The Second Time Around

Sometimes you turn around a corner in the dark and there are a couple giant elephants standing in the road.  Framed in your headlights, even when you’re not looking for them, even when you’re tired at the end of the day and it’s later than you’re supposed to be out driving.  Those are BIG surprises, but they’re also what you’re looking for.

            This is the first day off in a couple weeks’ work, the second time around in Kenya.  The first few minutes to sit and think, with (Psalm 18) open in front of me and the warm January African sun on my back.  “I love you, Oh Lord my strength…The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me…He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters…”  Very real here.

            What’s the same?  Desperate joy around us here.  In the open medical ward at Tenwek, so many very sick folks receive your morning greeting, “Habari za asubuhi” (what is the news this morning?) and no matter what they’re experiencing: pain, fear, etc.  Their answer “Mzuri” (good news).

            What else is the same?  This is a place of stunning natural beauty.  I just saw it today after 2 weeks.  Everything at work seems deeply infused with meaning.  The kids are outside playing at least 10 hours per day.  K has spent a couple Sabbaths in the village.

            What is different?  We come here as short term visitors for a month.  The missionaries are almost all different.  The teaching program for internship has changed a great deal.  There is a doctor’s strike ongoing; all public health services are closed.  The volume of patients, already high, gets higher still.  We are leading a global health rotation from UT with first time visitors to Kenya.  Trying to see it through their eyes, explain some things, but not too much.

 

            What was a highlight?  Renewing relationships, and being remembered.  Experiencing this place with different eyes, no longer fully shaded by materialism.  Our lives are built on the story of a Man who was raised from the dead; how can I assume that medical knowledge/biochemistry has a solution to all these problems.  There have been some good deaths.  And some good lives saved.  And even more lives and souls will be saved by the ones who are trained here.  This photo is from graduation of some surgeons at Tenwek.

            What was a lowlight?  In medicine here, everyone comes to the hospital as a last resort.  They come for help, and many times that is not found in medicine (a lesson I need to learn every day).  I forget this, and the weight of these tragedies feels too much again.  20% mortality rate on the medical ward.  These words quoted during the graduation yesterday: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

            This is the good life.

Missing.

“Mommy, I miss the shops in Kenya”.  I think automatically she means Mama Kwamboga’s shop where we went daily for bread and conversation.  But she says she likes the shops better there because they have tiny carts for the kids to push.  Then I know she means the super markets in the city we would visit once every 6 weeks.  I hated those shopping trips to the giant stores that exposed my bulk consumption in the midst of a society of minimal means.  I would hear the clerks checkout my items in quantities they couldn’t fathom and they'd remark softly in Kiswahili about the greediness of Americans.   So I reduced our consumption to sooth my guilt and go through the painful enculturation process.   But Little Miss didn’t know all of these things, she just enjoyed driving her own tiny cart around the store. And the way that Kenyans love children and yet don't idolize them either.





Today we were driving back from another exhausting American exercise in consumerism and the shuffle of  songs came suddenly:
"On Jordan's Stormy Banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye..." 
The tune has been buried down deep in our hearts from the times when we were strangers in a strange land singing loudly over the muddy roads "I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the Promised Land". 
Her eyes look down and her lips pucker out.  We are lurched back into that memory.
"I want to see Ellie" she says mournfully.

Man Cub left his Neverland.  He climbs a banister in our rental house now and the muscle memory makes his mouth blurt out “I miss Loquat hill”: the steep bank of terraced hillside at Tenwek where he and his age mates would climb trees, eat the loquat fruits and absorb mud.

In Kipsigis language, “missing” means very good. It’s a reply to “how are you”.  So I started thinking of missing as a positive thing rather than negative.  I'm glad they miss it.   What if they didn’t miss it?  That would be even worse.

Nowadays I drink cold bitter coffee alone at 10 am, where it used to be hot creamy chai with friends at 10 every day. I prayed that I would not be bitter over things there.   It isn't all sweet memories of course.  And God has heard my request.  My heart is not bitter, it is warmed by the goodness of God's mercy, even in the tears.  I am thankful for the deep drink of a life living a dream that we were given. 

And it’s a severe mercy to endure the end of something we love rather than to endure the end of love.  (Sheldon Vanauken’s “A Severe Mercy”)

Bridges

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Bridges are precarious for creatures. In the crazy scary true story of “The Ghost and The Darkness”, man-eating lions haunt the colonial workers in British East Africa who were building a railroad bridge through Tsavo, Kenya. Bridge building is dangerous, but the goal is to bring worlds together. 

When we went to Missionary Training International in Colorado both before and after our years in Kenya, they taught us to use the transition bridge as an analogy for the feelings of being settled, unsettling, chaos in the middle, then resettling, and settled again on the other side of the transition.   It gave vocabulary to us and our kids so man-cub could say “I feel like I’m in total chaos!” when in fact our whole family was feeling that way a few weeks ago.  And I could use that time to remind [myself and] him of where our True Peace is: not in a place but in a Person- Jesus Christ.

Flash back to a bridge story from Kenya:

On one of my last excursions in the villages around Tenwek, I was taking about 15 house-helpers out to the home of Pastor Francis who has also been cooking for missionaries for about 30 years.  His friends wanted to honor him by visiting his home and bringing blessings.  In Kenya, people truly believe that “to have a visitor is to have a blessing”.  So we journeyed out about 15 kilometers to his home for a visit with hot chai in tin mugs, fresh mandazi- a local homemade doughnut, speeches honoring the host and hostess, speeches welcoming the visitors, me choking back the “golly this is the last time” tears, and then the gift giving and singing. Singing to the Lord for joy, singing to honor Pastor Francis and his wife.  Singing by the Kipsigis men and women is done in their natural voice- no frills but pure belting it out from their truest voice.  No reserve or self- consciousness, but lots and lots of singing.  It’s not like the Zulu singers of South Africa that you may have heard, but the acapella harmonies will flash you forward still to the gathering of all the saints around the throne of God.  It is a magical experience to be there in a humble home with newspaper walls, dirt floors, a single solar light bulb and the evening closing in outside but the warmth of the room radiating a blessing to the whole community.  And they wanted to give Pastor a new blue suit, shirt, tie, socks, shoes, blanket, and a dress for his wife.  Presentations are always a big deal in Kenya.  Ceremony and honoring and gift giving are really important to people. They wanted to do this before I left and they didn’t have a car to reach that far away village after work where he and his family have lived for generations.

I am so so very blessed to have been there.  I felt so accepted there among my friends, even as the only white person for miles and miles. Even as it got dark on the drive home and I’m not supposed to have been out after dark driving, I felt so full of life and blessed beyond reason.  Then they said it.  “Wait. The bridge is out.”  We were at a hairpin turn on the bottom of a hill where a natural spring runs under the road.  The right hand side of the road had fallen down under the pressure of too many dump trucks that are building further up the road. Okaaaay…So driving off a bridge is a pretty legitimate fear, right?  I decided to do a 37 point turn around and let my friends walk home from there.   Stella road with me the extra distance to keep me company (In Kenya people do not like for you to be alone). They all texted me to make sure that I arrived home safely.   The songs were still ringing in my ears. Oh, how I love and miss those times and those people.

Only a few days after that, Daktari, the Wife, Man-Cub, and Little Miss are all on a big red bus riding around London.  We drive over the famous Tower Bridge, and London Bridge (which is not falling down), and zoom back to Heathrow to fly all the way across the Atlantic.  Effie told me that the airplanes are too fast for the heart to catch up and we find ourselves in the West with bits of Africa still all over us.

We are now living in Chattanooga- a Cherokee word meaning “rock coming to a point- what we call now "Lookout Mountain".  We have a lot of bridges here in the “Scenic City/ Gig City/ River City”.  One of the bridges is actually part of the historic Trail of Tears where Chief John Ross and the Cherokee Indians were forced out of Tennessee to Oklahoma by the president on the US 20 Dollar bill- another Tennessean.  So many bridges and transitions in my life, but nothing like the Cherokee went through here.  Little Miss calls out at all the bridges “Look!  Are we in London!?”

Yes, darlin, I too am disoriented with my body on one continent and my heart divided between two.  Two years ago 5-year old Man-cub explained to his sister “We don’t have a home now, we just live free in the wild”.  And again it feels like we are in the wilderness walking by faith one day at a time.  In being cross-cultural workers, we have chosen to take this shaky, chaotic, risky life of un and re-settling.  But we get to bring worlds together.

And there are not many people on earth that might be more blessed or more thankful than we are.

What is it?

June 24

Karen Blixen once said, “The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea.”

Daktari agreed with this home remedy at last, so we went for a few days where the salt water of Zanzibar would wash over us enough that we could begin the painful process of physically leaving Kenya.  Some would call it a beach vacation.

I called it our “Last Resort in Africa” time.

June 30

This was the night we flew.

There was a none-too subtle American lady there at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.  I call them the Pushy-Affluent-White-lady types (PAWL).  She didn’t like that our family had 13 pieces of luggage to check in. “Hey! What is it blocking the line? How can I get checked in?” (How can I serve my own needs in the midst of bigger needs?) I smile and apologetically wave to say, “It’s me.  We are moving.  Sorry.” (In Kenya everyone always says sorry to express sympathy with what the other may be feeling at the time)  And the PAWLady bellows across the lines “That’s not my problem”. 

Well, it actually was her problem precisely.  And sadly she was the one losing face in front of every Kenyan there for showing her “temper” in public.

Ah, Americans.  Is that what you’re going to be like?

I began having second thoughts about boarding the plane.

July 12

Silver sprinkles of shad minnow raining upwards from the glossy surface of the Tennessee River,

The whitetail near the road and myself, we shared a secret.

It was about how the beauty stopped me in my tracks,

How it brought a tear to my thankful eye.

How lovely a white and pink tipped puff of ethereal, ephemeral delicacy

Could be growing on the hardiest terrain of steep banked country roads.

A wild mimosa tree, proud as a peacock with the glorious flowers for feathers- but silent too, like the whitetail that went bounding through the woods after it got over my non-sense.

Ah, America.

There is beauty in the rare quiet here.

July 16

It’s so hot you can break a sweat without even working and you can wear shorts to let your legs breathe in the sunshine and freedom of living like a PAWL.  Oh, Lord I am one of them after all, aren’t I?

Jupiter and Venus are still up there in the night sky.  We saw them from Zanzibar too.  It feels like Jupiter and Venus are closer to me than my life in Kenya now.  How can we even be on the same terrestrial ball?

But the round white Queen Anne’s Lace is crusting the fields like manna every morning.

What is it?

It is like daily bread in this wilderness time.

Reminding me: He provided for our ancestors here. 

He will provide for my needs too, one day at a time.

There is beauty in taking life one day at a time.

There is Life in taking beauty one day at a time.

And then Uncle Glenn pulls up in his farm truck.

He’s saying to his sister on the phone

“well, I gotta go down to thu co-awp

and git some fertilahzer, and you never know what might come up then,

so I cain’t say fer sure what time I’ll be there”.

That sounded just like Africa.

It was a beautiful and gloriously grounding moment for me.

Karen Blixen also said “God made the world round so that we’d never be able to see too far down the road”.

August 16

Sunday.  Today we got to join in the Lord’s Supper.

Little round flakes of white that we eat.  Not ephemeral, nor ethereal, but solidly grounding the truth of heaven come down to earth.

What is it?

The Bread that came down from Heaven for the Life of the world.

Every side of this world.

Meeting our needs one day at a time.

like magic-

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As we drove away there at the end, two big crowned cranes were flaunting their feathers and trying to intimidate a goose off of her nest so they could eat the eggs.  We weren’t sure what sort of bird it was at first so- Stop the car! We got out for a closer look.  When the noise of the driving engine is stilled and you hear only the quiet crunch of grass and feel the intense equatorial UV rays all of a sudden, you get out of the car and feel the earth below and the sky above and you feel the freedom of the wild all around.  It's like magic.

Then we saw something else.  The unexpected tall heads pop up out of the trees.  Look!  Another one! Wow, over there! The Maasai Giraffes suddenly grazing on treetops just on the other side of the road.  One, two, three, four, o look at the baby!….Twenty!  With giraffes a big group like this is not called a herd or a pack.  They are called journey.

Man-Cub and I walk towards them.  I know they can kill a lion with a mere flick of the foot, but we don’t stand a chance of getting THAT close to them.  They, from on high sense our presence and turn in unison to look our way.  They are silent and gentle giants and we sense their presence too.  Each one stares at the other in expectation. 

My friend Beth gently helped me to learn about expectations.  My expectations often handicapped my experience of life in community.  When I wanted someone to be like me or think like me, I missed the true beauty of that person and our relationship was hindered.  Once my expectations opened up for people to be free as other and not just what I wanted them to be, then the wonder and the joy of relationship to God’s creation opened up. Beth is good at that.

So we watch the giraffes from waaaaaay down below and we step towards them in wonder-filled awe.  They stand their ground.  We step again and they turn the other way. We step up our pace to a trot and they begin to amble with two left legs and two right legs.  It looks like magic.  We begin to run and they, like a dream, move in silence and slow motion.  But they gain so much ground with each step that they are gone in no time.

They are a journey.  We too, are moving step by step in the journey.

"Your life is a journey, you must travel with a deep consciousness of God" I Peter 1:17 The Message

Then Again, Do Ask Me

Then again do.

Do ask me how it’s been.

I may give a blank stare and try to gauge your level of interest. But I do long to tell you.  I long for you to know. But these are things I might not tell you in person.

Ask me how was it, and I might say I was so made for this awkward cross-cultural thing.  We are really blessed so much by this experience that we might walk with Jacob’s limp for the rest of our lives.

If you ask are we going back, I will gaze with uncertainty and wish I could answer you in Kiswahili: Mungu atasema. (God will say).  The language and the culture here have a high tolerance for uncertainty. Most North Americans will find that (and me now) highly frustrating.

Ask Man-Cub how it was and he will answer “good”.  That is probably sufficient for most askers.

Yes there are stories of lions, elephants, giraffe chasing, and pure exhilaration.

But if you really want to know, catch me at the right time, send sonar signals telling me you really want to know, and I might tell you something like:  *proceed with caution as you may not want to read aloud the following:

Subsistence farmers with overdrafted bank accounts from buying maize seed that would not grow in a place with no buffers, no insurance for that sort of thing, symbolic mangled up guard rails along the precipice of the highway.

Rheumatic heart disease killing women because they had simple strep throat untreated so many times in life that her own immune system turns on her and infects the heart.  The heart that is to beat twice its normal capacity during pregnancy and just. Cant. Sustain. Anymore. Pressure.

She dies of a broken heart for another baby girl born in Kenya with no mama to love.

A few days ago, my friend Amy rescued 2 newborn baby girls who were victims of attempted infanticide.  One was left to exposure in the rain by the river overnight.  She is malnourished, but found in time to live.  The other. The other girl is probably a month old and has a broken arm.  It broke when she was. When she was thrown into a pit latrine.

Psalm 11

In the Lord I take refuge.        Selah.

How then can you say to me ‘ flee like a bird to your mountain’?  For look, the wicked bend their bows; they shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart.  When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do?

The Lord is in his holy temple. 

The Lord is on his heavenly throne.

(Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple? I Cor 3:16)

God is living in people like Amy.  She rescued these precious daughters of God because Amy is a little piece of the Kingdom of God.  She rescues children and people like me.  She is a friend who will help me in my loneliness; she packs my junk and gives a friendly Kenyan “push” when it’s time to go.  She will continue doing her work because of what God has done in her life.  

Some missionaries will try to tell you “you ought to be doing” (Most religions of the world are based on that idea).  But the Good news tells us “He has done it”.  He has done all the rescuing of all the cosmos and he has encountered all of this suffering in his own heart. 

What he has done is the long list of beautiful tiny bricks being laid in the Kingdom of God.  It may be a Kingdom that looks like mud huts, and milk cows for widows, and school fees for teenage girls.  He has done it.  He has built into his Kingdom medical training for young Kenyan healthcare workers.  He has built into his Kingdom more equipped Sunday School teachers.  He has built into his Kingdom a local translation of the Bible study that gives a storying pattern for the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation seven times over.  He has built into his Kingdom the encouragement of medical staff and treatment of patients with love and respect.  And, He has healed.  His Kingdom does bring healing.  The mortality rates are high, but then again we are all of us, mortal.  But about 80% of the medical patients are discharged in better health.

Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.  This is my Father’s World.

Sometimes it does feels like the gates of Hell are not far from the front door.  But then again, we know that they will not stand up against us.  The Kingdom is being built here after all.  So we opened the door.  Thank you for supporting us through it all for these past 2 years.  The Kingdom of God is at work in you too.

Tonight we take off to London with the full moon and the stars of the southern hemisphere and fly straight on till morning.  O Lord, Let your Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.

Strong Father, strong daughter*

 

In Kenya, people like to know who you come from as much as where you come from.  To recite one's own family lineage is an important introduction skill. While not all fathers are good and I can surely sober you up pretty quickly with some stories of being a daughter in sub-Saharan Africa, I would like to reflect on my father in this piece as the one who gave me the freedom to be me.

He flew the F-4 Phantom- the strongest fighter jet ever known in the 1960’s on a mission to protect others and to put his life into a cockpit for the United States Air Force and the greatest nation on earth.  He himself never has boasted or told stories about it, just that he learned to shun alcohol and always defend the Red White and Blue from any threats foreign or domestic.  We don’t have to know any details but I learned to put my hand over my heart and stand to honor him and his friends that died in that mission to give our nation security and the freedom to speak our mind about it.

Some years later he would use that same loyalty of character to give security to his wife and daughters by providing for us a place to call home on this earth.

He took me to my first concert when I was 6-  Amy Grant‘s Unguarded tour in 1985.  I fell asleep.  But I know she sang a song called “My Father’s Eyes” and I was proud that my eyes are hazel like his; maybe not the point of the song to anyone else but me.

He carried me a long ways.  When we visited New York City in 1986 I was sick and no doubt whiny, but he carried me all the way up the steps inside Lady Liberty.  Patriotism was instilled: A love for my father’s and forefather’s land and liberties that cannot be taken lightly.

And my dad taught us to love God.

Then he took on a new mission in the early 90’s. 

He took us to AFRICA!

So when people ask how my family dealt with me moving to Kenya, I can say “My dad took me there first.”  I was secure in his blessing.  He taught me to love the whole world too.

Fathers provide security and strength and a picture of how we could know God.  Some dads only leave their sons and daughters with a longing for a better Father-God.  If that is you, my heart longs for you to also know the Father’s great strong love as it truly is.

But my joy is so great today in knowing I will be returning to his house soon. A place where he gives me the joy of inviting people into his home and knowing that everyone who enters will be blessed with a bowl of ice cream. The sign outside the door of my father’s house says in all truth “Shalom Y’all”.

They say a little girl will grow up to marry a man like her daddy.  And I say man! I am blessed beyond all imagination that that has been true in my life.  May it be so for our little girl too.

* borrowed without permission from the title of Meg Meeker's awesome book Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters