My favorite prayer

The prayer I have been wanting to pray lately begins like this: "God, you are fucking awesome." Really, every time I think about praying, this is what I think. I understand it is not quite proper and to some it would definitely be offensive but it is absolutely true.
I don't really swear but sometimes it feels appropriate. Sometimes, whatever you are saying needs a little extra emphasis. This is one of those times. God is fucking awesome.
When everything falls apart, when everything is going well, when I am sad, when I am happy, when everything is everything....God is really, really, awesome. He is always who He is. It is simple and it is comforting. He knows my path, He knows. I have to trust that He will put it all together the way it should go and my only job is to follow the peace.

Everything becomes part of you

Even when you remove yourself from your normal life, life still goes on. Even when you are living in a hard place, working in difficult circumstances, dealing with things you never planned on needing to face, life still happens. Everything you left behind is still with you, nothing ever actually gets left behind. I have had to learn this so many times.
November has been very difficult for me. I think when things are difficult people look for reasons, we always want to justify any pain we have to endure. Especially if it's pain we can't do anything about.
Everybody dies and that I can deal with, I can work through the cycle of mourning and knowing that whoever died was in my life for a reason and that is something to celebrate. My grandma was a feisty woman and I always admired that about her. She definitely had a fire to her that I think I inherited. She always spoke her mind but really tried to be kind to people. As much as she could insult people (and she could!), practically, she was kind to everyone she met. I can be happy remembering she was my grandma.
Every relationship does not have to die. It's hard to watch someone go from being absolutely in love with you to hating you in a very short amount of time. There is no cycle of mourning for that, there is no procedure to remembering them. You're not even supposed to remember them. They are still alive, their love is not unconditional, they took whatever you gave and shattered it. It doesn't matter what you promised each other, what plans you made, the words you said, the love that was exchanged, none of that matters. When one person decides that the relationship is over, the other person just has to...let it die. They are supposed to forget the promises, pretend love is still real, and try to find someone else.
Falling in love is like being on drugs, everything is beautiful and happy. Every day is euphoric. It doesn't matter when you fight because you know you'll make up because that person loves  you and that is sacred, such a special thing. Love deserves to be protected and fought for. Falling out of love is hell. It feels like your insides are breaking, literally. Like you can't breathe normally anymore, it's difficult to really think clearly, everything you hear sounds like a lie, and everything seems unjust.
Regardless, as I said before, life goes on. Life will not always be like this, it will go on. More people will com into my life and more people will die. More people will hurt me and more things will remind me that I cannot escape life. Life has good things and bad things, it is a crazy mix. It is all life.
This reminds me of an excerpt from The Brother's Karamazov which says, "Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced, in fact, that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment- still I should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it!" That is what I believe. Life is too precious to want to stop. Life is too amazing to let someone or something ruin it all. People are people. No matter what, they will betray you, lie to you, disappoint you, and amaze you.

Give me hope in the darkness, that I will see the light

I haven't written in a month and the past month has been insanity. Absolute insanity. So emotional I am pretty sure I no longer feel emotion. Or perhaps feel too much? Hard to say.

I went on R&R which is two weeks off after ten weeks of work. I went to Italy, as I had planned. I ended up going by myself even though I had originally planned on going with a very special person. That didn't work out so I did the trip alone. At first it was really horrible. Traveling alone and not sharing the experience with anyone has never been something I've enjoyed. I did visit a friend in Florence but that place was kind of sad so I decided to go back to Rome. Rome felt magical, so amazing. Everywhere I went there was something old that had a story attached to it. So many stories, so many possibilities, it felt magical! I became so obsessed with the Coliseum that I dragged someone I just met there at 3 am. (I thought going alone was too dangerous) It was incredible. I ended up meeting a bunch of great travelers in the hostel I was staying at, The Yellow, and they made the second half of my trip really amazing and happy. If I ever go back to Rome I would definitely spend a weekend at The Yellow.

Coming back to South Sudan I expected to feel refreshed, rested, and ready to get back to work! However, I felt completely drained. Like all my feeling had been taken away and my ability to care was severely handicapped. I had a lot going on during my R&R and it all came to horrible end right before I had to get back to work. It got even worse about a week into work. Because of everything that happened, I feel like I don't care about my work like I used to. If this is a super intense way of teaching me what to value, I don't appreciate the lesson at all. I have a lot of questions, doubts, confusion, and I'm really unsure of the way forward. As cliche as it may sound, the only thing I can do is trust that God doesn't have questions, doubts, or confusion and is the One guiding me. He knows. Those two words help me a lot and I have to keep remembering them: He knows.

I can say for sure doing relief work makes you question a lot of things. Too many to list. I don't know if this is what I will do long term, I don't know how much longer I will do it at all. I can say I am excited to see what this leads to. As cool as this job is and as much as I am loving doing this, I don't think this is my career. I think this is a stepping stone. I wonder where it will lead....

The other day I finally got to see my first C-section! I was initially quite nervous that seeing them cut would make me queasy or seeing them yank out the uterus would cause me to pass out but I didn't even feel dizzy. It was pretty incredible. They made a few cuts and then pulled a baby out! The most surprising parts were that once the baby was out I couldn't believe it had ever fit in that small space and there wasn't as much blood as I thought there would be. It was awesome, though. Hearing the baby cry was so amazing somehow. I've heard babies cry before but this cry was a sign of health and life. It was awesome.

With the good comes bad (somehow) and today I learned of something that always saddens me. One of my favorite workers couldn't work recently because she was "sick" and today I found out that she had actually been beaten so badly by her husband that she couldn't work. I felt so angry and helpless all at once. It was like the incident in Korea all over again. The wife is her husband's property here, he has every right to hit her. If you involve the police, they will probably do nothing if the woman doesn't demand it. And even if she did do something, her husband would probably abandon her and then who would care for her and protect her? Maybe he doesn't beat her often and it's better to stay with him than try and do anything. Realizing this reality is more than sad, it is sickening. I hope one day this society can realize the value of it's women and work towards equality. I don't mean for that to sound like I want them to embrace the American idea of equality but I also don't want women to continue to be men's property. The women here are truly incredible and deserve better.