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.