“I only need to get through the day.”  I say this every day, and so today became a long season. And the “right now” that I can’t stand, also can’t fit into a day.  Hours and minutes can’t explain this today.

Today I cried. I cried a lot.  I cried, and the more I tried to stop, I couldn’t.  And I tried to pray while crying, and wasn’t able to articulate a word.  I was angry and frustrated, and then exhausted of being angry and frustrated. And then I started crying again.  I wasn’t even weeping; I was bawling. It almost felt as it was a tantrum, on why, oh, why can’t things be a little better, just a little?

Today I fell down the stairs, and when I was writing about it, the words that came out changed ‘fell’ into ‘failed.’  Rolling down the stairs wasn’t as painful as the idea of not being able to stop at the bottom of the staircase. And I cried again.  The more I cried, the more I realized that the pain from falling and failing has become too familiar lately. And the scratches and bruises are hard to see from the inside… so I didn’t realized I was as hurt as I was.

I got lost today.  I got carried away while fighting with my thoughts and next thing I knew, I was in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where to go. This is a recurrent feeling in my life lately. I just don’t know how or where or when to take the next step.

Today I tried to read a little, but tears were wetting the pages.  Then I tried with a different book, but even just flipping the pages was painful and exacerbating.  I wanted to find some clarity, but the letters were as blurry and dark as my heart is right now.

So I tried to read a softer bible verse – just one. Maybe one that was easy to digest.  One that wouldn’t require me to hold onto something that is too far away.  I just needed something for the “right now.” Something for today.  And there it was, the one that has come over and over in the past months, from the voice of good friends, in an old bookmark and a couple of other random places. “Be still and know that I am God.”  The words said, “don’t move” as they saw me in pain.

And the irony is that “stillness” is not the word that caught my attention this time but “know.” And as I defragment this season of ‘today’s’, I can only smile and know the one thing I should know.  And maybe hope and dream a little for tomorrow, or the day after. Meanwhile today, I just sit with these thoughts.

Liz Herrera loves to learn, read, have a good cup of coffee and find creative ways to combine her passions: communications, urban ministries, social action and mixed media.  Liz is a journalist and has served alongside the team of CTM Guatemala since 2006 and worked for over 12 years among marginalized populations with churches and non-profit organizations.

(Photo: Clix)

The following is a reflection on one of the intensives that CTM offers called:  In The Belly Of The Beast – Seeking Peace In A Violent World. Colin is a public school teacher and has participated in CTM’s intensives for the last few years.

My hometown is by no means a hot bed of unspeakable violence.  The 7,000 citizens of the town in which I was born go about their daily business as you might expect in any small community.  They are a communal, loyal, and patriotic people.  Growing up in a tight knit community like mine made me feel that violence was about as close as Mars.  My experience at the Street Psalms intensive—In the Belly of the Beast—showed me a violent world that is in my own backyard, in my own being, though it is violence I had scarcely taken note of.

It’s been almost a decade since September 11, 2001.  The attacks that day did a strange thing to towns like my hometown, and the country as a whole.  We were unified.  People banded together across social and economic lines to rise up in the face of tyranny.  The overwhelming emotion spewing from the masses was rage.  The overwhelming aim of the masses was revenge.

Each February my hometown gets together and puts on a carnival.  This is not all that uncommon in the rural southwest.  There are the traditional carnival games, and some that may be unique to the smaller, more western towns of the nation.  My favorite game was one where you were handed an automatic BB gun with 100 pellets in it, the goal being to eliminate a star printed on a piece of paper from roughly 15 feet away.  There was no age restriction on playing.  As I am aware, small children are shooting to their hearts content to this very day.  The February after 9/11, I was at the carnival and went to play my favorite game.  I was shocked to see the line over 50 people long.  It wasn’t till I got to the front of the line that I realized what all the buzz was about:  the goal was no longer to blast away the star, that picture had been replaced by a photo of Osama Bin Laden.
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Though I hardly grew up rich, my own story involves moving from the world of the nonpoor to the poor—a movement that continues to shape me deeply. So deeply, the shaping could be called a conversion, or a process of conversions. I know I’m not alone; this movement is an invitation Jesus extends to all who would “go through the eye of a needle.”

Theodore Wiesner identifies three conversions for a follower of Christ among the poor:

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