Email: Jessie Jennette

October 21, 2007

Greetings from Houma!

Is it really the 21st of October? November probably by the time you read this. Where did the first two months go? Nearly two months I’ve been a volunteer here now, and wouldn’t you know, none of my expectations have been met.

Concerning my spiritual growth, I should have accomplished so much more by this time. Sitting on my comfortable, extra long couch in my air-conditioned home in Wilmington, I laid out in my mind exactly how much growth I would accomplish during the next 12 months.

Let’s see, the work is mostly physical labor with a dash of paperwork and a touch of managerial experience. By my calculations, if everything goes as planned, I’ll be physically stronger, more responsible, and have better leadership skills by next August! If I get the adjustment-shock stage over with in the first six weeks or so, there should be visible results by Christmas! Won’t this year be great?!

Don’t laugh. It made perfect sense in August. It was like I’d signed up for a quick weight loss program and I was anticipating the “tah-dah” moment after I put in the work and sweat. It’s not so hard to understand, if you follow my train of thought: I knew it wasn’t practical to go into something like this and expect to change the world; I couldn’t even count on improving the lives of a couple people on the coast—that work would be accomplished by short-term volunteers that came down and actually put in the big hours on the work site. So, if I wasn’t doing it for the spiritual high of making someone’s life better, then what was I doing it for? Why did I come here in the first place? I wasn’t going to get out much (living on a volunteer village site to make myself available to them whenever they needed something), so broadening my cultural horizons was out. That also put the kibosh on travel experience—I’m certainly not going to be trek-savvy when I get back to Illinois. That’s it! I must be down here to better myself. Great, I can handle that; so God, if we’re going to spend this year working on our relationship, here are some areas I want us to cover along the way.

Again, it sounded so much better in my head. When I put it down on paper, however, I can’t help laughing at my own naïveté. And so God lets me realize that I may be approaching this adventure with the wrong perspective. Making a list of growth accomplishments implies that my growth will be occurring in predictable, controlled circumstances. But then, growth is never controlled, and only rarely predictable in your own life. Growth happens when…well, I guess that’s the point—we don’t know when growth happens, but we can perceive when growth has happened. I can’t say this understanding changes the way I feel about wanting to know what’s going to happen and how I’ll respond to the catalysts of change, but I guess I can accept that I won’t get an email tomorrow detailing the itinerary of growth through next summer.

Have you seen the film “Evan Almighty?” One of the themes here is depicted in that movie. Approaching the climax of the film, the wife of the main character has taken her two sons and is traveling to her mother’s house because her husband, Evan, has been experiencing an apparent mental break-down (building an ark “because God told him to”). Then God appears to her in the form of a bus boy at the road-side restaurant and explains that her prayer earlier that month, asking for their family to become closer, wasn’t really God’s responsibility. When someone prays for wisdom, is God going to toss a thunder bolt down and zap them with wisdom, or is God going to provide the opportunity for them to act with wisdom?

In the same way, when I pray for growth, I can’t expect God to sprinkle Miracle Grow on me while I’m sleeping so I can wake up the next morning a new person (and twice the size of those using other brands). What I can expect are opportunities to grow and learn. And knowing God, those opportunities may be more challenging than I anticipated. Come to think of it, maybe I should amend my first prayer: God, help me grow, but not too much.

All my love,

The ever-growing Jessie