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Getting Older, Growing Younger

A few weeks ago I celebrated my birthday and, as I do every year, I took some time to reflect on what I have learned and the ways in which I have changed in the past year. In most ways, I am still the same old me, but there have, of course, been circumstances and experiences that have molded me in new ways.
I would like to think that I have gained a little bit more wisdom, nurtured the growth of knowledge in my life and become more generous, more loving and more hopeful. Unfortunately, as I look back on my year, what I often seem to find is that along with all the good changes in me, I have also amassed new levels of cynicism, skepticism and caution. While caution certainly has a wise foundation and skepticism normally stems from encountering too much of humanities nonsensical effusiveness, there is nothing that kills joy quite like losing the quiet trust that once held the place of prominence through childlike confidence and hope.
Life is certainly more complex than I ever imagined as a kid and yet as I grow older I am struck by my need to be growing more childlike in faith, hope and love. When I was younger I always dreamed of being on the front lines of helping those whose lives have been shattered by war. I wanted to be there to give assistance to those in need so that they could go back to rebuilding their lives. It seemed so simple.
Now that I am actually on the front lines of assisting refugees and displaced people, nothing is ever as simple as it once seemed. There are partners to chose for the work, corrupt officials to haggle with, seemingly unending needs and requests for assistance to sort through, locations to pick from, and the list goes on… . Delivering aid is never simple either. There is always someone who has been missed and someone else who has cheated the system, and of course there is always the chance that the very aid I am delivering will make the already traumatized people a target for yet another brutal attack. Then, there is the difficult task of getting people back to their normal lives once the disaster/conflict has run its course and people have grown accustomed to the aid. Nothing is simple and cynicism becomes “the soup of the day”. Questions like “Am I really helping” rage in the mind and disillusionment and despair set in. The problems will never end.
The knowledge and theories related to aid work only serve to compile the complexities of already complex situation and pretty soon the very people I have been called to serve become subjects of a great experiment and objects to be tossed about by the world’s tumultuous turning. Love, hope and joy go out the window.
Jesus told his disciples to have faith like a child. In childlike faith we see a Father who is greater than the universe we have imagined and we see Jesus who loves us desperately. We see people with hurt and needs, clambering for freedom from the bondage that has held us all for so long, and we know that we have tasted of that freedom and it is ours to share. We see not subjects or objects but people with names, faces and hopes.
It is so easy to have a job. It is another thing altogether to have a calling and to follow that calling the way a toddler wobbles toward her father’s outstretched and eager arms during her first steps. The footing isn’t so sure but the joy and the embrace of those arms is.
Another year has started for me. Pray that it will be a year of growing younger even as I’m getting older.

Photos from recent church seminars in Congo.

When we arrived there was a welcoming song performed by a church choir. They followed us to the house we stayed at singing the whole way.

We had expected around twenty participants but the church was packed!

These women cooked some excellent food for us!

One of the participants.

The pastor's son.

The Ambiguous Life

“They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth…They were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.” ~Heb. 11: 13, 16

Missionary Kids (MKs) and the broader genre of “Third Culture Kids” are often noted for their flexible, nomadic lifestyle. It is not necessarily a lifestyle that they have chosen for themselves but is certainly one that becomes woven into the fabric of their identity. As an MK I am not in the least bit ashamed to count myself as one of these global wanderers. This lifestyle does, however, pose certain dilemmas and comes with its fare share of fears and uncertainties. For example, my least favourite (and yes I spell it the British way) question is, “Where are you from?”
There are days I wish I had a good answer for that question, but the answer has simply become more complicated as I’ve grown older and taken jobs in countries that do not count as my residence.
Quite often I find myself longing for a place to call my own, and I am sure that at some point in my life that place might exist, but in those times of longing I am also reminded of Abraham and how God called him to wander and essentially go nowhere – which, by the way, also spells “now, here”. I am reminded that now and here I am called to live nowhere because my hope is set on a place, and more importantly a person, where all my longings will be filled.
It does not mean that the journey is easy or that because my hope is set on heaven I simply forget about what this world can offer. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I find myself struggling to be content with not knowing what tomorrow will hold; fighting the urge to just throw in the towel on this ambiguous lifestyle that I live for something more 9 to 5. Since my trip to the US a little over a month ago, I have frantically purchased relief items in the mayhem that is Kampala, Uganda, made one quick dash to Congo and back, been to meetings in Kenya and scheduled, rescheduled and rescheduled trips into Congo for various purposes. Hardly anything goes according to plan. I did not know until Sunday afternoon(today) if I would have a plane available for a trip into Congo Monday(tomorrow) morning that I had planned for over a month. The uncertainty of what each day might hold can be torturous at times. It can also be very joyous and exciting when I have surrendered my plans to the King.
Tomorrow I fly into Congo (at least that’s the plan) to try and meet with various partners and potential partners in our work there. I am more convinced than ever before that the battle ceased to be merely a physical one long ago, and that for reasons only the Kings knows, I have been thrown into this battle which at times seems like it will overwhelm the church and my feeble attempts to help it. And so I simply ask you to pray. Pray because we know that this battle is ours for the taking; the gates of Hell will not prevail over the Kingdom because the King has said so and his word is SURE. There is nothing ambiguous there. Pray for willing martyrs for the faith who will stand up as light in the darkness. We can no longer afford to be hidden, fearful disciples of a King who died for us when the darkness is so great and the world needs a “city on a hill” blazing out the hope, love and glory of the King. Pray for me that I will daily lay down the ambiguity and uncertainty that each day can bring and will revel in the surety of the presence of Jesus.
In my favourite children’s series, The Kingdom Chronicles, there is a part were the watchtowers of the Kingdom let out the call from tower to tower, “How goes the world??” and the answer comes back, “The world goes not well, but the Kingdom comes!” Yes indeed, the world is a messed up place, but thanks be to God, the Kingdom comes!

Informative Article

Here is one of the best articles I have read summarizing the activities of the LRA in the past year.

NEW Statesman Article

A Sparrow Falls

Tiny hands, tiny fingers too
sister is crying on the floor
brother beside her is scratching
the bites, the sores, festering.

What is their name?

Orphan child,
forgotten,
forget.

The world is a cruel place
the wars, the hunger, lingering.

They are the first we forget

to their plastic cup with a spoon of mush
to the dirt floor, to the damp rain
huddled together, sharing warmth, diseases.

Brother wonders what the boys will say
their collared uniforms, his tattered tee,

Sister is tired
of fetching water,
the crying, the tears, unrelenting.

Mama? Who is mama today?

…or who isn’t?

Tiny fingers keep grasping
but the air is too hard to hold
its emptiness too big, too impossible, exhausting.

She will live without regret
there was nothing to forget

A sparrow falls.

Safe???

“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion –the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” – C.S. Lewis The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

It is before dawn, light still has not sprung from the eastern edges, but day has begun regardless. Maybe it is the mosquito buzzing near my rickety cot, the rooster crowing outside or perhaps I’ve just tangled in the net meant to keep the bugs from spending the night with me, but either way I am awake. It is hard not to be sensitive to the noises of the night in a place so unfamiliar to my habits.
As the sun rises through the muggy morning I find enough water to splash my face and brush my cotton mouth away. I am greeted by the questions of the morning: How did you sleep, how was your night? I am offered some steaming, sweet tea and a few bananas; the day is in full swing. I wander out to see the world and am followed by pastors, community leaders and a man with a gun. For the first time I realize, I have a bodyguard…

I have been traveling around the US for a little over a month now, trying to rest up and get ready for the challenges that await me as I return to Congo for another year. One of the things that has stood out to me as I have visited with friends and family is the number of times I have been asked about my safety or told to “be safe”. While I am extremely grateful for the concern and the sentiments of caring that have been extended to me by many along the way, I feel it is important to point out that as a disciple of Jesus I am not called to “be safe”, I am called to followed him wherever he might lead.
The call of Jesus is a far cry from a call to safety(by the world’s standards). Jesus never said, “Come follow me and I will make your life easy and safe”, instead he said, “Pick up the cross and follow me”. The cross, in my mind, is about the most unsafe place to be. To be clear, I am not saying that as a Christian I am going out looking for danger - that would be lunacy. I am, however, saying that regard for my personal safety is of no consequence when the King calls me to follow him; my life is in His hands. Following Jesus may cost some of us our very lives (and for many it has) but we follow willingly and joyfully, knowing that this world is not our home. Is the journey at times very frightening?? Of course it is!! But that is exactly why we are walking with Jesus in His surety and not down some path of our own choosing. Complacency and a life of “safety” would be the death of an intimate, trusting relationship with the King as He uses us as instruments for the advancement of His kingdom and His glory.
The vocabulary of the Kingdom is not a “be safe” vocabulary, but rather a vocabulary of “be strong in the Lord”, “have courage and hope” and “run the race with perseverance”. When we feel like quitting we need to be reminded of the King and how He left the sure safety of heaven to walk with courage and resolve to the cross for our sake; how He, with compassion, bore our suffering so that one day all this mess of a world we live in can be made new. We need to be reminded that He gave us His Spirit, not so that we could sit back and relax, but so that we could share in His courage and resolve to bring His kingdom on this earth.
If you want to know if my work is safe by the world’s standards the answer is simply no, we live in a world full of heartache and evil. However, I serve a King who is GOOD and that is what matters the most.