micahstravels

[micahstravels]

Hum, Honey

—1

The year is 2021 and all the days have blurred together; one moment I was washing my makeup off and the next, I couldn’t see. The days were blurry, and I could no longer see. I feel like I’m moving backwards somehow, and the thing about going backwards while everyone else moves forward is that they appear to be going much faster. I find myself watching the blurred rush of people around me, while I sit at my kitchen table with my chemistry book open, thinking, how are you accelerating so quickly? And then, who put my brakes on?

There is a knot at the base of my spine. I’ve already begun to twist myself around it, and my fear is that I’ll get stuck there. When they ask what happened to me, I’m afraid they’ll ask, but didn’t she do it to herself?

—2

You grinned. “That’s Mexico, baby,” you said to no one in particular; the sun was in my eyes. We walked six kilometers that hot day and you talked for five of them, which is unlike me, but when you’re around I’m not entirely sure who to be yet—so I guess I’ll settle for quiet?

“Mexico, baby.” You said it like it was yours to tell and I felt annoyed. Quietly annoyed. The air smelt of corn roasting and leftover trash and the sea, and you said that you could never get used to the smell of this place. I said, really? I think it’s the best smell in the world. I said that even when I lived in New Zealand and the air was so clean it was as if it had been filtered, I still woke up craving the grunge of Mexico.

You were quiet for a minute after that. Quiet for the first time in five kilometers.

Nah, you finally said, with a confident shake of your head. You told me that you’d rather breathe in artificially clean air than whatever these conflicting smells are. You grinned again and I turned to squint at you through the sun, because you are so damn cute and I love the way your eyes crease when you smile, and yeah, sometimes I do feel lonely. But I do not feel lonely enough for you.

I’m sorry, I said, but I don’t think this is going to work out. “It’s not Mexico; it’s you, baby.” And by saying that I hope it was implied that I am ok on my own. I spun around and walked the six kilometers back, talking out loud to myself, airing out all my unused words. My lungs were filled to the brim with roasted corn and leftover trash and the sea, and I was all by myself in Mexico, but I did not feel lonely. Not even once.

Later, they will ask you why I left. Do you think it was because she was already in love? I hope that you say yes. Yeah, you should say, I'm pretty sure she was in love. Yeah, now that I think about it, she was definitely in love.

You would be right, for once. “It's my Mexico, not yours, baby.”

—3

My sister calls, asking what stuff of mine to bring from Mexico to New Zealand so that I can take it to Israel. I don’t need much, I tell her, just bring my books and my tea mugs and that one pillowcase I bought at the San Miguel market and the rug I found in a street alley in Greece and a few of my clothes. In other words, I don’t need much—just all the things that will let me continue my life as seamlessly as possible in a completely new country. I need everything that belongs to me to be with me before I drag it across the world to somewhere else.

I find myself at a different kitchen table thinking, how can I be accelerating so quickly? And then, wait, who took my brakes off?

—4

In the quiet restaurant, it is obvious that the dark-haired boy in the booth facing me is in love with the blonde girl facing him. He stares at her, slightly bewildered, from beneath his black lashes. When their buzzer rings, he stands up too fast and trips, which makes her laugh. He grins, she looks down shyly; his eyes soften. Go and get the food, she tells him. He bends down, pulls her face to his. “I just love you so much,” he mumbles to her, “I can’t believe it.” Then he walks away.

If I could tell you something—

“I feel," wrote Madeline Miller, “like I could eat the world raw.” Yeah, me too, but when I tried to do that, I burnt my tongue and then everything lost its taste for a while.

—5

We were in a café at ten-thirty at night and she said that she’d like to have kids and have them soon. I asked her if she had any names in mind and she said yes. She pulled out her phone and read the list: girls first, then boys. For the life of me, I still don’t know why tears collected in my eyes in that moment. We want different things, her and I, and I moved halfway across the world in search of mine, and now I’m off again. But the mere thought of her unborn children? It’s enough that I feel a pull to stay. The knot at the base of my spine aches. She laughed and said that the years have made me softer; I never would’ve cried over something like future baby names before. Yes, they have changed me and no, I never would have dared. But thank God, I told her, because every kid needs a weepy, nostalgic auntie at their birthday party telling them what the weather was like on the day they were born.

She was suddenly serious. “You’ll fly back for them?” she asked. Outside it’s humid and I can hear the faint shouts of drunk teenagers screaming Selena lyrics, but inside this café it’s quiet, it’s just us. “You’ll fly back for them?” The knot in my spine is on fire. Yes, I’ll fly back for you; I’ll fly back for all of them.

If I could tell you something. Sometimes I think about standing up in the middle of my own life. I picture myself pushing back my chair to interrupt whatever this endeavor is, saying, “I’m sorry, but this is not what I want anymore. Please excuse me.”

But melodrama in real life is rarely as gratifying as it is in my head.

If I could tell you something it’s that I would stay but I cannot stay, because she brought me my suitcase and in it were the rugs, pillowcase, books, tea mugs and everything else that belongs to me that I need with me before I drag it across the world to start a new life in a place that is far from her, far from them. I’m doubled over from the knot in my spine.

My hope is that in moving so far away from the people I love (to pursue what I love), they will understand that I mean it when I say I’m sorry. Years from now, when she looks up from the dim window of the restaurant that she agreed to meet me in, she’ll see me staring down at the map on my phone, and I hope in that moment she’ll smile at the sleeping baby in the carrier next to her, the baby whose name I’ve kept with me all these years, and she’ll shake her head cause your aunt is always a bit late, darling, and there will be tears in my eyes when I hug her because it’s me, I flew back, and then, I’m sorry for leaving.

If I could tell you something, it’s that I took all my first loves for granted.

When they ask you if I was already in love, you should say that I’ve been in love for a long time already. When they ask you why I said no, tell them that I was already in love, and I did not know what to do. The days blurred together, makeup was running into my eyes and my spine was on fire. I was in love with so many people in countries I did not live in—I did not know what to do.

Ok?

—6

He said, oh my gosh, Israel, Micah. “I’ll come visit you in Israel.”

Honey, the sea.

He said, med school. “You’re going!”

Do you remember us at the beach? Green sweater hanging off your frame like a sheet flapping in the wind. Honey, the sea. We were both there physically, but your eyes had a faraway look. I remember what we looked like before we grew up. If I’d known then that growing up meant you’d outgrow me, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted it so much.

He shook his head. “I never said that I couldn’t believe it.”

When you began doubting everything, I stood by quietly. But then you began to doubt me.

I mean this in the nicest way possible: I don’t want your hand-me-down woke shit. You’re pulling yourself apart, but stop getting mad at me for not doing the same.

He said, you knew it all along, didn’t you, Micah? “You knew you would never be happy with anything else.”

“Your twenties are for questioning.” Have you found answers?

He said the feeling inside is accomplishment. “All you, baby.”

You came at me and my home with a sledgehammer in the name of inclusivity. But you slept here, you ate here, you cried here, you used to live here. You were safe here. Now you want to tear it all down? Even though it’s not yours?

Destroy your own peace, but don’t you dare come for mine.

He said, I couldn’t be prouder, Micah. “I think I’ll burst.”

I remember us on the beach, how you looked in the hazy morning light. Your eyes. Green sweater, grey sea. We sat on the sand and I said, if you want to leave me that’s fine, I understand. You said, it’s not that I want to leave, it’s just that I feel like we’re too different now. I said, can’t we co-exist with our differences? And you said, not when they’re this big.

I think back to that morning on the beach: I was looking right at you but I couldn’t see you anymore—so immense was the bitterness in your eyes.

He said I’ve never been to Israel, Micah. He grinned and his eyes creased. “But now I guess I’ll go all the time.”

I will state my case one last time, then I will back away. When you look at me, I know that you see a girl left behind. You see me as old fashioned, as unwilling to shift my viewpoint from a book that’s “so outdated anyway.” But bitterness has a way of obscuring the whole picture, such that you have forgotten Who has been next to me this whole time. It was never going to be a case of pulling myself apart, because to do so would be to pull myself away from Him.

I will not give Him up. You can ask, plead, threaten to leave, talk about me behind my back, make your accusations—but I will not give Him up. I do not have the words to articulate what He means to me, how even if every friendship I ever had crumbled, I would still choose Him. I do not have words—just devotion, just love for Him. If that is all you see when you look at me and that offends you, then I am not sorry, I will not apologize.

You’ve been asking me the wrong question for months. Instead of asking will you? you should’ve asked me why won’t you? Maybe then you would have realized that all along we were searching for the same thing, you and I: safety, a sense of home, peace.

I found mine and I will never leave, but you have to know that you will always be welcome here. The door to this home that Him and I share will never be locked. We'll leave the light on for you, always.

He said, a new life, Micah. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

A new life, yes. I just didn't realize the great cost.

—7

My friend group is splintering. Literally, not figuratively. I regret that I was the first to announce that I am moving—I feel I triggered a chain reaction. And now I am weeping at night. I’m capable of moving to a different country: I can set up a home, buy myself the things I need. But I find I don’t feel quite as stable anymore, not without them.

I think, maybe, this is part of the appeal of marriage? The idea that, yeah, you can pack up your life and start somewhere else, but your home is also a person, you’re never quite homesick. Not like this at least. No, I am dizzy-homesick. I am disoriented-homesick. I am a-bit-unsteady-on-my-feet-homesick. I am heartbroken-homesick. I am homesick for my friends, all these beautiful loves of my life, these ones that have molded and shaped me for years. Five years isn’t that long, but it’s enough to grow up. And grow up, we did.

We danced all night. Hold my face in your hands and tell me that I will be ok. We’ll break every drinking glass in the house. Let’s go to Piha for sunset. I’ll drop you off at the airport in the morning. When I wake up crying in the hospital bed, yours is the face that I see. Your mom called and wanted to talk to me. We’re stretched for cash but there is always money for brie and baguettes. The sun melts over your deck. A bottle of red on the table between us. I’ll pick our books up from the library on my way home. It was a shit day, but you waited for me at the bus stop in the pouring rain. A pile of sunflowers on my desk. We eat lunch every Thursday together. Shared airpods. Crying, spilling, laughing, bawling, dancing, grieving, growing. I found you at our corner in the arts building and when I saw you sitting there, I burst into tears. Sing Don’t Take the Money for me one more time? When I fall asleep on the couch, you’ll pull the blanket over me. I cannot think about anyone else; I want you with me all the time.

When I think back on years of cultivated friendship, I understand that all along it was having a safe space for pain, loneliness and grief to be acknowledged. So much of adulthood is coming to the realization that others around you are carrying all those things, too—usually silently. I realize now that the crafted narrative we tell each other is triggered out of a sense that no one will stay if they know, so I’ll just keep quiet about this pain. Like that scene in Goodwill Hunting, when Will is screaming at Skylar, telling her that the pockmarks on his arms are actually cigarette burns from abusive foster parents. Honey, I didn’t know that, she responds quietly, her shoulders quivering. All along she thought he was ok; she didn’t know he was in so much pain. Honey, I didn’t know that.

My most beautiful moments in friendship have been conversations where this pain finds a safe space to be let out. Did you know that you can open your mouth and let your grief fly around the room? It will wreak havoc; it will make a huge mess. But did you also know that the time it takes to clean it up is the same number of seconds it takes me to let you know that I don’t plan on going anywhere? Honey, I didn’t know that.

In the hospital they removed my bandages and told me to air my wound out so that it could breathe. As you become an adult, they should tell you to air out your pain when you’re amongst people who love you, so that you too can breathe.

Five years isn’t that long, but it’s enough time to air out all the pain, clean it up and then heal. My friends told me that they prefer it when I can breathe, so that’s what I did.

I’m leaving soon; let’s go dancing one last time. We’ll share a bottle of red, sip out of broken glasses as the sun melts over your deck. It was a shit day, but we rode the bus home together and listened to Drake in your airpods. I will tell you about the books I borrowed from the library, and you’ll pretend to care as we drive to Piha for sunset. Before we fall asleep on the couch, I’ll be sure to pull the blanket over all of us. When I air out my pain and my voice cracks, I know that you will be listening. Honey, I know that now. Honey, I know you.

If I could take them with me, I would. “She is my phantom limb,” wrote Nora Ephron, “and I cannot believe that I am here without her.” They are all my phantom limbs, pieces of me that were always there because we lived in the same place for so long; I cannot believe that I am moving away from them.

At my kitchen table, I am weeping. I don’t want to accelerate this quickly. Someone, please, put my brakes back on.

But do you know what I think about, most of all? I think the kindest thing my friends have done for me is giving me permission to make new ones. When I announced that I was moving away, they took my face in their hands and reassured me: you are going to meet such amazing people. It’s our benchmark to know that we’ve grown up—that we as adults release each other into new friendships without a hint of jealousy or suspicion, because you know that what you have is good. My friends? They know that I will always come back. I’ll drag my suitcase full of ridiculous and useless things across the world, I’ll find them in the dim light of the restaurant they said they’d be waiting in, I’ll fly back for all of them, and I think only then will the knot in my spine cease to ache.

Honey, I’ll come back for you and you and you and you.

They said goodbye and tears were running down their cheeks; they said that they couldn’t wait to one day meet all of my new friends.

I never want to be loved in any other way.

—8

I am on the phone whilst making dinner. This is taking so long, he says, we just need to know if you’re a match. I am cradling the phone between my cheek and shoulder, chopping vegetables at the same time. I can hear the very subtle hint of desperation in his voice. My hands are trembling, my desperation used to be subtle but now it is leaking out of me in ways that I could not have known. I put the knife down.

All I want is to be a match, I do not say. I know, I say instead, tears muffling the phone. I know.

I’ve heard it said that parents would do anything for their kids. But what about me? Do you know what I would do? The lengths I’d go to keep him here with me? One year (two, four, five years) in my twenties, all my thirties—I’d hand them over immediately to know that five years (ten, twenty, forty years) from now, I can look up and still see him standing there.

October 16th. Mom is hurting and dad is hurting and I am hurting, and I can only handle one, maybe two max. I will count down the days until this whole thing is over and I can take my finger off the pause button and see all that I missed while trying to hold myself together.

“160 grams,” I tell a friend. “That’s how much the average kidney weighs.”

Picture my face. Picture my face and then burst into tears.

160 grams—but how do I measure the weight of a parent that is alive?

December 6th. “Good morning, Micah. We have received the results from your HLA antibody crossmatch test. I am delighted to let you know that you are a perfect genetic match for your father.” Good morning, Micah. We have received the results from your HLA antibody crossmatch test. I am delighted to let you know that your dad will live, you can unclench your jaw, he’ll be there to watch you finish growing up.

A mere 160 grams of a rust-colored organ, so small you can nearly close your fist around it, pulled from my body and placed in his. A piece of me given back. I am the sum of many things, but mostly, half of her and half of him.

The day the nurse called to tell me that I was a tissue match, I dragged the cushions off the couch and onto the sun-drenched patio. I was a starfish on those cushions, and I was crying in that honey-morning light and when I got up and left the sun, the buzzing in my skull had ceased and I was starving. I made poached eggs on toast and opened a package of biscuits that I dunked in a mug of tea, and there was the distinct feeling that the rest of my life was quietly resuming around me while I ate. Picture my face. Burst into tears.

“Hey mom, call me back when you get a chance. Love you.”

Put dad on the phone. Tell him that I really need him.

What did the surgeon tell you? My dad and I sit on the beach after a swim, the Pacific a bowl of blue before us. The surgeon told me that I might feel colder after the surgery. The ocean was freezing that day, but I jumped in immediately while he took his time. I haven’t swum with my dad in over a year. The surgeon told me that I will have to watch my salt intake. The saltwater stings my eyes, chaps my lips. The ocean is cleaner and bluer and crisper than it’s been in a long time. The surgeon told me that the transplant shouldn’t affect me having children of my own, should I ever want them. We watch the kids in lifeguard training, decked in their yellow rash shirts and red swimming caps. They sprint into the surf, a dozen little red-and-yellow buoys bobbing in the frothy waves. The surgeon told me that I look healthy, and my labs have all come back with flying colors. “So, you feeling good?” he asks. I nod. Yeah, feeling good. The surgeon told me that the next time he sees me, it will be in the operating room. I look over at my dad, the Pacific a crisp bowl of blue in front of us. Four kidneys, only two work. Five days prior, I’d been accepted to medical school. I might need a sweater next time I’m at the beach. Everything that I’ve ever wanted to happen is finally happening. I forgot to ask the surgeon if I can swim in the sea after my stitches are out.

160 grams. The way in which you say ‘I love you’ is the way in which I have defined myself.

160 grams (320, 640, 1,280 grams), I’d hand over as many grams as they’d take if I could guarantee that in five years (ten, twenty, forty years) I’ll look up and he will still be standing there, telling me that everything will be alright. The way in which you say, ‘I love you’.

When I woke up in hospital after the surgery, the pain was sickening. They didn’t tell me it would hurt like that. My mom came in that evening, right before she went up to see him. It worked, she said and there were tears behind her eyes. It worked? I asked. Everything is working beautifully, she said, like it’s his own. The pain doubled me in half all night but the next day I saw my dad. I saw his face and it was full of healthy color like it hadn’t been in years. The nurses were beaming at me while I was dizzy in a body that felt off-balance, but my dad took my hand, and his fingers were warm. Thank you, he said quietly. Thank you so much.

I’ve been searching for a particular feeling for years, one of utter happiness, elation and relief. The expression in his eyes was that feeling; my entire body was cracking open with that feeling.

I remember Renaud’s words that sustained me:

“I will love you until we run out of mornings.

Then I will love you in the dark.”

If I could describe the feeling of what it’s like to wake up in the morning again, after four years of a darkness so thick I could feel it running down my throat, then I would. But how can I describe it? When you slip out from under the fear that your parent will die, it is the feeling that the whole world has been returned to you.

When the morning came, it was not just the sun but my whole world that was returned to me.

April 15th. “I don’t know why people make this out to be a big thing. The way I see it, I am twenty-six years old, and I need my dad. I just really need my dad. I cannot be without him.” The way in which you say, ‘I love you’.

160 grams.

That’s how much the average kidney weighs.

The way in which you say, ‘I love you’.

I really need you.

Don’t make me go on without you.

You here and 160 grams less of me—that is all I want.

Tell me, can we go to the sea once our stitches are out?

[micahstravels]

Circles

In 2015 I traveled to a tiny village in the center of Togo. It’s a small nation, and I later found out that it only takes eight hours to drive from the most northern corner down to the southernmost tip. I went to work at a medical clinic there, as part of an outreach for a primary health care course I was completing. I went because I was nineteen and a bit lost in the kind of way that most of us are at nineteen.

I don’t have much more to say about Togo because I’ve already written a lot, but there is one moment I’ve come back to several times. On one hot morning, a group of four women carried a bloodied teenage boy into the clinic and plopped him on the nearest bed. He’d been hit by a car and thrown off his motorcycle, causing a grapefruit-sized lump to form on his forehead where his skull whacked into the pavement. The head nurse, who had this insane calmness about her, began examining him while the mom fussed over her son, calling for rags to mop up the blood that was streaming from where his arms and shins had been scraped completely raw. At least five people were wiping, stitching, cleaning, and talking, and I stood off to the side, watching the frenzy of human concern.

We all assumed he was unconscious on the bed, but then that kid opened his bloodshot eyes, and everyone in the clinic said ‘ahhhh!’ at the same time. In hindsight if he’d remained still, then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad—but no. No, that kid opened his eyes and sat up so quickly, looking confused at the group of people standing around him. He opened his mouth as if to say something but instead, the most forceful projectile vomit shot out of his mouth and sprayed not one, not two, but the five people standing in front of him, including myself. What didn’t hit the human targets splashed against the back wall, which we later measured was exactly five feet away from where he sat. He shot that vomit out of his mouth like a firehose for a solid eight seconds, then he blinked—then he fainted. No one said anything for a moment; the entire clinic was silent. Then his little sister, who had food chunks sliding down her arms, started screaming. Then she vomited too.

Look, I’m aware it’s not a pleasant image, but something happened to me that day. I don’t remember much after he vomited, only that they told me later that I was wild-eyed. I think they thought I was going to puke too; I think they thought I wanted out of there. And in hindsight, maybe if I was older and more sure of myself and my place in this world, maybe if I wasn’t so lost like most of us at nineteen—then maybe it would’ve been different.

But I was the kind of lost that attracts purpose. I just didn’t know it then.

I went to the bathroom afterwards and peeled off my puke-soaked shirt and when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I realized that I was, indeed, wild-eyed. But I did not want to bolt, I did not want out of there. I was wild-eyed and euphoric; I’d found my thing. I was covered in vomit in a stifling hot clinic in the middle of nowhere, and I was absolutely, positively, and completely hooked—which is another way to say that I was in love.

I spent nine weeks in Togo, and those days pivoted my life dramatically. Togo changed everything; it was my introduction to medicine. I was starry-eyed and flustered in the way that you become when you have recently fallen in love. The longer I spent there, the less lost I felt.

During my time, I met and worked alongside a young nurse who had been at the clinic for several months. We became friends, and she told me about a medical school she was looking into. She told me that it was a small university in Israel with a complete focus on global health. She said that they teach you the American medical curriculum, but they also teach you how to be cross-cultural, how to look at medicine objectively, how to be empathetic and global-minded. She said they set you up to practice medicine anywhere, not just in a fully stocked hospital setting.

Wow, I told her, that sounds amazing. I knew it was years off, I knew I’d have to get an undergraduate degree, but still. October 8th, 2015: Being in Togo has completely changed my life. I must pursue a career in medicine, I don’t think I can do anything else. The school that April told me about in Israel sounds amazing, it sounds exactly like the doctor that I would like to be. Who knows, maybe one day.

—

I applied to get into medicine in New Zealand in 2018 and in 2020. I was rejected both times, and I was crushed, but I was also so confused. Every single door opened for me in New Zealand, all of my university fees were paid for, I was debt-free, people told me it was a miracle (and it was), but the one door that I wanted most was bolted shut. I wanted to study medicine there, and I could not get in. I felt that I’d built a whole life here around this goal of getting into medicine, and I’d failed miserably.

I was so painfully disappointed.

But within this disappointment, I was given time. I had time to take a step back and think not only about who I am, but also the type of doctor I want to become. The disappointment came for me, and with it an applied pressure—which I was sure would suffocate me. But then I realized that the pressure had a way of splitting everything in two: what is still important and what is not anymore. It was merciful in this way; it cracked my life down the middle. When I opened my laptop in bed and read my second letter of rejection from medical school, I felt like I was watching my life, cracked down the middle and floating apart, and New Zealand was on the half that I was not on anymore.

But there is disappointment that grows into bitterness, or there is disappointment that eventually dissipates. I summoned all of my willpower and chose the latter. The past two years have been a witness to me calmly throwing away anything that the disappointment turned to rejection or bitterness. I will not take it with me.

I stretched myself out on the new half of my life, closed my eyes and drifted for a bit. Then I sat up, tore a piece of paper in two and began writing two separate lists. If studying medicine in New Zealand was out of the question, then I would have to adapt. But more than that, I would choose. I would choose how I would let myself be marked by this process, and I would choose which schools I would apply to. So, I wrote two lists. The first was all the skills and the training that I want to receive as a medical student. I want a good education, top-notch teaching, and a faculty that I can network with. I want to meet physicians and professors and students that I can call upon later in my career, that can set me up for what I want to do. I want to train in developing countries, with limited resources. I want to know that I can be a doctor without the safety net of a big hospital and its funding.

The second list was who I would like to be as a future doctor, the character traits and qualities that I hope to emulate. I want to be empathetic. I want to be cross-cultural. I want to be kind and compassionate and I want to love patients even when you’re not really supposed to get attached. I want to be socially aware and emotionally intelligent, and I want to remain in love with medicine for as long as I live because I really do think I was made for this.

Then I searched for medical schools.

I was determined to find schools that reflected these lists and my values. In one of my late-night searches, the Medical School for International Health in Israel popped up, and it took me only a few days to realize that this school, its mission statement and its values, were exactly what I wanted. I began the application process. But one early morning a few weeks later, I was re-reading my journal from when I was nineteen, and I realized that MSIH was the same school I’d heard about seven years ago in Togo.

And a few days ago, nearly seven years later, I received my letter of acceptance to that exact medical school in Israel.

I start in August. I have not stopped crying; it’s been days.

—

I was nineteen seven years ago, right when He started to draw a circle and asked me to follow. I did not know where it would end nor how many times I would lose sight of His faint trail, but I fell into step behind Him anyway. I was wild-eyed and in love. This morning, I woke up in New Zealand and re-read my letter of acceptance, but I swear I could hear the sounds of Togo in the early dawn: flies buzzing, people shouting and the clanging of pots and pans.

I woke up and read my letter of acceptance, and suddenly we were back in Togo, Him and I, and I watched with tears in my eyes as He closed the circle, as He finished out what has been the toughest and hardest season of my short life.

I like to think that I have matured since Togo: I think things through a little more and I try to save my money and I wear sunscreen nearly every day. But these past few days since my acceptance, I feel like I am nineteen again, and I can smell the acrid scent of vomit on my clothes. I am starry-eyed and flustered in the way that you become when you’ve recently fallen in love. But I am also twenty-six. I am twenty-six and when I washed my face this morning and looked at my reflection in the mirror, I saw that my eyes are calm, but they are also wild, and that is how I know that I have remained in love, even after seven years.

The disappointment came for me and when it did it split my life in two, but the half I’ve been drifting on has given me time. It has given me time so that I can donate a kidney to my dad. The half I’ve been on circled me all the way back to Togo, and now it will take me to Israel in August.

I am going to medical school, my biggest dream of becoming a doctor is happening.

I have not been disappointed. The half I ended up on is too good for that.

[micahstravels]

“Claw Marks”

*I wrote a lot of this over the past few months, then pulled it all together and finished it while I was alone in isolation. Like so many other people, last year did not go as expected. The result (of many factors) is that I will be moving out of New Zealand, my home for the past four years. Even though I made this decision, it still feels very surreal.

Most of what is written here is from the last year: some is my own processing, some is recapturing moments, and some are just snapshots of things I write but devoid of the context in which I wrote them. 

Maybe this will not all make sense, but my hope is that maybe you’ll find some of your own thoughts and emotions articulated.

Again, thanks for reading.

—

The Slow Turn

A year changes you a lot.

What has unfolded over the past few months was everything I did not want to happen, a series of events that hit the ground like a pile of dominoes, one right after the other, and by the end of November I was on the floor.

I came across a quote from David Foster Wallace during that time. “Everything I’ve ever let go of,” he writes, “has claw marks on it.” Look, I am aware that I cannot hold on to things forever, at some point I must let go. But there was always a difference between freely relinquishing what’s in my grasp and having my fists pried open.

Of course, a habit of mine is that I shred things out of fear.

I board a flight leaving from New Zealand in early December. As the country shrinks, I feel hot tears soak into my face mask, and I know that the next time I fly away like this, it will be with everything that fits into two suitcases, maybe three. “The next time I fly away like this, I know, it will be for good,” I wrote on the flight.

But what no one knows is that I knew this in the middle of last year, when I awoke one morning with a gnawing kind of feeling that this country was giving me the last of what it has to offer—there wouldn’t be much left soon. For even in July I had a sense of what was coming in November. What has followed I can only describe as an inner shift, akin to someone placing their palms on my cheeks and slowly turning my head, forcing me to look away.

What is happening now is the slow turn, as my grey eyes hold the faces of all the people this country has brought me to love. The slow turn, a shelf full of books, a plant growing up the bare wall, early morning sun. An old green car in the driveway. The slow turn. Two friends on the other end of the phone, they are saying they are happy for me, this is the right thing, red eyes, tears streaming, I am crying too, I say sorry twice and they say don’t you ever apologize for this again. The slow turn, my name to take off the lease. The slow turn. A final drive out to the beach with the black sand, the one where I used to sprint into the Pacific. Out to lunch, my mom asks if I am sure, I’m sure, I say while I sit on my hands. The slow turn, “I’m sure, but I hate this,” I write on the flight back.

A slow turn, a pivot. Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it, he said. I will attempt not to shred anything as I return only to pack up, which is the same as being told not to be afraid.

“The next time I fly away like this, I know, it will be for good,” I wrote on that first flight.

I book another flight. This is the beginning of the end here, my time to wrap up. What do they call it? A transition.

—

No Easy Way Out

Here, finally, I relinquish my right to a direct route.

A fictional right; a right I never had to begin with.

—

“Culpable”

tengo que tomar una decisión: volver (regresar) o irme de nuevo (correr)

dime, si te dejo una vez más ¿me perdonarás?

—

Load-shedding

There are two main ways to carry a load: on your back or in your arms. It appears that one cripples you, while the other builds endurance.

Look, I know about this burden—I just need to consciously decide how I want it to mark me.

—

My Bottom Lip is Bleeding

I thought I was going to pass out in spin class the other day. I remember it being a 30-minute class, turns out it was sixty. By the 30-minute mark I’d given everything I had and then some, but then the instructor starts calling out halfway there! and that’s when I knew that I was in trouble. I kid you not: the instructor looks dead at me from his bike and says, bite down, girl, it will help you keep going and forget the pain. I’m so embarrassed to be singled out, but whatever. Bite down, girl. I clench my teeth together tight and keep pedaling. The feeling I experience after it’s over is one of exhilaration, akin to pride.

Two days later, at 6:32 in the morning, a rejection email, after I’ve given everything I have—and then some. I sit up in bed, howling softly.

Bite down, girl. Just bite down.

Look, I don’t know what I am going to do or what is going to happen, but I know this:

I hope one day to look back on this tender season in my life, and I hope for two things—(1) that I kept going and (2) that the feeling I experience when looking back is one of pride.

—

The Return

I forgot the Spanish word for dreaming (soñar) and then later I forgot the word for glasses (lentes) and then in the middle of a conversation I forgot how to properly construct a sentence in the past tense. 

This terrifies me. I have to go back.

There are some things you can afford to forget; this is not one of them.

—

Implosion

We spent an entire lecture discussing the ethics of using aborted fetus stem cells as a treatment for Parkinson’s. One life sacrificed so another could be prolonged, I write.

The offhanded way the lecturer talked about it—as if this were a minor inconvenience to research, as though this shouldn’t even be a debate at all—left a gross taste in my mouth. A student raised his hand and asked if the stem cells strictly came from aborted fetuses or if spontaneous miscarried fetuses would also be used. The lecturer replied that miscarried fetuses should always be treated as human remains, therefore the wishes of the family must be respected, whereas aborted ones are considered medical waste and thus, “in his opinion” should be released and used for research purposes. If I had the guts that few people have I would’ve raised my hand and said exactly what I thought about that. “In my opinion.”

Instead I write: I do not know what to do with or where to put this knowledge; it weighs heavy on my chest.

The thought of entering such a sterile yet fascinating field terrifies me. Will I learn to live with this weight? Who will I become in the process? I get home and drive to the beach; it’s pouring.

Who am I with this?

The past two years have been marked by a lot of questions, specifically about where to locate my beliefs in this fast-paced yet very complex, very septic world I’ve ventured into. There have been so many things in this field that I love, but there are so many ethics that I do not have answers to. Euthanasia for terminal, painful diseases? Stem cell therapy? Funding for Western diseases or the same funding instead for clean water? 3D printing organs? Cell cloning? Aborting babies with cystic fibrosis, with down syndrome, with cleft palates?

Do I want to study in the West? Do I even like living in the West?

I am twenty-four and find myself caught in the undertow of a forceful wave that I thought I could swim through, but it’s just a lot stronger than I originally expected. So many people around me seem to be riding these waves effortlessly, taking in the information and spitting out model answers, picking it all up and rearranging it neatly to fit into a worldview that is both contemporary and politically correct. But what if all of this doesn’t fit in mine?

I think about this a lot, about the way I want to look at and approach this world. I also think a lot about who I would like to be. And, in my final year of this one degree, I’ve reached the conclusion that if any stray piece of information can be molded, compressed and folded so that it stacks tidily within a worldview, I don’t think that speaks to the flexibility of the worldview—I think it speaks to its demise.

I think it foretells of a worldview that will uphold anything and everything, collecting opinions and beliefs as they come, unwilling to shed the information that doesn’t fit, until it can’t anymore, until it collapses in on itself. A worldview that was always destined to implode.  

The task ahead of me is to figure out how to build one that will last.  

—

December

The end of this year.

I feel sun-bleached, really. Or something like it.

I look across the table at my friend, at the half-eaten sandwich on her plate. The weariness we feel from a difficult year is evident between us: she barely touches her food while I devour everything on the table that is edible. I want to ask if I can eat her sandwich; I almost ask the waiter to bring me another plate of food. And a refill.

I think to myself that we are both starving differently, each malnourished in a kind of overtired way.

We were all running so fast, I say, we weren’t prepared for the standstill.

She looks at me. But what were we even running for?

Ocean Vuong, in one of my favorite books, “I am not with you because I am at war with everything but you.”

A standstill, yes. But now, also, a turnaround, a furious sprint away from a war in which I don’t remember enlisting but fought in nonetheless. A long run in the other direction, a long run back home.

What were we even running for? I will not—in an attempt to build this life—venture so far off into the distance that when I turn around the people I want to show it to most are gone. I will not.

I have come back to you because I am done fighting everything that took me away from you.

—

“Open to hear a new voice message”

0:59. “Hey Micah, hope you’re good. I just wanted to check in on you. Look, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while and I think now’s a good time. And it’s that I don’t think you should let the fear of what has happened over the past few months and years make you into something you’re not. I just see lately that you’ve been grabbing all of these back-up plans out of fear that one or all of them are going to fail. But I’ve never known you to be someone to look for worst case scenarios. You have never been indecisive and you were never easily overwhelmed or even frantic. And I find that being with you now, there’s something off, there’s something within you that doesn’t belong. I think you’ve become scared and that’s ok, we all get scared, but I think it’s time to not be scared anymore. I see how the fear of what has happened has begun to shape you into something you’re not, and I think it’s time to let that girl go and bring the old one ba—”

0:33. “It cut out on me. Bring the old one back, that’s what I was saying. Anyways, I just wanted to tell you that. You know I love you and I’m always rooting for the real you, but I will also root for you even when you’re scared, just as long as you commit to letting that scared part go. And I think—no, actually, I know—that what’s ahead is daunting, but you don’t have to be afraid of it. Anyways, I have to run but iloveyousomuch and I’m here for you, always. Have a good day, see you soon.”

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it, he said. Fear included.

—

June

When he walked away, I was overcome by a feeling that I was off-balance; the world felt like it was spinning. He left and I tried to steady myself, to sit upright again.

But those damn eyes left me reeling.

"Your eyes, an ocean, I drag a raft out to sea, no one has found me.”

—

Molting

To live in this peaceful country at this point in history is, as the news says, to be free. Everyone that can is migrating back here. But for me, that freedom was always relative, that is, it’s now contingent on the fact that you can no longer come and go as you please.

But I have to come and go: a whole piece of me lives somewhere else in the world.

Nonetheless, I find myself conflicted about leaving, conflicted about staying. I request a sign and get a picture of someone ripping off the outer layer of my skin, like someone helping a snake molt out of its old scales. In other words, this season has ended.

When I was a little girl growing up in Australia I used to find leftover cicada exoskeletons stuck to trees. At six, I used to wonder if it hurt the insect, and if it did hurt, did the cicada just shake off its outer layer anyway, out of necessity? In Mexico, at twenty-four, I sit on the beach and watch a hermit crab pull its spindly body out of a shell that has become too small.

I can’t stay in a country that won’t freely release me anymore, I can’t stay in a country that has nothing left for me, it is time to go. This knowledge hurts but I process it anyway, out of necessity.

I think about the snake, about the cicada, the hermit crab—the girl. All of us molting an exterior layer that has built up over time, shedding what we’ve outgrown, the difference between the creatures and I is that their instincts told them this would happen. The difference between us is that they’re not sobbing while they do it. I pick up four years of my life, like a shimmering, translucent wisp in my hands, it weighs nothing, it weighs everything, and I lay it on the ground and I make myself leave it behind.

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it, that’s what he said; that’s what I’m doing now, only gently.

This dead skin glows like a green light behind me, green like the neon exit sign that I am now running towards in this new, baby-soft skin.

I just don’t know where I’m running to.

—

Mornings

I want to write about my family, without saying too much.

I want to write about what it’s like to drive down a windy road, my dad at the wheel saying that we need a plan, we need a timeline, and I agree, I want a plan and I want a timeline; my mom says nothing. The Mexican desert is a blur past my tinted window, burnt orange, flecks of gold, a cloudless blue sky—and all I can think about is how I need a plan, I need a timeline. I pull out my phone to take notes, as if all of these things that we have been hoping for, for three years now, could be scheduled. If they could be scheduled they would’ve happened by now.

I want to write about the two people I love most, without saying too much. We take a road trip to the centre of the country, where we ate at a different restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner for ten days. There were colourful buildings, a sunrise ride up in a hot air balloon, late nights watching Lost reruns. My dad buys fresh pastries in the morning, my mom and I walk through the market for hours, we order hot chocolate so thick and creamy and rich that we cannot finish it. 

When we returned everybody said that it looked so beautiful, you must’ve had such a good time, but what is sharpest in my mind is how they both looked, what it was like to wake up in the same space as them, the many conversations over breakfast, lunch and dinner, the two of them holding hands as we walked between the colourful buildings, how it felt to know that an undercurrent of many things that are still not ok ran beneath us, but here in these moments, we are ok.

For I cannot write about this without writing about the ache we have all had to adjust to. An ache with a pulse, I wrote in 2018. I will not say too much except that the past three years have been hard, some days so gutting it took my breath away—I was spiraling—a lot of calls across the world where I put the phone down and howled. In November a series of events hit the ground like a pile of dominoes, in November I was on the floor, in November the elapsed time was now marked in years—in November I almost gave up. In November I was ready to raise the white flag, in December I flew to Mexico with the intention of raising it, come for me disappointment, I surrender, just let me catch my breath and then take me. 

But how can I write this? That is not the whole story. The untold part of the story continues, such that throughout this elapsed time, these three years, I have looked at my dad on multiple occasions and he refused to raise that white piece of cloth, I look to my mom and she won’t either. They are better than I am, more resilient than I am, and even though this hurts like hell, if they will not raise a flag in surrender then I will not either. I will not give up, either.  

A month into my time at home, I wrote down Renaud’s words:

"I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark.”

There is much to say of a family in the dark; every family experiences it at some point. But for ours, I can only write about how it stripped us of a lot but gave us back so much more. For it is dark but I know their faces, even if I can’t always see them, I know what things feel like, where we all fit in this black space, the presence of an extra Person whom we all take turns sleeping next to. One morning, my mom holds me like I’m a child again and I weep just like one; I weep out three years worth of disappointment. “Then I will love you in the dark.”

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it, he said. But not this, this I will not be letting go of, ever. I would like to write a lot more, about two months at home in Mexico that returned something lost to me; the mornings when I woke up to the dog scratching at the door, my dad on the couch wrapped in a blanket, my mom in the kitchen stirring oatmeal—and everything is not ok but everything in that moment is good, we are good. But this is all I will write here, for the rest of the story is written down somewhere else; the rest of the story is for me, for us.

Besides, there are mornings are coming, the ones where the light trickles in gradually, slowly, and then all at once everything is bright again. These are the mornings that are coming; I mustn’t waste my energy.

[micahstravels]

“Voicemail.”

*A piece I wrote this past season, as I have spent several hours trying to separate who I am from what I do.

Hi, yes it’s the real me  speaking do I matter to you does this  seem important enough am I enough or  are you still underwhelmed?

Hi, yes it’s the real me still speaking  I can change you know shut my mouth more  not be so angry stop setting things on fire do more be more is this what you want or  am  I  just  rambling?

Hi, yes it’s the real me speaking I have heard people say that if they could wind back the clock and go back (home; in time;   to the beginning) they would but what I want to know is if you could turn it back several thousand hours all the way back   would you raise the same daughter? If you could have known then that I would be me would I still be me or would I be better?

Hi, yes it’s the real me  speaking again I know I’m not supposed to ask  just assume but are you proud of me? I need to know have to know would kill to know can’t not know need it  like air maybe more than air I’m drowning here  I need you to be proud of me just tell me  do I make you  proud?  

Hi, yes it’s the real me  I’m almost done speaking sorry for talking so much are you still there?

Hi, yes unfortunately it’s the real me this is the last thing I will ask promise but how much is  enough? Because I will reach it just give me a measure  and I’ll do it  I’ll be enough I’ll change I’ll make you proud  I’ll re-raise myself I’ll be better how  much do you need  from  me?

Hi, yes it’s the real me speaking quickly before I hang up you have to know need to know must know can’t not know that I have a deep deep fear that I will get to the end of my life and realise that I did it all in the name of everyone else that I was supposed to do it all for you   but that really I did it all for myself   to satisfy this gnawing hunger to prove to forget  to refute  tell me honestly as I hang up is that  bad?

—

Hi,   yes it’s  the fake me speaking I’m  not sure why the  real me called but just ignore all of  her other  messages ok?

[micahstravels]

“Pinpoint”

*A year-long compilation; a wrestling. There is nothing necessarily conclusive about these words; they are just mine from my journals and reflect the ebb and flow of what my twenty-third year looked like, the year I think I grew [up] the most. I wanted to write and leave it semi-unfinished, just as various places in my life right now still feel very unfinished. This was my year, these were my experiences, this is how I documented it.

—

I am about to turn twenty-four.

A friend asks me over a cup of tea what this approaching year feels like; I tell her that I feel I am only just now catching up to myself.  It took a year of crucial and humbling moments to understand this feeling, I am certain it will take another whole year before I feel settled into this. I tell her I don’t like the feeling of running after myself.

—

I pinpoint this feeling at the start of twenty-three, when the Lord tells me that I’m moving too fast for myself. You need to slow down, Micah. I pretend that I do not know what this implies. It occurs to me that I am probably bulldozing through my own life, ploughing down everything in my path in an attempt to get where I want to be quicker.

The cop who pulls me over must think so as well. Any reason to be going this fast? he asks.

Um no, not really, I confess.

No emergency to get to?

No.

You were just going that fast?

Um, yes?

He looks at me with gentle eyes. You need to slow down, ok? Wouldn’t want you to get hurt. I wonder if his speedometer can predict an inner collision.

I pay the ticket quickly; paying the self-imposed penance takes months.  

—

I pinpoint this feeling when a friend insists on catching up, so we start talking about the future. What is it that you want? she asks.

Not enough, is what I want to say.

Too much, I say instead.

I will scold myself for my answer later, because I don’t like the way it sounded coming out of my mouth. I don’t like the apology it implies.

—

I pinpoint this feeling as the mechanic hands me a bill I am unprepared for. He motions under the hood in an effort to explain why it cost so much, and the thought that I am probably getting ripped off gnaws at me. I diagnose myself as incompetent.

I put on my best non-quivering, adult voice as I transfer almost all of my savings from one account to the other, sign the slip of paper and dash to my car.

I sob the whole way home. By twenty-three I thought I would have a better grasp on these things.

—

I pinpoint this feeling as I sit through another forced talk about self-care in university. I realise that this advice does not apply to me. What’s keeping me up at night is not the urge to drink my guts out, instead I hang a whiteboard on my bedroom wall at 2:13 am with a list of questions I decide to answer in my spare time.

What am I working towards?

Who and what do I want to become?

What do I want my twenties to be marked by?

What problems do I want to solve?

Where do I want my time to go?

I want someone to give me the answers to these questions, to tell me how to keep my life on this trajectory. Because I am beginning to worry that in an effort to carve out the life that I want—the calling I feel compelled to fulfill—that I will lose myself in this process.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when I almost book a trip to Japan using the remainder of my savings. My friend tells me to chop my hair off instead—it will achieve the same desired effect. 

I realise it’s autonomy I’m searching for.

—

I pinpoint this feeling in August, as I watch my dad worshipping next to me at my home church. I realise that he is standing in the same place I knelt almost every Sunday for a whole year. I realise that he is alive at the same time that I realise I cannot stop crying.

I lean into him, confess that for a whole year I’ve been terrified. We weep together.

I look down: all of my disappointment and fear is draining out in a puddle on the floor. Your infection has run its course, I hear the Lord say.

I realise fear was never meant to be chronic.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when I show up to my final exam without a gram of makeup on. As I walk out the door, the sight of my face in the mirror makes me wince. I have never wanted to not look at my face so much, I have never turned away from myself so willingly before.

My skin bears the remains of an academic year I thought would be better: dark circles, acne, puffiness. Look at me, it says, look at these marks. This is the skin of someone that kept going.

I start noticing other peoples’ skin and wonder what they’ve had to walk through.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when an old friend calls me one morning; we have not spoken in years. I have wasted months analysing our last conversation, and I have finally reached the conclusion that I would take back everything I said if I could, even though those words aligned with all of my beliefs. This scares me. The thought of this chasm growing any deeper scares me more.

At twenty-three I am torn between inhabiting the house I built on a firm foundation, and the people in my life that refuse to come inside for fear this foundation won’t hold them. There is enough room here for you, I say.

No there isn't, they reply.

I fear that I will watch people’s lives occur through a glass window. Some days I want to leave this house, I’m just worried I’ll lock myself out.

But when he calls I am so shocked to hear his voice on the other end that I shove a t-shirt in my mouth to muffle the raw emotion leaking out of me. If you would have told me that my arm had just been popped back into its socket, I wouldn’t have known the difference: the relief feels exactly the same.

When he asks about the last time we talked, I find myself apologising for something I am not sorry for. I blurred all the lines, and now I don’t know how to undo what I’ve just done.

—

I pinpoint this feeling as I take stock of my life, of the people inhabiting it. I become acutely aware that if you were to strip them all away and leave me only with what I have constructed with my hands, I would have nothing of worth.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when, the morning after I fly [home] to Mexico in December, I’m sitting at our dining table with my dad and he asks me how I really am, how the last year was. I attempt an answer, except that I can’t, because I am quietly weeping into my plate of eggs. I don’t really know why.

But when he—this man with whom I feel most safe in the world—wraps me in his arms and says, what you’ve done so far hasn’t been a waste, Micah, I understand why my jaw has been clenched all year.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when I climb into my best friends car at the airport, four weeks later. I feel like I don’t want to be here anymore, I tell her as we drive through this city that I somehow do and do not love at the same time. But I also don’t want to leave. My time at home revealed what I have known all along: I love Mexico so much more than New Zealand.

“They say that nothing lasts forever,” writes Ocean Vuong, “but they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it."

I google ways to fall back in love with a place.

—

I pinpoint this feeling when I realise this: what I want is taking up too much space in a decade that doesn’t have enough room. 

If what I want in my twenties doesn’t fit, then if and when it spills over into the subsequent decades, will it leave room for the rest? Am I caught in a recurrent cycle of catching up? Is this all in my head?

—

I pinpoint this feeling when I quietly ask the elderly speaker to pray for me. He takes my face in his hands, looks at me gently for a moment. Comparing your life to others’ is what’s suffocating you, he says.

I unravel slowly.

—

I pinpoint this feeling on a balmy evening in February, when I’m walking through my old neighbourhood with one of my dearest friends. I am wearing the leather flats that I bought in a market in Mexico; we have just eaten chocolate cake for dinner.  The past year has seen a lot of big decisions for the both of us, and the end result is that we both stayed.

And because we are in our twenties and because all of our friends are a blend of single, engaged, married, pregnant or breastfeeding—we talk about what it’s like watch this unfold from our vantage point.

I live with the weight of satisfaction and desire. They both exist inside of me, she says. I exhale. I didn’t know I wasn’t the only one who wrestled with this. 

It is here that I grab hold of my innate restlessness and pin it down—it is a habit I have started to avoid being consumed by it. At twenty-three I have had to learn that restless should not and cannot become a synonym for reckless, nor can it be a euphemism. Because if it is then I start to become someone that I do not intend to be.

And I do not intend to be reckless.

So when she says that, I understand that all along this restlessness was merely a side effect of the civil disruption happening inside of me. That to be twenty-something is to allow contentedness and longing to co-exist peacefully within you, until they decide to wage war.

And the aftermath shows up on my skin; it is insomnia, and writing lists of everything else I’d rather be pursuing right now, and boredom, and jealousy over my friends who look like they have achieved so much more. It’s the mornings when I wake up with a visceral urge to clean up what is not messy: my closet, my room, my brain. You are just restless, I tell myself. You are not purposeless.

But when they’re at peace? It’s a group of friends that make me a cup of tea without saying anything. It is parents who tell me that my life in itself is their proudest accomplishment, even when I feel like they’ve accomplished much more important things. It is the fourth and final year of a degree that I love; it’s an end in sight.

And so, at the end of this year, I pinpoint this:

I am deeply content; I am so unsatisfied.

"Twenty-three."

I am still catching up.

[micahstravels]

Soothe.

Many people read something I wrote way back in 2015, after I’d spent 9 weeks at a medical clininc in Togo, West Africa. The culmination of my time there was not what I was expecting: two days before we were due to leave, I found myself sitting on a bloodstained cement floor, holding the lifeless body of a beautiful newborn boy in my arms. The muscles in his neck were overstretched and his skull was disfigured—the aftermath of his head being stuck inside his mother’s pelvis for an hour, as he suffocated to death during his own birth. 

I watched the whole thing.

The reason I got to hold him afterwards was because the mother didn’t want to see him. It was too brutally painful, and she’d come close to dying herself. So I stood by in utter shock as my friend washed the blood and faeces off his little body, and then wrapped him in a clean piece of cloth before handing him to me. I held that dead baby in my arms and I did not cry because I was too enraged. I held that dead baby and the weight of a body that wasn’t alive cracked something open deep within me.

Something inside of me woke up that day. 

Besides the rage and the fury at a life that vanished before it had a chance, besides the questions, something else woke up, and it has remained awake since. 

What woke up was a heightened alertness to who He is in these moments.

Last year was really rough: for me, for my family, for some of my closest friends. It was a year of disappointment and it was news of deaths that never should  have happened, and it was sickness and it was frustration and it was a deep, pulsing ache that never went away because the punches just kept coming and I thought I was good at fighting but, damn, I’ve got nothing left. 

But through it all, something within me was alert, something was heightened. And as I finally look back, I have come to realise that despite the many things that are still being rearranged in my life, I now know this with certainty:

There is a steadiness within me that knows who He is, especially when everything hurts. 

I needed to know that, more than I need breath. I found myself on my bedroom floor so many nights, telling Him that if it’s not going to go away, then I need to know His goodness in the middle of it. I need to know who He is when I am in pain, I need to know who He is as the people I love are suffering, I need to know who He is in ache, in disappointment, in fear. I need to know who He is when all the shit hits the fan and I’ve got nothing to cover me from the mess. I need to know who He is as I sit on the floor in a rage, cradling a dead baby in my arms that should not have died—and I need to know who He is when I open the letter of rejection from my biggest dream. 

I needed to know. 

I do now: what woke up in me four years ago in Togo has stayed awake.

One of the only things He said in the middle of it all was this: you choose how this season marks you. And I have watched so many of the people close to me get whacked so hard the past few weeks and months, even years. But it must be said that what I have witnessed in their response is not so much a sense of whacking life right back, but more of an absorbing of this pain and letting Him soothe it. 

Because what no one tells you is that it takes a ridiculous amount of strength to allow Him to soothe your pain—especially when you feel like He should’ve stopped the punch from coming in the first place. 

Nonetheless, we stay. 

I stay, and in my staying I disentangle this preconceived belief that Him not stopping it is akin to Him inflicting it. 

No, He has not inflicted this. No, He never inflicts this.

I continue to disentangle all the untruth, and in the painful unknotting I find a God that is so good, so understanding, so kind and so loving it is actually as wild as they say. And so, for me, a long and arduous season has ended simply in where else would I go?

He has become everything. 

[micahstravels]

“Don’t Leave Me”

*A compilation of writing from the past year. I know now that He’s not going anywhere.

He planted flowers in my lungs:  He said that He wanted to prove to me that growth can happen on the inside. I open my mouth wide and He pours water down my throat so that it reaches them. And sometimes I cough up dirt. My tongue is stained brown and people don’t understand and my mouth tastes like earth and people don’t understand and I lay in bed at night and drive myself crazy thinking  that they are not growing and that they are dying because I can’t see the inside growth on the outside, and I overreact and think that maybe if they’re dying in my lungs then maybe I might slowly be dying from the inside too and people don’t understand. But they’re growing. "They are?” He tells me.  He shines a light down my throat and says that He can see petals. Every morning I dig my fingers into the skin in my chest, right in between the spaces of my ribs, and I breathe out and my lungs feel more full and I realise that He is right: that I am growing from the inside. I am growing from the inside.  The inside of me is growing, too.

He grew woods in my chest.  I woke up one day and there were evergreens rooted into my sternum; sometimes I hold my collarbone between my fingers, fearing that it will snap beneath the weight of the thicket.  It’s hard to breathe sometimes. Sometimes when He comes close I feel like I can’t breathe.  My chest is a tangle of woods and my worst fear is that I’ll become a forest fire and burn away everything that He grew because every once in a while in my stupid anger I do stupid things, like strike a match and burn some leaves just because setting things on fire   makes me feel in control and sometimes my life feels like it’s spinning out of control, and does anyone else ever feel like that? but then I regret it because if all these woods go up in flames then maybe He’ll leave me because no one wants  to live in a wasteland of ash and  I know this because I used to be a wasteland before He came so every day I fill a bucket of water just in case,  just in case today is the day I screw it all up. He dumps it out; He says He doesn’t need it. Says that He’ll still live in my wasteland, says that He’ll just plant more trees and wait for them to grow again, says that He’s lived in worse places. 

He made a home inside my bones. I think that He is the only one that can live in the marrow of who I am. It feels strangely calming to know that He exists in the  smallest spaces of me.

He asked me to stop lashing out at Him like He was a human being. I didn’t understand what He meant by it, but I do now. Sometimes people walk out of my life and it  creates a void so massive and black that just peering down  into it makes me throw up  because neither my mind nor my body can comprehend the gaping hole left by a person that used to be there. And this void is selfish: it pulses its way through my veins and steals all of my air. A choking, vomiting, crying mess, all because a human being picked themselves up  and out of my world.  I build a house with my grief and light a fire inside to keep me warm; all the doors are locked. And when He knocks I admit that sometimes I don’t  want to let Him inside because because because because He is wild and kind and whole and everything that I want to be and  when I look at myself sometimes all I see is Him,   He has that much of me,  and I unrealistically fear that if He were to go  then the void He would leave behind would be huge enough   to swallow me whole and I know that I am being stupid but, damn it,  people leave and I feel like they take pieces of me without permission. And I forget who He is sometimes. I forget who He is. I forget that He is not like me in my instability,  that He is not fickle like human beings. He’s not. He holds my face in His hands and I stop shaking and He looks me in the eye and tells me the same thing, every time: "I will never leave you.” It is my biggest insecurity: that one day He’ll walk out and leave me a wasteland leave me swallowed in blackness leave me alone.  And some nights, when the void reaches out like it owns me,  it is the only thing I can hear Him say: I will never leave you I will never leave you I will never leave you.

He has holes in His hands. I know this because one time I sobbed into His palms and  then realised that all of my saltwater was dripping  through the holes and out the other side, right onto my feet. I love those holes. Nothing comforts me more in this entire world than those holes. I trace the edges of the chasms in His palms and think about how He healed an entire human race with those hands, yet here He is: just as scarred as the rest of us. I feel like a child, always asking Him if I can see His holes,  always dipping my fingers into them,  but they stir something so deep and  so freeing and so wild and so fierce in me that I cannot explain it except to say that I feel ashamed sometimes at how much I love that He has scars because it makes me feel so much less self-conscious  about all of mine. 

He really does not leave; I know that because  I used to have all sorts of strangers sleep in my bed with me and I thought that surely He would walk out. But I would see Him from my pillow,  curled up in the corner of the room, eyes awake— because He never ever sleeps—  and He’d be watching me calmly and I could hear Him singing over me.  I’d feel the stranger breathing beside me—sometimes there would be more than one, all piled in this bed, all sucking the same air as me and now help me, I cannot breathe—and shame would leak into every pore on my skin and I think that the cells in my body knew what my mind  stubbornly refused to acknowledge: that cheating on Him was not what they were created for that laying in this sagging bed with doubt and fear and guilt was poison and even though the bed was full and tangled, I felt like I was drowning, like these sheets were smothering me. So I finally kicked them all out. I kicked all the strangers out of my bed and  now it’s just the two of us and I honestly thought that it would feel more empty, but it doesn’t because somehow He just makes everything feel more full.

He asks, "How much do you love me?”  And then, “You can’t use the same words as last time.”  I love you so much sometimes it feels like my head is going to split open: maybe it already has. I love you so much it feels like something inside of me is cracking. I love you so much I lose my voice. I love you so much I stop shaking.  I love you so much there’s no room for anything else. 

He says it’s my turn. "How much do you love me?” I ask Him. "You can’t use old words.” I love you so much sometimes I have to restrain myself from knocking you over. I love you so much that I’ll tell you every day in every language.  I love you so much that sometimes when you’re sleeping I want to  wake you up just so I can tell you again.  I love you so much that even when you’re asleep you make me cry. I love you so much that the holes in my hands shout.  I love you so much that you will never ever hear me say, “I love you, but...” You are not a sentence to be followed with “but...” you are not a wasteland that needs to be replanted you are not alone, love.

He’s not going to leave me. I didn’t know that before. I do  now.

[micahstravels]

“Biological”

It feels like everything about me was Mexico: she was the dirt beneath my fingernails, she was on my tongue. She fought against me some days and  I screamed at her that  I would leave but in the end we always made up  and at night I could smell her in my hair and she kissed my palms and we both knew that I was a mouth full of empty threats, that I would never leave— until one day: I did. 

She said nothing when I left. 

I hung her flag on my wall and threw her pillows on my bed to  remind me of what  it was like to sink into her,  but you cannot replace a lover with   an object,  much less a nation  that has entangled itself into you. So I stuff the pillows into the  gaping hole that I made her    climb out of, that she untangled herself  from when I boarded the plane, and I try not to cry myself to sleep. 

New Zealand is shy, and I was unprepared for it. Our first meeting was uncomfortable: she put her arms around me but I was stiff and moody and it took everything within me not to run.

Because, even now,  sometimes I want to take her by the shoulders and shake her,  I want to be mad at  her because she is not Mexico and she can’t dance and  she’s not loud and  she doesn’t go out at night and  she makes food that puts my tastebuds  to sleep. And she doesn’t know me.  She did not grow up by my side  or kiss me goodnight,  she’s clean and I can’t see any dirt  under my fingernails and that  freaks me out  and I do not like this smell in my hair. 

But I love her. 

Somehow.  Inexplicably.  Uncontrollably.  Unwillingly, I admit, at first.  Wildly, now.  I love her because deep, deep down she is mine in a way that  Mexico never was.  Mexico signed the adoption papers  but New Zealand birthed me: she was the first to hear my cry,  she wiped away all the blood.  She bundled me up and watched me go,  knowing that I might never come back. 

But I did.  

Many people ask what it has been like to  move countries.  I say one simple thing: "I have come back.” A wild craving for a biological nation,   a hunt for what I haven’t known. It was not what I envisioned at first—  an awkward first impression,  many nights of tears because she didn’t hold me the way that Mexico used to. 

But she holds me. 

And I hold her: I remove all the flattened pillows  and she crawls into the space left there, and she fills it; I didn’t think it could be filled.  She murmurs that it’s cozy in here.  We talk about the past and  I reconstruct the twenty years that she’s missed and I wave my hands and talk fast  and she says that I sound like  Mexico. "I do?” She kisses my hair and tells me  that I smell like Mexico. She points out the leftover dirt that  I couldn’t see beneath  my fingernails and laughs, saying, "Mexico.” She holds my face between her gentle  hands and whispers that my eyes  remind her of  Mexico.

She knows: I am of her and she is of me,  a birthing that cannot be unwound,  but more— an adoption that cannot be undone. A human loved by two countries,  DNA split open: recreated and reassembled. An empty hole: filled. Two pairs of arms tangling themselves around me, fingers brushing  through my unwashed hair.

A sense that something that has been  dislocated for so long has  popped back into place.  I close my eyes with relief. 

They both fit in this space, there’s room for  all three of us here. There’s room. There’s room.  There’s room. 

There’s enough room here. 

[micahstravels]

Vomiting

*Thoughts on moving countries. 

I’m not mad at anything right now. I usually write best if I’m mad. But, if anything, I feel stagnant. Like a ship that’s been hurled between waves but now sits still. It’s like I’ve been at sea for so long and now when I walk on solid ground I feel unstable. I feel motionless and mobile at the same time. I am motionless as I stand still on this ground, yet mobile as my body still tricks me into believing that I am moving. 

This is what happens when you move, I think to myself. You moved countries. This is normal.

Trying to ground myself into my new home while still reeling from the home I just left. 

This will wear off, I tell myself, meanwhile trying not to lean over and throw up from the dizziness. And why does my head ache like this? 

My heart aches more.

A deep, throbbing ache that I sometimes reach in and hold between my palms at night to try and make it stop so that I can sleep. 

This is what a small civil war looks like. This is what motion sickness feels like (except that I am not moving). For those of you who really want to know, this is what saying yes to God sounds like, sometimes: raw, retching, painful.

The start of something new is often excruciatingly hard, but not many people will admit it. Moving across countries has been excruciatingly hard. But I wouldn’t change it. People don’t often associate God with cleaning up vomit, but I don’t see why not. He never promised that you wouldn’t throw up, but He’ll hold back your hair. And I retched after arriving here (not physically, just…spiritually and emotionally and mentally). 

People are also quick to label everything as seasonal—"it’s just a tough season." Or maybe it’s just me on the pavement, hands on my knees, lips quivering, still trying to catch my breath before I charge ahead. Maybe I just got off the boat and I’m mentally gathering my wit to not climb back on the boat sail back, but to stay. Maybe He’s still wiping vomit off my face. 

No. 

No, this is not a tough season.

It was just a tough move. 

So, to all of the ones whose heads are still spinning: sometimes you just have to vomit and get it over with. 

But I’ve been told that eventually you get your normal walking legs back, that this ground feels solid, that the world does finally stop whirling. You always feel relieved after you throw up. 

I held my ache in my palms the other night. He laid next to me.

“Will it feel like this forever?”

No.

“Does it stop throbbing eventually?”

Yes. 

[micahstravels]

“Homesick”

homesick

i love the holes in His hands, i stop crying when my fingertips dip into them

homesick

can you return home if you haven’t left yet?

homesick

we went to war together: He came back the same, i did not

homesick

i have cheated on Him so many times, He still comes back to  my bed every single night; sometimes i feel so ashamed it takes all my strength to let Him hold me

homesick

“I loved you first”

homesick

He said He would never leave me; i didn’t believe Him at first

homesick

"i can’t write you in my own language” "I never said I was as scared  of your words as you are”

homesick

i lay my head  on His chest and His inhale sounds like the wind but His exhale sounds like peace: i didn’t know peace had a sound

homesick

i think i’ve hurt Him

homesick

when He kisses my hair i remember who i used to be

homesick

“i’m a sinner, i do sinful things” "that’s crap, Micah” i have never said it again

homesick

sometimes His singing wakes me up in the night

homesick

i want to go home so badly "I am your home”

homesick

"talk to me like you know I exist, not like I’m your ghost  who couldn’t care less”

homesick

He’s still here: i am so relieved i cannot stop weeping

homesick

one time He bathed me in blood and it was the cleanest i have ever felt "bloodbath”

homesick

for Micah, forever ago

homesick

i say “i” alot He says “we”

homesick

i stopped wearing makeup around Him i feel like i can breathe 

homesick

an ache in my chest: not from something but lack of it a Him-shaped hole in my universe a Him-shaped chasm in my bed "come back, please”

homesick

"when are you going to understand that I will never leave?”

homesick

an entire universe: filled

homesick

"you and me” "you and me”

homesick

i wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes "are you awake?” "yes” "can you hold me?” "yes”

homesick

“loving you is the best thing I’ve ever done”

homesick

“nomad,”  no more

homesick

“homeless,” no longer

homesick

"lifeless,” alive

homesick

"loverless,” oh, darling

homesick

not anymore.

[micahstravels]

“Unwind”

I smeared my cracked lips with lipstick the color of clay the color of mud the color of earth rubbing them together hard i don’t know why I do these things nostalgia summons the deep parts of me or maybe it was the tea

but i was born in the deep born in the womb of an earth that wasn’t meant to be this broken i often suppress the urge to pull her in my lap oh, what a heaping mess oh, what a scandalous earth if she would but lie her full head still for one moment i would comb my nails through her tangles unfurling knots between my padded fingertips if she would but stop sobbing for a split second i would help her breathe i’m good at breathing i would unravel the tendrils that have overgrown unraveling and unspooling back, all the way back to the deep where the air is wet and smells like fog where i used to stick my tongue out and taste honey back, all the way back to the clay to the mud, to the earth i would lie down on soil so rich i would bathe myself in dirt only to come out clean because that is the way of the deep it nourishes in all the ways we cannot in all the ways that she now despises only, she has forgotten   and we have becomes nomads trying to bring it back

i smear my lips with clay hoping that resemblance will be enough to seal the cracks on my lips i untangle all the knots in her hair hoping that mere beauty will suffice i whisper in her ear that formula for breathing inhale, exhale hoping that oxygen will revive what has begun to die but it never works we ache for the deep, her and i me and her she and i us both together one

take us back take us back to the deep lay us down on clay, on mud, on earth pour dirt over our heads and clean us off untangle the knots in our hair teach us to breathe in the crevice, in the shadow of wings so thick and full and wide open our mouths and melt honey on our tongues take our hands and twirl us through the fog close our eyes and kiss away pain still our shaking sobs make a home for us here, in this beloved deep her and i and You me and her and You she and i and You us all three together one

[micahstravels]

Chapultepec Love

They took me to Chapultepec in the bustling city of Guadalajara last week and I fell in love the same way I always do with big cities: quickly, happily. It feels so good to be whisked off your feet by a big city.

The steady, fast pulse of the streets lure me. I love to watch the artists talk about their pieces with the street-goers, flapping their hands about and describing the feeling behind the paint on the canvas, like they're pouring themselves into the conversation with the same ferocity that they poured into their work.

The entire strip of Chapultepec seems to be steeped in Mexican culture, as if the colors and fragrances and artwork were on display. Bright green, white, and red banners decorate the ceilings of restaurants, the mouthwatering aroma of meat frying from the many street corners wafts through the air. Women wear the homemade, colorfully stitched blouses native to the state of Jalisco, complete with black designer jeans and suede pumps. It's like the people, the citizens, of Chapultepec heard Mexico gasping for breath beneath the surface, and cracked holes in the sidewalk to allow her to breathe.

Mexico brims and spills out everywhere.

Amid the modern restaurants boasting anything from authentic falafel pita to mashed potato pizza, amid the cultural influences that lace the streets in forms of foreign exchange students with thick accents and American designer bags, Mexico remains the strongest force. In a massive, arms-open kind of way, as if to welcome everyone into her land, like a mother who doesn't turn away anyone, who feeds and loves and nurtures them all before they go.

Mexico leaves you breathless, not from chaos or excitement or fear, but rather from sheer beauty, from the open arms and the colors, from the taste of meat and cilantro melting on your tongue, from leftover churro grease on your fingers. It takes your breath away.

So much so that when you accidentally trip over the cracks in the sidewalk, you are in awe, not frustration, because you hear the gentle inhale and exhale of a living, breathing country beneath.

[micahstravels]

Bruised, Utterly

*Currently in Lesvos, Greece, co-leading a DTS outreach team while working at a massive refugee camp. 3,500 people inside from twenty-give different nations, all seeking freedom and life.

“It’s like going to war knowing that this battle might never end. Or, you know it will but the end is nowhere near. And you’ve only got three weeks to do what? Feed people, clothe them, set up a tent, hug their grubby children. It’s frustrating. This could end in a matter of weeks, but instead everyone tells you that reality is more like months or even years.

Years. Hundreds of days in that camp. Hundreds of days of fighting someone else for food, of showering in filthy water, of sitting around remembering the life that was left behind, of the people who didn’t make it all the way.

If we’re talking hundreds, then this feels too big for me. Damnit, it all feels big and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so small.”

We’ve been working inside a refugee camp for a week now, logging eight-hour shifts almost every day that leave me more spent than anything I’ve ever done. I prepare myself for the tidal wave of emotions that sucks me up, bashes me around, and then spits me out at the end of every shift. “It’s very important to debrief as a team, to take time to process what has happened throughout the day and what you’re thinking and feeling.” That’s the advice almost everyone has given us, and I try to take it to heart.

“What’s it like inside?”

I think as an outreach team we’re divided in the way the camp has affected us. Obviously it’s gut-wrenching to anyone who walks into those gates, but it stains everyone differently. For me, it takes an enormous amount of emotional energy to sit down and process. As more of a result-driven and problem-solving person than a relational person, it taxes on me. The system frustrates me because I don’t see a way out.

It entangles everyone who walks in there, because you can’t work for more than two hours handing out clothes or food without hearing someone’s story: of rape and abuse and death and sorrow. I hold back tears after saying no for the fifteenth time to a man who wants shoes because we have run out already. And I sit with the people in their tiny tents or overcrowded little box of a house, and I hold their adorable babies and take orders for clothes, and I can’t just help getting tangled up: they need to leave this place. They need a better home. I wish I could get them those magical papers that would get them out of here.

And then I get stuck on the outskirts of a massive fight around the food line, where men beat each other till they’re bloody and raw because they’ve cut the amount of food that each family gets. People fight all around me, but I am safe. I’ve got a neon yellow vest over me, a badge that identifies me as a volunteer, and an American passport in my back pocket that means I can slip in and out of Greece and Europe and North America with no problem at all. Nobody will check to see if I’m seeking refuge. No one will question why I’m coming or going. No official or policeman will check a paper or deny me access into these countries that are safe. “Welcome to Greece, we hope you enjoy your stay.”

And that’s what slams me hard every single time.

I walked through the camp yesterday and literally wanted to lay down on the filthy, cracked cement in the middle of everyone in an effort to see if I could feel His steady heartbeat beneath the chaos. Are you here, God? I wanted His pulse against my skin. I wanted the thump of His chest to beat out all my doubts and frustration. Are you here, God?

I feel bruised, almost. This camp bruised me, these people have bruised me. It’s like humanity smacked me in the face and now it’s imprint is outlined faintly on my cheek, like all my blood rushed to the surface of my skin at the reality of who I’m interacting with every day, of the reality of what my eyes are taking in.

Let me be bruised.

What’s it like inside? It’s awful and frustrating and precious all at once. I walk in taking deep breaths and walk out feeling like someone punched the air out of my stomach. The people inside are the most beautiful. They welcome me in and laugh when I try to speak Arabic or Farsi and grab my hands and thank me over and over again when I hand them new clothes and shoes. The need in the camp leaves me feeling small. Watching the fights break out frustrates me to no end because I know that I would punch and yell and beg for one more piece of bread for my child, too.

The camp imprints into you. It’s burrowed deep into the cracks of my palms; it smells like human waste and tastes like dust. It sounds like conversations of people wanting to commit suicide or begging over and over again, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes. It feels big and heavy and too much.

But my precious friend and student Camila said it so perfectly in a raw team debrief a few days back. “It’s in those moments of tears and frustration, when you can’t do anything else and you have nothing to give, that you pull Jesus down in front of you and say ‘ok, I can’t do it, you need to walk before me.’ We can’t do it by ourselves. That’s the only way they will distinguish God in us amidst the craziness.”

Are you here, God?

I’m here.

Man, if you want to experience God on a minute-by-minute basis, if you want your faith to be pounded out and then rebuilt more solidly, all you have to do is volunteer at a refugee camp. Work in a hospital in the middle of Africa. Visit the slums in Asia. Better yet, jut join missions anywhere, people. Surround yourself with overwhelming need and human beings who kiss you on the cheek and cry in your lap and threaten to punch you when you can’t give them clothes. Because that’s where I feel Him most. It’s frustrating, and I point things out all the time and ask Him why, but He’s here nonetheless. He’s here. Here, here, here.

Go be bruised.

Because bruised is a physical reminder to keep going, bruised tastes like salty tears and sounds like the cry of millions of people without hope: with no idea of how long they’ll be stuck or when they’ll be free.

Bruised, I’m all bruised. I’ll never not be bruised. But one thing I remember this past week is that God will never not have His hand on my tender cheek. I love when He runs His fingers over my black and purple flesh, tracing the outline that humanity stamped on me. I love it because He’s so soft, because He never inflicts pain. I can be surrounded by earthly pain, yet know that it has never and will never come from Him. I love Him because He’s promised that it’s not eternal, that one day this will all be restored and bruises won’t stain my skin and grief won’t stain our world. One day.

But for now I wake up each day and head to the camp, singing quietly on the drive over. I hand out clothes to people and feel like Santa Claus; a sweaty, ginger Santa Claus who gives out second-hand t-shirts and delights in the people’s response. I drink well water and eat sandwiches. I cry and get mad and laugh when the kids tickle me. I live and breathe and work in the camp, right alongside everyone else. And it’s beautiful.

I’m coming home bruised.

[micahstravels]

Daddy’s Here

*This may seem like a contradiction, especially when compared with my past few blog posts. One minute I'm writing about those moments when purpose tackles you and the next I'm writing about how confused I am in my grief. But this is a mixture of my journal entries and several hours of processing in what was one of the toughest weeks I ever experienced in Togo. I'm learning that just as life flows in and out of seasons, my days flow in and out of emotions, experiences, highs and lows. I love the life that I have, and most days my arms are open wide to catch the moments and the purpose and the joy. But sometimes I see things that make me sick to my stomach and stir up a whirlwind of rage and sorrow and confusion I don't know how to sort through.

I'm nineteen years old and in one of those crucial periods where it’s time to figure out exactly what I believe. It feels like most of my friends got into relationships this year, while I just got myself in the midst of suffering and life and purpose and humanity that left me in love and in pain. I told God that I wanted it to be easier, and He responded by telling me that He hasn't called me to easy, He's called me to reality. So, I've found myself surrounded by reality: by human beings that are aching and longing and hurting and dying.

And I am trying to make sense of it all.

I still don't really know why I'm sharing all of this. I know I'm not the only one who wrestles with God over these raw issues of death and grief, suffering and injustice. And maybe I’m just naive. Maybe I’m taking it too hard. But I guess I'm writing in an attempt to figure out where I stand now. These words are my own, from what I experienced and saw and heard, but also what I felt and am still feeling. I am struggling, yes, but it's been much more peaceful now over the past few days for He has been so incredibly gentle with me as I've left Togo and made my way back to South Africa.

This is my process and it hasn't been fun, but He remains good and loving and gentle through it all. I hope that in some way as you read this, you feel His gentleness even in any confusion and anger and sorrow and death that you may be facing in your own life. Thanks for reading my words, messy and untamed as they are, and for journeying with me in this season.

I feel so raw. I cannot even accurately put it into words.

I woke up at five this morning, while it was still dark, and went for a long walk down my favorite dirt road in between villages. My mind hasn't stopped replaying what I witnessed last night, the things that I heard and smelled and felt.

I was in the delivery room for over two hours, watching and helping a mama deliver a breech baby: feet first. At five o'clock I saw one foot and by six o'clock the whole leg had come out, but nothing else. We couldn't find the other leg, instead there was only a hand which confirmed what the midwife was fearing: the baby was lying sideways in the womb instead of head down.

By seven o'clock, after the mom had been pushing for hours, the baby's body finally came out with the help of the midwife, and only the head was left in the pelvis.

Only, it wasn't coming out.

That poor woman had her baby hanging between her legs for what felt like hours. The head was so stuck. My friend was up on the bed, holding the woman in an attempt to calm her down, I had my hands pressed right on her womb to try and increase the pressure, and the midwife had her hands up her cervix to try and get the head out, but it was stuck. The pelvis was too small for him.

"Get her on her knees! This baby is going to die!"

We had her on her knees, on her back, squatting, standing—whatever position worked in an attempt to try and get this baby out. The mom finally hit her breaking point and went delirious, splashing water all over herself because she was so hot, hitting and screaming at us whenever we tried to touch her, hands on her face as she wept at the excruciating pain the fact that he still wasn't out of her.

And I was in that stuffy room, her shaking body pressed against me, when the midwife announced that she needed to go to the hospital otherwise the mother would die soon. I took my gloves off and realized that my shirt was completely stained with poop and sweat from having to hold the mom. At this point we were all praying the same thing: God, save the mother.

But then, by some miracle we were all interceding for, he slipped out: dead.

And I broke.

I'll admit today, openly and freely, that there is a big part of me that is still so traumatized by this. I'm writing in an effort to somehow make sense of everything while still trying to remain on the foundation of a loving and good God. But, dangit, it's hard. I don't know where to go from here. I don't know. The past week in the clinic I've seen things that I never want to see again. I cried last week at a little girl that walked into the clinic like a ninety-year-old woman: joints swollen, arms and legs bent out like a crooked Barbie doll, muscles tiny. There was nothing we could do for her except pray. She walked out exactly the same and I half walked, half ran to my empty room and cried, stuffing my towel in my mouth to try and calm down. That same day I was called back in the afternoon to see a tiny little baby that I'd helped deliver the week before.  

He was seizing.

Have you ever seen someone having a seizure? It's terrifying. They shake and convulse violently and you are powerless to stop them. Now imagine a tiny, newborn baby convulsing and crying so pitifully you feel a dam of sorrow break within you.

And it feels like the nightmare delivery and dead baby was the final blow in my resolve to keep it together.

So, I walked at five o'clock in the morning because I knew that I was about to lose it. The sun was just peaking out and my legs were already covered in red dirt when He spoke to me, so gently.

Micah, Daddy's here.

I broke, again.  

Shhh, Daddy's here.

I start to sob.

It's ok, Daddy's here.

Deep, wracking sobs that I cannot stop.

Daddy's here.

My nose is flowing, my hands are shaking, I'm hiccuping and coughing and weeping harder than I have in what feels like years.

I'm here.

It hurts. It all hurts. I am reliving the past twenty-four hours that have been a whirlwind of confusion and pain and anger.

Daddy's here.

I look down at my arms and see red marks on my wrist and for a moment I am confused, and then remember that it's from the mother's nails when she was digging into me while trying to push her baby out.

Daddy's here.

It's nine at night and my hands are gloved and I'm scrubbing my skirt and t-shirt that have been stained with feces and flecks of blood.

Daddy's here.

I'm back in that delivery room, my arms literally wrapped around this woman that's got half a limp baby dangling out of her. The front of my shirt is soaked in her sweat and my cheeks are soaked with my tears. And I am thinking to myself how this feels like such a cruel contradiction: to be holding precious life in my arms yet knowing that there is death beneath us.

Daddy's here.

She's been pushing for two hours and we're all exhausted. Everyone is praying: some are whispering and some are pacing around the room, hands outstretched in what feels like an attempt to pull down heaven and get this baby out. But I am mad. I've got my hand on her womb, hard with another forceful contraction, and I speak the only words that I have. "Dangit, God, JUST DO SOMETHING!"

Daddy's here.

He's out: big and beautiful and lifeless. My friend's got him in her arms and the cool water is washing away the blood from his body. And I am weeping: just weeping softly and helplessly. I feel like something inside of me has unleashed grief I didn't know I could feel. She places a stethoscope on his tiny chest but we already know that he's been dead for a good forty-five minutes. "Just put him on the bed in the other room," one of the women says. The mother is on the bed and almost asleep. She doesn't want to see him, she's lost two babies at birth already, and that makes me cry harder. My friend gathers the little bundle in her arms. "I know he's dead, but he's a baby and he deserves to be held, even just for a little bit."

Daddy's here.

I am in the shower, scrubbing my skin to try and wash off the feces and blood and sweat I was covered in. I'm pounding my fist against the white tile and telling my teammate in the stall next to me how I'm just so fucking angry.

Daddy's here.

I'm outside the delivery room and it's gone quiet. People are shuffling in and out, taking care of the mother and scrubbing bloody tools. I've got him in my arms, wrapped up in fabric, eyes closed and body still. He's so adorable, and while I am done crying, I am now beginning to question. I'm thinking to myself that I didn't know how quickly anger could turn into sorrow and sorrow could turn into confusion. Because now I'm just confused. He's in my arms, but he's not breathing. He should be breathing. He should be crying and nursing and his heart should be beating. But, instead he's dead.

It's ok, Micah, Daddy's here.

I stood on that dirt road and wept for what felt like ages, fist in my mouth to try and calm the sobs. I felt like I was breaking down, piece by piece; I still do.

I didn't expect to come to Togo and crumble: to question some of the foundations that I've set my beliefs on, to feel so confused about things I used to feel so sure about. I know that God is love and it's easy to quote that to myself when I'm surrounded by abundance. But when reality, when humanity, smacks me in the face with pain and suffering and despair beyond anything, I feel myself crumbling. When I've got my gloved hands pressing down on her abdomen, and I'm covered in other people's body fluids, and all I can see is half a tiny baby's body lying limply between her legs, and I'm praying one of those half-pleading, half-demanding prayers--that's when I felt the quivering in my bones, when the questions started to slam into me. Why? Why? Why? Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy????

My response just doesn't seem good enough anymore: I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But He showed me a picture of myself, there on that dirt road somewhere in the middle of Togo: broken, frustrated, confused, weeping. I was shuffling like a half-asleep child, dragging my blanket of questions behind me. And He reached down and picked me up gently, because I am fragile and on the verge of falling apart, and engulfed me.

Oh, my sweet girl, Daddy's here.

There's something about His arms, something about His voice. And there's something about the freedom you feel in knowing that He will hold you even when you're mad, even when you're confused by Him, even when you feel like He deserted you by not showing up. Even when you feel betrayed.

That is how I feel.

But there's half a verse, just half a verse, that I've been clinging to these past few weeks and especially the past few days from Colossians: and in Him all things hold together.

Because I am all broken bones and bruised skin. I am messy hair and dirty feet. I am one of those rag dolls that kids play with: floppy, torn, pulled apart. But He's got his hands on me, I can feel them, and He's just waiting patiently for me to stop trembling, waiting for my teeth to stop chattering before He'll put me back together. He'll hold me like that, even when I'm swearing like a good Christian shouldn't and pounding my fists and standing in the middle of this dusty road sobbing my guts out, tight and secure, not letting me fall apart; I know He will. That's what He does, that's who He is. He holds all things together: humanity, the worn-out mother, me.

I've got you. I'll hold you. Daddy's here.

So, this writing comes to you from a broken, nineteen-year-old girl wrapped in her Daddy's arms. From her scratched up wrists and puffy eyes, from a heart that's been trampled on and wrung-out. From the girl who is leaving Togo in a day, a country that has changed who she is, and making her way back to her beloved Mexico. This girl who deleted facebook and went to South Africa in order to learn more about health care, but who really was just desperately longing for purpose and meaning to knock her over the head. From the girl who can no longer look at a human being in the eye and not care, the one who will no longer drown herself in someone else's lyrics about pain in an attempt to numb what she's seen. From the girl who is still hurting for a grieving mother, for a seizing newborn, for the little girl who can barely walk, for a tiny baby that should still be alive.

Yet through it all there is still the knowing, the beautiful knowing that I tend to forget about, that this isn't the end. I may be angry and confused and broken, and my beliefs might be a mess right now that I haven't begun to sort through, and I may never get an answer that I desperately want, but I know that He is good.

And for me, right here and right now, still weeping in His arms, that is enough.

Daddy's here. Daddy's got me. And Daddy will hold me together.

[micahstravels]

Tackled

There are moments in life when, no matter how fierce you battle doubt, you simply know that you know that you know that this is where you’re supposed to be. And, man, when those moments spring up on you, you just gotta let them tackle you to the ground; embrace the force that they smack you with.

May I continuously be tackled to the ground.

My days are long and unpredictable here in Togo. I’ve been waking before the sun to walk down a worn, dirt road to get some breathing time. During the day my team works alongside several of the YWAM Noepe staff that work in the clinic. We do everything from prenatal checkups to wound care to malaria tests to delivering babies to emergency care. It’s been a whirlwind of days, each one different than the next. I’ve loved the pace of the clinic, and I feel like I’m slowly finding a rhythm in the unpredictability and work.

But there are, of course, some days that just imprint themselves on you, that leave you with such a sense of wholeness. Today was one of them.

An elderly woman walked into the clinic this morning, her five-year-old granddaughter strapped to her back. She set the girl down on the chair and immediately she flopped forward. She was completely unresponsive and a diagnosis was quickly made: malaria. Bad. Plus severe dehydration. They squirted ibuprofen in her mouth to lower her high fever and covered her shaking body in cool rags. I was recruited to help start the IV and administer the malaria medication. I checked her hands, feet, and eyelids, and they were so pale even on her coffee-colored skin due to severe anemia that resulted from the malaria infection. We needed to get her medication immediately otherwise she would die within a few hours.

“It’s about to rain. A lot.”

I looked up and there were storm clouds heavy above us and in that moment the power went out and the room was almost completely dark, so praise the Lord for iPhones that have the most powerful flashlights. It took four people: two to hold her down, one to hold the flashlight, and one to insert the IV, to try and get her stabilized. We tried for twenty minutes in four different spots to locate a vein, but we found nothing. The anemia had made it incredibly difficult to find a suitable vein to use. So we opted to stick a tube down her throat and into her stomach that would allow for the fluid and medication to get in.

There we are: four of us, sweaty and concentrating hard, one of the staff carefully inserting a tube through her nostril and down the back of her throat. The little girl is crying and thrashing with all the energy she had left. I’m holding her squirmy arms down, trying to soothe her, praying over her.

And then I remember hearing the pounding of rain, and I looked up and the skies were weeping, and it was dark inside and my hands were wrapped around a small, crying girl who was on the brink of dying, and I found myself caught up in the force of one of those rare moments. Despite being overwhelmed and sweaty and unsure, I was being tackled by purpose, falling in the rush of heaven clashing with earth.

We don’t get many of these instances, they come every once in a while. We are caught in the busyness of each minute, our eyes are often on our phones, music and reality rings in our ears. And, if you’re like me, doubt sometimes creeps in and settles like a fine layer of dust in our lives. Is what I’m doing even worth it? Is this satisfying? Is this changing another human beings life in some way? Is there purpose in what I do?

But it only takes one moment of complete clarity, of being tackled, of being awoken to the reality that, yes, I have a purpose in this. Yes, I am being used. Yes, my actions mean something. Yes, I am, with every cell in my body, with every breath in my lungs, brining glory to Him.

And the moment comes like an exhale you didn’t know you were holding in. A breath that gets released, wind that rattles through your bones and blows the layer of doubt out of your life. It is wholeness and it tastes like sweetness. It is prophetic words and clung-to promises coming true. It is a loaf of freshly baked bread after you’ve been starving for food. It is fullness as your life on earth comes into alignment with the calling that He whispered in your ear at birth. It is total and utter and complete and exuberant joy.

And it’s His voice, speaking to me through the music that’s playing on someone’s iPad in the background while the tube slides down her throat: it’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise, we pour out our praise.

It’s your breath

In my lungs

It’s my breath

In your lungs

My breath in your lungs

It’s all entwined: a mess of heaven and earth that I don’t ever want to untangle. He is in me, His breath flows in and out of my lungs, His purpose pumps through my blood. He moves in my hands and whispers words of love to His children through my lips.

I sat with her a lot of the day, rubbing her back to try and help her sleep. After the clinic closed, I spent the rest of the afternoon back and forth between my room and the clinic, giving her more fluid in her tube, administering ibuprofen, dripping water into her mouth with a syringe. She got an entire bottle of fluid into her, the fever broke, her breathing slowed down, and she finally passed urine after several days of dryness. I pulled out her tube, explained to the grandma what needed to be done at home, prayed for her one last time, and then waved at them as they walked away to the motorcycle waiting to take them back to their village.

I still smell like her, from many moments of holding her down to get the IV in and rubbing her back: dirty, sweaty, sick. She rubbed off on me in more ways that I could ever thank her for. The power is out which means that running water is a luxury we had yesterday, so I’ll go to sleep still smelling like her. But I don’t care. I will fall asleep with red dust on my feet, smelling like a five-year-old girl that I might never see again, that same girl who’s life helped restore purpose to mine.

He sat with me on my bottom bunk this afternoon, while it rained again. I stunk of sweat and my face was overly greasy, but He never cares. He wrapped me in His arms, my most favorite place to be, and brought me to tears with His words. I am Emmanuel: God with you. God then, God now, God forever. God in the chaos and God in the calm. God in your inhale and God in your exhale. God in the exciting and God in the mundane. God with you: always and always and always.

I don’t know where you’re at, friends, but I pray that your life would be filled with moments full of purpose, of force that pulls you to the ground, of meaning that goes deep and erases all doubt. I pray that you would experience God like this: in moments, in people, in falling asleep dirty but so happy. I pray that He would restore purpose where dull mediocrity had settled. I pray that He would move through your hands, speak love to His children through your mouth, inhale and exhale through your lungs. I pray that He would tackle you with sheer love, leave you crying and laughing, and with a wholeness that you never knew existed. Ask Him, and He will dump on you such fulfillment that you will be at a loss for what to do with it all. My Emmanuel is yours too, and He’s waiting for you in the minutes of your everyday life.

Open your arms wide and prepare to be tackled.

[micahstravels]

“I’m Not Choking Anymore”

**I love words. Deeply. I write poetry based on my experiences, what I’m struggling with, and my intimacy with God. This is what comes out early in the morning or after ten o’clock at night. This is my sanity. This is what fills my journals. Enjoy.

I still remember that day, you’ve probably forgotten about it I remember that I didn’t want to call you because I didn’t know what you’d say I was choking when I sat outside, gurgling through my words, suffocating— ashamed

Shame was my comfort; the wound I nursed throughout those long nights Shame was the makeup I smeared on my face each morning, Shame was the scab I never let heal; continuously scraping, scratching, trying to bring forth fresh blood just to be reminded that there was still life in me, Shame always made me yield, Shame was the bottle of pills I kept beside my bed and swallowed every night to help me sleep Shame burrowed itself in deep— eating my flesh, scarring my skin, tainting my words, feeding off me

I cried before I dialed your number Did you know that? I sobbed, wept; choked

Maybe you would be angry with me Maybe you would try to tell me that it was all my fault Maybe you would accidentally click the red button; type me a message, tell me not to worry, rub my wounds with salt Maybe you would mumble that you still loved me before you hastily hung up Maybe you would pretend it never happened, just like I used to for all those months But, mostly, maybe you would be disappointed in me

Because shame lied to me and, damn it, I listened Shame told me that you didn’t care Shame came to me in my nightmares, when I was running, running, running, and told me that you would never be there, that you’d never come to save me Shame was the hurricane and I was still searching for the eye, Shame roared and slashed and howled that if you knew, you’d waste no time in saying goodbye, Shame never let me forget the fact that I was its possession

But then you answered the phone that day— I still remember your voice, And I was crying, softly, but you couldn’t hear I spoke through tears that left streaks through the dirt on my cheeks, and I spoke with bruised lips, cracked words

I told you about that night when I stood beneath the shower, scrubbing my skin raw with a bar of white soap to get the filth off of my skin, I told you how I wasn’t worthy of white anymore, that I lost all my dignity, that I was gagging on my sin I told you about my chains, about the tape that shame had slapped over my mouth, about the words that have never been spoken aloud I told you about the folds of blanket clamped between my teeth to stop the shrieks I told you about the nightmares where you weren’t there to save me

I told you about it all— sobbing, weeping, covering my eyes from you, even though you couldn’t see me through the phone, I still covered myself anyway, as shame had taught me to do

But then you spoke and your voice was unclear because lines and wires and long-distance calls, But I still heard, oh, I remember, what you said, I recall— “Baby, I am so sorry,” And you were crying too “Baby, I never ever wanted that to happen to you,” And I couldn’t believe that you were crying for me “Baby.”

My palms were pressing into the earth, my fingers searching for the dirt that I always try to hide myself in whenever I feel unsure

“Baby, are you still there?”

“Baby, listen to me,”

“Baby, I will never ever let that happen to you again,”

My eyes were closed beneath the weight of security,

“Baby, you’re safe with me,”

My hands were trembling,

“Baby, that wasn’t sin,”

Quivering,

“Baby, never again.”

I still don’t understand your voice—   How it jumps through phone lines, how it can heal an infected wound, how it awakens me from my nightmares, how it erases the lies, how it wipes off my makeup, how it empties my bottle of pills

I don’t understand how one word— baby— makes me feel like I am back in your arms, rocking; asleep; safe from harm I don’t understand how you can love me when I am scarred, how you can start your letters with, “hey, beautiful” I don’t understand how your voice and your smell and your presence and your arms is enough to silence my shame, to break off my chains, to rip the tape from my lips, to wash off my bloodstains

Nine months of shame, shattered in nine seconds of your voice— Phone pressed to my ear, palms pressed to the earth, forehead pressed to my knees, lips pressed to each other, tears pressed to my cheeks, Your voice pressed to my scars, Your words pressed to my shame, fighting it off so that I can finally breathe deeply again Your love pressing into its neck, suffocating the thing that once held me back

And your fingers— eight months later— pressed to my face, my cheeks, my eyes, my name, “Welcome home, baby."

“Baby, you’re safe.”

[micahstravels]

Sometimes, in YWAM

Sometimes, in YWAM, you are three minutes into your shower when the water goes from steaming hot to ice. The air outside is right at 2 degrees Celsius and you stand there, shivering and wet, trying to rinse the shampoo out of your dirty hair while praying that you don’t contract pneumonia. “This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.”

Sometimes, in YWAM, the whole base is sitting together, interceding for the Muslim world. You’re grasping the hand of a Brazilian girl next to you and she starts sobbing uncontrollably. Suddenly, the tears are welling up in your own eyes and, before you know it, you’re praying out loud, tears streaming down your cheeks for people—men, women, and children—that you’ve never met but whom you love achingly. And you’re crying out to God, pleading His mercy and protection over them, praying that He would bring freedom to their nations.

Sometimes, in YWAM, you eat the same foods every single week. Beans. Potatoes. Chicken. Cereal. Toast. Peanut butter. Beef. Rice. You hear cheers for joy whenever there’s dessert on the menu, and it’s enough to make your whole day better. But you’ve been to the nations—you’ve seen starving children in the Philippines who scarf down watery soup and you’ve run your hands over the protruding ribs of a pregnant woman. So you sit down at the dinner table, surrounded by people of different ethnicities, a plate of rice and potatoes and bland chicken in front of you, and you bless the food in Jesus’ name, because it is food and He nourishes us.

Sometimes, in YWAM, you see such horrible injustice it stops your breath. You witness little girls, no more than seven years old, being sold to men four times their age. You bite the inside of your cheek when an old man comes into the clinic with a pus-filled, smelly ulcer and a cough that brings up blood. You wrap your arms around the woman who just lost her baby to HIV, the woman who you know will probably die soon herself from the disease, and you plead, petition, beg of God to heal her.

Sometimes, in YWAM, it’s the end of a long day and you’ve got dinner cleanup. The front of your shirt is soaked from rinsing the dishes, the sanitizer decides to break again, and the tap is leaking water all over the floor. You lean over the sink, sleeves rolled up, hair falling in your face, hands wrinkly, and you ask God if this is really where you’re supposed to be. You tell Him how long for some time alone away from all the people, all the noise, all the action. And He responds right there in the noisy, dirty kitchen, that this is where He’s called you to be and that He will give you calm in the midst of the chaos.

Sometimes, in YWAM, you realize that you’re out of money. You check your bank account—zero. You check your wallet—nothing. You resolve to looking under the couch cushions for spare change just to wash your clothes. You’re in the middle of worship, trying to raise your hands like the other people, but you just can’t focus—you’re worried about how you’ll pay for outreach, how you’ll get a plane ticket home. But then you feel a tap on your shoulder and then someone’s pressing an envelope into your hand. “God will always provide for you,” they whisper before turning away. You open it up and see several hundred dollar bills crumpled inside. The tears come and your knees are falling to the ground in gratitude for this God who never fails to come through.

Sometimes, in YWAM, you sit on the bathroom floor and weep. You weep because people are leaving and you know that you will probably never see them again. You weep because some days you feel like you pour yourself out and you don’t see any difference. You weep because people are dying without knowing Jesus, kids are riddled with diseases that could be prevented, men are beating their wives. You sit on the cold, bathroom tiles, palms pressed to your wet eyes, nose running freely, and you feel Him come and sit next to you. He strokes your hair and whispers in your ear, “it’s alright, darling. I see the pain and I see the darkness. I see your work. I see the people. I love them, too, and I am doing a work far greater than you can ever imagine.”

Sometimes, in YWAM, you feel your eyelids starting to droop before nine o’clock even rolls around. Sometimes, in YWAM, you chop vegetables for hours. Sometimes, in YWAM, you laugh until your sides ache. Sometimes, in YWAM, you walk for miles. Sometimes, in YWAM, you wedge yourself behind a door and the wall just to get a moment of quiet. Sometimes, in YWAM, you hurt for what you see and feel helpless for what you cannot do. Sometimes, in YWAM, you feel like giving up.

But always, in YWAM, He meets you every day. He meets you in the kitchen, on the dusty roads, in the worship hall, around the dining table, on your knees, in the freezing shower, sobbing on the bathroom floor. He meets you in your humanness and your brokenness, in your attempt to save the world and in your frustrated tears when nothing seems to be happening. He meets you—He meets us—when we obey the calling He placed on our lives to go into all the world and preach the gospel, to reach the all and the every, to save the one. He meets us when we call out to Him, and it is His absolute joy to come.