Just a mom in an unjust world

Today isn't the first time I have been faced with this: what do I do in the face of the terrible injustice in the world?

I just received word that in one of the villages we often travel to for teaching and discipleship, four community members have been arrested by local police for inspecting their own land.  I don't know the details, but it has to do with the illegal logging that they are trying to stop on their lands, and the whole situation seems steeped in greed, corruption and racism.

My heart feels raw as I think about my dear friends in that community, I remember their tears over past tragedies.  Just last week a friend from that community mentioned, "the hard situation our community went through."  She couldn't even saw the words.  To talk about the death of her uncle, the chief was too painful.  The community is still grieving.

When will this end?  Is greed really the most powerful thing on earth?  Will we ever "learn to live together as brothers" as Martin Luther Kind, Jr. dreamed?

I sit at home as my girls splash in their wading pool.  Cooling off from the heat of this dry season day, they remain oblivious to so much of what goes on in this world which is bleeding with the results of man's sin.  And what am I to do?  I am not a lawyer, a millionaire, or a government official. I cannot move the powers that be, or make justice happen. The truth is, I do not know what to do. I am just a mom, a missionary, a friend.

I know that I will pray with my friends, and I will hear them cry out to God for their community, and for justice to be done.  I can ask others to pray.  I can weep with those who weep.  What else can I do?  I can drop by a meal for the family of a man who is tirelessly fighting for the rights of his people. And can bring by a bag of clothes for his daughter.  I can be friend to his wife.  I can tell them to not give up, to trust in God, the only one who is truly just. I can walk with them as they struggle to know how to forgive, as the fight to keep hate out of their hearts.

And I can ask God to show me what else to do.  Because what is the point of saying I am against injustice, if I do nothing when faced with it?  I feel like we are David facing Goliath, and yet we have no sling, and we haven't killed any bears.

How did I get here?

I had one of those moments today. I was waiting to pay our electric bill.  Someone has a little office that they run out of their house, and I was there, along with several other people waiting. The hot sun was "bravo" or angry as they say here.  I looked around the little neighborhood, tropical trees scattered between make-shift driveways and simple homes.

How did I get here?  Why is walking through the tropical sun to stand in line with my Panamanian neighbors my normal day?  It certainly isn't anything like what I imagined my life as, when I was a child.  I never traveled outside the US until I came to Panama at 18.  I didn't know anything about Panama. I had never been on an airplane, never lived away from my family.

What possessed me to board a plane, and then make a life for myself thousands of miles away. I don't know.  This life pulled me in, I felt compelled, it felt right.  I don't even know how to describe it.

How did I end up here, raising my children in a context so different from my own childhood.  Airplanes, outboard motors, and thatched roof houses are a normal part of their life.  Their mom is from one country, their dad from another, and they don't know that that might make them different.

Life is beyond my capacity to understand. The world is so complex and full of possibilities. For better or for worse, this is where I am. I hate it sometimes, and love it sometimes, and mostly it's just life.

How did I get here? One day at a time, trying to follow my Good Shepherd who knows this path better than I.

Handling Criticism

Sometimes this is my worst enemy.  My own doubts I can shush, but the critical words of others are hard to quiet.

As a missionary, I often feel like I have a bulls eye painted on me. "Please, criticize me!  Tell me all that I am doing wrong!".

Some come as suggestions, "Wouldn't it be much more effective if you did it this way?"  I then spend the next hour explaining how we already tried that, or how we know that wouldn't work in our context, or would be culturally inapproriate.  I know the person meant well. Still, it feels like we have just been torn apart.

Sometimes it's on those days when we spent the morning running errands for our husband (with the kids along, on the bus), helped a friend with her upcoming wedding, tried to squeeze some home school in between, only to go and teach a Bible class all afternoon, and get a comment about the dirty dishes in our sink (did I mention that the water was off all day?).

On days like this part of me just wants to say, "It's not worth it! I am going to stop giving, stop caring, stop helping.  I can't do this."

Then the Bible class ends up being amazing, and one of the ladies there tells us that every time her in-laws visit from the village she shares everything she is learning, and that they always ask her for more.  And then they go home to the village and share with their neighbors there what they have learned.

I realize just how important it can be to give just a little time, and how far our influence can go. She smiles, gives me a hug and says thank you, and I know she means in.

On the inside I am crying, and I say, "Okay, I will try again."

I will get up another day, and deal with all those situations that nobody else knows about, and do the best I can even though it will never be "good enough".  I will try, because even in the midst of feeling inadequate, there is just enough of hope in me that it will be enough.

Fear and Faith

I think one thing that most parents have in common is fear. We are afraid about different things, but we are all afraid for our children. One parent may be paranoid about germs; another may worry about the bus system, while another may fear their child falling in with bad friends.  We all have areas of weakness, but I think I fear mostly feels the same.

Someone told me once that fear blinds you.  I have experienced it, and it’s true.  But knowing that you are blind doesn’t help you see.  It doesn’t solve the fear.

As a missionary parent, options of things to be fearful about seem to be doubled or tripled.  Should I be afraid of poisonous snakes, crazy taxi drivers, unsafe drinking water, and lack of healthy food choices?  Or should I worry about my child’s bilingualism, worried that they may feel caught between cultures, wondering where they will find role models, and how I am doing as a parent.  The options are limitless.

Yet there is one option that trumps all others. And that option is faith.  I can spend endless time fearing every bad thing that could happen. Or I can choose to trust God. I can choose to trust him in a world where bad things happen, where nothing seems to make sense, where the suffering I see around me tries to sink my faith once and for all.  My only option is to hold on to faith. And to hold on to God.

He is the constant. Somehow, in ways I can’t understand, he is holding my children.  He didn’t give me the guarantee of a problem free life.  That deal isn’t offered to anyone, least of all missionaries.  But he told me that he has our lives in his hands.

What other hands could we want to be in?

My sister Hannah told me once that we don’t own our kids, and if we think we do we are only fooling ourselves. She told me that we can only hold them in open hands and trust God. Every piece of advice she has told me has been right on, and this one was no different.

It seems like a paradox. I am supposed to care for and protect my children, and yet I can’t depend on myself to do it.  God is the one who holds them in his hands.  It’s as if I am a steward who should do their job faithfully, caring for what belongs to another. My children belong to God. Even as I must be accountable for the care I give them, I can also trust him to ultimately be the one who has even their hairs counted.

May God give us parents both strength for our task, and the strength to let them go into his trustworthy hands.

Packing again...

We are packing again.  I seem to be forever packing for a trip, unpacking from a trip, cleaning up after a trip or cleaning the house before we leave on another trip.

We are leaving early this afternoon for the coastal community of Platanares.  We are going with our friends Steve and Malana Ganz for a week of teaching.

Last night as we started packing my three year old was convinced that I needed her help. She began packing randon items into whatever bags she could find. I have a large bag full of material and clothes waiting to be mended, someday when I get my sewing machine repaired.  She decided that everything in that bad HAD to go.  Around bedtime she had a total meltdown when Alex and I told her that we WERE NOT packing that bag.  Fifteen minutes later, after I remembered that she had skipped her afternoon nap, she was asleep.

This morning, as I finished throwing in last minute things, I kept finding ramdom items that she had put in when I wasn't looking, like the remote control to our fan, which she is convinced is a cell phone.

Life in missions is crazy, unpredictable, exciting and confusing at times. I often wonder how all this traveling will effect my children. Will they look back and remember the adventures fondly, the times spent together, the beautiful views of the ocean, the friendships formed? Or will they remember the heat, the bugs, the tiredness, the tears when they try to go to sleep in a strange place, surrounded by strange sounds and sights?  Will they thank us for giving them such diverse experiences and opportunities, the chance to see life as many children never will? Or will they lament the things and experiences they could have had growing up in the US?

Ultimately, there is no way to know. The future has not yet been written.  Right now we can only take the next step, trying to keep our hearts close to the Shepherd so that he can guide us in the next step. We can only be thankful for what we have, keep our minds on the people we can impact, the lives we can touch and lives that may be changed forever. 

With our children we can only stay close to their hearts, listen to their fears, comfort them, challenge them, help them grow where we are today.

Now our bags are all stacked by the door.  The girls keep coming up and asking when we are going on the boat and I am telling them very soon.  Thankfully, they are excited about this trip.  Going on the boat is nothing new, and they have long since stopped complaining about the life jackets.  I know they will enjoy the fresh shrimp and fish we will eat, and likely spend hours running to and fro with the local kids.

As we go out, I am praying that the bugs won't be too bad, wondering if I am a bad missionary for dreading those bugs, and having to use outhouses.  But bad missionary or not, I am willing. I think that is enough for God to use me, to use our family.

Where does our value come from?

Almost two years ago...

I sat in the tent with my two small girls.  It was pitch black except for the small flashlight in my hand.  Outside I could hear the song of the crickets and the occasional dry of a night bird.  The tent sat inside a thatched roof hut.  I could hear the sound of a church service in the distance.  Alex, and the rest of the out reach team, were there.

On this particular outreach, we happened to have a church service every evening, and my one and three year old just weren't up for that.  So we had just finished our evening shower, managing with an outdoor shower and a barrel of water in the dark.  The girls were dressed in their bedtime attire (just diapers) and we were well into our bedtime routine.  Each girl got slathered with anti-itch lotion, to combat that day's insect bites, and then a shirt became a make-shift fan as I sang a lullaby.  Singing and fanning, singing and fanning, praying they would go to sleep.  One of the girls drifted off easily, but the other woke up suddenly as her bites began to itch. 

Crying and scratching, she woke her sister.  So the fanning stopped, and I began to rub their legs to lessen the itch.  Waiting for them to finally fall asleep, I couldn't stop the question from presenting itself any longer, "why are we here?"

All the "real" ministry is going on over at the church, I thought.  When the girls are asleep, it will just be me and the dark tent.  During the day, keeping tabs on a busy one year old holds me back from participating in the ministry.  And frankly, I'm so tired at this point that I can't even have a meaningful conversation with our host.  It's all I can do to get through another day, taking little girls to outhouses, figuring out how to bath them, trying to keep them healthy, and safe.  I don't feel very spiritual, and I don't feel that I am contributing ANYTHING to this outreach.

Moments like this can bring into question our value, if we think that it is derived from what we do.  In a missionary organization like YWAM, it is all too easy to start focusing more on what we can accomplish than anything else. We start to calculate how valuable this new staff member will be for the ministry.  We lament another co-worker who "isn't pulling their weight".  We feel like there is so much to do, and God is depending on US to save the world by the end of next weekend.  And we secretly feel good about how dedicated we are and how we haven't taken a day off since last year.

So then when our season of life shifts, and suddenly we find ourselves mothers with little ones at home, our whole value system can fall apart. Suddenly we don't feel like we are contributing.  We haven't preached a sermon, and lead an outreach, or even sat through a church service for a long time.  We can't even remember what it was like when we had a whole hour carved out in our daily schedule for a quiet time. That sounds like an unreachable luxury now.

While I think there are many reasons that mothers can feel inadequate, I think that for those of us in missions, the over emphasis on GETTING STUFF DONE is a huge culprit.

I think all of us, whether you are a mom in missions, a missionary around moms, or anyone else who resonates with this, need to take a few steps back every once in a while and think about where we are deriving our value from.  How is that coming out in our comments and actions?  How is it causing us to judge others, or judge ourselves?

When I begin to struggle with this again, I remember this line from scripture...

"We set our hearts at rest in his presence..."

Difficult outreach moments and what I have learned from them

It's been on my mind lately to write out some of my memories and lessons learned on the mission field, here is my first attempt:

 

 

 The above picture was taken in 2011, on the first day of our two month outreach.  There is a story behind it.  We had left early in the morning, hoping to reach our first destination by nightfall. But instead we found ourselves trapped when the highway was blocked by a protesting community.  The day began to heat up and there was no shade anywhere.  Rows of cars lined the highway on both sides, and proved the only distraction for a bored three year old and one year old.

We spent a good amount of time observing a truck full of baby chicks, and even got given one, which proved a great distraction after that. Unfortunately, we couldn't take it with us on outreach.  We spent five hours waiting and praying for the protest to end.  All that stands out to me from that day is being drenched in sweat.  At some point the girls napped on the van seat.... more sweat.

We walked down the highway to the community and through the middle of the protest to buy something to drink, then back again, stopping at a truck carrying watermelons, and bought one to share.  Finally, sometime after noon, the protest disolved and the highway was again open to traffic.

There was no longer time to make it to our destination that day.  We ended staying in a small church building.  We were thankful to their hospitality, but all that stands out to me was the long muddy walk to the outhouse, and even longer, muddier walk to the outdoor shower. Did I mention that it was rainy season and that I had a recently potty trained child?  And the giant hole in the ground along whose muddy edge we had to walk to get to the shower?  And... well, let's move on.

I look back now and laugh, and I get it.  I understand why that outreach was so grueling for me.  Not even the first day could be relativly easy.  The months leading up hadn't exactly been easy either.

I can also look back now and have grace for myself. I can forgive myself for my percieved "failures"; losing my temper, feeling overwelmed, thinking I lacked vision for the ministry because I wasn't feeling all these warm fuzzies about our experience.  Mostly I just felt tired.

After that first challenging day, more of the same awaited me.  The next day found us riding up a flooded river, one of the scariest boat rides I have ever experienced. I ended up on a different boat than Alex, clutching the girls between my knees as the narrow canoe rocked in the dirt-brown torrent.

Upon reaching our destination, we found that other than the flooded river, there was no water available.  Saying there was no water other than the river doesn't really register until you realize that you have a one-year-old still in diapers, who get's into everything, and an almost-potty trained three year old who still has accidents... and there is no where to wash off.

The house we were offered had no outhouse, but plenty of rats.  Picture me in the evenings, after the team had left for the nightly church service, and the girls were asleep. Let's just say I was very thankful we had decided to bring our tent, and had that between us and the rats.

Most evenings I was back in the house fighting rats while the girls slept and I could hear the church service in the distance.  I missed almost every ministry activity because taking care of the girls took all of my energy.

I distinctly remember the one ministry activity I lead. It was a bible class for children, and we were going to tell a bible story, sing some songs, do some games, the usual.  Only, because of the school schedule that day, only preschool aged kids showed up.

None of them spoke Spanish.  Turns out most of the kids don't learn Spanish until they start school.  I sent for a translator, but no one was available.  My one chance during that week to teach something meaningful to the precious kids in the community, and they couldn't understand a word I said.

That moment represents well how I felt that whole outreach. I felt like I was working all day and night just to survive till the next day, but I wasn't seeing any results from my labor.  My eyes were focused on changing diapers and getting toddlers to sleep, and finding and outhouse or somewhere to shower.

All around me, significant ministry was happening. Our DTS student team was deeply impacted by their outreach time.  The relationships we formed on that two month outreach ended up opening up the doors for us to be here now, living here in Chepo and working alongside the Wounaan churches.  None of this would have been possible if we had given up after that first, horridly difficult day.  Well, the whole week was difficult.  It took some perserverence, but we saw fruit from our labor.

When I look back, I see reflected in myself other missionary moms who are wondering if they make any difference.  Maybe they decide not to even venture out on a ministry trip because they feel like they won't be able to do "ministry". Maybe they are so focused on getting through another day with their little ones that they can't see the significant things that are happening around them.  My advice to you?  Keep perservering and you will see the fruit of YOUR labors. It just may take some time.