11 Countries, 11 Months, 11 Journals

So I have these journals. Eleven to be exact. Yes, on a backpacking trip where every centimeter of packing space counts, your girl brought eleven journals. They each have a blank cover, so I started asking a local in every country to decorate it for me at the end of the month. Whether painting, drawing, using colored pencils, whatever. It was a way to showcase the art of a local that I had been bonding with all month, while also speaking life into them about their talent, their art and their worth. So far they have been so beautiful, not always what I expect, but so beautiful. I want to put them all on display when I get home. They are my favorite souvenirs. They are all of lovely scenes in nature from the country. They all have a similar look to them. They will look good next to each other on display when I get home. 

Walking to the ministry at the end of our month, I told my team that I still hadn’t found an artist out of the locals we were closest to. It was important to me that it wasn’t just a random person, but someone I cared about. They jokingly said, “What if you just hand all the kids markers and let them go wild, it would be a good depiction of the wild storyline that has been this month.” I didn’t even laugh, I looked at them like they were crazy. These journals meant so much to me. I wanted them to be beautiful, frameable, perfect. Nothing less. 

We headed to House of Hope and I sought out Raquel. I remembered how she had said that she liked to draw. She’s super angsty and too cool for all of us the way every 13 year old is. I spent three weeks trying to get her to talk to me as she chuckled under her breath and walked away, looking so over me. I had a very specific vibe for my journal this month. I always do, I always tell the person, “Whatever you feel like doing, you have full creative liberty, but here’s a photo to copy verbatim.” I guess I’m a bit controlling, but what else is new.

I walked over to her house, her sister Haley was in the front. I was nervous to ask, being judged by a teenager is hard, being turned down by one is worse. I asked Haley to call out Raquel. She came out of the house rolling her eyes with crossed arms, annoyed that we called her away from whatever she was doing. I told her how I remembered that she was an artist from our first ever conversation, her body language changed. She was less of a scary rock and more of an insecure kid. She looked nervous. I told her that I had been looking for an artist everywhere and needed her creative help ASAP. She ran back into the house, I thought she had decided I wasn’t worth her time. She did that sometimes. But she slowly returned, shuffling her feet, holding a portfolio of everything she had drawn. 

It definitely all looked like it belonged on a 7th graders binder on lined paper, like total junior high doodles. She was smiling nervously as she pulled out each piece of paper to show me. It was the most engaged and excited I had ever seen her. And I had tried, hard, for almost a month. I had a moment where I thought to myself, “This is definitely NOT what you wanted, you wanted them all to be beautiful” but it was followed by a thought of, “Who needs this more?” I gave her my journal and jokingly added, “But don’t read it” to which she almost even laughed seeing as how she doesn’t speak English and would have no idea what I was writing about. Almost a laugh feels like a win from her.

Haley sat with me as Raquel meticulously crafted something amazing, I’m assuming, she wouldn’t let me see during the process. I was just praying it would somehow turn out incredible and minimalistic like something you’d buy off of Etsy. That was the goal. She would look up and laugh nervously then look back down, focused as she continued. Haley moved into House of Hope a couple years ago when she decided to leave her old life behind. She’s only 22 and came with her 2 year old, 7 year old, and little sister Raquel. She didn’t want Raquel to end up on that same path that so many of the young girls in her family had. One amazing part of House of House is that the ministry gives each graduate a home right next to the property to start out in when they finish the program. It’s nothing fancy, just four walls. But it’s theirs. It’s safe, it’s a home, and it’s theirs. Haley gets to move into her new home when she graduates the program in July. We talked for a long time about what color she would paint it, how excited she was, how nervous she was, and how good God has been to her in this whole process. All while Raquel was doodling away silently.

Finally, she gets up, drops the journal in my lap and silently walks away like she didn’t even care. I was so eager to see, fingers crossed it would be like Bob Ross himself did it. When I saw it, it was a bunch of random doodles, again, like a 7th graders binder in 2007. I took a second, wondering why I just ruined my journal for a kid who didn’t even care, then realized that Raquel was actually watching from the doorway, hands covering her mouth, nervous, anxious, excited for me to see it. She cared, she definitely cared. I began hyping it up, as I do. Talking about how talented she was and how I couldn’t wait to show my whole family. She was so excited when I told her I would display it in my future home forever. She slowly inched out of the doorway and over to me. She began to explain. There was a house and a tree that she drew to look like House of Hope. There was a butterfly, like the logo (signifying beauty from ashes), and a heart for God’s love. I commented on each individual part and the amount of intentionality she put into it. She even sat with me as I asked for her signature. 

She eventually went back into the house, shuffling her feet and looking way too cool and embarrassed that I had made her just do that in front of the little kids who were all in awe of her the whole time. But I knew it meant something to her, even if she tried to hide it. I looked at Haley as she silently mouthed, “Thank you”. It wasn’t what I wanted for my journal. Not at all. But it meant so much to me because it meant so much to her. She was so proud of it, I was so proud of her. I went around showing everyone her pencil doodles. Two five year olds saw it and decided that it needed color. All I had was highlighters, that would look so tacky. But I figured you can’t really only halfway step into abandonment, so why the heck not. I pulled out the highlighters and Fernanda & Ashley got right to work. They loved it. I loved that.

It was such a sweet yet unexpected afternoon, reminding me of this entire month, thus making it the perfect journal cover for Nicaragua. It turned out crazy, but beautiful because of the hearts behind it. I cared so much about how the journal looked and wanted it to be perfect, while the inside was all just messy, uncategorized rantings of a restless mind. I wanted it to look on the outside like everything was perfect, when in all reality, if the spectator just looked inside, they would quickly see that it wasn’t. Seeming perfect is a lot easier than vulnerability when things aren’t. So I tried to hide it, cover up the imperfections, all sealed tight and wrapped with a bow. I do that sometimes. I’m working on it.

Lord, continue growing me in abandonment. I abandoned my family, my life, my comforts in the States, but help me to abandon something deeper. Help me to abandon my control, my need for perfection, my fear of people seeing the vulnerable parts of the story, all of it. Thank You, Lord, for this reminder that You can still orchestrate something beautiful out of what I think is too messy. Thank You, for my new favorite journal.

-K