Saturday, December 3, 2011

I have been here three full weeks, and already my life at home seems so remote that I can’t imagine doing anything other than what I’m doing now.

I have been happy here so far. Happy in a very comfortable, relaxed sort of way. Even though every day I witill seem to crash unknowingly into some unimagined rule, so far it hasn’t really caused me any anguish. I have adjusted and adapted quickly and—at least from my current point of view—completely.

One thing that really amazes me is how things are fitting together, how Betel is making sense of otherwise random-seeming things.

For instance, they assign me to clean, and I think back…I spent a year cleaning houses for a living—I know how to do that.

They send me to the hotel and I think back to my Verity experience, learning all about the behind-the-scenes work of a hotel.

Verity also relates to the whole “living-in-community” thing. I’ve already spent threeyears in a place with stricter rules than Betel, when I couldn’t just do whatever I wanted, when I was thrown together with a bunch of other people. So it hasn’t cost me much effort to adjust to the different life here.

They put me in the kitchen, where we cook meals with whatever is on hand, without recipes, without measuring cups or spoons, and I think back to my year in Malaga when I had this type of cooking modeled for me day in and day out by my Brazilian apartment mates. It was then that I discovered the possibility of doing it, and I started experimenting at home with my family with good success.

Then there’s the obvious one—that I already speak Spanish.

But these things are the answers, falling into place, to questions I have been asking for some time past.

•  Why did I go to college at THAT school?

•  Why did I spend the year after graduation cleaning houses, of all things? Why didn’t I get a “good” job?

•  Why did I waste my time doing menial tasks that didn’t advance many kind of career?

•  Why did I wander, seemingly aimlessly, through so many random things after high school.?

Well—all of it seems to have been ideal preparation, made to order, to live in Betel.

At least so far, which, admittedly, is still early to judge…

But I can’t help but wonder.

God?

What have you been up to?

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