long, random, and probably way too personal, even for me...

I “went out” with some of my counterpart’s friends tonight.  “Going out” is a very long, communal ordeal here.  We sit around a huge table and share huge plates of food.  We drink two or three or four rakiki or malinki or vodka or chashki vino.  We share a few huge salads.  We stuff ourselves while we laugh both with and at each other.  As I sat there, I had plenty of time to think, since I didn’t really understand much of what was being said.  (Funny note:  the recent widow was my counterpart’s mother, who is from the other side of the country.  She also understood little of what was being said.  Why?  Because they don’t speak Bulgarian here, they speak Razlogshki.  A very strange dialect)  I realized some of the things I didn’t have much exposure to in America.  

Today is the students’ holiday.  I celebrated with five married couples and a new widow.  None of whom are students.  Some of them have students (I teach one of their students, actually) and I wonder why they weren’t celebrating studenthood with their student.  I think, and I may be wrong on this, but they just wanted an excuse to celebrate.  I hope I’m not wrong, because I find this one of the most beautiful aspects of Bulgarian culture.  They have an amazing ability to find profound (founders of the Cyrillic alphabet), randomly obscure (Father’s of Bulgarian culture and literature), and pretty normal (birthdays) events to celebrate.  And when they celebrate, one would think there is nothing else in this world.

I thought about how beautiful these couples are.  I’ve spent some time with them before and I’ve seen them around town.  I know, like all families, they surely have their problems.  But when I see them together, they seem to treat each other with so much love.  Some people say that Bulgarian men are a bit macho.  I don’t know about that.  Of course it exists, as it does in any culture.  I find, at least in the marriages I’ve been around, that the men here love to serve their wives.  And the feeling is mutual.  Most of the married men I know here (and if they aren’t my students, and I know them, they’re married, darn it) extend that characteristic toward women in general.  Every woman is treated with the respect he gives his mother, sister, wife, or daughter.  

I would like to think that both the profound ability to celebrate and the deep mutual respect and desire to honor one another is all sourced by a deep seeded ability to love.  I’ve been thinking about love a lot lately.  It started with this cheesy “Christian” novel my aunt sent me that is based on the book of Hosea, a story about a prophet of Jehovah who was instructed by Jehovah to marry a prostitute.  He has to rescue his wife from prostitution time and again.  He is so beautifully patient with her, even when he finds her in the act of sex with another man.  Okay, maybe not always beautifully patient, but he keeps finding her and taking her back home, showing her the love she was created to receive.  Then I was watching the Hallmark channel (listen, the pickin’s are slim in English language TV over here) and there was a dramatization of the story of Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son.  They showed how, even after his brother’s sold him into slavery, he forgave them.  He knew that this evil his brothers had done had been used by Jehovah to keep the people of his father (Israel, Jacob’s new name – you know, like Abram became Abraham), and all the sons of Abraham alive.  These things make me see the log in my own eye.  

I’m sorry if I’m using too many Bible references here.  I suppose it’s the paradigm I operate in and personally, I love it.  But I suck at it.  I think it’s a patience thing.  I suck at love not because I don’t have the patience to take crap off of people (while yes, I am bad at taking crap off of people.  Actually, taking crap off of people makes me irate and indignant, now that I think of it.)  I don’t have the patience to wait for God to give me the strength to love sometimes.  I try to love of my own strength.  I find this tiring, futile, and altogether worthless.  But as I look back on the love I’ve known in my life, I’ve always tried (at least in the beginning) to love with a love that is not of me.  I’ve had a bunch of little hurts; I’ve been neglected a few times.  A few relationships have faded away when they didn’t need that Love anymore.  I’ve even been totally mistreated in a big way once or twice.  I don’t know what happened, but I don’t know how to capitol “L” Love anymore.  Or do I?  I see myself in certain positions and thinking, “Does it really matter God?  Can’t someone else love them?  I’m tired.”  I don’t ask “why me?” anymore, because the answer is always “Why not you?”  But I keep asking “how?????”  And it’s not just people who’ve hurt me, or people who’ve I’ve been allowed to believe were hurting me.  It’s everyone.  Somehow, my energy to Love has been sapped.  This breaks my heart because what am I with out Love?  “They will know you are Christians because you love one another.”  (One of Paul’s letter’s to one of those churches in first century South West Asia.)  

I guess it is a big deal that I can even come to this point.  Recognizing the problem is half the battle right?  And it goes back to Joseph.  Genesis 50 verses 19- 20 say, “But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid.  Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’”  If I were someone else, I’d tell this whiner (me) to buck up.  Don’t play the victim.  Bad stuff happens in life.  People, like you, come with baggage.  You’ve hurt people and will continue to do so.  People have hurt you and will continue to do so.  But you’ve got to trust that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Whether of malice, ignorance, heavy baggage, complacency, insensitivity, or your own just desserts, you cannot let hurt keep you from loving, let alone healing.  

That’s a hard pill to swallow, and I’ve got no one to feed me a tea spoon of sugar, or мед.