"Do you believe in magic?"

There are a billion things I should be doing right now instead of sitting here under an electric blanket eating a Three Musketeers for dinner and writing about nothing.  I need to pack.  I need to draft about fifty emails, plan out a budget for the semester, and brainstorm ideas to plump up my currently empty Africa fundraising account. I also need to get to sleep at a decent time so I can stay awake on the ride back to Nashville tomorrow.

A cozy warm nest of blankets and a candybar sounds like much more fun though.

I had a good week.  I spent Tuesday with my mom, Wednesday with my jr. high Sunday school teacher/high school boss/very dear friend, and Thursday with an assortment of people that I had not seen in entirely too long. I thought I would share the highlights with you.

During one of my ventures, I was riding the escalator in Barnes & Noble.  I was there to pick up a book to replace one I had borrowed from a friend.  The borrowed book met a rather unfortunate ending, and I felt pretty terrible about it. In front of me on the escalator was a little sandy-haired boy, probably about eight years old.  He was holding the hand of a little girl who was maybe six.  Her dark curly hair was pulled back in pigtails, and she was tapping her little black patent shoe impatiently. "Do you believe in magic, Chloe?" the boy asked. Chloe raised one eyebrow and smirked. "No," she scoffed. "I've never seen it." The boy just smiled. "Of course not.  If you had seen it, you wouldn't have to believe in it, because you would know..."

I wanted to tell him that I do.  I believe in magic-- in the Aslan kind, anyway... the kind of magic that melts away Christmas-less winters and wakes up hearts that were turned to stone.  When we grow up, we give it different names, like Grace, Forgiveness, and Redemption.  But when we're little-- when our hearts are still innocent and adventurous enough to believe in something bigger than itself without doubt or inhibition-- we call it magic.

My two-year-old niece and two-year-old cousin both stayed then night one evening.  We spent a couple hours chasing each other through the house, growling and pouncing and screaming like banshees. As Ryleigh was falling asleep, I went to check on her.  She smiled that beautiful dimpled grin and brushed her golden curls off her face.  Then she closed her little blue eyes, sighed deeply, and said, "Goodnight, mommy. I love you so much."

Yes, I know she was half asleep and delirious. It doesn't matter. My heart grew three sizes anyway.

On Thursday I went north to Olney to meet a girl I had worked with at camp a couple of summers ago.  She's going to spend a few weeks in Kenya next summer, and it was great to catch up with her and hear what's going on in her life.  Then I kept on going north to have a late lunch with a couple of friends that I haven't seen since high school.  I really enjoyed meeting the rest of their family.  The food was absolutely amazing.  We sat at the table for hours exchanging stories, and this family definitely has some stories to tell.  They also listened-- really listened-- to my past experiences and my dreams for the future.  I really appreciated and needed that more than they could possibly have known.  Evening came far too soon, and I bid them a fond farewell as I slipped in my car to make the long drive home.  I left their house thoroughly refreshed and encouraged. They are truly wonderful people, and I hope it's not another three years before I see them again.  It was a good day; it had been a long time since I had found a good excuse to ramble on about Kazembe for hours.

I've found myself missing Kazembe more than usual this week.  I always miss it, but these past few days the faces of last summer have visited my thoughts and dreams a bit more frequently.  New Year's day will be my halfway point between the time I came back to the States last August and when I can go back to my kids in May.  While the rest of the world counts down to the dawning of a new year, I'll be counting down to my own milestone.  I should have a plane ticket within the next week or two.

Tomorrow morning I'll head back to Nashville.  As much as I've enjoyed my time in Illinois, I'm absolutely pining to get home.  I miss my friends, and I'm ready to get back into the rhythm of work, school, and coffee-shop-hopping.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it is going to be a really, really great new year.  Because I believe in Magic.

Gladys

I don't want to write this post.

You see, I started to write it weeks ago. I had written about Johnny and Elias, and a dear friend that sits next to me in one of my classes suggested that I write about Gladys next.  But Amy had just told me that Gladys was not doing well, and I didn't want to write about her under those circumstances. I didn't want to feel like I was frantically clinging to the only memories I would ever have of her. I decided I would wait until she got better.

She didn't get better. She passed away early Friday morning.

And so tonight, I will tell you about Gladys.  The order of events is probably way off, but the heart doesn't always tell stories in order.  I've written some of this before. I'm going to write it again.

It was just a normal morning.  I had cooked breakfast already and came into the living room. Timmy said good morning and casually mentioned that he thought there might be a new baby, but he wasn't sure.  I bee-lined it to the nursery, running barefoot over the dry grass, dust flying with every step.  I skidded into the room and nearly bowled Nathan over.  Honestly, I didn't know the babies well enough at this point to recognize a new face, so I just counted them. There were the right number of heads.  I went to good-naturedly berate Timmy for his mistake, only to eat my words a few minutes later when one of the nannies confirmed that there was indeed a new baby.  She said she was five months old, but she seemed a few months older than that.  I don't remember which nanny it was.  It didn't matter. All I could see was this beautiful, cranky, fat little baby, sullenly curled up in a bouncer, whimpering quietly, and glaring at me with all the mistrust that one little being could muster.  I got lost in those eyes.  It was like she knew how heavy the world was, like she knew so much more than any child should ever have to know.  She was wearing a pink and yellow dress. The body and sleeves were a silky material, and the skirt was sort of lacey.  It was faded and torn, but it was clean. 

I reached toward her.  I could feel the heat before my hands even touched her.  She was raging with fever.  My heart jumped into my throat, and I breathed a silent prayer. Sweet Lord, not another one. Not another sick baby that I didn't know how to save.  I scooped her up and held her against me. She smelled like rancid sweat and dirt.  I didn't care.

Her steady whimper turned into a full-out cry almost as soon as I got her in the main house.  Something about it made her anxious, but she calmed down if I took her outside.  I fixed her a bottle, and she refused to take it.  I tried every nipple I could find.  It was like she didn't know how to suck, or just didn't want to.  She finally struggled herself to sleep, and I laid her feverish body down in defeat.  By now I had stripped her to try and cool her off.

Her family was coming to sign the papers.  I asked Tom if I could sit in on the process, and he said that was fine.  Her mother had died from something really random-- "stomach pains," I think. Her father was someone from the Congo who had basically just been passing through.  They had fed her nothing but a few spoonfuls of "porridge" a day since her mother died.  Her unwillingness to take a bottle made more sense now.  There was so much more to the process, but eventually, the papers were signed, and the orphanage was her home.

At some point the medical officer came.  He gave her a malaria test, and it came back positive immediately.  He said to start her on Coartem, an antimalarial.  Her family had brought her medical records, but they didn't appear to actually be real.  For starters, the recorded weights for the last few months could not possibly have been right.  All of the entries were written in the same handwriting and the same pen, as if someone had hastily scrawled it down before turning the corner and handing it to us.  It was like this little girl had no past at all.

I was desperate to get her to eat.  She would sleep fitfully for a few minutes, then wake up terrified and wail until I picked her up and cradled her against me.  She instantly calmed a bit if I took her outside.  I spent so much time walking in slow circles in the shade of the big tree outside the house, singing softly to her of "dancing bears, painted wings," my own tears falling to mingle with hers, because I just couldn't make her believe that she was safe.  And still, the fever raged, despite dose after systematic dose of baby tylenol.  I worried the medicine would be too much for her system to handle-- malaria is  is vicious on the liver and spleen.  I would lay a cold cloth on her sweaty forehead, and it would literally be hot to the touch seconds later.  I sat with her on the stone wall of the courtyard that evening and bounced her from knee to knee, promising over and over again that it was all going to be okay.  I'm not sure which one of us I was trying to convince.  Majory, one of the nannies, came and sat with us.  She cooed to Gladys and stroked her bald little head.  "My child died of malaria," she said.  I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.  Then she hugged her and gave her back to me.  I think it was the only time I saw Majory really hug one of the kids.

I made a cereal/milk mixture that was thick enough to make spooning it a little easier, and I cradled her in my lap.  Her head lolled back over my arm, and her mouth hung slack.  Her eyes stared up at me.  They weren't accusatory anymore.  They were just desperate, and tired.  I brought half a spoonful of milk to her mouth and dripped it into her cheek. She swallowed. And then she took another spoonful. And then another. And after an hour of painstakingly dripping it into her mouth, she had taken it all down.  It wasn't much-- less than 75ml, I think-- but it was something, and for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to fight through this together.

The cat adopted her.  At first, I put her in the cradle to sleep, but she was really too big for it, and she slept so lightly that if she moved at all and touched the cold metal bars, she would wake up screaming.  Chai did her best to help.  That first night, I curled up on the couch with the cradle next to me so I could reach out and check on her if I needed to.  Chai slept pretty much on my face, with her tail draped lazily over my shoulder.  If Gladys moved at all, Chai would hop into the cradle.  I woke up more than once to find her snuggled up next to her, and each time I wondered if angels came in feline form.

The fever came in waves, like it does with malaria.  I struggled to keep the Coartem down her.  She spit up an awful lot for a child who was barely taking down calories at all, and she was pretty much guaranteed to spit up if I gave her the medicine. 

One morning one of the nannies and I took several of the babies, including Gladys and Jessie, down to the clinic.  There was a group of women sitting a few feet away.  The nanny translated for me.  They had commented on each of the children in turn. Referring to Gladys, they said, "She is very dark. But also beautiful."

And she was. She was easily the blackest kid at the orphanage, to the point that she looks almost comical in the pictures I have of her next to the other babies.  She had a heavy brow and a flat nose with big round nostrils.  Her full pink lips were dreadfully difficult to coax into one of her rare grins, but when she did smile, you knew she meant it.  She would blow spit bubbles sometimes to amuse herself.  She wasn't "pretty" maybe in the way that the world defines it, but I thought she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, even if she could produce more snot than any child I have ever laid eyes on. 

With only two doses of Coartem left, her fever was still going strong. The medical officer gave me a baggie of Quinine to give her.  He cut the pills into quarters and left me dosing instructions (which, many weeks later, I discovered were actually way wrong).  The quinine was so bitter that she wouldn't swallow it at all.  I swear this kid could throw up just on impulse.  I tried it for a day and a half, but it just wasn't working.  We switched to injection.  I don't remember how much they were giving her per injection, but I remember it was an awfully large amount.  A baby can only handle about 0.5mL a shot. I think she was getting about 4 times that. Her hip would swell as the fluid was injected, and she would cry in pain if I accidentally put any pressure on the area.  After a day and a half of going to the clinic three times a day and waiting around for someone to show up and give her the shot, they finally sent the medicine home with me to give her.  Three times a day, I walked down to the nursery to give it to her. I hated doing it.  I know how nasty that medicine is, and I could see the physical pain it put her in.  It can cause terrible hallucinations as well as permanent deafness and muscle damage, among other things. 

Then one morning, the fever broke, and it didn't come back. That was also the first morning that she smiled at me without some major prompting.  I just walked in the room, and she smiled.

Eventually, she got to the point that she was trying to gum the spoon to death every time I dropped some formula in her mouth.  I tried a bottle again, but she didn't seem to know how to suck.  I found a nipple that was split at the end so that the milk came out in a fairly steady stream.  She took it.  I had to be careful not to give it to her for more than a few seconds because she couldn't quite swallow fast enough to keep up if I did, but it helped her get the hang of a bottle.  Then we moved to a normal nipple, and finally she was drinking like any healthy baby would.

She moved to the nursery about halfway through this process because Jessie had come and was demanding pretty much every spare moment I had to give.  I just couldn't handle both of them at once.  I managed it for two nights, but but they were both eating every two hours, so by the time I fed one and got her to sleep and fed the other it was pretty much time to make a bottle for the first one again.  Timmy, Jazz, and Troy were great to take them of a morning so that I could go grab a few hours of solid sleep, but I figured the night nannies were there for a reason, and they could handle Gladys through the night.  I had her a lot through the day though, at least until Jessie got worse.  She was very, very clingy.  She had finally come to trust me, but it was that kind of fragile trust that comes at first, where every time I left the room or put her down she seemed to think I wasn't coming back to pick her up again.  Timmy often commented that she was a rather ugly baby (I think partly to annoy me...), but I think he kind of liked her.  Once I came into the living room to find him dancing with her to some terrible rock music.  She loved it.

She spent a lot of time in the dining room and kitchen with me.  One morning Essie scooped her up and comforted her.  Sometimes I would put her in the little chair that hooks onto the counter and let her play while I bustled around doing whatever.  One time someone gave her a piece of bread to play with, and she thoroughly enjoyed slobbering it into a mushy mess and rubbing it into the counter.

When I would walk into the nursery, whatever nanny was there would jump at the chance to hand her over to me.  Gladys was never an easy baby, even after the malaria was gone.  They would say, "Your baby is crying for you. Your baby wants you. Your baby, she cries too much."  She was kind of stubborn.  She wouldn't stretch both arms up for me, but she would hold one hand out when she saw me, as if to say, "Yeah, you can pick me up if you want..."

I loved to go in the nursery first thing in the morning as all the kids were getting dressed.  I was helping one of the toddlers into a pair of jeans and distractedly asked a couple of the kids to go rock Gladys in her bouncer, because she was crying and my hands were full.  I looked up five seconds later to see Moriah rocking the bouncer with every ounce of her toddler strength.  Glady's startled face, which was flying systematically up and down, made me laugh out loud.  Thankfully, she was strapped in, or else Moriah would have bounced her headfirst onto the stone floor.  I jumped up and grabbed her, and she gave me this scowl that clearly said, "Yeah, thanks..." before dropping her head solidly on my shoulder and sighing theatrically.

Even though she was probably about the same age as Ana and Ephraim, she wasn't nearly as developmentally advanced as they were.  She spent most of her playtime sitting on the mat, leaned up against whoever was closest to her, watching the world around her with those giant eyes.  She was a very low stimulus kid.  Antics that would make the other babies around her age laugh didn't phase her at all.  She wasn't particularly happy or unhappy; she was just sort of uninterested, or shy, like she was reserving judgment for now. 

The morning Jessie died, Amy reminded me, "You still have Gladys."  I needed to fill my empty arms with something, so I went and got her from the nursery and sat with her on that same spot on the wall where Majory had met us five weeks before.  I fed her the morning bottle and talked to the kinders, who had all gathered around me, as one by one the Texas group emerged from their rooms to be met by the news that we had lost Jessie.  I carried her around a lot that day, and in the days that followed.  The Quinine had left it's mark-- she cried in pain if I absentmindedly patted her on the bottom-- but her hearing appeared to be intact.  Amy took her at one point and was playing with her on the couch, and she made her giggle.  I played with her fat, round little toes and daydreamed about how strange it would be to come back the next summer and find her walking and talking. 

The morning we left, I didn't hug her goodbye. She was asleep, and I didn't want to wake her up. She sleeps so lightly, you see, and I hated to disturb her.

And that's how I'll always remember her.  She was asleep on her stomach, both arms wrapped up around her head.  Her mouth was partly open. Her head was facing away from me to the right.  She was wearing a tie-dye shirt and matching shorts that a friend of mine's aunt had sent as a donation.  Her long eyelashes curved down to meet those black, round cheeks, and she was peaceful.  I whispered to her that it wouldn't be long.  Just a few months.

Weeks passed, and school did its best to eat me alive. One morning Timmy chatted me on facebook to let me know that he had walked into the nursery to find Gladys struggling onto all-fours, trying to crawl.  I was so proud of her.

Timmy took some pictures of the kids and posted them on facebook for those of us who were stuck stateside.  Gladys' face had thinned out so much.  Of all the kids, it seemed like she had changed the most since I had left.  She was starting to look a bit more like a little girl and a bit less like a baby.

Time went on.  Amy told me one morning that Gladys was not doing well. My chest tightened.

I knew that Amy had taken her to the hospital.  My head expected the worst.  My heart wouldn't believe it, not even when the phone call came, and so I stared at the screen that said "Unknown ID" and willed it not to be.  Before I could make myself answer it, the call went to voicemail.  The message confirmed what my heart knew.  Gladys was gone.

It's hard to process it, really.  I'm not there.  I didn't see her get sick, and I wasn't with her when she finally gave up.  Part of me thinks it won't be completely real until I get back to that crib where I left her and see that she's not in it.  It's been an interesting thing to try and handle during the holidays.  Someone commented rather coldly that life didn't stop mattering just because one baby had died.  They're right. Quite to the contrary, in fact. The things in life that do matter become much clearer, and suddenly what's under the tree and whether that carol has been overplayed this year and all of the consumerist tradition that has grown up to be a holiday really doesn't matter at all.  It's all in perspective, I suppose.

These are the fleeting memories I have of her.  They're not much, but they are precious to me, as she is.  I've caught my self humming a lullaby for the past couple of days.  It's one I wanted to share with her when I saw her again.  Maybe she's listening now.

"Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away."

Deliver Us

Christmas is coming.  It is the season of Advent, and the promise of the “not yet” can be heard, barely a whisper, calling from the quietest corners of an earth begging silently for Deliverance. 

Prince of Egypt is one of my favorite movies.  It tells the story of Moses and the Exodus. The kids in Kazembe love it too, and we were sure to watch it at least once a week during video time.  There is so much more to the story than meets the eye.

It is, first and foremost, a story of Deliverance.  The Israelites are desperate.  They are carrying loads, both literal and spiritual, that are too much for them to bear, and their hope is breaking.  The first song is a hungry plea with an echoing refrain: “Deliver us!”

But there was no reply. Heaven was silent.

And then Pharaoh felt that his position was threatened by the growing number of Israelites, so he decreed that every baby boy be thrown into the Nile.  Israel cried over the blood of her innocents…

 and still, heaven was silent.

But one little boy was saved. He was hidden within Egypt itself, drawn from the river and protected by royalty.  And so Moses slept safe and warm in the palace of a people not his own.  He knew luxury and plenty, and he was protected.

Then something changed.  The Bible doesn’t tell us what prompted Moses’ curiosity, and the movie takes a bit of creative license, but it seems that Moses was drawn to the world outside the alabaster walls of the palace.  At least twice, he ventured out to peer upon the pain and desperation of his own people.  I wonder if he realized that it could have been him carrying that load.  He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and Moses killed the Egyptian.  He then fled to avoid Pharaoh’s wrath.

Twice an exile-- and both times to save his life-- Moses then wandered to Midian.  He rescued some damsels in distress and got a wife out of the deal, and then he settled down to live a nice quiet life.

But heaven was listening after all.  And Moses’ life was about to be wrecked by Grace.

He found himself standing on Holy Ground surrounded by the glory of God, and then he was told to go.

And so he went. I bet he didn’t want to.  Not completely, anyway.  I’m sure he felt a fair amount of helpless compassion for the nation he had left behind, but he was just one man, and he was well aware of his weaknesses.  He had a nice, normal, comfortable life in Midian.  To return, to face the only “family” he had known growing up and demand from them something he felt sure they wouldn’t willingly give, must have been terrifying.  But he went.

In the movie, Moses’ father-in-law reminds him that he might not see the full picture.  A single thread in the tapestry can never know its role in the grand design, and so he must seek to look at his life through heaven’s eyes, as a part of a story so much bigger than himself.

I wonder if Moses felt brave, or if he just knew that he had to do it anyway and hoped that courage would come with the doing.  I kind of think it might have been the latter.

I wonder how it felt to look his “brother” in the eye (the movie holds that the Pharaoh whom Moses confronted was his adopted brother, and many Biblical scholars agree) and tell him that if he didn’t free Egypt’s workforce then terrible calamity would befall him.  I wonder if he felt a little silly saying it, because Pharaoh didn’t believe in the same God that Moses did, and Moses knew this.  You might as well threaten me with the wrath of Ra.

I wonder if Moses’ heart broke a little bit every time Pharaoh’s stubbornness brought the judgment of heaven raining down. And I wonder what he felt when his “nephew,” son of the Pharaoh, died the night of Passover because he had not been redeemed by the blood of the sacrificial lamb.

And finally, with the blood of that lamb, the cry for deliverance, lowercase “d,” was answered.  Moses and his people walked out of Egypt.  God saved them again at the Red Sea, and they knew, without a doubt, because they had seen it, that God was with them.

The movie ends there.  What it doesn’t tell you is that the next thing you know, all of those newly delivered people turned their back on their Deliverer and made a golden cow to worship instead. 

Moses’ story was a distant foreshadowing of something greater.  Many, many generations later, another child would be born.  Another king would try to kill Him, and Royalty would rescue Him, because He was Royalty.  He would be hidden in Egypt for a time, and when He grew up, He too would demand the Deliverance, capital “D,” of his people.  But the blood of animals can never really redeem anything, and so He became the Passover lamb Himself. 

And so it turns out that heaven was listening all along.

Sometimes I feel like the Israelites.  When materialism and selfish gain drown out the joy that should be Christmas, my heart cries, “Deliver us.”  When my dreams are visited by the faces of those I couldn’t save, “Deliver us.” As I fall to my knees, unable to choke out the words of a desperate prayer for a sick child that I can’t be there to hold, “Deliver us.”  When I wonder how I will ever be strong enough to board a plane and leave friends, family, relationships, and everything else I’ve accumulated here, while simultaneously knowing that I will never be strong enough not to, “Deliver us.”  When I fail to represent Him well (or at all), “Deliver us.”

But He has. He has delivered us. Christmas is coming.

The word “Hosanna” originally meant “Save us!” It is only used once in the Old Testament, in Psalm 118:25.  In the New Testament, it takes on a different meaning. It is a cry of exultation, a joyous declaration of “Salvation!”  John Piper explains it as the difference between fans who are screaming for a safety to catch the quarterback: the old hosanna screams, “Catch him!” The new hosanna declares, “You got him!”  As Piper says, “The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence.”

My hosanna is somewhere in the middle tonight. I know Deliverance has come, but I see around me a world that seems to have forgotten it, or never knew it in the first place, or thinks it knows it but lives a life that screams to the contrary.  I repeat the same tired prayer for Gladys, terribly sick and so very far away, and I hope with everything I have that heaven will answer-- because even though it makes absolutely no sense at all to most of you reading this, I love that little girl with all of my heart, the same way you love your child, or your sister, or whoever it is that you dearly love. I don’t know where my thread fits into the tapestry, but it seems to be hopelessly interwoven with those of the children of Kazembe.

In this moment, I whisper, “Hosanna.”

Christmas is coming.

Birthday Shenanigans

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a wonderful life.

Every year, my birthday falls in the middle of exam weekend.  It makes scheduling an absolute nightmare.  This year was even worse, because several of my dearest friends are all in the same a capella group, which conveniently scheduled its Christmas party for the night of the ninth.  One of them was leaving for home the next morning, so the only way to get everyone there was to work around the aforementioned party.  The plan was to go out to eat together at a fancy Italian place, then those of us who are not singing extraordinaires could go to Danielle's place and watch a movie while the others went to their Christmas party.

An hour and a half before I was supposed to be ready to go, two of them kidnapped me, threw me in a car, and sped away quickly.  It was actually a lot less melodramatic than that... I needed to go to the bank, so they picked me up early.  Then he missed the bank turnoff. And kept driving. Out of town. To a sketchy little strip mall.

We spent the next hour roaming around in a wonderful, magical, giant, booth-style antique store that is basically located in the attic of a Staples.  It was like stepping back in time.  There were whole sections full of beautiful books that filled the air with paper dust when you flipped through them.  We barely had time to scrape the surface of this wonderful treasure trove before we had to leave in a mad rush to get to the restaurant on time. 

We had all been seated at the table for about two minutes when one of my friends realized that there was paper on top of the white tablecloth.  Immediately, she pulled out her pen and began to doodle.  Everyone else followed suit.  And so it was that fourteen fancy college students sat and graffitied the table while the waitress took their orders.  There were hangman wars, portrait drawing contests, and tic-tac-toe battles.  The food got there, and we all ate off of each others' plates.  Then someone ordered an amazing slab of tiramisu slathered in chocolate syrup and topped with a single candle.  She accidentally took it to the wrong person, which garnered laughs all around. I blew out the candle (repeatedly, as one of my friends felt it should be blown out 21 times in honor of the day) and took a bite.  Then I passed it to my right, and there was enough for everyone to enjoy some.

After dinner, those of us who were going to Danielle's piled into our separate carpool caravans and headed that direction.  Mine was the first to arrive.  As we sat outside her house in the car waiting for her to get there, a man carrying a suitcase climbed out of a large white truck and walked up to her house. Then he went inside.  Wondering whether or not she was being robbed blind, we got out of the car and sidled up to the door.  Luckily, she pulled in several houses down right before we got to the porch and saved us the embarrassment of demanding to know why someone had entered a house that they probably had every right to be in.

The original plan had been to watch The Godfather III that night.  I've seen the first two and wanted to finish out the trilogy.  As a backup, David had also brought Saving Private Ryan.  Both movies were vetoed by other people in attendance, and we ended up flipping aimlessly through the channels and watching TLC shows.  The entertainment was in the company anyway; I appreciated the chance to simply exist in the same room as my friends without some pressing matter banging on the inside of my subconscious.  Danielle made a delectable dessert to finish off the night, and we all went home a little after midnight thoroughly stuffed and happy.

The next morning, I clawed my way out of bed before the sun even thought about rising. At seven, I met several Kennedy residents (mostly mine) and David in the lobby.  We walked to Pancake Pantry and ate an obscene amount of pancakes.  The rest of the day consisted of roaming through antique stores with Danielle and David, becoming entirely too overcaffeinated at Frothy Monkey, speed-walking around the block to blow off some energy, and desperately trying to find the motivation to finish a paper that was due Sunday morning.  We decided that baking cookies would be a good study break.  Three hours later, the entire kitchen and every person in it were thoroughly coated with flour, and the cookies still weren't done.  I may have started the flour war, but I definitely ended up on the losing end.  It was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had while baking.  We made dozens of reindeer, a sleigh, Santa, his bag of goodies, and three baby reindeer that I named Cocoa, Mocha, and Yum.  After all of that excitement, I stayed up half of the night working on my paper and ended up oversleeping Sunday and missing church.  Later that afternoon, we went to some friends' house to watch football and further ignore all homework.

In short, I had fun this weekend.  I enjoyed myself.  I relaxed, and I got a decent amount of sleep, and I laughed so much I thought my gut would split.  I did what birthdays are supposed to be about-- I celebrated life. And I did it in the company of people who have come to mean the world to me. I simply cannot think of a better way to usher in another year of such a precious gift.

Much love to you all.

And then she opened her mouth...

Fair warning: Based on the conversations that have precipitated this post, I’m probably about to step on some toes. If it’s any solace, I stepped on my own first.  If you’re going to jump me, do me a favor and at least read the whole post and the links first. J

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Go.

How? Where? Why?

I live at Belmont University.   It is a school positively swimming in social activism, and the short-term mission trip culture is as alive here as anywhere. We even work it into some of our study abroad gigs.  Half of my friends’ facebook pictures are of them holding a little brown baby (okay, so is mine…).

First, read this post by a family serving as long-term missionaries in Haiti, and take the time to read the many, many comments too.  This lady put it so much more eloquently than I possibly could, and her comment section is littered with input from missionaries and aid workers all over the world.

I have been approached by dozens of people over the last three months who have heard about Kazembe and were curious, generally because they were thinking about running off to the third world for a couple weeks over the summer and wanted some advice and encouragement.   I have inexpertly offered both. Here are my concerns:

The physical act of going, of removing yourself from one geographical location and placing yourself in another, does NOT in and of itself fulfill the Great Commission.   Hopping a plane and going really far away does NOT inherently produce more for the kingdom than plucking up the courage to knock on your neighbor’s door.

I think the “where” and “how” are hugely important too.   I know literally dozens of people here at Belmont that would absolutely love to spend some time in the third world for a variety of reasons.  Some of those reasons are, I think, very good ones. But what would happen if I took all seventy of them to Kazembe for a summer? Amy could not possibly make enough chicken curry to feed us all.  Let’s say for sake of argument that all of them are fluent in Khmer.  Now it makes even less sense.  Their gifts and abilities make them suited much more to serving in Cambodia.  So maybe it wasn’t “wrong” of them to go, but they should have paid a little more attention to their GPS.  At the same time, it would be kind of foolish for all 70 of them to descend on the same tiny Cambodian village as well.

(Note: To my knowledge, the Kazembe Orphanage has never had a volunteer who was fluent in Khmer, but if they have, there is definitely the possibility that person was exceptionally helpful and productive. Also, I use Kazembe as an example because that is my context, not because I suspect it is overrun with Cambodians...)

I’m not saying people shouldn’t go. I am saying that blind naivete can be dangerous and harmful.

Honestly, I am struggling for words right now. I don’t know how to clearly articulate my frustrations.  I’m not claiming to be innocent of the accusations leveled at STMs during my time in Zambia. I recognize that there might inevitably be some harm mixed with the good that is done with any mission trip, because any relationship has good and bad facets.

I’m not saying all short term mission trips are evil, because I don’t think they are. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do them right, because I don’t think it is.   I fully intend to spend next summer in the African bush. In fact, I kind of plan to spend my forever in the African bush.  But it would be foolish, selfish, and outright wrong of me to not be constantly considering what is best for those kids, even if it’s not necessarily what I want.

An orphanage should never have to turn a child away due to lack of funds.

“We want hearts to be broken for the orphans, but never at the expense of the orphans.”

One of the most common rebuttals I hear when these concerns are expressed by myself or others is that if God wants people to go, then they will go.   Therefore, anyone who ends up on the mission field in any capacity for any length of time is supposed to be there.

Methinks that is a rather poorly thought-out statement.   I don’t believe that every little thing that happens is what God wanted to happen.  For those of you reading from a Christian perspective, indulge me for a moment.  The Bible clearly states that “God is not willing that any should perish.” And yet we believe that people do. Why? Because we have free will.  We have the ability to make decisions. I believe that God will bring good out of every situation. That does not give us license to abdicate the very real responsibility of weighing our actions.  Good intentions don’t guarantee good results.  Sometimes you pray and pray and pray for something and don’t get a concrete answer falling out of heaven. At those times, I can’t help but think that God might be prodding us to just use our heads to make a wise decision rather than blaming our emotionally-driven decisions on Him.

I realize there is a very fine line between sending resources and sending bodies.   Maybe part of finding that balance is to look at the needs of the place you intend to go to?  Do they need teachers, or do they need schools? If they need both, what is the most efficient way to provide that? The terribly ironic truth is that churches and people seem much less willing to donate money that you intend to just send to an orphanage than they do to donate money that will send you to that orphanage.  I live one block from one of the poorest places in Nashville. I wonder how many of the people who have approached me about Africa have walked down to 12th street.

I haven't.  That needs to change.

Because somewhere along the line, we elevated foreign missions to a status much greater than "neighbor missions." It's as though we are those in the Good Samaritan story who walked past the dying man, only we didn't have time to stop because we were on our way to catch a plane to the third world.

There’s also a dangerous flip-side to all of this.  I also don’t think that the answer is for people to just fundraise nonchalantly and go about their merry lives, never encountering those in need in any real way.

Where’s the balance?

I don’t know. Maybe it starts with making sure that we can actually meet a need that would not be met without us in the place we’re gallivanting off to, or with realizing that there is so very much need right where we are.   Maybe it is in remembering to offer a little grace to ourselves, because even the best thought out and well reasoned ministry in the world still falls short of perfection.  Maybe it is in recognizing that if we are honest with ourselves, a massive part of the draw to STMs is purely selfish motivation (not to put it too harshly, but a commenter on the blog I linked to referred to it as “poverty porn”).

Let me just say that I am absolutely 100% still intending to spend next summer and my post-graduation life in Africa.   I have asked these questions of myself, and I have done my best to adjust my attitudes and my actions accordingly. But here’s the thing: If I truly believed that not going, or that going in a different capacity or to a different place, was the best way to impact the Kingdom, I pray to sweet God in heaven that I would have the strength to act upon that realization, even if walking away from my kids shattered my heart with the force of the Hiroshima nuke.

Maybe I’m speaking out of turn.   I don’t have all the answers.  Please, feel free to chime in.

I feel like I’ve spent the better part of this blog backtracking and trying to explain what I’m NOT saying, so you really do need to read the link above if you haven’t already.

I would love to hear your thoughts.