Ramblings on Life in Brazil (or "on Courage") {matul}

Yesterday, with the help of a couple internet sites, I completely disassembled my laptop in order to clean the fan in it. And then I put it back together and it still works!  In fact, it works better than it did before I cleaned the fan! I'm pretty freaking proud of myself. My host mom called me courageous for doing something that I'd never done before that had a potentially disastrous outcome (like my computer not working anymore). For me, it was just what needed to be done, since no on I knew could point me to a computer store that also cleaned laptops here in Rio.

I've found a renewed sense of purpose being back in Rio. My month in Sao Paulo taught me a lot things, without any explicit lessons. But one of them was that I needed to take better care of myself, and not to call that selfish. One such way I take care of myself is by living my life by a fairly rigid schedule.  I go to bed earlier than the people I live with, I have to say no to things that are extremely normal here. I have to be, sometimes, entirely different than those around me. 

Courage, I'm reminded isn't necessarily about doing great things. It is about doing difficult and sometimes risky things. What I'm learning is that following God's call always takes courage, because it will always be difficult to stand outside of the norm, which the call of God always is. It doesn't always have to look like my call, which involved moving to a country I'd never been to before and taking part in a program that few in this country or my own seem to understand. But, I know that the call of God never asks us to toe the party line or be satisfied with the status quo. Whether in our churches, our jobs, or our neighborhoods, we are called to be courageously different.