11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

It really is amazing how liberating it can be. Perhaps, it is actually even quite surprising. I guess I never really considered it this way until now, but there comes a time in everyone’s life when we need to own up to something: I am not a victim. I am not a victim of someone else’s thoughts, their actions, their words, or even of circumstances.

A victim is powerless: they are held captive by someone else’s actions and they cannot choose who they become. A victim bows to the circumstance and allows the situation to determine their actions and thoughts. A victim is reactionary, and not pro-active. A victim looks for someone else to blame and tries to avoid the truth: that perhaps I am in this place because of my own actions and I just need to man up and take responsibility.

The word victim suggests that it is more like a casualty. Like a natural disaster or predatorial action.  In moments like that, you don’t have time to choose who you become-you just go with gut instinct for survival. However, in most of my life, I have to learn to roll with the punches and not let my circumstances determine who I become.  “People are talking about me”. “I feel left out”. “I feel misunderstood”. “I have the urge to want to justify myself”. These are just perceptions - they are not necessarily the truth. The more I play into it, the more credit I give the situation and the more I allow it to determine who I am am rather than giving that power to the only person on earth who can really determine that: me.  And me is not a victim!

There is a little obscure verse in Isaiah 32:17 that says, “the fruit of rightness will be peace,  and its effects will be confidence forever.”This is true in life at every angle: why would we try to justify ourselves about anything if we feel the confidence that we made the right choice? What good does panicking at trying to win people’s approval do if we have the nagging feeling that we need to somehow justify something? There is so much to be said in admitting when we are wrong and realizing that we are ok with owning up to it.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book that played a huge role in the end of slavery in the US in the mid-1860’s. It is a story about an amazing slave that everyone affectionately called “Uncle Tom”.  However, slavery to him was not what defined him: his faith and his dignity was what defined him. As a slave, he refused to consider himself a victim of injustice and cruelty, and instead decided to choose who he would be every day.  This is what I am choosing to do today. And this is what I will choose to do tomorrow. I will not allow anyone or anything else the privilege of detemining who I will become…that choice is mine alone.

In my mind, I can see the scene so clearly, it is as if it was unfolding in front of me…
The poor, abandoned boy meets the Genie that he thinks will give him everything he could possibly dream of: fame, fortune, the ability to wow the one he loves. As the Genie is attempting to convince the boy of his true abilities, in a moment of inspiration, he says, “It’s really like unbelievable cosmic power” (cue Genie growing to an exponential size of himself, and then shrinking back into the bottle he came out of) “In an itty-bitty living space!” Whenever I think of the potential of my life and the lives of every single person I meet, I often review this little cartoon segment in my head. This is what we are each capable of.
I am not talking about some magical or mythical moment where we take on extra-terrestrial powers; I am talking about choosing to live large when your world is small. Choosing to be more than is expected, choosing to do more than would have been sufficient, and choosing to love always-even when it seems outrageous and uncalled for.
What would my life look like if instead of choosing to prove myself, I chose to serve others? What would I look like if instead of needing to feel justified, I felt satisfied. What would I look like if instead of needing a title, I realized that what I really need is to be fulfilled with who I am and what I am doing.
We are that Genie, minus the bad pants (who, by the way, should be reported to the Fashion Police! Someone needs to tell that dude that a big belly and a vest with no tee is a definite fashion violation on so many levels!). We are each a powerhouse of amazing potential, even if it may not look like much right now. The only thing that stops us is us. What a crazy thought: I limit myself in so many ways, and the only way to unlock that potential is living a life that loves and inspires others to that same place.
I have been back in the schools this week with one of our road teams, and we are in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Today, as I watched my team members as they went through their day and reached out to about 1200 high school students, I was thinking about the Genie’s words and remembering that there is no kindness that is insignificant, there is no word of life and hope that is insignificant, and there is definitely no dream that is insignificant. As we wrapped up the last of the cables and were about to walk out the door, a girl from the school stopped me and said, “Thanks for coming to my school today. We normally only have people come here and tell us what not to do, and tell us what we do wrong, but you came and told us that we are valuable. You have given us something to aspire to.”
So now, a few hours later, I sit here at this laptop and realize that I can honestly say that I believe that every day is a gift, and every moment I choose to love, I choose to live out how significant and powerful my life really can be. Love is what gives us wings to believe in ourselves, and today, I got the chance to give that gift to someone else…and it felt great!

When we were in Thailand this past March, there was a little girl there who had the most amazing smile. In my heart, her name is Hla, which is Burmese for beautiful.  She was about 8 years old, and from Burma (Myanmar). Her parents had sold her to traffickers when she was very small to help pay for feeding the rest of the family, and she does not remember where they were from. When I inquired further, one of the staff at the home told me that they moved down to the capital city, Rangoon, shortly after selling her.

Hla is a testimony to the beauty and innocence of childhood. She has the greatest smile that makes her eyes shine and pulls on my heart every time I see it. She is incredibly smart, and knows a remarkable amount of English, considering it is just what she has picked up vicariously along the way.  Probably the most profound thing about her young life is that she willingly trusts adults that are in her life now. She allows them to hug her and will often reach out to hold one of their hands, despite the pain and abuse she has suffered at the hands of adults that have been in her life in the past.

I have been thinking about little Hla all week, as I anxiously watch the devastation of the Cyclone that hit Burma. This morning I woke up to the headlines that said that UN officials fear that there are more than 100,000 people dead as a result. As a result of what? Of a cyclone and tidal wave? No, they are dead as a result of an evil regime that refused to even warn the people that it was coming. They sat back in their wealth and comfort and literally ignored the impending doom that was about to strike their shores. As I look at pictures of the devastation,  my heart breaks. What can one person do in the face of such total destruction? The evil of poverty is that it always leaves it’s victims open to exploitation, danger, and to be victimized.

And the whole time,I think of little Hla’s face as she blurts out English words that she is proud to try out on me. I think of her little hand in mine and remember that her parents could possibly be trapped somewhere in that devastation - or worse- have lost their lives there. Hla believes in her heart that they will someday return for her. Amazing…the very people that through desperation or sheer ignorance, gave permission to people to exploit her and steal her innocence, are the same people that she longs to be reunited with. To her, they are worth trusting again and believing in.

In those piles of bodies that we see in the pictures and reports, there is more than just rotting flesh. There are letters that were never written, words that were never spoken, reconciliation that was never achieved, love that was never lived out, dreams that were cut short, and injustice that was never avenged. There are mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters that were separated forever and all because the force of nature combined with the selfish irrationality of humanity is a deadly cocktail.

Tonight, I will pray for Hla and for her long lost family.  In fact, I pray for all my Burmese family.  I can’t call myself a person of compassion if I don’t see their plight as my own. I believe that they need someone to believe in them and for them, and to take action because of what that compassion can produce.  I can do that. I can see them through the eyes of compassion and non-judgment.  Because I love their sons and daughters, they are my family too, and my mom once gave me wise words that I continually remind myself of all the time: “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family”.

So, Burmese family, wherever you are tonight, I pray that you are safe, free from harm, and that you would go to bed in peace knowing that someone believes in you…I will be your voice, and my love will have action in all that it professes.

Finally, they had arrived…all 107 of them. We had waited all day to get to this point, and in typical style, they were 2 hours later than we had agreed upon! But, we reasoned with ourselves, the point was that they were here now!
It was the last day of our time with them, and the day before Good Friday. Our Hero Holiday team had spent the past hour hiding 1200 Easter eggs and about 150 marshmallow candies on a one acre piece of land that we were staying on. They hid them for the kids that were coming to say good-bye to us after spending 10 amazing days together. These children had impacted our lives in such an incredible and unique way that it was very difficult for us to quantify what it meant to each of us. They had taught us so much about courage, resilience, and hope- and they had taught us that you can trust again after incredible pain and tragedy. These children and their leaders had become some of our personal heroes.

When they came running down the steps to meet us on the cleared area, we were anxious as we saw the sun quickly fading and worried that we wouldn’t have enough time to finish our plans. As they sat in front of me and the translator, they were completely unaware of what I was going to tell them. For them, it was enough to be able to see us again and be together. The thought of what I was going to get to tell them even got me excited! I began to tell them about the tradition for Canadian children about hunting for hidden Easter eggs. I explained to them that this weekend, all over the world, millions of children would be doing this, and because we loved them so much, we wanted them to have the chance to do it first.
I explained to them where to look and showed them what the candy looked like, and as we handed out the little bags to collect the candies in, some of them started to quiver with excitement and anticipation! A couple of the little girls were holding and squeezing each other’s hands as they tried to contain their excitement. We counted together out loud to three, and then I yelled “Go!”.
It was mayhem! They squealed and laughed and shouted as they jumped over bushes, rolled on the grass, and dove under plants to find the candies they had been promised were there. I actually started to cry as I thought about how beautiful it was to hear them laugh and play like this, and how privileged we were to be able to do this for them.
As I was drinking in the scene of chaos and ecstatic joy, I was brought back to a little dose of bizarre reality: one of the staff at the hotel where we were doing this with the children, in an effort to try to give us some mood music and background cheering thought he would start up the giant, rusty sound system and blare the music at the maximum volume. A nice gesture…until I realized it was the Black Eyed Peas…singing ‘My Humps’!

So I am sitting here in the Hong Kong airport, looking out at the downtown, smoggy skyline, thanking the Lord for free wireless so I can Skype my husband back in Canada, and thinking about how the world of airports is a crazy reflection of the global village in which we live. I have had a Starbucks at every stop on my journey since leaving Toronto: Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Hong Kong and later today in Bangkok. I have seen Burger King signs everywhere, and KFC abounds. I am looking out the window at the planes, trains, and automobiles, and giggling to myself about how this could literally be anywhere on earth and still look relatively familiar. How strange it is that for as many differences as we all have, there are so many things that we have in common.

Tonight I will get into Chiangsaen with my Hero Holiday group, and we will be spending the next 10 days working with kids that have been rescued out of slavery, sexual exploitation, and even warfare and violence. Their world consists of being thankful that they are safe and knowing that they are cared for. Some of them have faced unbelievable violence and pain: some have been repeatedly raped since they were young, some were beaten almost beyond recognition, and some come from so much hurt that is almost beyond my comprehension. Will we make a difference? I hope so…

What does it really mean to make a difference, anyways? Does it mean that people have to stop and take notice that something dramtic has happened, or is it as simple as kindness, affection, and security? We seem to always look for the big earth shattering moments that make us feel like we have contributed (or maybe I am the only person that wrestles with this) and yet it is often the simplest of kindnesses that can change a life and destiny. This is why I have never understood the concept of ‘racism’; because when all is stripped away, we truly still are of the human race, and therefore to hate our brother or sister is essentially to hate ourselves.

As I was standing in the foodcourt a few moments ago, I was thinking this. Liz, one of the girls with me, and I were ordering our food, and two American guys behind us started talking to us and asking us what we were doing in Hong Kong. As soon as we looked at them, we both got a weird vibe…what were they doing was more the question. I told them what we were on our way to Thailand to do, and they said they just came back from Bangkok, and were just there for a ‘good time’…a good time? At who’s expense? I stood there wrestling with myself: do I judge them at what I think they were there doing, or do I give them the benefit of the doubt and let it go. I let it go. I walked away and couldn’t decide whether I was at peace with myself in that moment or not. Where is the middle ground between the truth and the soap box that I am tempted to jump on and start screaming from?

I don’t know what those guys were doing in Bangkok- I mean I think I know, but I am pre-judging them by assuming anything. However, there is something to be said about the reality of how we are all connected. On the inside flap of Vaden’s book, we talk about how each one of the stories are really stories about our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, and even our children. Every time someone hurts someone, they are in essence, hurting their own families. Every time a child or woman is exploited, it is like exploiting ourselves, as we are all connected. We are all of the same family line, and blood needs to be thicker than water.

So, again, I ask myself, ‘what does it mean to make a difference’? And today, I am realizing that every time I choose to honor someone about myself, every time I reach out in compassion wherever I am, every time I remind people about the eternal significance of their lives, I am making a difference. I am more than the sum of my feelings: I am a light that can shine brightly wherever I find myself…

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.“

Mother Theresa

I am often asked for resources on where to find more info on how to get educated on what is happening in the world in regards to human trafficking and sexual slavery. Below is a list of some books and websites to get you started and inspired to make a difference!

WEBSITES:

www.thefuturegroup.com
www.crin.org
www.notforsalecampaign.org
www.ijm.org
www.vitalvoices.org
www.anti-trafficking.net
www.antislavery.org
www.trafficking.ca
The T.I.P. Report (trafficking in persons report)
www.stopthetraffik.org
www.amnesty.ca
www.ecpat.net

BOOKS:

Not for Sale by David Batstone
Disposable People by Kevin Bales
One:A Face Behind the Numbers by Vaden Earle
The Natashas by Victor Malarek

I would love to hear back from whomever reads this and would like to add to this list. The truth is anyone can educate themselves and begin to become an advocate and an activist for anti-trafficking; we just need to start somewhere.

We are their voice…

Last night I had the craziest dream: I dreamed that I was with a group of people, and we were in the desert, hiding out under fake leaves (clearly a brilliant move in the desert) and trying to keep away from them. You know…them…the bad guys…the ones that are always to blame for everything… They had me paralyzed by fear, and that fear rendered me helpless to change my situation. I felt weakened and numbed by my own powerlessness. Before I could figure out anything else, I woke up in a cold sweat, and wondering where I found those leaves in the desert!

There was a familiar saying I would hear in my world when I was growing up. My parents used it, my teachers used it, my friends often used it, and I have even heard it come out of my own mouth. I never used to give it much thought, because it always managed to convince me that I wasn’t entirely to blame for whatever the problem was at hand; like somehow I was a victim of an evil blot- even perhaps, dare I say it- a matrix. And the ones to blame for so much that was wrong in my world and my life was ‘them’. When you get busted for speeding in a speed trap, that’s how ‘they’ get you. When there are additional administration costs on a service, that’s how ‘they’ get you. When there is small print on an ad, that’s how ‘they’ get you. When you get ripped off at work for hours or time, that’s how ‘they’ get you.

Sound familiar?

I only recently started realizing that if this holds true, then ‘they’ must be everywhere and they must be crazy busy! It’s like some unseen, omni-presence of badness, and it is relentless. They lurk in all walks of life, at every turn in the road, and wherever there is someone upset with something, you can be sure that ‘they’ are to blame. The craziest part about the whole thing is that ‘they’ get blamed so much that you almost start to pity ‘them’! It must be tough being held responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world!

But if I stop and think about it, maybe I am them…maybe ‘they’ is actually ‘me’. Maybe I am actually the one to blame for breaking the speed limit. Maybe I am actually the one that needs to pay the extra costs if I want it bad enough. Maybe I need to learn to read the fine print before I sign on to anything. And maybe, I need to stop looking for excuses and be accountable for what I can do.

When I look at the world around me, it can be hard to know where to start: ‘they’ seem to be wreaking havoc everywhere. They destroy lives through war, their voices silence the cry of the unborn, their greed exploits the weak and the powerless, and they prey on the fear of those who feel like ‘they’ are unstoppable. In response, the world just sighs and says, “Why doesn’t someone do something about it? Why are they allowed to get away with this?” Somehow, it makes us feel more pious and justified if we can get the focus of the blame off of us, and back onto ‘them’.
I mean,honestly, we deserve to be able to have our opinion aired, don’t we? If we can keep it at an us and them stage, then we don’t need to get bogged down with the details of what is really going on and what is really at stake. That’s the beauty of an opinion: it makes you feel like you have contributed to the solution by speaking your mind. Like the two old hecklers from the Muppet Show, we are often content to sit in our box seat and watch the story unfold, pick out the problems, and poke at what we don’t agree with. Life is so much easier if we can just stay removed from the ground level…

In my dream, I was scared of ‘them’. My fear gave them permission to have my focus and attention. They were only as strong as I allowed them to be. Maybe I can’t always change them, but I can be responsible with what I can do in response to what they are doing. Maybe, had I hung around in the dream long enough, I might have realized that I needed to see the situation differently, and I needed to actually make an effort to move past fear and into action.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be an ugly old muppet with bad eyebrows…I want to actually be someone who gives meaningfully back to my world. I want to be someone who stops looking out for them and starts changing things for us.

Today is family day: a day to take out some time and enjoy your family and make a memory…or just sleep in and enjoy one less day to work this week. Seeing as it was raining and gross outside, Vaden and I thought that it would be a great time to show the storage space some love. We spent the afternoon in the freezing basement of our condo building, digging through old boxes and pictures, and laughing at the junk that we have managed to accumulate over the years. As I was looking at the piles of stuff and reminiscing over pictures, I was reminded of how far we have come.

Within the boxes were memories and reminders of a former life, or so it would seem. Memories of the places we have lived, bad hair days caught on camera, and friends and places that fill the mosaic of my life. Am I still the same person that I see looking back at me from these seemingly ancient photos? Do I still believe the same things, desire the same things, and want to give my energy to the same causes? To be honest with you, I don’t think I am-or maybe it is just that it has shifted and come into focus more. Life has a way of shaping you very quickly and causing you to take your own inventory of why you believe what you believe.

I am a professional speaker, and a big part of my world is traveling and meeting new people and situations. I have a crazy, paradoxical circle of friends, due to the places that I work and the places I find myself: millionaires and refugees, Oxford graduates and high school dropouts, missionaries and poker players. I am used to wearing different hats and carrying on a wide variety of conversations in a day. However, this last week, while I was on the road, I experienced something really bizarre; worlds collided and tumbled in a simple texting conversation with my office.

I was in a major city in western Canada, and I was doing a week of consulting and traveling with an organization called Beautiful Unique Girl, speaking to teenage girls about their value and true beauty. It is a great organization, and we get to see a lot of lives touched and hope re-ignited in young hearts. We do most of the events in churches, community centres, and schools. This last week, we were at a church and we were unloading the van with the sound equipment and meeting the staff there. They were showing us around the building, and we got to the children’s area that took up most of the basement of this huge facility. It was unreal! There were amazing murals and toys, and the whole area was done up like a city, with everything from travel agencies to pet shop fronts. I guess the idea is to make it more stimulating and interesting for kids, and I was kind of wishing I could go there for children’s church, because it looked pretty amazing!

While our host was walking us through the building, my phone buzzed, and it was a text from my office, telling me that a special cheque had arrived that I had been waiting for. The cheque is from a lady who raised money for us to send to our project that we partner with in Thailand so I was really glad to get it. But the reason I was so glad to get it is because two days earlier, I had received an emergency email from them regarding a desperate need for the children: they didn’t have enough money for food and care for the orphans that are there. Forty five young lives were desperate for someone to help them out. Even though they had been rescued from slavery once already, they were still victims of poverty and injustice. How unfair life sometimes seems when you step back and see the bigger picture of what is happening. As I was texting back with instructions for how to get the money to Thailand as fast as possible, I suddenly took stock of where I was standing: in the middle of a children’s play area worth more than my annual salary and that is used for 4 hours per week for almost 100 children. Are those children worth it? Of course each life is worth whatever it takes to keep them safe and secure, but standing there in that moment, I suddenly realized how I have reached the point of no return in my own life…

Once you have been touched by injustice and poverty, you are never the same. You somehow lose your innocence and are no longer able to turn a blind eye because you realize that from that point forward, your life is inexplicably linked with theirs. Their struggle has to become yours. Things in our lives that we tend to see as ‘rights’ are often mere ‘privileges’ that we can take for granted: peace, safety, education, food and clean water are all things that we expect to be there when we want them. As I looked through pictures of Vaden and I from years ago, or of family vacations, school photos or achievements, I realized something: I am not the same person as I was then. I can’t go back. Over the past few years, I have come to find myself faced with a decision about who I want to be, and I have come to realize that I see much clearer who that person is.

I hope that the church with the uber-cool children’s area touches many lives, and I hope that they never forget the power of faith. I hope that my children in Thailand grow up to be healthy, healed, and free. I hope that years from now, when I am doing another spring cleaning in my storage, I find pictures of my former self and realize how far I have come and what I have done to make a difference. Not so long ago, I was the one taking the picture that now sits in a box in my storage. A lot of life has happened since then: I have loved and let go, I have laughed and made incredible memories, I have wept at gravesides and help dying hands. I have only tasted a bit of what life can be like, and it has given me an insatiable appetite for more of its fullness.

Tomorrow I will hopefully hear from my friends in Thailand that they have received the money. It isn’t enough to change everything, but it is enough to change something, and for now, that is a start.

You know the feeling: the alarm goes off, you fumble through a few snooze button moments, and then you finally haul your carcass out of the bed and across the room. On the way (if you are Christal) you step on the cat by accident or clothes that you panicked were the cat, and brace yourself as you do that which 10 minutes ago was unthinkable: you turn on the bathroom light. It sears your little eyeballs and for a moment you feel like a gremlin when you see the light (note: 1984 movie about little furry guys that couldn’t handle the light and hated microwaves). Sometimes I brush my teeth right away, sometimes I don’t (routine is too confining for me!). Then, the moment you have been praying for happens: you turn the knobs in the shower and the angels sing as the beautiful, clean water comes gushing out, promising you that today you can take on the world.

This morning, as I jumped into the steamy, hot shower, I was singing to myself and congratulating myself on my new choice of blackberry shower gel that I acquired from a random airport last week, and I realized how much I love to be clean. I am out of the closet: I love to be clean. I love the thought of being clean, I love the smell of being clean–I love to be clean! Clean is my friend. I am definitely not the O.C.D. clean type-I am just the “when my fingernails are clean all is well with the world” kind of clean.

In the end of January, Vaden and I went to Mexico to see Charles and Tricia and the crew. There were about 16 of us using the water supply in the house. Our room was on the far end of the house, and I was warned that it took a long time for the hot water to actually reach my end of the house. They really weren’t exaggerating: it took about 5 minutes to actually get hot water to our shower! I guess it was taking a siesta along the way and decided to show up on Mexican time, but, hey, no problem! I am a roll-with-it kind of girl anyways; I am always all about the adventure and entertaining story that may result. After the initial wrestle with figuring out which way was actually hot or cold, I jumped in and started my regular singing in the rain routine. I used my sweet smelling organic shampoo and conditioner, my Mary Kay facewash, and then pulled out my spiffy little pink razor and showed my leg hair who was boss. A hot shower is truly empowering!

The second day there, I woke up feeling really damp and cold because it gets quite cool in the desert in the night time. I did my little stumble dance to the bathroom and thought to myself, ‘I am going to warm up my bones with a nice, hot shower’. (Clearly, I am a genius). So, I turned on the shower. I waited 3 minutes. Then 5 minutes. Then 8 minutes, and still no hot water. It was merely a slightly warmer than cold shower…and I am now standing naked in it at the point of no return. What now? GASP-I am forced to have a less than hot shower! I can honestly hear my own words in my head as I am typing this: ‘This sucks! I am sooo cold! I feel sooo miserable! Blah, blah, blah…’ Isn’t life so cruel to us sometimes?

After lunch that day we went to meet a couple of the families that we will be building houses for. One of those families is a single mom with 6 kids. We pulled up to their current home, which consists of boxes from the strawberry fields and rolled out tin cans, and were chatting with her about the plan for the house. I stood under the roof that she probably constructed with her own calloused, tired hands, and I looked around and tried to memorize what I saw: beds that sagged in the middle and were filthy beyond recognition, covered with threadbare blankets that you wouldn’t even allow your dog to sleep on at home. I looked up and could see the sky through the roof and feel the wind move my hair through the wall- the cold, damp wind of a Baja winter. I looked down where I was standing and realized that my feet had sunk into mud: the mud that was actually the floor where the rest of their family walked on barefoot…and I thought that a hot shower was my ‘right’? How could I even explain the concept of a hot shower to these people? They don’t even have access to any clean water except that which they buy from a truck when they can spare the money.

I have to be honest here: I didn’t even want to look her in the eye. I felt like my cheeks were hot as I was remembering my own little hissy fit with shower earlier that day. Saying good bye to her that day, I reached out and kissed her cheek. It was weathered, but beautiful. There was a quiet dignity that rested there. In that moment, I wanted to somehow honor her and communicate to her my deep respect and admiration; or perhaps, in some selfish way I wanted to alleviate my own guilt that I wrestled with. Either way, I couldn’t leave her property without doing it.

Why is there so much disparity in our world? Why are we so scared to be touched by it and somehow changed because of it? We can spend our whole lives just trying to be safe and avoiding any discomfort, and in the end, perhaps all we have really succeeded in doing is alienating ourselves from what we could truly accomplish if we were willing to try.

Ever since the first time I encountered sever poverty, I have been struck by the smell. Once you smell it, you are never the same. It is hard to describe the smell of a busy, dirty alley in a slum, or a home that has no access to clean water. It is at once repulsive and compelling, and it begs to be noticed.

As I sit here typing this on my laptop that I also have mixed emotions with (sometimes when I try to ‘turn it on’ it just gives me the silent treatment), two thirds of the world is without access to clean water:

“Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.” http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp

Really, a cold shower isn’t that big of deal.

This morning, just to prove this to myself, I tried to stand in the shower with no hot water. Well, ok, so I didn’t last that long, but the point is that I actually had clean water to access in the first place. I am going to be okay. You are going to be okay. Together, maybe we can work to see that more people experience the reality of ‘being okay’.

I used to think that cold showers only served one purpose: to cool raging hormones. Now, I realize that perhaps there is a much greater reality: maybe we could all use a cold shower….

My friend, Nettie, showed me this book she recently bought called “Postsecret”. It is an incredibly fascinating social experiment that this guy named Frank Warren did . He sent out hundreds of postcards and told everyone that got them that they could write a secret on it and send it back-the only condition was that it had to be a secret that no one else knew about them. The results were a crazy combination of hilarious, bizarre, and quite tragic…

One lady said that when she is mad at her husband, she puts boogers in her soup…I can see her logic there. Who hasn’t wanted to do that? Another girl gave up a dirty secret: ” I love to pee when I am swimming”. Or my personal favorite: “I give decaf to customers who are rude to me”…talk about sinister!

But then there are the really sad ones about people who have been abused and molested and never told anyone-that should never be a secret. There is one about a girl who was bullied at a fountain at school, and to this day, whenever she gets nervous, she feels thirsty. There is one confessing to murder, and so many confessing to self-hatred. One that really broke my heart: “All of my life people have told me I’m not special…I’m very easy to replace. After 43 years it has finally sunk in. I finally get it.” Wow, that makes me wish I could find that person and tell them that no matter how many times they have heard that, it is an ugly lie that has robbed them of 43 years of truth. I wish I could communicate to them how incredibly special they are and that they are irreplaceable.

This whole concept had me thinking about a few things myself. Do I have any deep dark secrets that I would love to put down on a postcard and mail off to someone I will never meet? Well, I have never put boogers in Vaden’s soup…mostly because I don’t cook, he does (which is now causing me concern after this revelation), I have never given someone decaf when I was mad at them (because that is just plain vindictive), and I have never felt like I was replaceable. I have always known that there is a unique destiny for my life that I need to step out and fulfill.

However, if I was to be totally honest with myself, I think I might have a ‘postsecret’ too…

Many times in my life, I am caught between a love and hate relationship with being North American and privileged and living with integrity in light of what I now know. I didn’t grow up rich by Canadian standards, and I am definitely not rich now either. But there are many moments, every single day of my life, where the harsh reality hits me: this is not all that there is. And when those moments happen, I can’t shake them. I find myself wondering if I am becoming ‘too North American’ again. I wonder if I am getting too self-absorbed again, or too caught up in what I see in front of me. Am I doing enough? I mean, there are people all around the globe that are in dire trouble: in the midst of war, famine, exploitation, slavery, and pain. Am I really investing my time, money and resources as wisely as I could? Do I really believe what I say I believe about how valuable they are? Do I truly see them as my family, neighbours, and friends?

I have a lot of amazing friends here in Canada and all over the world. My circle of friends is often filled with people from opposite sides of the spectrum: old and young, single and married, millionaires and garbage dump refugees, Christians and Muslims, goody-two- shoes and bad a**, and yet, sometimes I wrestle with where reality is in the midst of this. I have friends who struggle with depression, yet seem to have it all together, and I have friends who I would have thought should have been depressed in their circumstances, and instead they are always thankful for whatever they have. I wish these friends could catch up with each other and share resources.

This morning, when I woke up, I had the luxury of lying in bed for a few moments and listening to my husband and cat snore beside me. I smiled to myself thinking about what a blessing it is to have a morning like this: I am safe, warm, loved, protected, and most of all, I have hope. And then, I remembered that in this moment, not all of my friends and acquaintances have this and I am reminded that there is more of life for me to live and give. This is my not-so-secret secret. Am I thankful I was born here? Yes. Do I sometimes get itchy feet here? Every day. My life has been so changed by the people I have met and the stories I have found myself in that I can’t go back to where I used to be; I am not that person anymore. I have been wrecked for normal life, and I now long for so much more…

This is me waving good bye to the girls in Mexico as we were waiting for the truck to be pulled out of the mud from 4Xing and I am responding to the call of the wild…and my bladder.