Vive la Liberte

Five Things I Learned by Traveling to France

1. Funny things makes friends out of strangers. 

Three instances taught me this: 

Instance #1: When the Egyptian guy in the Chicago airport thought the TSA agent was being serious when he told us to empty our pockets of all things, including lint. He looked very concerned (what are you hiding in your lint, hmmmm?) and I had to tell him it was just a joke and we laughed and then chatted for so long in line that eventually he invited me to smoke hookah with him and his friends in Milwaukee sometime. I politely told him he was a strange man in an airport and no thank you, and he said foreigners are friendlier than Americans but he understood and gave me his phone number just in case. (I still have it.) 

Instance #2: When the Indian woman sitting next to me on the plane said not one word to me the entire 8.5 hours from Stockholm to Chicago, not one word, even though I know she noticed that I was discreetly watching her movies from my seat to see if they looked interesting enough for me to watch. (She kept glancing over at my screen every time I started a new movie, and I tried to stare straight ahead with an expression that said, "I came up with the idea to watch this movie all by myself.")
Then as we were preparing to land, the pilot gave some long Scandinavian instructions to his flight crew and, when he'd finished, translated succinctly into English, "Cabin crew, sit." 

I giggled. 

The Indian woman giggled. 

We looked at each other for the first time in eight hours. 

She said, "It's like they're puppies," and I laughed and said, "I was thinking the same thing!" 

Instance #3: When the guy on the tram that takes you from the Chicago airport to remote parking looked at my guitar and said, "You must be a professional if you're going to carry that thing around the airport." 

I nodded to his five pieces of luggage he was engulfed by and responded, "Says the guy who's carrying around an entire department store." 

He laughed and from there I learned that he just came from Mexico where he was in a wedding and he needed to pack seven different pairs of shoes just in case he needed gray ones or brown ones (depending on his pants). He just moved out of Chicago, so "It will take me 2 hours to get home from here, how bout you?" 

"It depends on how much longer I decide to ride this tram," I responded, and he laughed again, and we're getting married next June. 

(Just kidding. He didn't even tell me his name, unlike the Egyptian guy. Americans are so rude. Hesham was right.)

2. European Netflix is different from American Netflix. 

"I CAN'T WAIT TO WATCH MODERN FAMILY WHEN I GET HOME I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT FOR SO LONG MODERN FAMILY IS ON NETFLIX GONNA LOG IN AND WATCH IT HERE I GO YAY YAY YAY WAIT WHERE IS IT WHERE'S MODERN FAMILY WHERE DID IT GO WHY ME LORD I'M MOVING TO FRANCE GOODBYE."

3. Where canola oil comes from. 

This is the view that welcomes you to France: Fields of colza which gives us canola oil (and engine lubricant, apparently) and smells like feet. Isn't it pretty? Did you ever wonder where canola oil comes from before this? I did, all the time. JK I never did.

4. How to say "pigeon" in French. 

"Pee-jo," basically, only prettier. I also learned how to say "socks" and "don't drink this water" in German (which I thankfully learned before it was too late). I spent the whole week with the Rooses and they taught me a lot. I'm very humbled by the love which this family responds out of daily. Their generous and sincere hearts make me so very grateful to know them and to have been a part of their family for the week. (Pictured: Fayth, Hannah, Tony, and a stately building in Dijon, France. Not pictured: Raeni, pigeons, mustard.)

5. Freedom comes in letting go.

These are the Alps, as seen from Annecy, France. 
I don't think it's any secret that I did not plan to end up living in Wisconsin and working for an insurance company. My plan looked much different and others' plans for me looked much different, too. And I've been feeling the burden and weight of those dead plans and dreams and I think I've been trying to resurrect them or repaint them somehow, or something similar.
But as I sat in an empty field and stared at these mountains, I felt very strongly that God was telling me to "be free." Be free from past plans and others' plans and the expectations of being female or 20-something or Christian or single or a pastor's kid or a businesswoman or artsy or brainy or blah blah blah, the list goes on. Just let go of all the expectations that I or anybody else has placed on me, and let God build something new, and delight in the newness without trying to salvage any of the old pieces to incorporate in the new building. There is freedom when you let go of expectations and old plans and old ways of doing things, when you just let go and let them drift away like curled-up leaves that float atop the water like little boats, not anchors. Freedom in just being you and being happy with being you, today, undefined by anything past, present, or future.

It's a new day. Be free each new day.

in this world you will have car trouble

Cornfields.

Just cornfields, all around, somewhere in Indiana, after already driving for five hours in rain and traffic, and Dad was telling me on the phone that I needed to find an auto place, maybe a Wal-Mart? Or else my engine was going to overheat. At least, that's what the little needle by the little sailboat thing on my dashboard that was bouncing around way up above the "H" was indicating.

"Get a towel," Dad was saying, "and use it to unscrew the radiator cap, in case the water is hot and sprays up in your face. Then add some water, because you're probably just low."

My thoughts: What's a radiator, where's the radiator, where am I supposed to get a towel, what if the water sprays into my eyes and I'm blinded, where am I supposed to find a Wal-Mart, why is there so much corn in Indiana, who am I, what is life.

The nearest exit was in three miles and I prayed the whole way. Please don't let my engine explode. Please don't let my engine explode.

I told my GPS to find me the nearest auto care place. "Magg's Auto," he responded. Down a country road with more cornfields, to a lone house next to a big warehouse. Please don't let me get abducted. Please don't let me get abducted.

A woman was standing at the end of the driveway with a puppy on a leash. Harmless! I pulled up to the driveway and opened my car door.

"DON'T GET OUT OF YOUR CAR!" She screamed at me like a war buddy warning me of an incoming grenade. I jumped back inside just as a vicious snarling dog came running up to my car like it wanted to eat my face.

"DON'T ROLL DOWN YOUR WINDOW!" She screamed at me again.

I was not inclined to disobey her.

She walked up to my window and I yelled through the glass like an inmate, "My car is overheating and I just pulled off the highway. Is there an auto place nearby?"

She told me to pull into the driveway, all the while trying not to run over her angry dog, which she kept screaming at curdlingly to get away from my car.

As she coaxed her dog inside, I sat in my car and stared at my steering wheel. I laughed out loud at the absurdity. "Nothing's ever easy, is it, Lord," I said.

The woman's name was Deanna. She told me the nearest auto place was at the next exit. Instead of risking it on the highway again, she offered to call her dad to come take a look. Larry. He drove out and squirted water from a hose into my radiator. I know where it is now. And it didn't spray water into his eyes and blind him, either (thank goodness).

Then the woman's daughter, Gretta, came home with her friend Luke, and they refilled my coolant. Because apparently I was low on that, too.

Why do people let other people operate deadly machines without full knowledge of what kind of things happen inside to make them run? Why am I JUST NOW finding out about these liquids that run low and make your car a ticking time bomb?

I told Deanna my GPS sent me here and told me it was Magg's Auto. Apparently her husband owns a trucking company called Magg's.

Oh, GPS, you confused little robot.

Deanna told me that God had sent me there. Then she gave me a gallon of water and a towel in case I had to stop and put more water into my radiator, a glass of ice water because I was thirsty, and her phone number in case I had troubles further down the road. "Text me when you get there," she said.

I have met the nicest people in the midwest because my car is a pooper. (Remember last time?)

Nothing's ever easy.

I've been thinking about the process of moving down to Kentucky from Wisconsin. It has not gone smoothly. Things have not fallen beautifully into place. It has, in fact, been very hard.

And as I sat in Deanna's driveway while Cerberus leapt at my tires, I thought about opposition.

Jennie Allen talks about this in her book Anything:

Somewhere in my life I picked up the idea that if things did not feel right or fall perfectly into place, God was not in them. I thought obeying God should feel pretty easy and convenient. For instance, if God was calling you to Africa, then he would have a buyer for your house in two weeks; and if not, then he likely isn't in it....All my life I thought I had God's stamp of approval because my life wasn't going badly. Now I was faced with the fear that it might actually be the opposite. What if my life was going so beautifully because I wasn't chasing after God?

It makes sense to me that the harder we chase after God, the more opposition we will face.

Remember this blog post I wrote about living life surrendered to God? I am being reminded of that today. Surrender does not mean that we sit around and wait for God to move, or that we give up when we face opposition, but that in every choice we make, in every step we take, in every battle we fight, we are completely surrendered to whatever the outcome will be, and to the reality that God can alter our course at any moment.

So I'll keep walking, and fighting, and surrendering, and I will trust that God will keep making it clear what He has for me.

Because God will not waste a surrendered life. He waits eagerly for a surrendered life. Oh, what purposes God can accomplish with a surrendered life!

And you can trust that, no matter the opposition, He will accomplish them.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton