Monday, August 31, 2009

invisible

so i knew i would write this blog from the moment i stepped foot back on american soil after returning from uganda. i think i've waited this long because i've been afraid that i wouldnt be able to properly explain this. i'm still afraid that will be the case. and i think there may be people that read this that will be offended by parts of it. if that is you, i do apologize - not for these words, but that you would have that reaction because this isnt about that.

in december 2003, i graduated from the University of Dayton and moved to Nashville, Tennessee. it was quite the random move, as the only person i 'knew' there was buried 6 feet underground at The Hermatige. and while i dont remember particularly why i never considered staying in ohio, i wasnt afraid to move to nashville unknown. i was eager for the challenges it brought and anxious for a new beginning. sometimes hindsight isnt 20/20, but that doesnt change that the past is indeed the past. questioning 'how life might have been different if' doesnt really do any good.

i lived in nashville from january 2004 through april 2007 (minus the summer of 2004), so just over 3 years. those 3 years felt like 30. challenging doesnt even begin to describe it. i met a few amazing people while i lived there, people who are still shining stars in my mind. but i spent most of my time in nashville feeling like i didnt belong. for a long time, i thought it was just because this was 'life after college' - that i couldve moved anywhere and done anything and would have still felt lost and invisible so often. during my 3 semesters of school in nashville, i was rarely with the same people - i describe it as spending each semester with a different class (freshman my first semester, sophomores/juniors my second semester, and seniors the third). it wasnt anything like school in ohio. at my job, my responsibilities required very little interaction with people [relatively speaking]...maybe i just didnt like 'work' and wanted life to be lived with other people. i didnt find that at work, and even in 3 years, i didnt really find it outside of work. i recall feeling like the odd duck regularly. i remember one time someone called to invite me out w/ 'the group' that night. when i called to get the details, i heard someone in the background asking who was on the phone and the person answered 'melissa rau' and the person in the background going 'who?'... these were people i'd hung around with on a more regular basis than anyone else at the time... i really thought they'd at least recognize my name. those little things ate at me, discouraged me, and confused me. i'd never been 'miss popular' but in 20 years, this world my path came across just left me dumbfounded. even my parents couldnt understand how i could try so hard and not have a good group of friends.

by the fall of 2006, i was desperate to leave nashville. i wanted to leave without looking back. in april 2007, that's basically what i did. i'd told the people at my new job they could send me anywhere (except fargo) and they rerouted my life to little rock arkansas. i cried [of course] on my last day with EMI... i generally cry when i move on in life (even if, like this case, i was desperate to go) because closing the door announces to my brain and heart that any opportunity from that way is gone, missed, passed up, etc. i feel like moving on equates with giving up and its hard for me to deal with that. but after crying out, i was still ready to leave nashville. i was desperate for life.

little rock turned out to be a blessing i couldnt have asked for. i remember when the fdic first asked if i would interview for a position in little rock... i said yes, hung up the phone, went into my coworker's office and said 'i'm interviewing for little rock... i'm really afraid its going to work out and i'm going to move there and love it and have to tell people i'm from arkansas!'... it still makes me laugh, because of course that's how it is. and better is that i SO prefer to be 'a bank examiner from arkansas' [which most people equate with... well, nothing fancy to put it mildly!] than to 'work for a record label in nashville' [which wowed most people not from nashville]. but even here, life still has its challenges, i still am about as big a fan of work as i was in nashville, living is still a struggle.

so maybe at this point you're wondering... maybe many things. why is this post titled invisible? and what in the heck does it have to do with uganda? anything?? yes... sort of.
invisible... ah, it gets rough here... there are so many times in the past 5 years i've felt invisible. it happens regularly at work... someone will walk in and say hello to my coworkers and there i sit, basically invisible. it doesnt offend me, i normally just laugh...
this is so hard to explain. maybe if i try the uganda route... so, i sign up for this trip, so blazing excited... i've said to many people - once i heard about this trip, it wasnt really a question of whether i should go, it was just the natural course my life was heading -- it fit right in. i've done enough things in life without knowing anyone else involved, so that part of the trip didnt really concern me. the fact that most of them were from nashville...that concerned me. not anything against them, but simply b/c i spent 3 years trying life amongst nashvillians and it didnt work. going to uganda - my goals were simple: meet a need and see the lives of the ugandans for myself. those goals were met [they were pretty much inevitably going to be met, but still, it meant my expectations were realistic, and so nothing was disappointing. that's a new one for me]. anyway, something else neat happened that i didnt forsee.

coming home from uganda, in the newark airport, i spoke to my mom on the phone for like 2-3 hours... i think it was more words than i'd spoken during the whole previous 9 days. seriously. i actually wondered if my trip-mates in the airport were surprised [well, okay, really i wondered if they even noticed... inivisible remember]. i spoke more to complete strangers sitting next to me as our planes were delayed than i spoke to the team in uganda. i spoke so little during the trip that when i came back, my words had become but a whisper. it took me a while to notice the pattern of people asking me to repeat myself.
for most of the trip, i felt invisible. not in the sense that i was ignored by people, just invisible. like i could have walked off into the bush & while they might notice i'm gone, they wouldnt really think anything of it. it didnt hurt my feelings or anything like that. it was a little odd - almost surprising that it felt like life did while i lived in nashville. by the end of our trip, i was ready to go back to arkansas, like i'd been when i moved in 2007. but for the first time, i saw things differently, understood them in new ways.

i didnt intentionally try to NOT become friends with the team; i didnt intentionally not talk... but that quiet person - a bit withdrawn - it was just naturally who i was in this circumstance. and like seeing myself from a third party perspective, i could see that i was not myself on this trip. so much of the personality God has developed within me - its like an entirely different person than i was during this trip. a few years back, someone said to me something along the lines of: 'i think you're this great person that most people will never know'. i think he meant that he saw me... saw this unique creation... but could also see that most people didnt see that - or that ... like i was a ghost that he could see, but no one else could. aaah, trying to explain this is not working. i dont think any of us are made to be invisible. and i think most of us have so much to us that very few people will see. but what i learned about myself on the trip to uganda was that there are places where who God has made us to be shines more brightly than others. in nashville, i didnt shine. not that my light wasnt welcome, it just wasnt the right spot for me to be planted. little rock is different.

maybe giving up isnt always a bad thing. instead of being confused and feeling defeated, i've had the opportunity to better understand who i am, what i believe. and going to uganda, with this particular group of people, instead of frustration, i saw who i was, who God has made me to be, and it turns out - that's a good place to be.

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