Tears

Today was the first time I cried about leaving Fort Myers. It was during the communion service at church. As I accepted the bread from Pastor Stu and dipped it in the wine cup held by Dave Weinman, I was blessed to know that I could share this important sacrament with the church family that I have grown to love over the last view years. After I got back to my pew and watched people walk up one by one to receive the symbols of Christ's body and blood, I was sad to be leaving them and happy to have shared life with them. This afternoon, they blessed me with a goodbye party, and I was thankful for the love that was poured upon me. Tonight I get to hang out with the family that has become the most dear to me here—Dave, Susan, Paula, Christina, Daniel and Maddy.

In less than a week, I drive up to Orlando to begin work with Wycliffe Bible Translators. I am excited, scared and hopeful. Wycliffe is a big organization that has been around for a long time, and they are passionate about seeing the scripture translated into every language in the world. When I went through their museum several years ago, I was overwhelmed with the importance and power of God's word, and it's exciting to play a small role in helping others translate His words to those who have yet to hear the message of the Gospel.

My heart is breaking for what I am leaving behind at New Mission Systems International. So many wonderful memories haunt these buildings between Stella and Katherine streets. I have shed countless tears, laughed deeply, received love, and poured my heart and soul into these people and the ministry we have shared together.

And yet, I know the time has finally come for me to go.

There are more tears to come—tears that evidence the beauty of the relationships that God has blessed me with these last nine years, and for that, I am grateful.

Heartbeat

This is my attempt to put into words the lessons I have learned from God and my relationships at NMSI through the years. I believe these things reflect the heartbeat of Christ and the richness of the Gospel lived out in broken people.

Laughter and Tears

The world is not as it should be, yet we believe that God has called us to live life abundantly and fully. The enemy tries to deaden our desires, numb our hearts, and cause us to forget the longings in our soul that draw us to our Creator. We don’t want to ever pretend that things are fine when they’re not, and the tears that a friend sheds on our behalf are often the best medicine. For the Christian, a realistic view of sin, along with the surrender of our helplessness to fix it, is what allows us to experience deep joy and to laugh together, not at another’s expense, but in celebration of who God made us to be and in longing for our ultimate home. Christ calls us to suffer with him on the cross and also promises our fellowship in the joy that is yet to come. We hold humor and sorrow equally high, and we rejoice that, in the midst of a fallen world, we can laugh together and cherish glimpses of the future glory we will share with Christ at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Crucified Relationships
We want our lives to shout that the Gospel is true, and we want for ourselves the same thing we want for the world—to invite each other into a beautiful cosmic dance with the Trinity as Christ describes in John 17. We have found that it’s impossible to offer this to the world without continually offering it to each other, and it’s messy, just like the cross was painfully messy. We want to nail our sin, shame and fear to the Cross for the sake of others and for relationship. If we protect ourselves by hiding our shame, lashing out at others, or withholding tenderness, then we refuse to love them. We deny that the Gospel is true. We choose ourselves over others, refusing to die and risk crucifixion for their sake, and we place ourselves above God who has commanded us to love. To love people is to offer them ourselves, naked and vulnerable, and to offer them the chance of redemption. It’s what Christ did for us.

Pursuit of Redemption
We long for people of every tribe and tongue to be reconciled to God, and to experience the power of the Gospel transforming their lives. We really like the word community, and we desire to see the global Church unified under the Lordship of Christ. As each one of us is being redeemed into the people God made us to be, we ruthlessly pursue the world’s redemption in the unique ways that God made us individually whether this means using our musical talent to create worship songs that draw others to Christ, people skills to plant a church, counseling skills to show the downtrodden their value to God, or our messy pasts to help others out of similar pits. We want to be strategic, while listening to the Holy Spirit; steadfast, yet flexible; and bold, while being kind. We want to make disciples who will go on to passionately pursue the proclamation of the Gospel in their communities around the world.

Resonate

Today I am wearing a shirt that says "Resonate or Die". I don't really know what it means. I just think it looks cool, and it was free at the Catalyst Conference last week. My whole wardrobe was planned today based on the fact that my leg muscles hurt too much yesterday from my high heels, and I needed to wear comfortable shoes. So I chose tennis-shoes.

I hate tennis-shoes. They hurt my toes.

And tennis-shoes could only be warn with jeans, the combination of which could only be warn with a t-shirt...And this is where my "Resonate or Die" shirt stepped on to the stage.

It was going to be a good day.

Funny Story Number 1: Kristy and I went to lunch where she told me about a conversation Adam had been part of the day before. He and some guys were talking about some of us who worked in the office, and one of the guys heard my name and boldly declared that I was never going to get married because I was too weird and didn't know how to relate to people. Adam was, naturally, a little puzzled and tried to tell him that I wasn't so bad, but there was no persuading this guy. I was definitely a lost cause. Finally, they discovered that this guy had thought they were talking about Angela on The Office the whole time.

Whew! Glad to know my chances aren't gone yet.

Funny Story Number 2: As I was walking back to the office after taking a picture of the new NMSI trainees, I noticed Bob's convertible in the parking lot. Since it was so open, it just seemed like it needed a friend. As I looked around, I discovered the tall covered ash tray thingy (the kind where you drop the cigarettes down a big hole), and thought it was the perfect companion to the front seat. Turns out I was right. Even more funny was that Shane had seen me from distance, and, since I was wearing my t-shirt, jeans and tennis-shoes, he thought I was a teenager. So my crime stayed safely anonymous.

Until now...

My toes hurt. Tomorrow I'm going to wear flip- flops.

Gorbichoff

There comes a time in everyone's life where their mom tells them that it's getting time to get their old boxes out of the house where they once grew up. The other day, my mom casually alluded to this semi right of passage, so later that day I found myself rummaging through my old stuff to figure out what I might want to throw away. After deciding that my montrous valedictorian trophy, arrayed in gold, silver and red chords, would probably be a bit too obnoxious and Dwight Schrute-esk to addorn my NMSI desk with, I started looking through old school notebooks, and found a good read in my fifth grade journal. Here is my favorite entry, the words of which I have left in their original miss-spelled splendor. All I can say is, what normal eleven-year-old thinks this way?

Journal Entry
3-19-91

Dear Mr. Clements,
Poff! A genie appears and says, "Your wish is my comand." At first I don't know what to say, but then I decide to see if this is real or am I just dreaming. So I say make me invisible. Poff but nothing happened. I asoom that it's all a joke so I take my chemistry set to the living room. "Ahh!" screams my mom, "Angela's chemistry set it floating in mid air!" so I reliese t hat I really am invisible. I go to my room, then the genie reapears and says, "Your wish is my comand." So I say, "I want to go to Russia." Poff! I look around and I find myself in Gorbichoffs house. I hear them plotting to attack the U.S.! So I tell the genie to get me to Washington D.C. and to make me visible. Poff! I'm right outside the presidents ofice. I knock and he lets me in. I tell him about Russia's plan, so he gets all the troops ready and Russia is completly suprized and we defeat them.

Angela Nelson

Cheryl

You know how when it's raining, and you need to go somewhere but you don't want to get wet? You try to wait it out to see if it's going to stop, but as the time rolls on and it doesn't let up, you have to eventually run out in the midst of it anyway? That happened to me today. I got wet. I suspect there's a theological application in there somewhere. It's been raining a lot lately.

I have no intentions for all my blog posts to be melancholy. I much prefer my charming wit anyway. But I thought it would be good to explain one of the reasons for my tears lately. The death of my friend Cheryl prompted this recent wave of writing for me. Here is what I typed a month ago when she died.

August 8

I found out today that my friend Cheryl was one of the aid workers killed in Afghanistan a few days ago. Cheryl had mentioned the opportunity to go on this medical trip in her last month’s correspondence. How tragic to discover its ending. The story of her death is all over the news and Hillary Clinton has spoken out against the culprits for this atrocious act. Never would I have thought that my dear friend Cheryl’s life, or death rather, would be known throughout the world. What must have been going through her head as they were ambushed. Was she scared? Was she peaceful? Did she feel Jesus with her, holding her as she went down? It all seems so surreal—like a bad dream. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to people we actually know.

Cheryl was one of those people who you can’t think of a single thing negative to say about even if you tried, and there are very few people who fit into that category. We lived in the same house together for about six months at a time that was incredibly life-shaping for me, and watching Cheryl’s life played a huge role in some of the changes God did in me that year. Cheryl was full of life, laughter, deep faith and humility. I don’t really have the words to describe her accurately. We spent Christmas 2001 together on the farm. We had to wait to go home to our families that year because someone had to stay behind to do the chores. I’ll never forget how peaceful that Christmas was. We woke up together, did chores, sipped coffee, ate our homemade biscotti and exchanged the gifts that were under our illegally chopped down Florida Slash Pine. I don’t remember what I gave her—a journal, perhaps—but she gave me a cookbook that I still have entitled “A Little Meat Goes a Long Way”. I pulled it out today just so I could see her handwriting. She had written on the inside cover “just one more step towards being ‘ready’!” which was our way of referring to skills generally thought needed for marriage. We also attempted to make a dish for a potluck dinner that afternoon. Since we only had cucumbers on the farm, we consulted the Mennonite cookbook and found a recipe for cucumber salad. Unfortunately, our cucumber salad was really more like cucumber soup. Needless to say, it really didn’t get eaten and neither of us ever got married.

The last time I saw Cheryl was a few years ago when she was in town for a conference. We got to spend nearly a whole day together. Even though we hadn’t been keeping in touch with our daily lives, we picked up right back where we left off and talked passionately and deeply about everything God had been doing in our lives the last few years—about singleness and missions and our friends and about God. I don’t remember details of our conversation, just that we were at Starbucks and that it was amazing to see her again. It’s moments like those that are the most beautiful to me in life, and I think of them as “communion”. Getting to enjoy God and weep together with a dear brother or sister is one of the sweetest gifts that I think God gives to us, and Cheryl was a person who God allowed me to share in Him together with. She was also a fellow lover of pumpkin icecream, and I remember late night runs to get a pint of heaven at the 136—an icecream shop so small that we knew it only by the numbers in its address. I think God Himself might have enjoyed some pumpkin icecream after he created the world…and I imagine that He and Cheryl are enjoying it together right now.

Thank you God for my dear friend who loved you and the people you gave her to serve. Thank you for using her to dramatically shape who I am today and for the communion that we got to share together with you.

Words

Would you believe that "Where have all the cowboys gone" was already taken as a blog name? Hence, my need to break the rules of grammar and add a preposition to the end of my title. Shane helped me in this big decision and then promptly played Paula Cole's song for inspiration. I've never blogged before, but I do journal and occasionally even write poetry. If I'm doing either, it often means that I am sad. An old college boyfriend is to blame for nearly half my poetry (thanks Billy). These days have been a bit more sad than others, and the words have been flowing from my fingers in an attempt to ease the pain in my heart. I feel like all that I can cling to is the name of Jesus. I can't even think anything intelligent about Him or about any of His qualities—just His name. Somehow that in itself has been comforting enough....