Church leaders don't bite... most of the time

“Timid” has never been a word used to describe me when it comes to interacting with leaders.

When I was 12, someone snuck up behind me at our main grocery store in Uganda. He put his hands over my eyes and said the mandatory “guess who”. I was pretty sure that it was my dad, so I spun around and knocked his hands off my eyes, only to find the Bishop of Kampala laughing hysterically in my face. I have been picked up and swung around by bishops. I am privileged to count church leaders, bishops, archbishops, and others among personal confidants, and I have sympathized with their wives when we were surrounded by church leaders and both a little overwhelmed… all before I turned 18.

And yet, today I am headed to meet with my new pastor, and I find myself… nervous. Perhaps it is because of recent experiences. Perhaps it is because I am trying to establish a home for myself.

My dad reminded me that church leaders need you as much as you need them… That they need you “being there, being part, loving and praying”. Food for thought…

One thing that I have noticed about church leaders is that they fundamentally seek out joy. It’s as if they’re saying “my job sees a lot of pain, and I just like seeing you smile”. It’s as if they’re just craving an interaction where they can do their job and be supported themselves with a hug, a smile, or a goofy face.

Obviously, it’s easier to make faces at a bishop when you’re 12, but I think there is a basic truth about church leaders.

They are here for us.

Yes, they are serving God. Yes, they have a calling. But I would guess the calling is also to help us draw closer, to know better, and they are called to literally be the body of Christ reaching out to us. They can speak healing or hurt, love or hatred, peace or war to our hearts. And yet, they are people. Broken, stressed, but incredibly loving people.

They need for us to be engaged, because we are their job. They take our panicked, late night phone calls because they care. God never sleeps, and so they try to be a personification of some of that. They are called to not abandon us, and so they strive to love us more and more.

These are the people who battle in prayer and words for our souls. More than that, these are the people who hand us the weapons and the armor and a little courage and send us out to fight for ourselves.

At the end of the day, they need us to be our beautiful selves with them so that they know that the battle is not in vain.

And nobody cried.

A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight

Well mama said, "It's just make believe
You can't believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabyes
On the news tonight"

--Jack Johnson "The News"

Check your Facebook news feed, and I am sure you will find that your social-activist friends share posts about Ferguson, racial tensions, etc. And they should--this is the main and pressing US issue right now.

A few people post about Iraq.

Nobody posts about Ebola right now, unless they are posting to share a hyped fear for themselves.

Why? Because those other people over there don't matter to the Facebook population.

As a Communications major, I have been taught that good news is relevant and urgent. Something that is merely a continuation of a crisis thousands of miles away, like Syria, does not appeal to the sensationalist desires in the US. I realize that sometimes we can't do things about the rest of the world, but I wonder why one life in this country garners more attention than 190,000 elsewhere.

I'm not saying that the one life doesn't matter, but I don't see why it should matter more than others elsewhere.

I think part of the issue is that the US relies on too much sensationalism. We watch gruesome movies, and the violence feels removed from us. So, we don't react when we read that things are blowing up elsewhere--literally.

Then, when something like Ebola erupts, we panic for our own safety and worry about our own country. Minds flash to movies like Contagion, but our worries about the more that 1,200 deaths are very minor.

It is, in some ways, right for us to worry about ourselves. However, we need to make sure that we don't put more value on our own lives than those elsewhere. Yes, we have race problems in the US. The Yazidis do as well, after thousands of years of persecution. Yes, we have disease and death. The rest of the world does, as well.

Living in a concern cocoon for ourselves only serves to numb the impact of the rest of the world.

It's time that we wake up and reach out to all members of our global community. They are also at our door, asking for help.

Let us build new stories

You question my identity.

You tell me to forget my old home… to make a new one.

You tell me that it’s time to move on.

And I desperately want to belong here. Sometimes, it would be easier to forget, to rebuild from scratch. But I cannot put into words how complicated that is.

How do I put into words how odd this place feels? How do I tell you how much it kills me, how much I am confused by the smooth roads, the fast food, the traffic lights? I don’t know how to communicate that your country seems strange to me.

I don’t know how to tell you how much I long for the red-dirt roads. I don’t know how to tell you that I miss the fiery sunsets that are unmatched by anything I see here.

I don’t have words to tell you that the shades of green on your trees here seem dull compared to the mango trees near my home.

But I have come to this country that is supposed to be my country. I am trying to make it home.

You don’t want to hear my stories. You tell me that I identify too much with my upbringing.

Tell me, do you think you identify too much as an American? Do you think you identify too much with the things you do or don’t like?

You see, when you crave your comfort food you can go and buy it. Or you can make it. When I crave some of my old comfort food, I am in the wrong place. There is no wood-slatted tin-roofed red-cement-floor canteen here to sell me my stewed liver and chips, or even a chapatti.

I have explanations for why I act weirdly sometimes. I can tell you why when I gesture for someone to come I hesitate and end up looking awkward, while panicking inside. It’s because the American gesture for “come here” is the gesture for soliciting sex where I come from—so I had to learn a new way.

I have a thousand idiosyncrasies like this, and we could laugh about them together if you wanted to know.

But you don’t want to know.

I look like you, and so you want me to act like you.

Doing so has become easier with time. It has become almost too easy. And yet I have this hole in my heart. It is a hole that I can sometimes fill with my records of music from my old home.

I have stories, memories, that you cannot imagine. But here’s the catch: I want you to know. I want to share with you the joy, the pain, the utter beauty of my place.

And if you want to care about me, you will care about where I have been. You cannot take out my experiences. You can only encourage me to forget them, but I don’t want to do that.

So come, listen to my stories.

And come, let us make new ones. Let us watch the sunset over the mountains. Let us dance to indie music. Let us learn how to understand each other.

And let us never forget who we are.

Building the moon: Finding peace in the midst of good-byes

“Everything is temporary”.

I marvel at how much I truly believe those words. I believe them in the depth of my soul. Everything in this world is temporary.

This thought comes from an entire early life of experiences. When, at age 10, I moved from Virginia to Uganda, my whole life was shaken up. In 2004, Uganda didn’t exactly have high speed internet, so even email was a challenge sometimes. Plus, I had lost my entire culture and cultural reality.

As a kid, my friends came and went. One day I would be making a close friend, and literally the next day she would have disappeared from my life—and I would never see her again.

Moving back to the US when I was 18 brought similar changes. I found that I didn’t know anyone, or even my own culture. I was truly by myself in a very strange country.

This isn’t meant to be a sob story. This isn’t meant to get your sympathy. This is meant as a preface.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing this good-bye phenomenon with someone. I realized just how much I believe that everything is truly temporary.

Last night I went out with my camera at dusk. With my 200mm lens, I took pictures of the moon with Mt. Rainier right there. In the foreground is a building with a light on, and a piece of construction.

What struck me is this: everything that we build is temporary. If I just turn the building’s light off, there will be darkness. If I cut some wires, the equipment would fail. A building would never be built, simply because of one action I made. If you build with something so capricious , then your surely darkness will win.

But you can’t really turn off the moon. At least, humans can’t.  And you can’t really knock down a mountain.  These things stand and orbit and never disappear.

The strength of the mountain radiates this hope—this promise—that some day we can find stability. A promise that God never fails. A promise that what God makes cannot be destroyed by a simple “good-bye”.

I love that these pictures were taken at dusk. Even in semi-darkness, the mountain is visible, and the moon illuminates your way.

No airplane can possibly fly so far that we out-run eternal truths or goodness.  I guess the only thing left to do is to actually look at the beauty.

"I am at your feet"

The road is hot, dust and red clay. The dust burns my feet as the dust invades my bright orange flip-flops. I look down at my feet.

They are small and tan. The burning sun beats down and seems to singe my feet. My Coated in a thick layer of the red dust, they are undeniably filthy. Dark dirt is in my toe nails. The bottoms of my feet are black from mud and the dirt on our house’s floor, despite the fact that it is cleaned daily. My tiny feet are learning how to walk effectively in this dirt-sand-mud-clay mixture. We come to a shaded, dried out river bed, and I pull off my shoes and wade through the massive amount of sand.

Another pair of feet enters my view. These are barefoot, ignoring the singing sand.

The toes are the most noticeable… they are nonexistent. Small stubs indicate that they used to be there, but they have been entirely worn away due to the friction of the dirt over years of 10 mile treks for a jerry-can of water. The dark skin is cracked and beaten. Even without toes, these feet easily and gracefully find their way through the sand, over the hills, and back to this woman’s house—many miles away.

I look up to see an expectant face. Gnarled with age, it still has an shocking beauty. The grey haired old woman looks down at me and smiles. I know what she wants.

“Shikomo” I say quickly. I have just paid my respect to my elder, as is expected when I pass or greet anyone older than I am. Roughly, I have just said “I am at your feet”.

Her face cracks into a deep grin, revealing pearly teeth underneath her chocolate skin. “Marihaba” she replies.

Our exchange consists of “habari”, answered by “nzuri”, “hujambo”  answered by “sijambo”. My Swahili is quickly exhausted, though I pick up a few other words. She smiles at me, says something in beautifully rhythmic Swahili, and we pad on in opposite directions.

This is my every-day reality for 3 amazing months.

Later that night, I will carefully wash my feet in extremely precious water in a basin with my dad, though it takes months of being back in the hyper-clean US before they lose their reddish tint.

I have spent the last 12 years wishing I could go back to that tiny town/village.

Godrenaline Junkie

“God loves us just as much when we are doing normal, boring things as opposed to having a great adventure”.

I wish that I could say that I believed that, but I don’t know.

As a Missionary Kid, life was always an adventure. I never had to depend on God for the small things, because nothing felt small. While my friends in the US had the stomach flu, I had a trio of typhoid, another parasite, and a staph infection that made me septic.

I guess I got used to the big things. I got used to depending on God for all money, because without Him, we wouldn’t have donors, and without donors, we wouldn’t have any money.

It was like a crazy roller-coaster-bungee-jump-rafting adventure. There is so much adrenaline when you are dealing with perilous traffic and political instability and sickness that life never feels dull.

After finishing up my time as an overseas MK, my adrenaline craze continued.

I returned to the US, which was a massive transition. I learned a whole country again—well, at least I learned some things.

After my crazy freshman year, I jumped into the fire head first again: I became a youth leader at a struggling church. Once again, I depended on ministry for money, and for excitement. I found myself an my knees constantly again, because the ministry demanded it.

That’s great—until it’s a problem.

When you constantly get used to the idea that life is an adventure, it makes it hard to think of life as anything but that. So, when life starts to settle down, it’s depressing.

I don’t know how to find God in things that aren’t threatening me, or at least giving a massive sense of need. I don’t know what to say to God when I don’t feel like anything I’m doing is important, or like He should care about it.

If life is only about insane adventures, the adrenaline becomes like a drug. I find that I get used to it, that I need more and more of it in order to feel like I have something worthwhile. I hope that I don’t have to live insanely in order to be worth something, but I don’t know if I trust that.

It’s something I need to work on. Life isn’t just about the crazy things. It’s easy to forget that though. After all, I have to wonder if I’m only as good as the next grand adventure. Without that, I don’t know how to find worth in my life.

Polar ice caps: what home means to me

Sometimes the concept of “home” feels like the polar ice caps: I am told that it exists, and yet I cannot comprehend it until it begins to melt and flood my world. At other times it is a whole set of little things that begin to make me feel like I can believe in this concept.

When I went to the mattress store looking for something cheap, the sales woman barely contained her laughter at my immediate comfort on a foam bunk bed mattress. This seven inch piece of high quality foam immediately made me feel at ease. I suddenly felt… at home. I bought Sleep Country’s cheapest mattress and a box spring off the floor. I have not felt more at home since returning to the US.

It might sound silly that a mattress could do this. I spent 8 years sleeping on a five inch slab of foam over some wooden slats. I never realized how comfortable this was until I returned to the US and slept on some bad spring mattresses.

Finally finding myself sleeping on a hunk of foam again reminded me of some of the best times in Uganda. As I turned over, I was transported back to the Kingfisher lodge, where I slept on their glorious king size foam beds. I actually reached out to touch the mosquito net in my half-awake state, only to realize that we don’t have malaria here.

As soon as I got up this morning and turned on my computer, my Skype went off with a call from my “Uncle” Peter. Also known as Mr. Nagler, my high school Biology teacher, he makes my week when he calls me. Hearing from him was delightful and reminded me of all of the best things about Uganda.

Later, I walked back into my room. It finally struck me that the noise I had heard all morning was, in fact, a rooster crowing. While this seems unremarkable in a way, it is a sound that I have not heard since I moved. I realized that this sound woke me this morning. I don’t know how to put into words what this sound did for my mind… I guess the closest thing I can say is that it made me feel like myself again.

This all sounds fairly trivial when I try to put words to it. I don’t have the words that I need to describe the feeling of ease and joy that a rooster’s crow instills. I don’t know how to say that I laughed talking to Peter like I rarely laugh… full of ebullience. I don’t know how to say that a foam mattress causes me to realize that I am not an estranged lump of this world, but am instead an integral—while different—feature.

Little tastes of a life once lived can make you feel ecstatic, relaxed, and peaceful. In this strange place, I find myself realizing that I can settle down at some point. And so, I have hope.