April as an Intern

A whole new world

I moved to Minnesota 4 years 3 months and 15 days ago. Over the past few years I’ve embraced that one of my super powers is Adaptation. My resiliency to cope with difficult times comes in handy as well, so when I moved to a new culture a lot of things changed, I had a lot of shifts in the perspectives of my core beliefs, one of them is how I view my birthday month. It has also been 4+ years since I’ve celebrated my birthday face to face with any blood family, I’ve only celebrated it with my family by choice (until 2020 and the adventures of a year with COVID19). So celebrating it with my family over face time has been the norm and they know how to love me well form a distance, I would like to think I do the same.Celebrating here is different. But I’m grateful for community. (Pictured: My parents (Francisco and Norma and my brother, Joshua. Not Josue, Joshua, he’s very particular about that lol)

During this month our leaders had a great idea to have all of us interns get to know each other better, we are partnered with a fellow intern, the first person I got to start knowing was a great experience, got to know a lot about him, little details of how he is living his best introvert life ever. I can definitely relate. Not such luck with my second person, pero I guess this is how we learn to show grace to others, even when they’re not ready to or able to be reached. I’m grateful that Substance provides us with relevant trainings, like getting to know our personality types from the perspective of not taking them as an excuse of why we behave the way we do, but rather to as growing points (paraphrasing Pastor Carolyn Haas). The week we did that I was actually struggling with communication with my roommate, and doing Annie’s training helped me communicate better and understand her better, turns out both of us are very intuitive and empathic.

Another mindset I had to kinda change/adapt to is celebrating Easter. From where I’m from Easter is something only Catholics celebrate in “full force” meaning they would do this beautiful carpets made out of colored sawdust (see pictures), been a Christian (aka: evangelical, Presbyterian, baptist, Pentecostal , etc. Anyone BUT catholic)we wouldn’t par I participate in it, it took a long time to come to accept that it was ok to admire the art in this sawdust carpets, and from a afar never help in any shape or form. Looking back I can only think how silly it is to allow our own judgments of how to love others well can create communities that do exactly the opposite of loving one another well. Although Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are acknowledged form the pulpit at churches. You can see how that would be confusing growing up.  

So when I moved here, Easter was a big deal, I had no idea you need to wear your best fashion style that day, the first year was a rookie mistake, now I’m prepared for Easter Day, lol. I have to say I love it, been an active part of the significance behind Easter is great. I do draw the line at the bunny and egg hunting events. I just don’t get it. I would however support friends that enjoy it, although I’ve never been invited to Easter celebrations after church, I think is because is a family and kid friendly event. And also physical distancing this year did not make it easy to celebrate in the same ways. 

I invited a friend over to watch Substance’s Easter services together, it was good, I do have to admit I missed my intern fam after service.

The last week of April was a bit hectic, I was in a situation were pain form my past was revealed. I have taken actions to move forward on my healing journey, exited to share it with you on my next blog.