Painful Pilgrimage

I knew this summer would be hard. I knew I would struggle with issues I wouldn't foresee. I knew it would be exhausting. I knew I would just have to endure it. But I didn't know how much it would hurt.
C. S. Lewis once said, "We don't doubt that God will do the best for us. We're only wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." I find that's the story of my life. I don't doubt that I'm where I'm supposed to be and going where I'm supposed to go. I just worry how much it will hurt. "Will I pull through? It's gonna be tough. Can I do it without making a mess of things?" Since the beginning of our family's journey away from normality, we've struggled with being okay with being weird. I never was a "normal" kid, but I never owned it until I found others just as weird as me. It was always harder when I was surrounded by "normal" people. The pastor's kid stands out in a small town because no one thinks she's cool. The missionary's kid stands out in a youth group because nobody understands she's just a teenager wanting peer fellowship, not an exotic display item.
But these things I accounted for in my preparation for furlough. I have dealt with them before, and I know they are only side effects of following Jesus for me. Feeling left out occasionally is nothing compared to what He did for me. Neither is heartache, but I wasn't prepared for that one.
I've read books about being a "Third Culture Kid" ("TCK," it means someone who spent much of their developing years in transition between two cultures). I've had friends talk about this very thing. But nothing warned me sufficiently.
I'm homeless. It's not that I don't have a roof over my head; I do, and I'm very grateful for the blessings God has given me. No, I don't have a place to call my home. There is not one place that I can point to and say, "There. There is where I am most comfortable and where I look forward to returning just so I can be there." All my life I have had that. Even when I was in transition between Oregon and Uganda, I considered Uganda to be my home, even though I'd never been there. Once I reached Jinja, when I felt homesick I just decided that Oregon was my home. Wherever I was, the other place was what I missed. I had my heart split two ways and halves on opposite sides of the world. Now no part of my heart can rest on any continent.
Jinja can no longer be my home, because I have packed all my things from there and prepared to move to school. Oregon cannot be my home, for I feel so out of place here it hurts. Kijabe, Kenya (where my school is) cannot possibly be home, for I don't live there yet and it is only temporary anyway. Nothing fits the definition anymore.
I wish I could be normal. I see all my friends and family here, in Oregon, with their houses that have been their singular homes for years. They have all their earthly possessions under one roof. I wish I wasn't always having to think, "Where is that? I know I have it, is it here or there?" I wish I had a church to call my church home. I have attended so many different churches in the past year, I've lost count. I haven't had a chance to settle into any of them. All these things I wish, and each wish cuts a little deeper into my heart, piercing it with the pain of self-pity, for I have none of them. I wallow in the slime of selfishness a while, and then I wake up.
I get on facebook and see what these sacrifices have gained me. I talk to friends on the other side of the world, and I realise that my home does not have to be on this earth. I realise that I don't have to fit in with the "normal" people--there's plenty of weird ones out there just like me. And when I look for them, I can't find a single "normal" person anymore. We are all so weird (aka unique) I can enjoy everyone's company, and it doesn't matter if we understand everything each other says.
I know of one place where I know I am understood. I know there is one place that I will go to and rest. There everyone will understand and no one will say something that makes me hate my ethnicity. Everyone there will share the same love and purpose I desire so fervently to culture in my life. There is one place I can call home and not have any scruples about it.

"I've got a mansion / Just over that hilltop! / In that bright land where / We'll never grow old. / And someday yonder, / We will never more wander, / But walk the streets that are purest gold. // Don't think me more poor / Or deserted or lonely. / I'm just a pilgrim/ That's heaven-bound. / And though I find here/ No permanent dwelling, / I know He'll give me / A harp and a crown!"

("Mansion Over the Hilltop," the hymn my mother sang as my lullaby when I was a baby. Even then, God was preparing me for my life. He is so Awesome!)

Freedom

Have you ever seen a little girl pick up a kitten? She holds it tight and squeezes it, showing her love, or so she thinks.
If you have, then you likely have felt sympathy for the poor kitten. As it squirms and kicks and meows for freedom, it's easy to take the side of the underdog--or cat, as the case may be.
Then a few years later, we have an elementary-school age girl still in love with cats. But when she grabs a kitten, it still squirms. She holds it looser, gentlier and her only goal is to make it purr. Even with these good intentions, the small cat is terrified, not knowing the comfort and love it's being offered, and cries for freedom. When it finally wrenches free, the girl sags her shoulders and sinks to the ground, dejected and hurt. The kitten has its freedom, but is alone once again, never having known what it missed out on.
Seems like a lose-lose situation. But it's one we create everyday, even if we don't ever touch a cat. It may seem a bit far fetched, but I can picture my God as holding me like that girl held the kitten. His desire is to have fellowship with me, to fulfill what He created me for. Rarely do I care what He's trying to do, it's uncomfortable at the moment and I don't know what He's doing! I'm not in control, so I shouldn't be here. When I leap the bounds and leave His arms, the sense of what should be freedom is instead replaced with fear, worry and even depression. The farther we get from what were supposed to be doing, from where were supposed to be, the less freedom we find in our heart of hearts.
It is only when the kitten stops squirming that the girl could pet it. Therefore it is much easier for God to teach, mould and love us when we just hunker down and let Him!

May 2012

Looking back on 2012 brings to my mind one prominent month: May. What happened in May? My father's heart had arrhythmia trouble. It lasted only a month, but it still affects me today.

I remember waking up on a Saturday morning and thinking I could watch "Justice League" all by myself because the little boys were gone and nobody else would be awake yet. But there dad sat, in his favourite seat on the living room couch, staring out across the orange-tinted yard through the front windows. He told me that his heart was having the same trouble he had had with it in America, and he didn't know what we would do about it. As I sat beside him and placed my head on his chest, all I heard was the horrid rhythm that couldn't stick with the beat. Buhm bummm bmpp BUM bum bum.

The whole next month he couldn't walk across the room without resting, and couldn't sit up long enough to finish a movie with us. As we (us four kids) heard our parents discuss insurance troubles, we began to wonder what it all meant. Would we have to go back to America? If so, how long? If they didn't fix it, daddy couldn't work here. Would that mean moving back to Oregon? I remember one day momma told us kids to pack our bags. When we asked for how many days we needed to pack for, she said she had no idea. When are we leaving? No clue. Where are we going? Not sure yet. It's not easy to pack when you don't know those three things.

Eventually, it all worked out. Daddy and momma went to South Africa and we stayed with our good friends/neighbours. But what amazes me even more than how God healed daddy is how He sustained us throughout the uncertainty of it all. People I have talked to about it say that they couldn't imagine how frightening it must have been for us kids to stay in a foreign country with our parents in another foreign country for serious medical work. I say that's it's a pretty simple matter. We just continued on the same way we did before--with God's help. I believe the only reason us kids didn't freak out or break down crying from stress is the prayers that people sent up on our behalf. In place of those afore mentioned emotions, we instead felt a peace and even close to an excitement. We somehow knew that whatever would happen to us next would be okay, no matter where we or our parents were. They might go to America and leave us here. They might come back soon. And I can't lie; there were a few times I wondered if they would ever return to us. But the busy lives we stepped into for the week our parents were gone kept us focused, and the silent strength and faith of our hosts added to the God-given peace we felt. I think on this and want to thank all of you who prayed for us, and thank our God for blessing us.

To be quite honest, I see the "scary" month of May as a trial I grew through. It taught me to forget what I thought was going to happen and just wait and see what God would do. We were supposed to go to Kenya. We waited, and God sent them to South Africa. The money it cost them to go to South Africa was supposed to toss out my braces. We waited, and God provided the money for both. I will always remember that month--May 2012--and praise my God.

Not Goodbye

I hate goodbyes. Parting ways with friends is one of the hardest things in life.  Even though I know I will see them again someday, my heart knows it will miss them while we are distanced. There really are no words to describe what happens to one’s heart when part of it leaves. When you send off part of your family, there is no way to convey the words that need to be said. I guess the only ones that matter are just these: I will miss you, Don’t forget me, and Have a good time. They just don’t suffice for the emotions welling from my heart.

This is not goodbye to two of my favorite people in the world. Never will I say those two words to you. In the two years we’ve been friends, the only parting phrase we’ve said is, “See you [Wednesday],” or whatever day we have plans for next. You befriended me when I was new to the land. You put up with me when all I was was wasted space. You made me feel appreciated and like you enjoyed my company. Thank you.

I’m sure if you’re reading this, you know who you are.

I am not sending you off, because for that I would have to let go of you. I am not letting go, because you are a part of me. As you cross the border, know that part of my heart goes with you. This summer we have bonded in ways I never thought possible. My guarded composure was loosened little by little until I felt you knew me better than any other souls in this world. You know my quirks, my shortcomings and most of my blonde moments. You have shared in my successes and helped me in my failures. You have stood by me while we marched through a sea of troubles, and we’ve been through much together. Whether it be eating a cow’s tongue, playing Halo or Just Dance, swimming or Truth or Dare—or just hanging out and talking, our lives have become intertwined.

I know you will gain experiences in this next step in your life that will grow you and teach you much. I pray that you will enjoy this season. Know that I will miss you, but learn as much as you can. I hope to join you next year—then you can show me the ropes.

See you in November.

The Hunger Games {A Different Response}

The secular sensation series The Hunger Games caught my curiosity when almost all my friends, including many Christians, sang its praises. It made the New York Times’ Best Seller list. I read almost all of the trilogy, and the impressive effects Suzanne Collins has on her readers through these books was not lost on me. But I am about to give it much less than the five-star rating I’ve seen from others. In fact, I deleted the trilogy from my Kindle app because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Slow down, here, and I’ll explain that bold statement. It was awesome, indeed, if awesome truly means “worthy of awe.” I truly felt that I was the main character, that I did all the things Katniss did, and that I was the object of love for the “Romeo” of the story. It’s an accomplished writer that can attain such effects. The plot was well-developed until the sharp cutoff ending, and the suspense was enough to keep me hooked, but predictable to keep me yelling at the characters. Well done, Collins.

But now I’m about to hone in on the problem. It was too good. Collins did too good a job pulling me into a new world. When I put down the book (or iPod, as the case may be), I still was waiting for Peeta (the “Romeo” I mentioned earlier) to come home. I still wondered how Prim (the main character’s little sister) was doing. Everything around me I related to my life in my new-found country of Panem. The subtle horrors of the book, the murderous Games, the lying heroes and the giant and growing character flaws of the main people all worked into me without me noticing. Because I read all three books (excluding about 15 chapters from the third one) in three days, I had little time to process my experiences or think about what I was doing. What’s wrong with that? It’s a sign of good modern writing, is it not? Well, “good,” isn’t the word I’d use for it.

In my Lit class, my teacher calls it “Escape Literature.” You know, the kind that’s not meant to teach anything, but merely as entertainment? There is no such thing. You cannot write without sending a message. I know this, and I hope everyone who has read my blog knows it from my communications. The Hunger Games teaches people beyond the surface of the words on the page. It teaches to lie, because both the main characters, Katniss and Peeta, protected those they loved successfully by doing so. It teaches to take desperate measures to stay alive, because that’s what everybody did and only those who were desperate enough to really do it lived. It teaches that having “spirit” is good and a hot temper can save your life, if you have a good liar at your side to cover up your mistakes. The trilogy was meant to entertain, yes, but it does so much more.

Many of my friends have tried to get me to read Harry Potter or Twilight. I have a feeling they are just as sensational as this trilogy was. But I’m not interested. People complain that my generation is lazy, that we are handicapped. But can’t you see why? It’s those desensitizing television shows, the sensational books without a point, the role-playing video games—they all pull you away from reality. Each one is an addiction in and of itself. When we have to put down the strong heroes we have become on the plasma screen thanks to our Xbox or close the book in which we have a passionate lover and see that we actually have to do something with our lives to become a person of influence, the obviously easier path is to pick that book back up or the controller.

This is not a book review. This is a rally cry. These books, and I’m sure many others, were wonderful, yes. But is it really worth our real lives to feel like heroes in a fake one? Is it really worth our character to watch a fictional person evolve on paper? There’s nothing wrong with reading books, but when they are written to take control of our minds—with moral or immoral motives—it’s dangerous to every aspect of our lives.

To Be Continued…

The stories we tell often have a cut beginning and end. Our minds are finite, and we need to organize things with starts and finishes. It’s the way we are. But God’s above that. The stories He tells, He writes, He plays, run together meshing our lives with those around us.

The story He’s been telling me doesn’t have a clear beginning. It might have started in 1998. It might have started when I was born or when my father was born. Actually, it might have started way before that, I don’t know. But I’ve reached a climax, crisis or whatever one calls the high moments of suspense. We’ve reached a point in which nothing from here on out can be the same again. And a decision is made.

See, my daddy’s heart has always had a problem. One of his valves doesn’t work right and his thyroid is off, etc. He was born that way, but he didn’t discover it until he would keep my momma up at night because he was shaking the bed with only his heartbeat. In 1998, his heart stopped beating in rhythm for the first time. Momma rushed him to the ER and they shocked his heart back into pace, no problem. It just shook them up a bit and started daddy on yearly cardiologist visits. In 2009 it happened again with the same results. When we moved to Africa it was one of the concerns we had that we just trusted to God to take care of. And He has… in His own way.

On May 11, in the middle of the night, his heart went into arrhythmia for the third time. Daddy had spent the week on the island, where he doesn’t sleep well and the food is different as well as the less extravagant accommodations cause stress. The next morning I woke up to find my father up and sitting on the couch at 7 am on a Saturday morning, which basically never happens. When I asked what was wrong and learned, I sat down to give him a hug. But never have I given a more painful hug—as I leaned my head on his chest all I heard was “bum bump…bum bump bum! bump…bum….bump bum!” And that’s not a comforting beat to hear.

He and momma hired a driver to take them to Kampala, the big city, to see a trusted doctor there. The boys and I hung out with friends and expected a renewed father to return that evening. The instructions from the doctor (which we later confirmed with our American cardiologist) were to take blood thinner and wait three weeks before shocking. Those three weeks were very different from our normal life. If you take one member of a working family out of that family, there’s a gap that’s left to fill, chores left to be done and it affects the actions of the rest of the family. Momma was driving around town more, doing things, the boys were home more and I was out and talking to people more. And daddy? He was resting A LOT more.

Ever since that day he has not been able to walk more than across the house without a rest. He can’t stand more than 10 minutes or sit up straight more than an hour. Seeing him that way stressed all of us. But we all were counting the days until he would “get better.”

On this past Wednesday, daddy, momma, a friend of mine and her mom and I all were driven to Kampala for a couple different appointments. One was my dad’s for some blood tests. He got numbers low enough to go ahead with the operation and the doctor scheduled the procedure for the next day. Oh, daddy was so relieved. I started planning on being at church the Sunday after and the boys and I went to spend the night at some friends’ house.

But it wasn’t in the plot diagram, I guess. God didn’t write that in the story. Instead, He had the nurses shock my daddy twice, neither time being successful. Instead, He had us kids reeling with questions back home while our parents were gone and we heard snippets that daddy wasn’t “fixed.” Oh, the turmoil.

I think the next event in this story is our whole family going to Nairobi, Kenya for more advanced treatment. We’re gathering all our clothes, schoolwork and anything we might need for possibly the next two or three weeks to leave as soon as our money gets wired in to the country. We have no idea how long this will take. If Nairobi can’t fix it, the next logical step would be a cardiac aversion or pacemaker. But like I said, we’re not writing the story.

I just know the current status of it is “To Be Continued…”

Step Back

One day a man woke up in a strange world. He first believed himself to still be dreaming, but as the day wore on he found this really to be the real world. It just didn’t look right.

The problem was he couldn’t see with his full view. He always felt as if he was looking through a camera that was zoomed in all the way. When he took a step into the kitchen from the hallway, he failed to see the chair right under his nose until his face was on the ground. He began feeling around to protect his step, but he found all his senses but sight were useless.

Grappling to touch the chair he had just tripped on, he couldn’t feel what it was. He knew it to be a chair, but only from his memory of the house. As his fingers skimmed the surface of the wood, he hardly could distinguish it from the walls he hit earlier. The normally small leg of the chair was too big to fit in his hand by some fluke of nature.

Standing, he began to ponder his fate. Maybe if he focused more closely on the small scope of his sight, he could figure out where he was and feel his way around. This worked while he had a guide—his memory—but upon entering his car to drive to work he found his newfound eagle eyes would not be of use. Even just looking out his windshield, he found his eyes only could focus on the bugs smeared across the glass—which seemed to be the size of his outstretched hand. If he could stretch his view beyond that, it only saw the rocks on the ground directly in front of the car.

“Well, this is no use!” declared the unfortunate man. He went back in the house, because he saw that he would only be a hazard if he were to drive anywhere. But he had to get to work. Thankfully, he lived just half a mile from his work, so he determined to walk. First he must warn his boss that he’d be late.

Finding the phone proved just as difficult as driving out the driveway. But dialing was the worst!  He managed to call his boss and even to walk the half a mile to the building, only to fall on the steps. When his coworker came out to help him up, he couldn’t tell who she was. Every time he blinked, he only saw a few strands of her hair as she pulled him up, or the texture of her leather shoes as they walked to the door.

By the lunch hour, he was too worn out to hear the reports his coworkers brought to their supervisor. By a mere miracle, he reached home again to hear his wife calling out to him. But try as he might, he could not find where she was in this whole wide world. He heard her say hello and even felt her quick embrace. He answered her concerned questions as to his early work leave with, “I don’t feel well,'” but he never could tell what angle he should focus at. Finally he shouted as loud as he could, “Where are you?” when she had stopped speaking.

“Why, dear, I’m right here. Can’t you see me?” she asked, now genuinely concerned. He then explained why the chair was overturned and the phone mangled. He couldn’t see at all! She led him by the hand back to his room and laid him down. He closed his eyes as he heard her say words that only confused him.

“Step out, step back, look out and look back. Step out, step back, look out and look back.”

Suddenly, he awoke once again. But he was unwilling to open his eye for fear of what he might see—or not see, as the case may be. He heard his wife murmuring to herself in their shared bathroom. She was repeating those words she had said as he had fallen asleep last afternoon. It was the words to the poem she was memorizing. He gathered his courage and opened his eyes, to see his hand was completely normal and he could even see the numbers on his clock.

He realized it was all a dream when the date was the same as it was when he woke up the first time. But he never picked up a magnifying glass again.

That day, after work, he said only one thing to his wife. “Honey, I think we ought to go take a vacation next week. I think we need to take a step back from everything and get the bigger picture of our lives.”

Focusing on ourselves leaves us confused and angry. To step out and look out and help others gives us a better picture of our lives and where we fit in to this world.