t have because they get that Jesus is everything. Not a new Wii or a fancy pair of boots.

Humbling. Convicting. Life-changing.

Shaun Groves and Patricia Jones will be our fearless leaders, along with our amazing photographer Keely Scott. The bloggers going in addition to me are Amanda Jones, Kelly Stamps, Ann Voskamp and Sophie.

Y’all, there are so many times when I think about how silly blogging really is. I mean why do I feel like anyone cares that I started watching Army Wives this weekend? And that I can’t stop?

But it’s moments like this when it all feels worth it. It’s about something bigger. It’s about these kids that could have so easily been forgotten but for Compassion International and their desire to give them hope and a future. My prayer is that you would follow our trip and consider sponsoring one of these kids if you haven’t already or even if you have. It doesn’t take much to change a life.

So if you want to pray that the State Department approves my new, even more hideous photos, for safe travel and easy trip preparations, and that God would use our words to make a difference, it would be appreciated.

This isn’t the short version

December 7, 2010

I don’t even know how to put this weekend into words. But let’s all believe that I will now attempt to do that very thing as I ramble until I end up with approximately 1,000+ of them. I’d been looking forward to this past weekend for as long as I can remember and I came home feeling humbled, amazed, grateful, inspired, and exhausted.

That’s a lot to pack into one weekend. In fact, as I attempted to recount everything to P on Sunday night, I suddenly burst into tears for reasons I didn’t even understand. He just looked at me and said, “Wow. You are all hyped up on some estrogen after being around all those women.”

I don’t know if he’s ever been happier to be trapped on a couch with me as I share my feelings as he was at that moment.

So, let’s start from the beginning.

I was born in Houston, Texas on August 14, 1971.

Oh I kid. Although by the time I finish this post you may feel like my life story might be shorter.

On Thursday morning, my dad dropped me off at the airport for my flight to Birmingham. It was then that I realized I’d made a serious rookie mistake and forgotten to check in for my Southwest flight online. This resulted in a B 22 boarding pass which isn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but certainly isn’t ideal. But I breezed through security without any kind of inappropriate groping and that felt like a win. I stopped at Starbucks for the Grande Peppermint Mocha I’d been anticipating all morning, only to be told that they were out of peppermint. How does this happen? It’s Christmas time.

I boarded my flight and spent the next few hours reading all about Prince William and Kate Middleton, although she apparently wants to go by Catherine now. It looks like the wedding is going to be April 29 at Westminster Abbey and there is much debate about which tiara she’ll wear. I just thought you might want to know.

Also, I promise I’ll quit with all these meaningless details as I flounder for a storyline.

Once I arrived in Birmingham I checked into my hotel room and then headed to the arena to start my official event team duties even though I had no idea what those were and what I was doing. We spent the next few hours looking for walkie-talkies and pulling out reserved signs for various seats and getting things organized for the next day.

Later on I headed back to the hotel and Sophie came to pick me up for dinner. I’d thought we’d eat Mexican food, but we ended up going to eat at some fabulous restaurant downtown. It’s safe to say I’d tell you the name of it if I could remember. I just know I ate some pasta that changed my life and a tiramisu I’ll remember when I’m on my deathbed.

Friday was filled with putting signs on seats and filling gift bags and making sure the merch (love the merch!) was all ready to go. I’m sure there were other things involved but I was too busy walking around asking, “What am I supposed to be doing? Do I need to be somewhere?”

Bless their hearts, they decided to give me a walkie-talkie anyway. Probably because they knew I was going to be in dire need of guidance and direction.

My official role was Greeter Assist. Which means I was in charge of the volunteers at one of the arena entrances and had to fake an air of confidence and authority. Fortunately this is part of my skill set. It’s how I rolled for ten years as a pharmaceutical rep. “ABSOLUTELY NOT! THIS DRUG DOESN’T INTERFERE WITH THE CYP450 METABOLISM!”

Anyway, the doors opened at 5:30 and that’s about the last time I had a coherent thought that day. CRAZY TOWN.

On Saturday morning, Betsy (our LifeWay event team leader) told us to be packed and downstairs at 6:25. In the morning. The good news is I’d managed to get about four minutes of sleep the night before so I was ready to go with my bloodshot eyes and feet that felt like I’d walked on a bed of nails.

I went back to my post as Greeter Assist until the crowd died down and I found Kelly and Heather holding my contraband Starbucks. That Grande dose of caffeine may have been what saved me. It certainly was the only thing that gave me strength to work the merch tables selling $2.00 t-shirts.

But, seriously, I’ve attended a lot of LifeWay events over the last three years. However, I’ve never done the event team thing and I had NO IDEA what all goes into the entire thing. They work so hard to make the whole thing come together and the thing that impressed me the most was that everyone just does what needs to be done. (In editing this, the other thing that should impress me is the number of times I used the word “thing” in the last two sentences.) No one says that something isn’t their job or they’re too busy. They just go. And they have fun while they do it. I’d never met the majority of women on the team, but I loved every one of them by the end of the weekend.

Okay, so the other component of the weekend was a Compassion Bloggers’ Reunion. Amanda worked with Shaun Groves to organize a reunion of all the bloggers that have been on various Compassion trips. They all attended Deeper Still, but I didn’t really get to see any of them during the event because none of them were in line buying $2.00 t-shirts.

But Compassion hosted a dinner on Saturday night for all of us. So after the event ended, I changed out of my green Deeper Still t-shirt and into something a little more dinner-ish. (I don’t know what that means.) And then Kelly, Amanda, Heather and I piled into Sophie’s car in search of some caffeine and a place to kill a little time since the dinner didn’t start for another hour.

Which is how we ended up parked on a street in downtown Birmingham drinking various soft drinks from McDonalds. Sophie knows how to show some girls a good time. And she pretty much summed it up when she said, “Who would have ever thought I’d be parked in front of the McWane Center with a car full of people I met on the internet?”

We laughed and talked and told stories about our kids and other various things until we were crying and laughing. Then it was time to head to dinner at Cafe DuPont.

I could tell you about the restaurant and how much I loved it and how the dessert changed all my preconceived notions about the wisdom in combining cheesecake with acorn squash. (IT TURNS OUT THAT IT’S SO RIGHT AND GOOD.)

But none of that is the most important thing. The thing that mattered to me were the people in that room. The people whose words I’ve read and cried over and have been such an inspiration to me. (I honestly think I might have frightened Ann Voskamp a little. She is so graceful and beautiful and I went a little FAN GIRL on her.)

Steve Jones, who works for Compassion and went to the Dominican Republic with my group, stood up at dinner and told us that 5,000 kids have been sponsored through the Compassion blog trips. 5,000 little lives. I have no idea what part of that number is mine. It may be just one for all I know. (This is where I want to tell that story of the starfish on the beach but I will stop myself because seriously.)

It made me cry to hear that number. To be among people who took time out of their daily lives to write words that have ultimately led to impacting 5,000 lives. It’s humbling and it makes me want to do more and to live a life with purpose.

(Not that talking about the Real Housewives on the internet isn’t purposeful. Because, OF COURSE.)

Anyway, I have no way to wrap all this up in any kind of adequate way. It was just a great weekend filled with fun and friends and laughter and tears and so much more that will probably have to be another post at some point when I have the words.

So, for now, I’ll just leave you with this picture from the Compassion dinner. You’d think that after the weekend I had that I’d have a whole slew of pictures. But that would have involved taking my camera out of my purse.

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Compassion in India

April 25, 2009

About 7 p.m. last night, a group of bloggers flew out of the Chicago airport bound for New Delhi. And because I am a little obsessive, every time I woke up last night I would think about the fact they were STILL on a plane.

In fact, as of this moment, they are STILL on a plane.

That is a lot of honey-roasted peanuts.

Anyway, they’ve been on my heart because I know a little bit about what they’re about to experience, although I suspect that the Dominican pales in comparison to the poverty of Kolkata.

Please pray for them this week and make sure you follow along by going to the Compassion Bloggers site. I know what they share is going to be incredible because there is nothing like seeing the way Compassion International completely changes lives of children all over the globe.

And if you want a glimpse of what they’ll be seeing, take a look at these sweet faces waiting to be sponsored.

And somewhere Juan Valdez is crying

February 5, 2009

Last November when I went to the Dominican Republic with Compassion International, I brought home a few souvenirs for my peeps. Specifically, I brought Caroline a necklace that is made out of some kind of magnetic hematite (totally just made that up) or something. I knew she would love it because you can wear it as a necklace or wrap it around your wrist about ten times and make a bracelet. Of course neither of these options thrill her as much as the fact that you can throw it against something metal and it sticks.

All the seasoned Dominican Republic travelers told me that I should definitely buy some coffee and vanilla extract to take home and so I did because I love them all and highly valued their opinion. I bought one very large bottle of vanilla for myself and two small bags of Dominican coffee for P.

Here is where I need to tell you that P is very particular about his coffee, which is why I only bought two small bags. I cannot even express the various coffees we have purchased in his quest for caffeinated perfection over eleven years of marriage, including one unfortunate incident that got us enrolled in Boca Java’s Connoisseur Club.

We began receiving approximately six pounds of coffee every month from Boca Java, which is a little excessive, especially considering that I rarely even drink coffee at home. Apparently the Boca Java Connoisseur Club is kind of like the Mafia because once we were in, it was almost impossible to get us out.

I seriously thought I was going to have to cancel our credit card just to stop the coffee from showing up on our doorstep, but finally got a representative on the phone who let me stop our coffee deliveries after I explained that P’s doctor had told him to limit his caffeine intake. And by “doctor”, I mean me.

Technically, since I was a pharmaceutical rep for ten years, I’m kind of like a doctor except for the fact that I never attended any kind of medical school and really know just enough about prescription drugs to be dangerous.

Anyway, I returned home from the Dominican and presented P with his two small bags of Dominican coffee. He seemed skeptical but agreed to give them a whirl.

The next morning he made (brewed? is that better coffee terminology?) his first pot. He was in love. I seriously thought he might need a moment alone with his coffee. Perhaps he and his Dominican coffee might want to get a room.

Those two small bags were depleted very quickly, but I discovered that you can order it online. That’s a total score because you can’t order Dominican Vanilla Extract online because of some kind of FDA regulations. That should probably concern me but, YUM YUM, it makes my baked goods taste muy, muy delicioso.

So I mentioned to P that we could order the coffee online and that I’d get around to it at some point. Then I forgot all about it. Until this showed up on our doorstep last week.

Anyone who remembers the post about P and his carwash supplies should not be surprised by that photo. He is a firm believer in the philosophy of “If one is good, then a hundred is better”.

Needless to say I probably won’t be making too many trips to Starbucks in the near future.

**Edited to add that for those of you who are interested, you can purchase the coffee here.

A little aftershock

November 20, 2008

I’m going to be totally honest with y’all today and say that I just don’t have much funny in me at the moment. In fact, I feel a little bit like I’m having the missionary version of post-traumatic stress syndrome, but without the trauma or the stress.

If I had to compile a list of my talents it would probably be a short list. However, chief among my gifts would be my ability to compartmentalize certain things. If there is something I don’t want to think about or talk about, then I just go all Scarlett O’Hara and decide I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak to a group of high school students about Compassion and my trip to the Dominican. I’ve spent the last few days reading back over the posts that all the bloggers wrote about the trip and then this morning I googled “Everett Swanson” who is the man that founded Compassion back in 1952.

The last night of our trip, Shaun told us the story of how Compassion came to exist. The short version is that Everett Swanson was an American evangelist who went to Korea during the Korean War to minister to the troops. While he was there, he began to notice all the orphans everywhere. They were huddled in doorways trying to stay warm and starving to death.

One morning he saw a sanitation truck driving down the street. The workers would jump off the truck, kick what appeared to be piles of rags and then throw them in the truck. It turns out they weren’t just piles of rags; they were orphans who didn’t make it through the night being thrown away like garbage. Everett Swanson knew he had to do something.

Because of his commitment, Compassion is now in 24 countries and sponsors over a million children.

I shared that story with the high school students, along with my personal experiences from the trip.

After I was done there, I drove out to my church to record a short video where I was interviewed about the difference Compassion has made in countless lives.

Needless to say, yesterday was like the Big Mama Compassion Tour ’08. (Not coming soon to cities near you!)

Last night, as I drove to meet some friends for Mexican food, my heart was so heavy and I could feel tears right below the surface. I don’t know if it’s because I had talked about it all day or if it’s just taken this long to sink in, but I just felt a heavy weight of sadness settle over me.

It’s a strange experience to see everything we saw that week, the extreme poverty, the sadness, the presence of hope in spite of the bare minimum of material possessions, and then come back to America at a time when everyone is freaking out about our economic crisis and big industries are requesting multi-billion dollar bailouts.

We’re a week away from celebrating Thanksgiving, which should be a time to reflect on our many blessings, yet we’re inundated by Christmas catalogs with the sole purpose of making sure we want more than we already have.

Caroline and I look through the catalogs while she picks out what she wants Santa to bring on Christmas Eve and then I’ll feel guilty because do we really need any more toys in her already packed playroom?

Do I really need any more clothes in a closet full of things?

What’s the balance between my reality and the reality of the kids in the Dominican Republic?

Why do I have moments where I fully realize I’ve seen the worst and yet still have moments where I feel discontent with what I have?

Am I an idiot?

Don’t answer that. It’s intended to be hypothetical.

Most of all, I can’t get this precious girl off my mind.