Back In Time-Seventh Day Slumber

Sometimes I don’t think I should even try to put life into words. I can’t properly describe all the ways that my heart feels at once; how will you ever get the complete picture? I feel like writing is supposed to be cathartic, getting all of your feelings out and all that. Instead, I feel frustrated by my inability to actually communicate, hemmed in by sentence structure, tone and diction. My only consolation is that I am known fully by God, that he knows how I feel even when I can’t properly conceptualize it myself.

Psalm 139:4 “Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O LORD.”

And so, buoyed by the knowledge of my creator, I will continue to share my thoughts with you…

Things are good on the Eastern Cape. I spent this weekend with 268, which is a Christian organization on campus (one of many, apparently) that has connections with the Baptist church that Jill attends. They had a retreat and she mentioned it to me because she thought I might be interested. Since I am disappointed about missing the upcoming LT retreat, and I really want to find people whose weekend activities are more along the lines of my own, I was totally up for a weekend away with some other Christians.

Obviously, it wasn’t DCF, which I knew going in… its not like I can just find a group that instantly feels like home. I have to work to get to know people, and adjust to the group and their own dynamics. The good thing is that we serve the same God, which is a pretty good place to start. While my DCF homesickness was intensified at some points of the weekend, I had a good time, and it was great to just spend some time focusing on God. I was particularly amused when I joined a group of people standing in a circle Friday afternoon, then realized that not only had they segregated by gender around the circle, but that I had moved to the correct side without even noticing. Also, Sunday afternoon we played dodge ball and soccer, and I couldn’t resist playing both just to say that I had (actually, to be honest, I had no choice about dodge ball, since it was basically a required activity, and I didn’t touch the soccer ball the entire time we played).

There were, however, some things that I don’t normally do with DCF… we were staying in a nature reserve not far from Grahamstown (Thomas Baines Reserve), so Saturday afternoon I went for a walk through the African bush. No big deal. Also, Saturday night was my first braai, a very important South Africa milestone for me. For those of you who are not South African (or African, because I know other countries in southern Africa have braais), a braai is… basically… a barbecue/cookout, except not exactly what you think of when you imagine a barbecue. I can’t claim to be an expert, but people here are very serious about their braais, and there seem to be unspoken ground rules involving the meat (boerewors, among other things), the fire, the gender roles, etc. I sort of broke the rules by hanging out around the fire instead of staying in the kitchen, but I have always liked fire, and they were the generous type that would overlook the American girl’s antics. 

I am back on campus now, both glad I went and happy to be here again. Firstly, it was cold this weekend (53 degrees F inside when I went to bed Saturday night) and I am now enjoying my room with its heater back at res. Also, I am still working at the whole ‘reaching out’ and ‘making friends’ thing, and sometimes I find that it take an inordinate amount of energy to force myself to socialize. On the other hand, I obviously don’t want to just be isolated from people for the next four months, and to have friends you have to actually put some effort into making them. It’s probably character building or something, and at the very least God is teaching me both about idols in my life and the things that really matter.