Breanna Dillon
So, here goes...
So here I am getting geared up for Mission Year in August… I don’t feel quite worthy of a blog space yet, but why not let you adventure with me through my transition? So, here goes…
My name is Breanna, and I am a recent graduate from Lee University in Cleveland, TN. My major was in intercultural studies with an emphasis in urban missiology and a minor in Spanish. (Translation: Christian mission work, inner-city focus, and some Spanish language studies, too.) Presently I’m working two part-time jobs to raise money for the program (remember to tip your waitresses well and to be nice to the cashiers at the grocery store, by the way!), and, understandably, I’ve been keeping ridiculously busy. But anyhoo, I’m very excited about my soon-and-coming time with Mission Year, and figured I’d kick things off with an introductory blog. Mission Year, for me, is an opportunity to serve and grow; a means of working towards wholeness in my own life, in a specific community, and in the world; and the first ‘official’ step in the direction of the rest of my life. I’ve considered Mission Year for quite some time, but now all of my pondering and praying has given way to what I believe will (soon) be one of my most formative years—and knowing that in four months I will be doing the kind of work that I hope to do for the rest of my life keeps me strong for the present. My heart burns to live and serve alongside/ with those in great need, to live incarnationally and know both pain and joy…And on this blessed weekend in which we celebrate our Savior’s resurrection, I can do no less than believe with my whole heart that resurrection is forever a possibility and a reality with the God of life. I have a deep yearning to witness resurrection in lives, families, communities, and the world, and I firmly believe that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave is at work in every place and in every heart even now. When I journey to my appointed city in in August, I will do no more than meet the Spirit there and join His hands in the work of His kingdom.
On this most holy weekend, may you be blessed to know that the Way, the Truth, and the Life is with you birthing resurrection in the midst of pain, brokenness, and despair and that he is at your side rejoicing when you are granted a genuine smile. And may you be blessed as you journey with me into a year of joy, pain, sweat, and prayer. (By the way, I appreciate your prayers even now!)
~Breanna
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Breanna Dillon's Blog
Waiting / May 18, 01:04 PM
I want to be so many things—patient being one of them. Funny thing, though: with everything else I want to be, it’s hard to be patient. I want to be a wife and a mother. I want to be a servant of Christ working tangibly on behalf of and with/ alongside the poor. I want to be a writer and an “ordinary radical” who, with God’s Spirit and fire inside of me, inspires others to love. And as I wait (and perhaps as I miss the fact that in many ways I am fulfilling my calling and desires even now), there’s this weird, abstract longing… aching… something inside of my heart and spirit. It’s this ache and fully felt, “How long, Lord?” and this all-too-poignantly-experienced sense of brokenness. Humanity, the earth, creation, and my own heart are broken, and while I want to be so many things, my ultimate desire to be redeemed and restored with all of God’s creation has left me begging for my Savior to return and bring an end to pain and a beginning to eternal uninhibited day. But back to temporal existence, there’s just this sense in me of something not yet birthed. An anticipation of what I know lies ahead yet of what I know nothing else about. And while most basically it’s hard to wait for the redemption of all creation, temporally it’s hard to wait for the moments of my life to unfurl before me. Before I leave this world or see it transformed while I’m still here, will I be loved and truly known by a man who somehow senses my soul? Will I care for a child from my own womb and for a child who maybe would have never thought they’d have someone to call mother? Will I pray a prayer of healing and see someone’s body and life made new by God’s Spirit? Will I lead someone to Christ and witness the light wash over their face as they come to know the love of the Savior I came to truly know some eight years ago? Will I dance in celebration as light breaks through the darkness in both big and small ways in the overlap of the ages? I don’t want to know now what is to come in my life. No, it’s not some foreknowledge I desire. I want to live it. To know it as only that which is experienced can be known. But the waiting leaves an ache… and maybe, no, most certainly, makes me stronger. Either way, I must wait. So I wait.
Car wrecks, hospitality, and pride / May 18, 12:57 PM
God is so good. I totaled my car—my first car ever, my 1991 Volvo 240 Sedan—on Wednesday. On my way to work I reached for my purse, which I had hung around the passenger’s side headrest, because I wanted to get out my tracfone to see what time it was (i.e. how late I was to work) when my phone received signal a few miles down the road. My purse strap slipped in between the headrest and the door, so I gave it one last jerk. My left hand (which was on the steering wheel) veered right, and when I realized I was off the road and heading down/over a little berm, it was too late. I cashed into a fence, ripping up about three large fence posts, knocking down a couple more, and demolishing a good portion of the fence. My car is totally dead. But I walked away without even a scratch.
Now to take a more extended look at God’s grace. First of all, a month or so ago, I broke the little pull thing that pops open my hood so I can lift the hood. So the mechanic across the street had to break into my hood (in order to change my oil) by taking out my grill. He wanted to trip something up for me so I could get in my hood myself, so he left the grill off with the understanding that I’d bring my car back over and he’d figure something out. I brought my car over a couple of times after that, but it was never a good time, and with our schedules not coinciding my grill was still in the back seat of my car when I wrecked. I very much believe that that was God’s providence, though, because it seems to me that my hood popped open all the more easily when I wrecked because my grill wasn’t there. The entire front portion of my car (like the horn and front bumper or something like that) was ripped out/ broken by the crash and the barbed wire I ran into, and my hood flew open basically upon impact, deflecting flying fence posts. One fence post (maybe five inches square) hit the roof of my car, leaving a square dent/ impression not even an inch from my windshield on the driver’s side. Had my grill not been gone, maybe my hood wouldn’t have flown open so soon (or maybe at all?)… Maybe the barbed wire or just the impact ripped out the front of my car, grilless as it was, and flew my hood open… And had my hood not flown open (or maybe had it just not flown open so soon), that fence post that left an impression on the roof of my car may have come through the windshield at me. I could be dead or really injured right now.
And as if God’s protection isn’t already obvious and awesome already, it was likewise about a month or so ago that my supplemental restraint system light came on. I had decided not to mess with fixing it because it would be so expensive, so I kept driving my car, knowing that my airbags most likely wouldn’t deploy were I to crash. Then, when I crashed Wednesday, my airbags, as expected, didn’t deploy. For that I was and still am thankful, because my airbag probably would have hurt me—I could have gotten a black eye, a broken nose, broken glasses (and cuts and stuff)… something from the airbags. But, as I said before, I walked away without even a scratch.
It’s an inconvenience now not to have a car, but Dave and Lisa (the owners of April’s Pizzeria where I work part time in addition to working part time at Food Lion) are letting me stay at their house when I’m scheduled to work at night either at April’s or at Food Lion. I have to figure out how to get to Marlinton come June when I’m supposed to work with Energy Express (an AmeriCorps-ran summer reading program for elementary school kids) there, but I know that all in God’s plan will come to fruition.
I am so blessed to have walked away from my wreck untouched (and with my car’s grill, license plate, and CD player, to boot!), and I’m so blessed to be the recipient of the wonderful hospitality Dave and Lisa are showing me. The other night (Thursday night—the first night I stayed at Dave and Lisa’s place), Lisa gave me a piece of paper with their home phone number on it to give to my mom should she ever want or need to get in touch with me while I’m at their place. And before she gave/ handed me that she gave me an 800-minute calling card should I want to call my mom from their home phone (seeing as how I just have a tracfone and where I live is long distance from where Dave and Lisa live). I am so blessed, and while it feels a little awkward right now for me to be receiving such hospitality, it is such a blessing to see true hospitality in action and to be reminded of how I, too, need mercy and hospitality from others. Sometimes with a mind and heart set to give to and help others it’s all too easy to feel pride and to believe oneself to be above needing help yourself. For all practical purposes, my independence has been taken from me. I have to lean on others now, now just in some abstract sense but in terms of being able to keep my jobs and make it to where I’m going (Mission Year, at this point in my life).
And writing about this reminds me of the other day at work and of one day while I was working at Food Lion. The other day at April’s, Marti (a waitress I work with) was waitressing and I was the hostess. I cashed a guy out in the game room when he won some money from a slot machine and he gave me five dollars. I gave it to Marti even though she protested, and I promptly felt all warm, fuzzy, and righteous. Later, when the same guy gave Marti five dollars, she gave it to me even though I protested. “It’s fair,” she said. And I shut up. Something as simple as that is a lesson more than worth learning (and a lesson apparently needing to be learned more than once). Many Christians have a true desire to do good. Many Christians want to give and help and “do the right thing” when it comes to treating other people fairly and with goodness, mercy, and justice. But what about letting someone else treat you with goodness, mercy, and justice? Many of the same Christians who want to give and help and “do the right thing” never want to receive help from someone else, even when maybe the “right thing” to do is to acknowledge their own need for others’ help—their own dependence on others or on community for their very human existence—and the other person’s dignity and right to help others. It’s easy to give, even thinking that one’s motivation to give is entirely pure, because giving strokes one’s pride, feeds it. But to accept from another what you feel you should only give and never receive yourself, that is a lesson in humility and the interconnectedness of humanity and even the body of Christ.
Along the same lines, the other day (a few weeks ago) at Food Lion, I showed up to work wearing my regular uniform—no shirt underneath my Food Lion T-shirt to keep me warm or anything. It was a cold and windy day, and I was placed at a register near/ next to the doors. The doors would open, the wind would blow… and, obviously, I would freeze. “I’ll be lucky to get outta here without getting sick,” I thought to myself, dreading the rest of my shift. A few minutes after I was on the clock, however, a little girl and her grandmother came through my line. Somehow I ended up telling them that I lived far away and had no way to get a jacket or an undershirt brought to me. They left the store, and by the time I had helped the next customer or two the little girl was back in the store, trying to get my attention to the right of the register. I turned around and the little girl help up a pink/ mauve jacket and said, “Maw-maw told me to give this to you. She’ll come back later to get it.” At first I thought, “Oh no, I couldn’t,” half-way because I felt bad for someone else to lend me a jacket and maybe half-way because the jacket was obviously of an older person’s style (and it definitely didn’t match my navy blue Food Lion shirt). But I thankfully accepted the gift-on-loan, and told the little girl to tell her grandma thank you and that I got off of work at such-and-such a time. It felt strange for me to accept such thoughtfulness from a stranger, especially when it seemed to my petty human judgment that the little girl and her grandma had less than I do, materially-speaking. I know that I’ve been given clothes and hand-me-downs and what-not before, but a sensation came over me as I accepted that jacket that day like I had never felt before. I thought of Matthew 25 and of Jesus’ teaching (and command, in true essence) to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick and in prison… And I knew that in that moment I was naked and someone else clothed me.
It is so easy to be proud. It is so easy to give or help another person and to feel smug about it without ever knowing yourself to be smug. But it’s not so easy to be humble, to realize that you stand no taller than the rest and that you, too, are so many times a helpless wanderer along the Way. To accept five dollars from someone else and not be able to pat yourself on the back and say, “Good job putting someone else before yourself.” To accept a jacket from someone you had judged as having less than you and not be able to think of yourself as being on a higher plain than they are… To accept hospitality and unmerited care when you were so stupid as to reach for your purse and wreck your car in the first place… Maybe these are the simple and most beautiful lessons of humility and life. I wouldn’t trade such simplicity for the world, and it is my heart’s desire and prayer to know more and more of the meekness and justice of my Savior, the one who not only healed others but also let others open their homes to him and care for him and his disciples. The one who not only gave himself but also proclaimed that whoever would follow him would have to give themselves, too—that whoever would follow him would have to take up their cross (and we all know where that’s going). The one who not only restored lives but who also praised the poor widow who gave all she had as an offering to God. The one who allowed a repentant woman to break a box of precious ointment over his feet before his death and resurrection and who praised that same woman for doing so. For any person who ever does anything in the name of Christ and his kingdom: no work can ever be done in true holiness unless the dignity of others and the frailty an dependence of our own selves is acknowledged. We are not only givers but of necessity also receivers. In the words of I don’t remember who, “We are just beggars telling other beggars where to find bread.” May we walk this road together, and may we live true justice, holiness, and redemption.
Ache / May 11, 02:04 PM
So although I have yet to officially begin Mission Year (start date: August 27…Woohoo!!), I figure that some of the family members/ friends/ professors who have received my Mission Year launch announcement may already want to check up on my blog and see what’s going on in my head and heart. And I figure that before I start the program I should let people know a little bit about what has brought me to this point and what sort of things push me further forward into this program and beyond. For anyone already my friend on Facebook or MySpace, the next few paragraphs may be nothing new to you. For anyone else, I hope you can glean a few glimmers of hope and/ or a few morsels of food for thought from what follows. I wrote what I’m about to post during my last semester at Lee University (fall 2008). I was reading for one of my favorite Lee classes, The Prophets (i.e. Old Testament prophets/ prophetic books), and was moved to write, reflect, vent, express, whatever you’d like to call it. What follows is what ended up on paper during my study time and on social networking sites later :) Hopefully you connect with the ache I try to give expression to… the groaning Paul speaks of in Romans 8.18 and following…the groaning in my heart, in humanity’s collective heart, and in all of creation. I hope to post more of my reflections and such in the next few days so that anyone who would like to know more about me—or who just wants to find an interesting something to read—can (hopefully) be satisfied by way of my Mission Year blog spot :) But enough intro. On to the body proper! :)
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“Ache”
The more I study the Bible, the more I study the Old Testament prophets and the prophetic voice of Jesus himself, the more I ache. I ache for the world. I ache for the church, many times represented by communities Ron Sider rightly calls “one-sided disasters.” I ache for the world, for all of creation, as I wait for its redemption (Romans 1.18-25). I ache because I am privileged. I have not known the pain of a parent who cannot give me food. I have not sold my body to sex-hungry men in order to feed myself, my siblings, my children or in order to evade death or punishment at the hands of brutal pimps. I have not watched my nation, my town, my family ravaged by daily bombs and the woes of war. I ache not because I wish to experience these things or am unthankful for having been spared such atrocity but because others have experienced and do experience such devastation and I cannot feel the pain which they deserve no more than I do.
I ache because I know another world is possible. I ache because I say this yet I am blind. I ache because every nation looks to its own interests while Christ cries for his church to transcend national and partisan boundaries and bring his disjointed limbs back together as his true body. I ache because I see friends—white, middle-class, privileged friends—who ache as I do, yearning to forsake the comforts of this world as Jesus instructed the young ruler to do in Luke 18.18-22. I ache because I see duplicity, hypocrisy in myself. I ache as day after day I gaze in the mirror to put on makeup and admire my pseudo-beauty while people die. I ache as I strive to be desired and long to be noticed but finally realize it’s all a bunch of futile garbage…meaningless…stupid…worthless in the face of the world’s pain and those who cry every night for a bit of rice to stave off hunger or clean water to keep their children from dying or peace in the midst of violence and hate and injustice or deliverance from the hands and bodies of strangers who strip away their dignity night after night after night. I ache. I ache.
I ache as people spit in the face of my Savior, saying there is no God who made or cares about this now broken world. I ache as I see the scars in Jesus’ hands, feet, and side, as I come to realize that those scars are for the redemption of this broken life and that, in the face of such love, so many still do not want to know the God who would humble himself in humanity and look us in the face. I ache because the church has so many times failed to reveal the full splendor of this King to those who, were they to see Christ in his true beauty, might confess him as indeed the Savior of the world.
I ache as I long for more than what so many view as heaven, for more than my tradition seems so often to tell me is the grand prize. I ache for a greater vision and implementation of love and justice and righteousness and redemption among my brothers and sisters who call themselves by the name of Christ. I ache for something to break within me every day…for Jesus’ words to mean something…for the whole, “If you want to be my disciple you must take up your cross and follow me” thing to birth death and resurrection in my soul and in the soul of anyone who would be so bold as to read the words of the most self-destructive book in the world.
I ache because I don’t ache enough. I ache because none of us ache enough. I am broken, but not nearly as broken as I must become. And it hurts.
I pray that whoever reads this will join in my pain. I pray that you will become so uncomfortable you cannot bear it. I pray that as you read the words of Jesus and the prophets—as you read all of the words penned under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and preserved for us in Scripture—that you become ever-increasingly broken and burdened. I pray that something inside of you begins to burn, that something of the power of the Holy Spirit would rise within you so that you would no longer have eyes but be unable to truly see, ears but unable to truly hear. I pray that you ache with the pathos and passion of God that wells up within Scripture and preeminently in the person of Jesus Christ, he who came to live and breathe and die and rise among us, preaching the good news to the poor and to all. I pray that, until every tear is wiped away, you would not cease in your brokenness over creation. And I pray that in the midst of it all, your hope and trust in the God of love and the power of redemption through Christ would defy logic and bear the weight that only such supernaturally-born vision can.
May our love be strong. May our hope be real. May our faith never fail. May we ache ‘til kingdom come.
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