displacement

it's another beautiful day, warm but cloudy with a good breeze.  jude is in the front yard playing with three ugandan kids.  i can hear his mix of 'ugandan english' with some lugandan words thrown in as they teach each other games.  his light blonde head standing out in the group.

we are displaced. but in a rich and good way- a chosen way.  our life here is a voluntary displacement- moved or shifted from our ordinary or proper place.  and while we miss our families and our friends deeply, it hasn't been that hard and in fact this feels now like our 'proper place'.  the much harder part for me is recognizing and embracing or even just accepting the inner and involuntary displacements in my life.

i'm reading 'compassion' by henri nouwen which is fabulous.  he has a chapter on displacement where he talks about voluntary and involuntary displacement, and he talks about physical displacement and that of our inner lives. 

it is the shift from the ordinary, from the expected, it is the veering off the normal course of life when i was perfectly happy sticking with ordinary, that has been hardest for me.  having a zoe, instead of a typical kid was an involuntary displacement- wrought with a host of emotions most of which would not be associated with embracing or accepting my displacement.

but what if we were able to really control our lives?  what if there were no involuntary displacements? what if we were all able to hold tightly to the sameness? to the common way, to the ordinary, the 'proper'?  what if all the stuff we fight and cry about and resent and ask 'why me' about, what if it went away?  would our lives be better? 

not for me.  at least not on my path- because where i want to go, who i want to be, needs the challenge and the pain of displacement. if i had my druthers and was given a choice, would i have chosen to have a baby with scoliosis and a funny shoulder, 2 small heart defects, and developmental delay?  no. way.  but, life with out the joy of zoe?  i would never give that up.  if i'd had a choice to have a second child with congenital ventriculomegaly, hypothyroidism and a brain tumor, would i?  hells no!  but would i ever give up even the darkness of those years?  no for i felt and breathed God in a profound way.  if i could chose to make this adoption thing easy and simple with rose would i?  of. course.  but who knows the beauty that lies in the confusion of it, in the un-ordinariness of it? maybe someday i will.  

involuntary displacements are what we are made of.  our response to the things that blindside us- that make us feel alone- that leave us walking around with our underwear showing - sharpens or dulls us, stimulates our growth or causes our shrinkage.

so how can we embrace and invite the experience of God's love into the displacements that we didn't ask for in life?  perhaps this is the task of a lifetime.  to stay in the moments, to ask the questions, the whys, to be angry and shout about it, but then to be quiet and listen- to wait and be still. 

i think it gets easier, i think we learn to listen in the small daily displacements and the big ones.  i think when we start living in our days and not into our future years, we begin to experience the grace given in the life lived out of the ordinary. 

and i think perhaps only then, then do we begin to experience the extraordinary.