Today, I woke up in Thailand.
My sister and her husband start their day early on behalf of their community, feeding a bunch of kids breakfast so they can grow up strong. The food is cooked by an amazing local Burmese woman with a heart even bigger than her industrial-sized rice cooker.
It was a handful of years ago now. Our family was hauling around the States on a trip back from Uganda. I stood at a gas station in Arkansas, an eye on the climbing digital numbers of my gas purchase. I was deliberately attempting not to look at the car parked two lanes over, whose car alarm was freaking out at what looked to be its owner.
I didn’t want to embarrass the woman. Poor thing. It didn’t help that her lapdogs were going bananas behind the glass.
I looked up at my oldest son climbing out of the car. Blonde, blue-eyed, and nearly eleven, he spoke in a low voice so that I inclined my head.
So many of us are experiencing new heights of irritation with and alienation from our own nations’ government. But consider this post an opportunity to shift our eyes in gratitude. When I’m struggling to feel content here, I think of my African friends’ perspectives on just what abundance we drink in every day.
Today’s and yesterday’s posts, rather than reinforcing the misguided, often arrogant notion that developing-world countries are horrible places to live, are simply invitations to be grateful with me about what we have…but generally did not create for ourselves.
So many of us are experiencing new heights of irritation with and alienation from our own nations’ government. But consider this post an opportunity to shift our eyes in gratitude. When I’m struggling to feel content here, I think of my African friends’ perspectives on just what abundance we drink in every day.
Today’s and tomorrow’s posts, rather than reinforcing the misguided, often arrogant notion that developing-world countries are horrible places to live, are simply invitations to be grateful with me about what we have…but generally did not create for ourselves.
You guys know I’m not big into getting political. Promise I’ll try hard not to go all soapbox-y on you. Yet I gotta admit: I was pretty hot under the collar last week over some rumored comments regarding African nations like the beautiful one I raised my kids in. In my gratitude for this place, with its remarkable people and so much to offer the world–people who’ve changed my life–I was more than a wee bit appalled.
I admit to thinking something like, REALLY?
And maybe some other things that were not so generous nor gracious.
We were headed to church, exhaling clouds of steam in the still-cold car. Up in the front seat, I happily remarked to my husband about the expanding diversity in our small town–as judged authoritatively, of course, by my trips to Wal-Mart. After five and a half years in Africa, I can feel a little stifled amongst all the vanilla around me.
My daughter, from the backseat: “Why does ‘diversity’ make you happy?”
She didn’t, it turns out, know what diversity was. So we talked about it: That God expresses Himself through every culture. That differences make us more vibrant and loving and whole. That we want people of all types to be welcome here.
Allow me to tell you the story of a friend of mine, because her story’s stuck with me. I’ll call her Susan.
Susan has a couple of daughters. They’re grown now–but back in the day, she was ready to pull them out of their public school and opt for private: Their public school was performing among the lowest 20% in the UK. But it’s her take on this that struck me:
At some thoughts one stands perplexed, above all at the sight of human sin, and wonders whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide “I will combat it by humble love.” If you resolve on that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humiity is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing like it.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Missed the first post? Grab it here.
Sending shoes or clothes or food, for example, to impoverished countries—in my experience–can simply be sending in what could be purchased there, without the Western manpower and shipping expenses. (My family and I still load Samaritan’s Purse shoeboxes at Christmastime; those are different to me.) Supporting local farmers and businesses helps those working hard in their own nations.
The stories happened more often than I’d like to admit, and echoed a truth a friend had told me within my first few months of moving to Africa. “The longer I’m here, the more I realize just how hard it is to help without hurting.”
I’ve heard heartrending stories of boxes of early reading books collecting dust. Sewing machines gone into disrepair, sitting idle for years. Business owners possessing the equipment they need, but selling their goods for less than the goods cost, for lack of basic business training. Adoption funding such widespread corruption that an entire nation must close nearly entirely its adoption doors.
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