I get to

This new place. The new and orderly and thrumming organized chaos of a big city. Everything is tucked carefully into somewhere else. We spent several hours in a Service Ontario — in a Staples store. I walked through a mall to get to an outdoor concert. The constant construction, up and up and up the buildings go. Tucking more — more people — into the same space. 

Even my neighbors share walls with me. My address does not have an apartment number — but my home is definitely compartmented into a long line of townhouses. Sometimes, I ache for the old (old) streets of Detroit with their stately homes and sad ruins. On every corner, a church and a liquor store — and not much else. I miss the scrappy genuineness of the Christians there. Each of them facing the dangers of a city with a bad reputation. But here, the streets are ordered and quiet. If you speed or clip a red light, odds are you will receive a quiet ticket in the mail to atone for your sin. 

Everyone moves and lives and breathes in chaotic, ordered rhythms. I struggle with keeping all the rules, and flame with embarrassment when I inevitably break them. I cringe at the aggressive drivers and find myself wanting to join the pushing, angry crowd at Costco with just as much irritation and obliviousness as everyone around me. Generosity, deference, even eye contact, feel too expensive here when a pause will mean 10 extra minutes in traffic or in line. 

But. 

But…here I see the faces of the whole world. They are pinched and stressed and anxious and exhausted. They are hurried and harried as they go about their day, trying to make a living in this expensive place. But they are here. In my neighborhood. 

My neighbor, a Chinese woman, here without her husband so her daughter can attend school, is desperately homesick. The Russian woman at Food Basics tried to call a cab with all her groceries but couldn’t understand the calling system, so she looked around desperately for help and found me. Joel came into the store after me (we had only 10 minutes to get our four items), but there I was, calling a taxi for this woman. Another woman, bewildered, asked me to tell her whether or not her box of chicken was sweet or not, “I no like sweet. Is sweet?” These are people with needs and stresses and burdens, trying to make it in the West, 100,000 of them pouring into this city of 9 million each year. The world is at my doorstep. Stressed, exhausted, searching for peace, at my door. 

I get to be here. And I’m deeply grateful for this opportunity. Because one year ago, I couldn’t picture how we’d make it. 

And this, over and over again, is whispered into my soul when I feel like joining the competitive fray for the green grapes that are at a huge discount and are just now being set out. 

I get to be here. 

Having grown up in a sleepy place where if I heard another language, I knew which one of the five it would be, this place shocks me. What on earth can two people and four kids do for this teeming place? I don’t honestly know. But I do know that I get to be here. 

Where do you get to be? Does your crowd of little people push you to irritation and distraction? Would that reframe help? You get to have little people to raise and hold. Their laundry —- abundance. Their messes — potential. I struggle with this. I know it’s not easy. But what if we didn’t have hair in the sink or shoes at the door? What if it was clean and quiet and empty? Like my neighbor, who loves the sounds of my kids through the walls because it makes her feel less alone. 

This reframe helps on the hard days and through the burdened sighs. We get to be here, where we are. He put us here with care and attention for a purpose He decided long ago. No matter how hard or soul-draining. He’s working. 

Today, wherever you are, you get to be there.