Love ACTUALLY is all around...
--The immortal words of the great philosopher and theologian... Hugh Grant.
Watch before Reading: Love Actually Clip (1 min)
What I learned from the airport....
When my parents dropped me off at Cleveland airport yesterday, I was overflowing with silent dread, worry, and anxiety. The language barrier seemed impossible to overcome...no matter how much last minute Portuguese i cram in on the plane. However, spending the last 24 hours in airports with hundreds of different people has completely eradicated all the fear.
Standing in the International Check-in line today I realized...people are people. They smile, they sigh in frustration, the worry about their kids, they laugh....they are all the same. Our differences are on the surface and fleeting. Our similarities are profound and easily detected and shared. Our emotions and gestures are universal.
I have spent the last 24 hours inside of airports, teetering on the edge of the scariest and biggest adventure of my life. If you don't know... I will be spending the next 4 months in Entre Rios, Brazil working and living in an orphanage. Visit Canaan Land Ministries or Mike and Mary Cochran's Blog to learn more and see that love actually is all around...
The question everyone seems to ask is "Are you excited?". To be honestly, I am scared feces-less. I am entering a country where I don't know the language...to live with 35 kids.... to do whatever work needs done (which could include slaughtering pigs for dinner, emptying trash cans full of used toilet paper, or teaching English).
However, despite all the reasons I should be scared and frustrated, I am stupidly giddy. It's comparable to the sensation you feel as a roller coaster finally reaches the top of the first big hill. There's a moment, where all you see is sky and all you hear is the final metallic clicks. At that moment, you stop breathing and regret ever getting on the stupid machine, but a second later you are go over the edge and, despite rational thought, you are smiling all the way down.
Tonight at 9:00pm, I finally leave Atlanta airport and the United State (God Willing) and by supper time Easter Sunday I should be breaking bread with the children of Brazil. Deep, Deep Sigh...followed by a big-ole grin.
Love actually is all around or to say it another way: God is Love....Let us love one another.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. --First John (the bible)
Professor Grant spoke these words as a montage of real people - wives, husbands, children, lovers, brothers from another mothers, grandmothers, and grandchildren ran towards their families and friends after exiting an airplane. Despite, these peoples' varying tints of skin, mismatching reproductive parts, and different stages of life - they were smiling (lips turned upward, eyes open and welcoming). They all approached their companions with literal open arms and and held their loved ones once they got them close enough.
Now, if warm chucks of half digested vomit just climbed the walls of your esophagus and curdled as the acid splashed against your taste buds causing you to convulse and heave...I don't blame you. But just because it sounds like Hallmark inspired, LifeTime movie material Bullshit doesn't mean it's not true.
What I learned from the airport....
When my parents dropped me off at Cleveland airport yesterday, I was overflowing with silent dread, worry, and anxiety. The language barrier seemed impossible to overcome...no matter how much last minute Portuguese i cram in on the plane. However, spending the last 24 hours in airports with hundreds of different people has completely eradicated all the fear.
Standing in the International Check-in line today I realized...people are people. They smile, they sigh in frustration, the worry about their kids, they laugh....they are all the same. Our differences are on the surface and fleeting. Our similarities are profound and easily detected and shared. Our emotions and gestures are universal.
To say hello to someone - you don't know need to speak their language... all you have to do smile and look them in the eye. The non-verbal cues we give each other translate better than my stuttering and stammering in Portuguese ever could...
I have spent the last 24 hours inside of airports, teetering on the edge of the scariest and biggest adventure of my life. If you don't know... I will be spending the next 4 months in Entre Rios, Brazil working and living in an orphanage. Visit Canaan Land Ministries or Mike and Mary Cochran's Blog to learn more and see that love actually is all around...
The question everyone seems to ask is "Are you excited?". To be honestly, I am scared feces-less. I am entering a country where I don't know the language...to live with 35 kids.... to do whatever work needs done (which could include slaughtering pigs for dinner, emptying trash cans full of used toilet paper, or teaching English).
However, despite all the reasons I should be scared and frustrated, I am stupidly giddy. It's comparable to the sensation you feel as a roller coaster finally reaches the top of the first big hill. There's a moment, where all you see is sky and all you hear is the final metallic clicks. At that moment, you stop breathing and regret ever getting on the stupid machine, but a second later you are go over the edge and, despite rational thought, you are smiling all the way down.
Tonight at 9:00pm, I finally leave Atlanta airport and the United State (God Willing) and by supper time Easter Sunday I should be breaking bread with the children of Brazil. Deep, Deep Sigh...followed by a big-ole grin.
Love actually is all around or to say it another way: God is Love....Let us love one another.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. --First John (the bible)
email me: pat.gerber84@gmail.com
grace and peace. gerbs
grace and peace. gerbs
Posts
1 comment:
Pat, I'm looking forward to reading your first thoughts from Brazil. Hope the rest of your travels went smoothly!
Annie
Post a Comment