a world inside a world...

we live in a world inside a world inside a world....inside a world. we are constantly surrounded by other worlds. we each have our own world of personality, background, culture, taste, preference, worldview, and perspective. sometimes we are so far into our own world it is difficult to see the pressence of surrounding worlds.

when i play with my neice, i try to enter her world and let her enter mine. as she develops the emotion of fear i try to explain that the scary vacuum is to pick up dirt. so whenever she finds a piece of dirt or furry chunk that is not supposed to be on the carpet she tells me, "OOOO....UUuuh OOoohhhh!" while pointing frantically for me to quickly remove the terrible thing. then runs to the room where the vacuum is located (to get to close could be dangerous) and looks at me pointing to it. she is now obsessed with the scary vacuum. while i don't completely understand the fasination with it (other than it is my favorite color purple) or the fear of it (other than my dreading to physically have to use it) i know it something she is trying to wrap her brain around. a big perplexor in her world right now is the vacuum. so when i enter excited to see her and give her kisses, and she wants to show me to vacuum still in the other room from yesturday, i must consciously enter into her world. we go through the "vacuum routine"....yes this is a vaccuum. it is purple. it is big. it is taller than you. it is used to clean the floor inside the house. it is loud. do you want to touch it? no, thats okay. i understand your scared. don't worry, i have you. i'll hold you so i can touch it and you can see. it won't hurt us. it does make a scary loud noise but it is actually our cleaner friend. then we do this same routine, seriously, about 20 times a day.

but i love being in neice's world. if to be in her world, is for her to show me how she has found a vacuum then i try to enter it. even when i can't ever really know what it feels like to be in her world. i can never completely be in another's world. but i love talking to my girls and feeling our worlds so connected. i love feeling like they completely know and understand mine and we can laugh at it together. they help me try to adjust to the fearful "vacuums" i have in my own life, the challenges i deal with. i love the chances i get for late night talks with my bros when we try to figure out the world we come from. we try to make sense of what we experienced. we share how our worlds are taking shape in our separate lives. we are constantly reworking in our heads how our family world should be and how we desire it to be as we grow up.

i know how hard it is when i feel like i am talking to someone and we believe in different worldviews. i know i mess up and lose perspective and only see my own world and not the world they are experiencing. it is hard to live in a world, inside other worlds. we live amongst worlds of family, neighbors, friends, cultures, theories, conservatives, liberals, societies, sciences, governments, pop culture, ethnicities, languages, religions, aliens, spirit worlds, you name it. it is incredible to think that we are surrounded by so much and yet can feel so alone and unknown or misunderstood at times. it is amazing that we are always living amist the pressence of heaven and God. yet we remain so selfish and stuck inside our own world that sometimes we don't even see our Mother and Father God. it is so painful to be lost in our own world feeling astranged from our true home of heaven. everyday, i read about atrocities...more innocent killed in Lebenon, more women refugees in Darfur raped as they go to fetch water, 6 aid workers in Chechnya killed, soilders fighting Muslim separatists in the Philippines, kids dying in the Congo from hunger, a man stabbed to death in D.C. ...AH! Its enough to make Bobby and I talk about how it feels like there is so much evil in the world, question the humanity of humanity, and why God doesn't make us all a little less capable of the distruction we cause.

but then bobby comes home with a treat for me....a giant bag of sweet cherries (one of my favorite summer fruits)! he tells me about his day and i mine. he makes dinner as i steal garlic bread and cherries and rest on the couch doing nothing. he makes me laugh and begs to hold me until we fall asleep. i rest my eyes feeling so loved. i think of superman and how he had to help the world because they at times could be capable of so much love.

we live in a world inside a world. and when my world is terrible someone else's is worse. when mine is sunny someone else's is still dark. when we celebrate two new marriages and a baptism in our church on the same day as a tragic death, i know we live in a world inside a world. goodness wrapped in guns and military might. while i hate it that my life is so safe and someone else's is not, i always pray for protection when i wake from nightmares and am so glad to be tucked in my warm bed safe at home. i hate it when bobs works late because i get scared at night alone in the dark. i don't know why we are made in the image of God and have such capacity, capacity for good and capacity for evil. but i know she/he made us that way. and knowing God's big beautiful world...i am blessed to be living in a world inside of God's.