Life is a Roller Coaster
When the song “Life is a Highway” came out in 1991 I used to turn up the radio in my little Honda and sing my heart out. I loved to have the window down, hair blowing, and thinking that I too was on the highway of life.
Almost twenty years later (wow, really?), I still love the song, but I feel like life is much more of a roller coaster than a highway. I don’t have the sense of a straight open road just waiting for me to take off down it, but rather a series of ups and downs that can be pretty unpredictable and have you laughing out loud one minute and gasping for breath the next.
In Colombia that feeling is all the more pronounced.
- We go from celebrating at a professional soccer game to reading news about a mass grave found in the town of La Macarena.
- As part of a delegation visit we listen to a displaced man as he speaks of being kidnapped three times and scraping out a living on land that has not gotten enough water this year, then we go to a pastor’s house for a despedida (going away party) where eating, laughing and dancing rules the night.
- We take part in a Presbytery planning session for 2010 with high hopes for more emphasis in service, new communities, and education after which people ruefully note that the army members accused of participating in a plot to kidnap young men in a poor suburb of Bogotá, kill them, and present their bodies as those of armed-group members killed in combat (thus reaping financial rewards) are having a spa day with their families to relax them. (Issue summary here. Article about the day of “Clowns, Aromatherapy, and Roasted Pig” in Spanish here. Google translate here.)
Colombia is clearly not the only place where there are roller coasters, but it has some big, impressive ones. I have never really been a fan of roller coasters, but sometimes it is just how things go. The two dangers seem to be getting lost in the valleys and forgetting the hilltops, or – more often here – ignoring/forgetting/erasing the falls and looking only toward the climbs. Still, whether looking up or remembering down, there is always the need to keep in mind the words from Isaiah, echoed in Luke:
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain. (Isaiah 40:4)
Roller coaster….to highway.
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Maybe- local US sunday achurch is a merry-go-round. But Missions is a roller coaster.
1 is thrilling. 1 is entertaining or maybe boring. Depending on your stomach, either way you can sick though.
Profound, Mamie. Thanks for sharing.
You know, I can hear your voice coming through the words written on my computer screen.
Many many more thoughts, coming soon in an email to you!!!
Love you and miss you, btw!