Blog Hopping

It seems I just can’t stay away. Today I have the privilege of guest posting on the Plant With Purpose blog. I share my thoughts on life abroad, serving internationally, and, basically, how awesome Plant With Purpose is. 

Please hop on over and check out my post, Confessions of an International Nonprofit Hopper.

Two Weeks’ Notice

Would those who are grammatically inclined please confirm that this movie title should read “Two Weeks’ Notice”?

Please consider this your “two weeks” notice that this blog will remain woefully unattended for the next two weeks.

I am in the middle of a very big transition: in just two weeks I will no longer be working as a grant writer for Plant With Purpose–the only post college job I’ve ever had. After I finish at Plant With Purpose, I will be preparing to move to Guatemala. (Lots to be excited about and try not to panic about.)

As my Bucket List at work nears the single digits, I have decided to take a blogging break to focus more time and energy on finishing well at Plant With Purpose. In addition to being an emotional mess, I also anticipate spending a considerable amount of extracurricular time happy houring with coworkers, compiling a Plant With Purpose Grant Writing Manifesto, and purging my desk of personal items such as my sling shot and bubbles, my trusty hammer, and the embarrassing Post-it note pledges I made to myself promising to finish XX proposal by 3 pm or that I will not check email until I finish writing the spring newsletter article.

These next two weeks will be good and hard and surreal. God has been building connections and giving me time to cultivate relationships that will allow me to do what I love to do in the country I would love to call home. I am excited for what’s next, but it is going to be so tough to relinquish my role at Plant With Purpose and say goodbye to the coworkers that have become my family.

Over the next two weeks, if you find yourself checking back to the see if the blog is updated, please offer up a thought or a prayer for me as I finish my time at Plant With Purpose.

I would greatly appreciate prayers for focus, wisdom, and peace. Diligence, stamina, and grace. And for a sense of God’s presence and even joy in these last days.

Thank you so much for your prayers and patience.

I’ll see you back here in two weeks when I enter my temporary stint of “fun-employment” before moving to Guatemala. Also, check out the Plant With Purpose blog, where I will be sharing some reflections on my time there. 

Raindrops and Whiskers

Here are a few of my favorite things from the interwebs this week:

On blogging as a spiritual discipline: In Which Sarah Bessey Writes a Guest Post for Introverted Church. 

“Writing has given me permission to contemplate my life in a daily rhythm, looking for the touches and movement of God across the day.”

“And sometimes the sharing of my life, especially the tender and still bruised parts of it, the parts without answers or neat bows of seven steps to whatever-it-is, is as much an offering to God as I can imagine, it’s sometimes the only way I know how to pray and worship.”

On the Green Commission: Confessions of a Tree Hugger on Reject Apathy.

“God doesn’t want us to carelessly trash the planet in the name of progress, even if we think Jesus is coming back soon. He wants us to use it responsibly and to care for it.”

 And Radical Discipleship: John Stott’s final charge by Tim Hoiland. 

“I for one hope my generation will do better at setting an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity — beginning with myself. And I pray we’ll humbly, eagerly and intentionally seek to learn from those Christians who have been at it longer than we have — even if they drive a gas-guzzling Buick instead of a Prius.”

On the open arms of the Father: When was it ever about my deserving? Or Why the Gospel is Good News by Anita Mathias.

“And then I am chiding myself, “You’ve not dwelt in the heart of worship for a couple of weeks. You could have repented and surrendered and returned to live in Christ so much sooner!” And I am sort of thinking, “I don’t really deserve God’s help and blessing….” 

And then I realize, “When was it ever about my deserving?” 

You barely listen to my statements of failure. Instead you clothe me in your best robes. You put a ring on my finger, and sandals on my feet. You have a feast and celebrate, serving the best steak. There is music and dancing.”

On What to Get Pops for Father’s Day: Careers, Yard Work, Grilling, and Porcelain Thrones…We Have the Perfect Father’s Day Gifts! at Plant With Purpose. 

“Every family has a joke about dad’s “throne,” so why not help another father build a better and healthier future for his family by providing an ecological latrine.”

Why not, indeed?

On how to navigate grief: Unmet Expectations and Grief by Erica McNeal over at Confessions of a Funeral Director. 

“The problem is that you, the grieving person, don’t know what you need and your loved ones don’t know how to help. This disparity often leads to a lot of conflict and unmet expectations, on both sides.” 

“My encouragement to anyone who is grieving is that when you are hurt by words, action, or inaction, to discuss your hurt as soon as you can with the person who hurt you.”

And my favorite prayer (not from the web, but from an old fashion contraption called a book):

“O God, since Thou art with me, and it is Thy will that I must now apply myself to these outward duties, I beseech Thee, assist me with Thy grace that I may continue in Thy presence. To this end, O Lord, be with me in this my work, accept the labor of my hands, and dwell within my heart all Thy fullness.” Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

And of course my favorite photos from my brother and my Flag Day Celebration:

And then our decorating took a turn for the politically incorrect:  A People’s History of Flag Day.

What were your favorite things this week? 

Do You Follow?

Me, that is.

Do you follow Memoirs of Algeisha? 

If yes, THANK YOU! Give yourself a pat on the back for ensuring your daily dose of memoir-mania and  weekly wealth of T.S. Tuesdays. Oh, and my blogging alter ego greatly appreciates the self-esteem boost.

If no, what are you waiting for? If you occasionally stumble upon this blog via Facebook, Gchat, or other social media or random Google searches, would you consider following or subscribing for reals?

Keeping up with the Memoirs is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1.  Subscribe via email or RSS feed to enjoy bloggy updates. This is the best way to ensure that you’re not missing out. 

 Subscribe in a reader

Or sign up to receive email updates below.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner
Could be your best part of waking up (besides that steaming cup of coffee).

2.  Join the conversation on Twitter. Follow @Algeisha  

new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: ‘profile’, rpp: 4, interval: 30000, width: 250, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: ‘#333333’, color: ‘#ffffff’ }, tweets: { background: ‘#000000’, color: ‘#ffffff’, links: ‘#4aed05’ } }, features: { scrollbar: false, loop: false, live: false, behavior: ‘all’ } }).render().setUser(‘Algeisha’).start();
3. Become a fan of Memoirs of Algeisha on the book of face: Facebook.com/MemoirsOfAlgeisha

AND for the next week I will plant a tree through Plant With Purpose in honor of every new follower/like/subscriber. Giving to a good cause is proven to release endorphins, so go ahead, subscribe away!

And, as always, I welcome feedback. How’s my blogging? How could I make it easier to follow along? What do you want to read more of? Know any guest posters who would like to share their love story with God?

Thanks for reading, and what are you waiting for–those trees won’t plant themselves?!

Light Floods: Darkness, Dreams, & Daylight

The Darkness

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12 NIV)

The darkness flooded strong and heavy. Torrential.

Before Plant With Purpose wiggled its way into my heart, I wanted to live abroad. I dreamed of Antigua’s cobblestone streets, flowering woven shirts, bright skirts, distant volcanoes, and a day when I would dream in Spanish. I hoped to call Antigua home.

And that hope burrowed down deep within me, determined.

But I was scared. I was content, even joyful, to serve at Plant With Purpose. So I stayed silent. Stayed put.

About a year and a half ago I felt God calling me to ask if it would be possible to work for Plant With Purpose remotely from Guatemala. To ask if my dreams could come true. After an initial yes, I was given a final no.

I. felt. so. foolish. for thinking I could get what I wanted. That I wouldn’t have to choose between the job I loved and the country I wanted to call home.

And so, not ready to leave my job, I stuffed in the disappointment. Swallowed it down. Tucked it into a pocket. And went back to work.

Could I dare to hope again?

Night Vision

I spent one and half years in grief and burnout, trying to discern if the call for Guatemala was God-given or God-thwarted. Was I being too selfish or were my dreams too small?

I learned to name the grief, the ache, the burnout.

I learned to see God in the dark.

As my sight failed, my Hope grew. I learned to don my night vision God goggles, my hope growing wide as my pupils.

At a prayer workshop at my church, I was given a vision of light, of freedom, of joy:

“Someone is running in the dark, past all of these closed doors. But God rushes in and takes your hand; suddenly you are running with him in the light—free.”

I was running in the dark, past closed doors. I was running so hard and so fast and so desperate. I couldn’t see the light, but knew the light was coming. I kept running anyway. What else would I do?

I was promised light.

The Light

I know this is a lot of background and you’re probably wondering why I don’t just hurry and up and tell you already how the story ends, how God has made a way, but the darkness is what makes the light so sweet.

In the last few weeks of praying and pleading, of discerning and deliberating, I sensed a calling to let go. To loose my fists that clench too tightly around Plant With Purpose. To silence the voices that tell me I am nothing without my job, without this identity as a social justice do gooder. To quell the fear that Plant With Purpose is the best part of me, the only good part of me. That alone I will unhinge, disappear, disintegrate.

And so I decided to leave. To let go. To step forward.

I have friends who live in Guatemala who have graciously offered their home to me. I have roommates who have graciously agreed to let me leave halfway through our lease. I have a family that has graciously encouraged me to follow my dreams, even if it means I’ll see them less.

And so I told my boss I will be leaving Plant With Purpose at the end of June.

And so I told my roommates I will be moving out in the middle of July.

And so I told my friends I will be coming to live with them in Guatemala.

Just as soon as I made these plans, as I took this step, the light began to flood in. God answered my prayers for confirmation, my heart cry for meaningful work.

I have been given the opportunity to work as a freelance writer for other non profits. Over the last few months, the dark months, God has been building connections and giving me time to cultivate relationships that will allow me to do what I love to do in the country I would love to call home.

I have been running in the dark for so long, banging closed doors, and now I see the light. Like the woman at the prayer workshop told me, it is as if God has rushed up beside me, grabbed my hand, and we are now running in the light.

FREE.

I stand here astonished. My vision flooded with light, with gifts, with promises fulfilled.

Ful-filled. Filled with fullness. Only the Great of Greatness, the Holy of Holies, the true God of True God, the Deep of Deep can fill with fullness. Is Fullness Himself.

The light floods quick, burns pupils. I am left, face unveiled, squinting out the glory, whispering gracias, gracias.

***

Braids, Burnout, and Obedience

I work for an incredible organization. And this week I had the privilege to travel to the field to visit the coworkers and farmers with whom we partner.

On trips like these, the words I crank out from 9 to 5 take on life. Take on faces with wrinkles and smiling grandpa eyes. Take on braids and crooked smiles and school uniforms.

On Monday morning I joined with hipsters and surfers and college students from San Diego to plant trees with mothers and fathers, farmers and pastors and mayors from a tiny, rural town called Zumbador in the Dominican Republic. In case you missed my thoughts on planting trees at Life Before the Bucket or in Relevant Magazine, planting trees with the rural poor is something very close to my heart.

Together, we planted orange trees in what will soon be a thriving agroforestry plot. As Leoncio, a farmer I have written stories about from my desk in San Diego, placed a small seedling, the very symbol of new life, cool and damp in the palm of my own hand, the tears sprang hot on my face.  A holy moment of holy grace. 

***

There was a time when I couldn’t read or listen to stories of Plant With Purpose’s work without crying. Literally. From videos to newsletter articles to hearing the Executive Director share his stories from the field, I was a regular waterworks.

The tears were triggered by something beyond me, or perhaps within me, an unconscious reflex. A sign of God at work.

Before I started praying again after I swore off the church and God. Before I even knew how my writing skills and experiences with both rural and urban poverty—and the connection between the two—would line up with the exact needs and role I would later take on at Plant With Purpose. Before any of that, I knew that God was moving in those tears, in the passion behind the tears. I knew that in this passion, this stirring, this calling, was where I would find God. Where I would be used beyond my wildest dreams. Where I would be given the gift, the privilege, of sharing the stories of hope and transformation and restoration that are occurring in rural areas around the world as a result of Plant With Purpose’s work.

Over the last year, the tears have been plentiful. But these tears haven’t been the tears of a passion so strong my eyes could not stay dry. Instead they were tears of pain, of grief, of defeat.

Sometime in the last year, I hit burnout pretty hard. Really hard.

If you’ve never experienced burnout, I am grateful for you. It is one of the most harrowing trials I’ve ever gone through as a writer, as an employee, as a person.

An article by Psychology Today describes burnout as “a cunning thief that robs the world of its best and its brightest by feeding on their energy, enthusiasm, and passion, transforming these positive qualities into exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment.”

I don’t claim to be one of the best or brightest, but I know I once had an energy, enthusiasm, and passion for my job that I could not contain. And I know that after three years of pouring myself into my work, I woke up to exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment. It seemed overnight the job I once loved, the job I literally lived and slept and breathed, the job that gave me life—that was my life–, became a burden, suddenly unmanageable and simply un-doable.

I tried to push through. I took time off. I changed my job description. I set better work-life boundaries. I changed my job description again. I started this blog. I prayed and prayed and prayed.

I haven’t shared this struggle on this blog because I’ve been embarrassed. I’ve feared the voices that would tell me to just try harder. To just suck it up. To just get over it already.

But even without writing it, those voices were screaming in my head. Telling me it’s a tough economy and I have a job that helps people and has flexible hours and occasionally sends me to really cool places around the world and I must try harder to make it work. 

The voices told me I was entitled and greedy for wanting more.  For wanting the passion to be reignited. For wanting rest and revival.

If you follow this blog, perhaps you can recall my posts on trusting God through the darkness and the storm and the bad days and all of those metaphors of persevering through difficult seasons in our lives. My darkness, my storm, my bad days have been burnout.

And through it all I have been praying, seeking answers, seeking comfort, seeking joy. And God has been silent, mostly.

But He has been faithful. In the darkness He has been moving. Passing by. Making a way.

Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Giftssays, “When we look back, we see God’s back. Wasn’t that too His way with Moses?

“When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back” (Exodus 33:22-23 NIV).”

She asks, “Is that it? When it gets dark, it’s only because God has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I am falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams. But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors.”

This last year I have felt too many tremors to count. Spilled too many tears to tally. Clutched too tightly to the shards of cracking dreams. 

But He has been faithful. He has been moving, protecting, passing by.

He has been calling me out of the job I love to call me in to something new. And I have waivered, pouted, thrashed, and tried to divine the answer from the rod of my own casting, instead of trusting His divine wisdom.

I have failed and flailed and I cannot do it anymore. I am surrendering to His calling out. In the end of June I will be leaving my job at Plant With Purpose.

Tomorrow I will share where I will be going and what I believe God is calling me into. Tomorrow I will share how God has made a way for joy to be restored. I will write of His faithfulness.

But today I sit in joy and pain, together. Relief and sadness, together.

Today I mourn that I am leaving. I mourn the limits of my brain and body and my own efforts. I mourn the burnout. I mourn that this last week was my last trip to the field as a Plant With Purpose employee.

As yet more tears (I didn’t think I had more to shed) slide down my cheeks, I mourn. I mourn and give thanks together. Give thanks for the time I’ve had, the role I’ve had. Give thanks for the smiling grandpa eyes and the girls with braids and crooked smiles and school uniforms.

I give thanks even in the mourning because I trust the One who will turn my mourning into dancing.

A Blog Breather

For the next slew of days, I will be visiting the incredible work of Plant With Purpose in the Dominican Republic, so here is your official warning that this blog will remain silent until my return. 

Please utilize this time to catch up on all your other favorite bloggers and stay tuned for Dominican updates next week! 

¡Hasta luego!

Can Planting Trees Be an Act of Social Justice?

Find out in my guest post today at Life Before the Bucket. And leave some commenting love. 

Promote With Purpose

Today’s post is targeted at all the bloggers out there who 

1. Need content

2. Like promoting good causes 

3. Need content

Everyone else, check out the cool things that are happening at Plant With Purpose and get involved however you feel led. 

To my blog friends:

Dear purveyors of wit and wisdom, bringers of bloggy brilliance, social media socialites and social justice activists,

Would you consider wielding the power of your platform for good this week?

April is turning out to be an especially exciting month for telling Plant With Purpose’s story of bringing environmental restoration, economic empowerment, and spiritual renewal to the rural poor–including the adorable Haitian girls pictured above.  For those who don’t know, Plant With Purpose is an organization that is very dear to my heart (and coincidentally my paycheck). 

Earth Day is coming up on Sunday April 22, 2012, and Plant With Purpose has a number of splendid promotional opportunities. From being featured on the 58 Global Impact Tour to getting our Groupon (link goes live on Monday), there is plenty to talk, write, and tweet about. These two campaigns in particular will directly support Plant With Purpose’s transformational work with matching grants, doubling the impact of your words. 

And so I humbly ask, would you, in your own quirky, creative, and blogtasatic way help us tell our story?

If so, please check out the prolific list of partnerships and events taking place this month and pick one to promote. You could blog about our challenge to Save the Earth with World Vision’s creative activist network, ACT:S, like I did on Thursday. You could retweet the sounding joy of restoring fruitfulness to the land. Or come up with your own tree-mendous Earth Day topic. For example, Rachel Held Evans is featuring Executive Director Scott Sabin in her “Ask a…” series, where he will share his thoughts on being a Christian environmentalist. Or blogger, Andrea Ward, posted an inspiring blog on her discovery of Plant With Purpose through the 58: Global Impact Tour.  

The opportunities are as bottomless as your blogs. Just respond in the comments for more information, comments, concerns, or suggestions.

Thank you in advance for your promoting prowess!

Sincerely,

Aly Lewis and The Plant With Purpose Team


photo credit: Plant With Purpose

Act for Justice

Have a heart for the poor? Like to take pictures, write stories, or engage in other artistic endeavors? Care about justice issues, but don’t know how to get involved?


World Vision has launched a creative activism network called ACT:S that I’d love for you to check out.

The heart of ACT:S is to “connect faith and justice through creative activism, which means we create to inspire action. We make resources like art and music, take over spaces, host events and tell stories to bring the world’s most challenging issues to life and mobilize our generation to act.”

Pretty sweet, huh?

It’s a great place find and share your activism, to inspire and be inspired. And this month, ACT:S has issued an Earth Day Challenge featuring an issue and organization that is close to my heart. I’ve shared my thoughts on the connection between poverty and the environment  and why I do what I do from 9-5 at Plant With Purpose.

What are you still doing here? Go check it out, Share your ACT:IONS, get inspired by others’ resources or tell your own story.