Radical

A week ago, I went to a women's Christmas brunch and book exchange at my church. The book exchange was set up white elephant-style, so when your number came, you could either pick one of the wrapped books from the table, or steal an unwrapped book from somebody. I was number 5 of about 50, but number 4 got a book I had seen in the bookstore about six months ago and really wanted: Wild by Cheryl Strayed.  I unabashedly stole it from her.

Then it got stolen from me.

I didn't steal any more books in the game, but I kept getting them stolen from me, so I had to keep going up and unwrapping new ones. I unwrapped a paleo cook book, an old novel that didn't really pique my interest, and finally, at almost the very end of the game, ended up with a book I had never heard of called Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski. It's a book about two men who, feeling convicted about how their faith in God would stand if they didn't have their lives handed to them on a silver platter anymore, became intentionally homeless for a period of time. I was really excited about it.

This week has been a busy one, and I've only managed to get one chapter into the book. But I love it already.

I just took a picture of the line, "Perhaps you, too, have felt a nudging toward a life on the edge--some place or task in your life where, as Frederick Buechner put it, 'God's great mercy and the world's great hunger meet,'" and texted it to my accomplice, Lexi.

Although I have never considered a intentional homelessness (that is to say, I have never felt convicted to take it up), I have always dreamed of nobly living an off-beat lifestyle. I have brain-stormed ways to make my life different in a good way, regardless of whether others see it as a "good way." I want to live a life worth writing about.

~~~

In the summer of 2013, I managed to take a leap of faith and went on a mission trip to Juneau, Alaska. I had the time of my life and left figuring it was goodbye for a long time, if not forever. But in the summer of 2014, I found myself there yet again.

I realized I had fallen deeply and madly in love. With the land, mostly. With God and the way he made himself known to me there. Saying goodbye the second time was on the verge of heart-breaking. I took a lot of photos of the town and surrounding land from the airplane window.

I came home and moved into a lovely little house surrounded on four sides by other lovely little houses only a few blocks away from where I went to college. I found an awfully stressful, but beautiful job helping people with severe mental illnesses. I started sinking my toes into the mud of my city and my church. I tried to cultivate my love for the town and life I was living in. And God helped me to do so.

Still, there was one little pocket of the planet that I was unable to shake out of my head.

After deciding with Lexi that we were going back up there to live, I told her I felt like we needed a vision. Were were going just for fun, to get our kicks? Or were were going to live to a higher purpose? What would that higher purpose be? Neither of us really knew.

Radical lifestyles are not easy to come by. Choosing homelessness is not an option for me if simply for the fact that I am a woman and therefore would be much, much more vulnerable on the streets. Long-term mission work is not anything I feel compelled to do anymore as, although I believe it is good for certain people to live this way, I do not want to rely on others' charity as my sole source of income. I do not have the cultural training, language skills, or rigor to go very far beyond English-speaking countries (yet). I also have to work with the fact that I am unmarried: a blessing because I have more freedom to go where I choose and when; a curse because I do not have a built-in, like-minded accomplice.

But what is so radical about a simple move? When I tell people I'm going, people react by saying how cool/exciting it is. Some people ask me what my motives are. A lot of people ask me if it gets really dark there. But no one looks at me like I'm crazy, which indicates to me that I am not living radically enough.

But that is a lie. I think I found my radical vision. It's just not a very obvious one to the naked eye. My life in the 49th state will probably not look drastically different than the life I'm living now. I will rent a cute little apartment or house. I will invest in a church. I will live with roommates. I will go to work every day. I will go to the grocery store.

But it will be different. I will not be risking my finances; I will be risking my sanity. I will be entering a world where, for six months out of the year, utter darkness will consume more than its fair share of the hours of the day. I will be entering a world where, according to CBS News, Alaska has the highest suicide rate out of the 50 United States. I will be entering a world where depression and alcoholism run rampant. Homeless rates are more than 2.5 times what they are in my home state. I will be dealing with these problems on a daily basis, assuming I find a job similar to what I am doing now.

I will not be getting down and dirty with those in poverty in third-world countries. I will not literally be in the trenches. But I will be figuratively huddling in the dark, in the cold mud, with the emotionally and mentally needy. I will risk a lot in terms of my own mental and emotional state. I will probably cry even more than I do now over the brokenness of the world. But that is the radical life I want. Besides, I will not be alone. I will have my companionship in Lexi, any other roommates I may have, my church, etc.

The beauty of it is that I will continue to see lives restored as I am now. And every day I will walk out of my front door and see snow-capped mountains, towering evergreens, misty gray fog, sunrises and sunsets, stars more plentiful than I ever dreamed or imagined, and for the first time in my life, the green dance of the northern lights.

So I think I'll love it. I think God will sustain my mind and hope.

Pray for me as I embark on a journey of a lifetime. I don't know how long I'll be gone and I certainly don't know what the outcome will be. I don't know if I can anticipate how my heart will break and swell.

But, for now, this is what I choose.


God bless.