Gangs and my thoughts on the Bible.

I got that weird feeling again today. the one where i feel like i need to pack up and move away immediately. but in a good way. not because i am discontent, or because im sad or bored, but because i desperately want to meet new people unlike myself and everyone i know. it all started last night when i was watching PBS. i really can't handle sitcoms anymore. all i ever want to watch are those boring yet informative documentories about world travel and things. this show was about gangs in El Salvador. at one point they asked this gang 18 member what he thought about death. the kid just said "i know what i do in God's eyes is bad. but in my eyes, and my gangs eyes, it is for good. Where do you think i will go when i die? i think i will go to hell where i will burn."
it about killed me.
for ages now, i've had the desire to live in places that no-one else will go. i want to live in India, Sudan, Cairo, and now El Salvador. i want to live in ghettos, experience poverty, and love people who've never known love. i know it will be hard, but i can't stop watching these shows and getting more and more desperate for these people. its in those moments that i actually feel something stronger than any emotion i could fake. my heart for the unloveable is real. i've felt numb for so long, its actually good to feel heartbreak again.
Today is gross and rainy, and i love it. i woke up to find myself sleeping in dog puke (scout is sick) and still, i am in a good mood. i nannied all morning and my sister was unusually crabby, and yet, today seems beautiful. i read my bible for the first time in awhile last night, and it hit me, this book is crazy. its our entire, messed up history of love, war, sex, violence, peace, death and life. and i love it. i've never been excited to read the bible before. this is a big step.

the pirate summer

as i type, there is a ferocious thunder storm outside. its a beautiful, muggy summer night. a night i would normally be out having adventures in. the crazy static feel of lightning always makes me want to dance and sing and run and sometimes swim. but theres something else. i feel discontented and anxious, like something really big and important is going to happen.
being back in the country, i have felt this alot. but tonight, the feeling is so strong, it stings and gives me the startling notion that maybe my heart will never heal. perhaps i will always feel a little lost and uncomfortable. i am a nomad, after all. but so was jesus.
tomorrow is te 4th of july. my family has never really been one to make a huge fuss about it. we normally just mooch off some other wholesome, church families patriotism. i just went for the hot dogs and sparklers. sometimes i wish we were that family who stayed in the same city, neighborhood and house my whole life. that we had the same people over every year for independence day, always lit off the same fireworks, and always drank the same beer. maybe then i would not feel like this.
but its this feeling that keeps me from settling. i cannot settle. it terrifies me to see the majority of americans who have never stepped outside the western box. i want to scream, slap, shake them till they look up and say "My God! why didn't i see this before?"
a rude awakening, if you will.
i press on, struggling everyday with the fact that i could be accross the world actually making a tangible difference in somebodies life, instead of being here, pretending to care who is dating who, and always putting on the "i'm perfectly fine" mask. because im not. i hurt. and sometimes all i want to do is run into the middle of the lightning storm, because its terrifingly beautiful and unsafe, but its always in those situations that i feel God most present.
maybe thats what i am chasing.