So today was pre-op, forms and talking to the nurses and a last minute MRI with a barium study. All good, right?

On the MRI form they asked ” are you claustrophobic” and I confidently checked of “no!” Yet when I was laying on that skinny table, covered in a blanket, my shoulders wedged against the shoulder guards, my head closed in with all kinds of foam to keep it still (it’s a neck scan after all) and a face guard down over my face, I started to feel slightly . . . . Hot.

And moments later as the table slid into the tube, I started to panic. As my heart raced and I tried to figure out how to escape my padding, my mask and the tiny tube just a few inches from my body on all sides, that cheery tech’s voice came on through the intercom. “How ya doing? You feeling okay in there?”

Then my voice, breathy and slightly wound up “no! I’m panicking, get me out!”

And the response, as cheery as before . . . . “Great! We’ll get you started then, just remember to stay perfectly still and you can move in 30 minutes.”

I’m laughing now, but then I was crying . . . . I removed myself from the situation and erased the panic by visualizing an entire day in Bundi – which I miss so much. . . . And then I was crying. And crying harder as I started praying for little baby Chase on our team, who is coming home for head scans and other testing to check out his health problems.

So, it’s confirmed, I’m a baby. But even babies need prayer!

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We thought this week would be final preparations (finally) for heading back to our home in Uganda. We were prepared for goodbyes, last minute shopping and of course the marathon packing experience that two more years overseas in a place with little, entails. And we were ready. What was supposed to have been a six week HMA has already become nine weeks.

Instead we are preparing for surgery, recovery and another month here in the States.

This was all perfectly orchestrated by the big God we serve. I went into Bethesda Naval Hospital on Friday for routine follow up with the endocrinologist who has been seeing me for what we believed was hypothyroidism, a very common and treatable health issue (but NOT easy to live with!)

I ended up spending the entire day at the hospital, arriving before breakfast and leaving at dinnertime . . . . It was a saga; blood work lost and retaken, waiting and more waiting. A friend who lives close to the hospital came to sit and wait with me and as we sat and talked outside the endocrine department, a doctor friend of hers stopped by and we met. He went in to try to expedite my appointment process and got caught up a bit on my health situation as he talked to my doctor. After a couple of hours of waiting, my blood work was finally in and I got to sit and discuss it with my doctor.

Turns out my situation is slightly more tricky than hypothyroidism – they recommended I have surgery to remove the entire gland, not as simple as usual since my thyroid is very atypical in anatomy and location.
Long story short, turns out that doctor friend of a friend that I had just met, is an ENT surgeon and the most experienced thyroid surgeon at Bethesda. My doctor paged him and he agreed to schedule my surgery, which would normally have a three month wait, for three DAYS later instead, on Tuesday of this week. He brought me for some minor procedures to help them understand my anatomy and scheduled me for my MRI and pre-op on Monday.

So! We can so clearly see God’s hand in how all this worked out. It would be tedious to write (or read) all the details of the day in this blog, but suffice it to say that there is no doubt in my mind that it was a “God-thing”. I have no opportunity to second-guess, to wonder if this is the right thing to do. God was clear. And it’s an amazing reminder that God doesn’t require my super-human efforts to accomplish things. As I sat in that doctor’s office, feeling that my concerns about my health, given my African lifestyle, were not being taken seriously; I heard God tell me ” I am your advocate, your protector, let me speak for you.” So I let go of my fear, my worry and uncertainty, and trusted God. I thought I was trusting Him in for the long haul of not feeling well and uncertain conditions of health, but turns out I’m trusting Him for surgery, recovery and a delayed return.

Either way, it works.

We’d appreciate prayer for 9 am Tuesday surgery with 1-3 nights in the hospital. It’s a significant five hour surgery involving my neck and tongue. Naomi and Quinn are fairly worried about it because, as Quinn said in his prayers tonight, “God you know we don’t really have any fun when Mom’s not home so help her to get better really quick.” So pray for them to have peace and know God’s presence with or without me.

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One of the most striking differences between most Americans and the Babwisi is our source of security.
Have you ever noticed how many layers of security lie between many Americans and trouble? We have home insurance, health insurance, car insurance, life insurance . . . Insurance for our mistakes, others’ mistakes, and catastrophes. And one of the first things we learn about what it means to be a responsible adult is that we start paying into the funds that provide security for us and our loved ones; 401ks, mortgages,college funds, disability, social security, long-term care.
I really noticed this difference a week or so ago at small group when I contrasted our sources of security to the Babwisis’, summed up in a word – relationships. In a place with no forms of insurance and where very few have even savings accounts at a bank, relationships provide all this and more . . . . As the family comes together for funerals, money is handed in to help pay for the burial costs and family care of the one who died. When a child is sick, extended family and friends pool resources to buy necessary medicine. And of course the old and those who have lost parents rely on the compassion and generosity of the family around them to care for them. Our part of Ugandan currently has no orphanages, a testament to the strong traditional families within our villages . . . Every child is cared for by someone.
I met recently with a small group of women, discussing “stuff” and our complicated lives. And I realized again how much our material possessions are a part of the form of security that we as Americans depend so much on. As we talked about simplifying our lives many of us felt compelled to hold on to our things, ” just in case . . . ” We’re holding on to baby things in case we have another, holding on to extra toys in case our children get bored one day and want them to play with, holding on to clothes that used to fit us just in case we’re that weight again someday. We hold on to things that no longer work for our lives or homes because they provide the security of a memory of a loved person, time or place. We hold on to old music that no longer works in our modern players because it reminds us of the people we used to be, that we remember fondly or perhaps with fear.
Interestingly enough, those of us who have had to get rid of all of it, or nearly all (we ourselves winnowed down to eight trunks and about twenty boxes and now realize how little of the stuff in the twenty boxes we saved we really need) – now find joy in purging even more. Two of my closest friends were raised in other cultures and came to the States as young adults, with little to their names. Now both of their homes are spare; comfortable and livable but without so many of the accoutrements that we Americans find, well, comforting. Looking around there is not so much to do in these homes. No big screen TVs with cable to watch or pool or foosball tables to fool around on. The toys are few and well-loved and perhaps there aren’t so many for the age or interest of my own children. In fact, as I think about it, there is precious little to do in these homes besides RELATE. Cooking together, eating together, talking, reading or working in the same spaces, enjoying the outdoors together, sharing the conflicts that rise out of boredom together! This is what happens in a simple home. And what is so curious for me to notice about these friends is that their urge is to GET RID OF EVEN MORE. And for me too, hence the purging of those twenty boxes to about 7 over the last and next weeks.
Now I’m not dissing insurance, or big beautiful homes. I am convicted that each of us can be convicted differently by the complex God we serve. God is often honored in abundance and in good stewardship and I am thankful for them. Both material possessions and accounts holding the solutions to someday-crisies, are meant as gifts from a Creator who knows our real joy and security will only be found in relationship with Him. Even as He showers us with good things, providing for our needs and delighting us with abundance, He longs for us to turn our eyes toward the one who “sends rain on the just and the unjust” and recognize that the gift is only a faint message from the Giver. Every single remarkable joy of our remarkable lives as blessed inhabitants of a developed country speaks of the One who holds it and us in His hands. Just as He holds in his hands each person in my small village of Bundimalinga who is the insurance, retirement, and savings account for His neighbor. And just like us, each of those neighbors’ greatest delight will be found in each other and in Him.
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The quote went like this “The cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development.”
Amazingly enough, in parts of the world like Bundibugyo, people who live on two, one or even half a dollar a day have become avid users of a technology that some say has allowed the third world to skip over the use of the PC as a development aid.
I’m sometimes embarrassed to admit that in our remote and rural part of the world, surrounded by nationals who practice polygamy and witchcraft and believe that cannibals are in their midst, we have a cell tower close enough to provide us frequent, if intermittent and unreliable, coverage. Perhaps even more surprisingly, not only do we own and use cell phones as a team, most often calling out because we are rarely able to catch each other within coverage area, locals around us also use phones. In fact, our home solar power is a coveted source of charging and unless we set some serious boundaries we often end up in an endless cycle, rotating phones through our chargers for our impoverished neighbors.
A cell phone was one of the first perks we provided to our workers, and cell phone cards holding precious minutes is one way we provide benefits. You, and we, might be tempted to think of cell phones as an unnecessary luxury for the poorest of the poor, yet cellular technology is providing an efficiency for rural Africans that is helping along important growth in deficient local economies.
Using cell phones to find the current price of cocoa beans in other parts of Uganda may someday help our local cocoa farmers to negotiate for a fairer price on the beans they sell to the local “big boss man” who exports their cocoa to the city (right now our farmers make only 1/3 of what other Ugandans make on raw, dry cocoa beans). Cell phones can also help prevent the over-supply that happens when too many Nyahuka townspeople travel to Lake Albert and bring back fresh fish for the big Saturday market. Calling to Congo, where most of our villagers travel to buy the big sacks of rice, cassava flour and beans that they resell cup-by-cup for profit could allow locals to decide whether the trip’s worth it and how far in to travel for the best deal.
Economics of business aside, quality of life issues are greatly affected by handheld technology. In Bundibugyo a bike is a status symbol, very few are lucky enough to own motorcycles and I only know one man who owns a vehicle. Though bota botas (motorcycle taxis) are everywhere, most people can’t afford to use them very often. As a result, Ugandans from the youngest school children to the oldest widows, walk many kilometers daily or weekly to get wherever they need to go, often finding out when they get there that they shouldn’t have come. A simple cell phone call can save hours of hot and tiring and barefoot travel by informing that the visitor has already left, the father has already died, or the small child has been sent to a hospital in the city because of malaria.
People come to us almost every day asking to use our phones. They come carrying some tiny slip of paper with a few numbers scribbled on it. Usually they talk about family illness and needing to find out how much money is needed to help care for the sick one far away. When I hand them the phone, most men dial away thankfully while most women hand it back sheepishly indicating they have no idea how to use it. They handle it gingerly, after I dial, as if it is alive and perhaps “white”, despite their usual physicality they don’t hold it too close to their ear. But they, like us, are soon caught up in the nearness of the voice on the other end, perhaps a familiar one, giving them the news they need so badly to hear, and I catch these same women moments later gesticulating wildly as they carry on animated discussion via the modern marvel that Jeffrey Sachs, in a recent Newsweek article, calls “transformative technology.”
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Small children of 7 or 8 carry sand, wrapped with cloth, on their backs up from the riverbank, their flexible bones bowing under the weight . . . . .
Old widows bend low under stacks of firewood perhaps 5 or 6 feet long, carried to help them earn some money or perhaps simply to have enough to cook . . . .
Motorcycles carry burdens of live chickens, perhaps twenty or so, all attached by the legs, wings waving wildly to balance over the bumps as they head to sale in the market . . . .
Girls of 14 or 15 bear swollen bellies, carrying twins gestating in utero, the first pregnancy of their early marriage, so many more pregnancies still to come . . . .
P. carries his own body as his burden, walking down the dirt roads on his hands dragging his small and withered legs beneath him and stopping to wave and beam as I pass . . . . .
Huge 4 foot long bunches of bananas, many hands together, are born on the head; Jackfruits, as big as a large watermelon, carried with the assistance of a crown of palm leaf to shield one’s skull; water in geri cans, toted from the river; safrias (saucepans) of food, stacked three high on top of A’s head, carried from her house to mine to be our dinner . . . . .
Our students at Christ School have graduated from the toils of burden bearing in the villager life. They are carrying textbooks and footballs now, preparing to carry a briefcase or stethoscope someday. But as the exterior burdens change, the inner burdens stay much the same. Witchcraft – don’t stick your neck out or stand above the crowd lest you be cursed, your kidneys eaten and your life ended. Defilement – that older man doesn’t mind paying your fees if only you’ll give him a little something in return, and since you don’t know where else you’ll find the money, perhaps you’ll take him up on it. Corruption – Christ School has helped you to have the smarts you need to do well on the exam, some of your friends aren’t so lucky and they’re willing to pay you to take it for them. Poverty – while you eat three meals a day your small siblings haven’t eaten protein this whole week, and like 60% of the kids in the district, their IQ is suffering.
Meanwhile we’re here in the States bearing a sense of burden as well. The burden of sharing well the story of the Babwisi people, of Christ School, and of the radical change God has made in our lives. The burden of the responsibility of the school, soon falling on our shoulders; the care of 350 students, 25 Ugandan staff and their families – all in all almost 400 people living on campus and reliant on us for shelter, food, and safety. In an area where simple things like water, mattresses, and medicine aren’t always easy to come by, it’s stressful. And when you add being aware of rebel activity for quick evacuation should the need arise ( schools are a target because they are an easy place to find new soldiers and wives), we feel a whole new level of weight. Most of all right now, the weight of fund raising. So little money could do so much, yet it’s God who has to move hearts to give it.
A week ago, a seasoned West African missionary laid hands on us and prayed “come to Me all you who are weary and burdened”. For me it was a moment of the dam breaking, tears flooding out and a release as God spoke into my heart showing me that I am just like those widows bent under their wood, just like those children bent under their sand. I am bent, in pain, struggling sometimes to breath from the load I have taken on.
The verse goes on to say ” I will give you rest because my burden is light.” The Message (a Bible paraphrase) says, learn from me the rhythms of grace. I like that, but I’m struggling to do it. Struggling because instead of feeling that weight and stopping to ask God what I have added that has made what should be light feel so heavy, I’m instead using sheer willpower and determination to hoist it little by little farther and more securely onto my back. Like Pilgrim from Pilgrim’s Progress, my burden is so attached to me I mostly don’t even notice it, and merely readjust it by habit.
Would you pray for me, for us, to be constantly reminded of that God’s burden for us is easy and light and that when it feels overwhelming we’re not depending on Him. Would you pray that we would be visually reminded of the people in Bundibugyo and our desire to release them from the suffering of their burdens and know that God also wants to release us from ours.
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