The Journey is Always Worth It

A Warning
Posted on April 8, 2015 by Alyssa Reilly

http://adaughtersjourney.me/2015/04/08/a-warning-2/


To the adventurer, to the wandering soul. To the travel luster and the big dreamer. To the pastoral heart, to the deep lover. To the feeler and the pursuer. To the brave and bold ones, to the sensitive cores. To the travelers and commissioners, to the world lovers and disciplers. To the missionaries and the unordinary, before you leave home, these are some things you should know.

You will leave home, and you will love it.
You will leave home, and you will hate it.
You will travel to amazing places and see amazing things.

You will sit in the dirt, on the floor.
You will sit in filth, in stench, in trash heaps and mud dumps.
You will sit in palaces and on thrones, with dignitaries and kings.
You will sit with the lonely and the broken, the rich and wealthy, and they may be the same person.

You will be blessed beyond compare with the simplest gift.
You will be blessed with wealth and extravagance, with many treasures at your feet.

You will taste the foods of this world and wonder what you ate.
You will see the wonders of the world, and miss the comforts of home.
You will be wrecked for life and love, wrecked for the ordinary.

Too long in one place and your heart will ache for another.
You will always want to travel, yet long for a feeling of home.
You will see world news headlines and think about the people you know there.

You will have many homes, many families and many friends.
You will dream with a map and dance in the stars.
You will never look at social issues the same, for you will see actually faces, actually hearts standing before your eyes.
What really matters in this world will change for you.

You will know what it is to be in two places at the same time.
And you will be misunderstood.
People will see your boldness and mistake it for fearlessness.
They will not see the hours of tears or the process behind the journey.

When you leave, people will move on.
You will move on too.
Home will not be the same, and you will not be the same.
You will grow and they will grow, and that is good, because growth means you’re alive.

You will make incredible friends and not be able to sustain all the relationships you want to.
You will make incredible friends and have relationships that will last a lifetime.
You will miss more people than you ever thought possible.
Some relationships will be strengthened, and some will fade away.

You will be sustained by little reminders that you are seen and known.
The rain, coffee, sunsets and rooftops, will remind you that you are cared for.

You will see lives impacted for eternity because of you.
Your voice will shift nations.
Your hands will heal hearts.

You will see people’s hearts, thoughts and emotions and discover hidden treasure.
You will pour love on dry and hurting souls.
You will impact the homeless and the millionaire, the orphan and the soldier.

You will pour yourself out for others and not feel loved in return.
You will pour yourself out for others and receive the deepest satisfaction in your soul.

You will win some and loose some.
You will make enemies and best friends.

You will forget some things you want to remember and never forget things you wish you could.

You will lie in bed at night wondering if you did things your best, wondering if you gave it your all.
You will not sleep because the bus is too bumpy.
You will sleep sweetly under a blanket of stars.

You will sit with the poor in the dirt and speak to thousands on stages.
You will stand for the voiceless and defenseless.

You will climb the world’s mountains and swim legendary seas.
You will eat delicacies and drink the finest of wines.

You will love, so deeply.
You will hurt after the love, and then you will heal.
And you will love again.

You won’t forget their broken smiles or the way the children played with your hair.
You wont forget the pain in their eyes or the joy of their laugh.

You will miss birthdays and weddings, Christmases and anniversaries.
But you will be celebrated by the world, and will thrive in the joy of new cultures.

You will not be the same.
Some might not understand the pain that has made you so strong or the process to your authority.
But that’s ok, there will always be someone who does.

So here’s to you, adventurer. Here’s to you for heading out the door. Here’s to you for not turning back. Here’s to you for loving again.

Here’s to the rewards that are worth the risk. Here’s to the dreams realized and desires fulfilled. Here’s to full passports and full hearts. Here’s to knowing why you are alive and what moves your feet. Here’s to standing your ground and not giving in to fear.

Here’s to the wanderer, the lover, the pastor, the dreamer, the injustice fighter and the feeler.

Here’s to you.
And here’s to me.

_______________

I found this poem today.  And while it has been 3, almost 4 years since my trip to Russia, and I have not left the country again, it still resonates.  I have come home, and processed, and pondered, and found jobs--sometimes ones obtained just to pay the bills, and gone back to graduate school, and soon I will be starting my first real adult job--one with a salary and benefits and job security.  And it is one I am so pleased to have found.  One that uses all of who I am--my brain and my heart.

I have been on journeys since then.  I am eager for the journey that lies ahead.  Because I know that I don't know where the road leads, and while I may panic when I cannot see around the bend, I know that the journey is always worth it.

But I have not forgotten Russia.  It will always be there, and it will always be a part of my story.  I will always have the receipt on which I took notes while speaking on the phone to the recruiter.  I hope to always remember Camp Yantar when I put on my bracelet.  I hope to never forget the lilt of her voice, and I hope the people I loved there will always know that I loved them, and that the time and the distance does not change that.

I am grateful for this poem that reminds me that it is okay both to remember and to forget.

Looking Back

Well, it's been two years now.  I read these old entries and it still feels like yesterday, like nothing has changed.  But so much has.

The last you heard from me, I was planning on applying to go on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as a part-time campus staff member.  I started that process, but, for a variety of reasons, it didn't get very far.  I spent a couple months re-evaluating things, and praying, and seeking, and crying, and questioning, and talking, and listening.  Once things settled down, I realized I was right where I needed to be.  Working in a lab, volunteering, and teaching.

Since then, I have quit my lab job, and I left my formal volunteer role with InterVarsity.  Instead, focused on teaching, and started volunteering with my church's high school youth group.  And I have found much satisfaction in those things.  I am looking towards going back to graduate school in the fall (3 months!) to finish my master's degree.  It will be a chemistry degree, but I will do a research project in chemistry education.  Because I have discovered that I love being a teacher.  It fits me well, and I feel like I use *me* to do this job.  I use my critical thinking skills, I use my creativity, I use my chemistry knowledge, but I also use my heart.  I find that I'm always facing new challenges, and I enjoy meeting them.

And I look back and consider...this started with a trip around the world.  This started with an invitation to follow Him around the world to do something I had hardly done before.  I am amazed at what happens when He leads.

Dinosaur Dresses

Alright.  I wanted to post about a few things, but I knew that I needed to tell this story first.

Shows seem to be a big deal in their culture--performances of all kinds, dancing, singing, random talents.  So quite frequently, we would be dragged into these performances (often the day of..."So, you're doing a song for tonight's show, right?"......"Uh...sure!").  One of these performances (which we thankfully had more notice for) was involvement in this dance-off thing.  Groups would get together to create a dance to a set of 8 counts.  Groups would have no idea what song it would be danced to, but you were responsible for creating a dance for a given amount of time.  And then come show time, two groups would be pitted against one other, dancing at the same time to the same music.  Additionally, each time would then bring out a solo dancer after the group dance to do the same thing.

So the first round, we did some dance in black outfits with Russian scarves tied around our waists:

Alaina was our solo dancer, as she had some dance experience.  She was pretty much amazing. ;)  She broke out some pirouettes.

We ended up placing in it somewhere, which meant that we had to go on to round 2 (I think everybody actually did).  So we had to come up with a whole new dance, joined by some Russians on our team.  And we raided the costume room in the main lodge and found lots of animal costumes.  So, we had a variety of animal or other nonsensical creatures doing this completely ridiculous dance.  Full of cheese, nowhere near being a cool dance like we attempted with the first dance.

Tiger(A), Butterfly (R), Carlson (R), Juggler (R), Dance Manager Natasha (R), Dinosaur (A), and Grasshopper (A)

Yep, those would be pinwheels.

And, as before, we needed a solo dancer.  We are walking into the gymnasium, and we still haven't chosen a dancer.  And I say, okay, fine.  I'll do it.  Totally winging it.

Me, in my starting pose.  Thinking, I have got to be kidding myself.

I do some random steps, old dance moves, but really just being ridiculous and looking like I'm having a ton of fun (which, besides the pressure factor, it was).  And since everyone seemed to like it when the boys threw in gymnastic stunts, I decided to not let them have all the fun and broke out a front handspring!  Didn't quite land it, but everyone went nuts--the rest of my team and our Russian friends were amazed!  Haha.

Galina, giving me a huge hug, after my ridiculous (and apparently amazing) performance.

AAAnd we won.  We won the Dance Grand Prix.  Yep.

Time

I know it has been a very long while since my last post, where I did say that there would be a next time.  I'll get back to that point in a minute.

I still look back at last summer with many emotions.  I've come to the conclusion that I will be processing this for a while.  I think all impactful (and I mean truly impactful, not just emotional) experiences will always be open for the examining.  I still think about the week-long mission trip to Costa Rica that I took my senior year of high school--that was 7 years ago, 7 years next month.  Nothing super-obviously revolutionary happened then, but I took risks I never took before, in a way that I could never take now.  I was super shy, but I still remember sitting on the bench in the part with Jill (I think that was her name; it sounds right at least) while everyone else on my team was playing soccer or maybe "Mas Alto!"  I knew zero Spanish.  Really.  I could say, Hola, commo estas?  But if they said anything other than Bieno, I was lost.  Ha.  But I sat and watched with her anyway, and attempted some sort of communication, but mostly sat in silence.  Now, in the same situation, I'm not sure I would have so naturally approached her.  I would think too much about it.  I would agonize over what I would say.  I would force conversation that didn't need to happen.  It challenges me to remember what I learned that week, that perhaps I was meant for such a time as this (Ester).  That I give what I can offer, and that is what is needed. 

Likewise, I think 7 years from now, I'll still be processing my trip to Russia.  I have no idea where I'll be in 7 years, but I'm sure that I'll remember certain facets of this trip, and be challenged in some way or be reminded of something I learned, like what it means to serve, or what it looks like to be surrendered to His leading.

I'm sure that I still don't know where this trip "leads."  I'm sure that the ramifications of me having gone on this trip are still to be seen, in ways that I will never expect.  For example, last weekend, I got a call from a friend and ministry partner.  He told me that they were going to be going to Russia this summer to help lead a conference for students there with his church, and he wanted to invite me along!  Oh, how exciting that would be!  Alas, I will be teaching here during that time frame.  But I am half expecting the other shoe to drop--for my supervisor to walk into my lab or office one day, or send me an email saying that they don't need me to teach that summer session, thereby enabling me to go to Russia again this summer!  How crazy awesome would that be! Maybe next year...

Okay, I know I said I would explain the weird dinosaur picture...but I have to go eat dinner now.  I'm exhausted after a day of teaching but I still have grading to do.  Maybe I'll take a grading break later on this evening and tell the story.  It's not as great a story as the anticipation is probably leading you to believe, it's just a complicated story requiring details.

Adieu (oui, c'est francias)

Some photos....

Alyona and I toasting bread over a campfire--they add garlic and olive oil to the toasted pieces--it's their traditional campfire snack!

Um, this will be explained next time...

Alyona and I saying goodbye in Cherepovets

At the Hermitage State Art Museum in St. Petersburg on our last day in Russia! From back to front: Rebecca, Spencer, Anna (our local guide and friend of Galina, not pictured), me, and Candy

Spencer and I on our way home.  Spencer's showing off her braclet that Evgeny made her!

Camp Yantar family for the last few weeks!  Saying goodbye.

It's Time

Welp, here goes!

There was a small chance that I would be speaking about my experience in Russia this Sunday, which motivated me to finally do some more processing.  I'm also getting an important piece of mail in the next two days, to which I will return later in this post.  All this to say, I think I'm ready to start telling more of my Russia story.

So the last true update left off somewhere around the middle of the month.

Amtek left camp on the 15th of July, which was sad.  We did get to ride the bus all the way back to the city with them, though.  I got to spend 2 wonderful hours with my favorite student Alyona, dicussing colors and music.  We had a similar taste in music, which was so fun!  I recently found a band called Within Temptation, which I have never heard much about and thought noone else had heard of them.  But lo and behold, she had!  We shared earbuds--and yummy butter cookies-- for the ride.  Wonderful.

We said goodbye and got to see their school in the city.  I had lots of fun taking photos of the chemistry classroom--the periodic table was in Russian! ^.^  And it was great to see Yalaina's face light up with joy and pride when she showed us her new classroom and her previous student's work...!  That was a good day, even if we did have to say goodbye.  Although, it wasn't until several days later that I really started to miss them.  I think it's indicative of the sheer weight that this trip had on me emotionally that things like "I'm never ever going to see these kids again" didn't even begin to register until several handfuls of hours later.  That's just kind of how it felt the whole time--emotionally, mentally, lagging.  I mean, the physical jet lag wore off fine.  I think the adjustment just kind of shocked my system a bit; taking things longer to register and sort through. :(

We had a few days off.  Camp was empty.  Quiet.  It was nice, but then got a little boring and slightly creepy.  Half of the team went to Moscow for the weekend.  I didn't go--I'm not much of a tourist and trying to coordinate bus schedules and currency exchanges...and paying the equivalent of +$100 for it was not for me.  I was quite content to stay back at camp with three of my teammates.  We even got to dance out in the rare rain shower! =)

And then things got challenging.  We had hundreds of new kids show up...but we were never sure who was supposed to be in our classes or when.  We had a group, and then they disappeared, and we got new students halfway through...oh man, was it confusing.  Our relationships with these kids took longer to form because they didn't intentionally involve us the way Amtek did.  Which left me, a few days prior to departure, feeling frustrated and guilty.  I felt like I had done nothing that month.  It was our last week there and I was still not in comfortable relatively-easy relationships with my students, and that left me feeling like a failure.  And then I realized that I had had far less time with these students than I was imagining--I reminded myself that they were still new students and that while I had been there for several weeks, they had only been there a week.  I knew that if Amtek were still there, I would have been in a different place.  I would have had many more weeks with them, to love them and share with them.

But it was in these weeks that I think I learned the most.  At least, the moments of learning that stand out to me the clearest.  Several of our kids in these weeks were from a local orphanage, which posed interesting relational challenges.  I had one girl who was so, so sweet.  She was so affectionate and loved to give me hugs, which, if you know me, can be an awkward thing.  But I loved giving her hugs. She was so sweet.  I don't know if she was from the orphanage or not, but how quickly and tightly she latched onto me made me wonder if she was. :(  But I loved her anyway.

There were two other girls in one of my classes who were very attention-seeking.  Not bad kids, but certainly disruptive and exasperating.  One had scars all up her arms.  When I saw this, I took a deep breath and said, Okay.  This is what you came for.  I knew it would be there.  I knew it would be, and all of the things that go into someone self-injuring were the things I cared about and wanted to stand against in going to Russia.  It's why I went, I just didn't expect to see it to clearly or immediately--they didn't cover them up at all, and would pick at the scabs in class.  But I digress.  We never spoke about things like that, we never built that relationship.  But their attention-seeking did open my eyes to what it means to serve and to care from a teacher's perspective.  Loving and serving them meant having patience with them and treating them with the same respect that I showed every other student.  Not giving into their demands, but not dismissing them in frustration like perhaps so many of their other teachers probably have.  It seemed like the rubber met the road there.  I could be loving and patient to any of my students outside of class, but it was a lot easier to only hang out with the easy kids outside of class, and what kind of service is that?  The kind of love and service that He calls us to is not the easy kind.  This kind of love and service matters most when it's hard, like with difficult students in class that you can't ignore.

I learned several things over the summer, and one of those was service.  I'll get back to the other things later and in more detail at some other time (real life grading calls!), but for now, I'll focus on what I learned about service.  I learned more of what it looked like to serve others in my time in Russia.  Service requires a relationship.  It's not just a list of things that need to be done and checking them off for other people.  Service requires something deeper than that.  It's patiently spending 20 minutes communicating one point of a simple conversation to someone across a language barrier.  It's treating those problem students in a way that trusts them and spurs them forward.  I want to reflect this understanding of service in all that I do here, back in my "real life" with my friends, with my small group, with my family, and with my students (both IV and those to whom I teach chemistry).

I also saw, like the Word says in Psalms, that I am safe when I follow HIM.  I can trust him to care for me and to provide for me when I follow where he leads me.  I was cared for and provided for in ways I never expected throughout this trip, not the least of which was being more than fully-funded.  Hot water.  Teammates.  Forests.  And not even just the trip itself.  Every single step of even getting to Russia was iniated and led by HIM.  For the past two years, it has all been led by him, from leaving grad school to finding an apartment and a job and eventually finding the opportunity to go to Russia and then actually going, and finding a new job and apartment upon my return, and never seeing more than one step ahead.  And I am SO. HAPPY.  I am so happy.  I don't think I've even been this happy.

Given these things, I have decided to apply for staff with InterVarsity for the upcoming school year.  There, I said it, it's out!  I will have the application in hand hopefully by the end of this week!  I am so excited!  Oh, I could tell you so many things about this, and I will soon!  Briefly, though, this is something that I feel I have poked at for a couple years now, about a year or two.  I've gotten enough shoves in this direction that I feel like doing anything else would be stupid and disobedient.  I love working with students.  I really do.  And I have always felt the need to give them space in my life and in my heart.  Space for them to discover the things they need to discover in a safe place.  And InterVarsity did that in my life.  I'll tell more about this later.  And in keeping with all this, I think I will continue to adjunct part-time and then staff part-time, at least for now.  But where this ties into Russia is on on those rare occasions when I could walk around camp by myself, it would occur to me that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.  Just being present to the members of that community and living, walking, teaching, serving, loving with them.  I want to do that with my students, really do that in a way that isn't just on a volunteer basis.  I am so excited for the possibility of doing that by going on staff with InterVarsity!

And now, dear readers, I must go.  I have several lab reports to grade before the morning!  I will add more stories at a later date.  But here's to watching the Story unfold!

We're "halfway" there...

So maybe I'm not halfway there, but I liked the title... An update is long over due. This still probably isn't the cohesive answer to "How was Russia?" people are looking for yet, but it is time for an update, and there are things to update about. My roommate and I have found an apartment. It's wonderful. We love the house and I'm enjoying the presence of my roommate. She's going to seminary for biblical counseling, so we certainly have some interesting things to talk about. It's been good to live with her so far. Unfortunately, both our schedules are so crazy that there are sometimes weeks when we literally don't see each other for 3 days straight. I also like the fact that I have 20-35 minute drives to both of my workplaces on country roads, so I have space to think. I like this. :) My new job as an adjunct lab instructor is going really well, also. I really enjoy it. Grading is a little burdensome, but nothing spectacularly terrible or anything. I like teaching and I like helping the students. It encourages me when my students say, "You explain things really well." Even though I don't teach lecture, some of my lab students are coming to my office hours because I explain things better than their lecture professor (who has a PhD). That's encouraging. I have new things to think about now that I'm home from Russia. It still doesn't all "fit" the way I'd like it to, but I can say that it was a *good* trip and that I am grateful for it. I'm moving into new stages in my life with lessons learned from this summer (on which I will post later). Even though things are insanely busy, I am happy. Every step to this point has been led by God, and I look forward to the steps ahead.