Last week I read a brief excerpt that talked about a short term evangelism group that had gone out to South America. After a few weeks there, they came back with news for their supporters that over 900 people had made a decision for the gospel while they were there. My first reaction is – WOW! My second reaction is – wait a minute, are we sure?? And my third of course is to feel not enough, to wish that I had numbers to speak of, however I may be skeptical of them when spoken by others.

Reading Frederick Beuchner’s ” Telling the Truth: the Gospel as tragedy, comedy and fairy tale” has been a reminding. The Gospel is good news, it is the good news of a fairy tale. But before the gospel can be a fairy tale, it is first tragedy and comedy. He talks about the moment of silence, when the preacher comes up to the pulpit and the congregation awaits his words. In that moment, he says, the stones cry out. There are no answers, only questions, the silence speaks Gospel in tragedy. And this is what he says of, or to, the preacher . . . And to us:

“Let him tell them the truth. Before the Gospel is a word, it is silence. It is the silence of their own lives and of his life. It is life with the sound turned off so that for a moment or two you can experience it not in terms of the words you make it bearable by but for the unutterable mystery that it it. Let him say, ‘ be silent and know that I am God, says the Lord’. Be silent and know that even by my silence and absence I am known Be silent and listen to the stones cry out.. . . . . Out of the silence let the only real news come, which is sad news before it is glad news and that is fairy tale last of all. . . . . None of us is very good at silence so let us also use words. But words which do not only try to give answers to the questions which we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking and to hear the silence that those questions rise out of and the silence that is the answer to those questions. Drawing on nothing fancier than the poetry of life, let (us) use words and images that help make the surface of our lives transparent to the truth that lies deep within them, which is the wordless truth of who we are and who God is the Gospel of our meeting.”

I am struck by the thought that mercy ministry, holistic ministry is a way of speaking silence as Gospel. We don’t come first with good news, though perhaps many think we should and sometimes indeed we feel led to do so. We come first in the tragedy where the stones cry out amidst the voices of suffering. I awoke this morning to loud wailing from beyond our walls. The sound of death alluded to after the final plague – a mother mourning. The wailing was loud in the silence of the night, and louder still our questions and the God who alone can answer them. Someone has died and the Gospel is also hidden there, in death, in wailing, in hopeless mourning where no answers are spoken. To live in the third world doing mercy ministry is to acknowledge that we believe in a God who we have not pinned down and who does not always respond as we wish He would. As Jesus wept in the garden after the death of Lazarus, not just the tears of a friend but the tears of “why God.” God is big enough, strong enough, so WHY?

Buechner goes on to say ” . . .to be relevant to the staggering problems of history is to risk being irrelevant to the staggering problems of the ones who sit listening out of their own histories. To deal with the problems to which there is a possible solution can be a way of avoiding the problems to which humanly speaking there is no solution.”

Perhaps mercy ministry can also be too many words spoken into silence. An avoidance to face the bigger problems as we focus on those most fixable. But one day in the pediatric ward and one week spent with students and one night in the home of a mother with AIDs will tell you that for even these things which we have training and experience to face, we feel mostly impotent.

Silence is the Gospel. The silence of sitting beside the body of the dead child and beside the mother whose tears have been cried out. No ” Jesus loves you” can suffice here. The silence of acknowledging rape or incest in the life of a young girl, which no words of hope can erase. The silence of giving the death sentence which is HIV to a strong young man or to his small child. We do bring good news, a veritable fairy tale where the weak are made strong and the maimed made whole; yet first there is the sadness of the why and the silence of questions. I suspect there are many here for whom that silence has spoken poignant truths. I suspect women, dying alone, in the suffering of end-stage, have remembered Pat’s silence, her tears. And in their own silence, believed.

David and I visited our first orphanage on Friday. Sanyu Babies Home is probably the highest visibility orphanage in Kampala. They are located very close to the center of town and their sign says “orphaned, abandoned, destitute – we take all babies”. Speaking to someone during our visit, we heard the sad stories of how babies end up in Sanyu. They are brought by police officers or citizens who find them thrown under bushes in the taxi park, many are found in rubbish bins, others in pit latrines. One picture of a sweetly grinning two year old said ” ‘A’ was found by the side of a busy road in a black plastic bag with his cord still uncut.” Many of the babies are brought in severely malnourished or dehydrated and require short hospitalizations for stabilization.

Sanyu was filled not only with babies but with volunteers from around the world who were loving on the kids. I tried not to look too hard at any of the baby’s faces so that I wouldn’t fall in love, in fact I totally avoided looking into their faces, except for the sweet one who came running up to grab my hand and say “come!” as I came in. And the little two month old who chortled and beamed into my eyes as I rubbed her tummy when I passed. That one was a keeper – the problem was, they all are.

It was a great time for David and I to recognize the concreteness of the need of homes for these children although our personal dream of adopting still feels abstract; clearly this is reality for these kids. It’s strange that we never began our journey towards adoption by thinking of the need, but only thinking of our own desires. Yet our desires and the needs of the world ARE intersecting.

This week Quinn has been having nightmares about bacteria (do we really talk about it that much?!) and Naomi asked us yesterday to please “not talk about money while I’m on vacation, it’s so stressful!” Meanwhile, I am doing the classic missionary questioning of our calling: “did I really sign on for this? Why? Did God trick me?”

Taking on Christ School has been the acquisition of a surprisingly endless vacuum of need. Not only money but people and facilities and animals and crops and furniture and a small school clinic and feeding, etc! Over the last few months we have fallen deeper into the hole of meeting those needs. In response; we love our work, we love our life here, but enough is enough is enough – and 24/7 months on end feels like enough.

I have been asking some hard questions of myself, God and a few others I trust. All callings require some death. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to others. In particular, the missionary life is synonymous with the giving up . . . . Giving up close access to family, to security, to the accoutrements of American life. But where do we draw the line? What is enough to give up? How do we make choices to balance our needs and wants for more children or more education or more time together with the needs of the ministry God has called us to? How do we stay healthy enough to live here well; truly able to help people and not just barely surviving? How do we know what we are called to, specifically, and which things we choose to say no to because of our already full load?

It’s easy to get caught up in the vicious cycle of hopeless busyness. We signed on for this, we are called to this, so we must live like this.
But I am reminded that hope is a verb; something we actively live out. We choose to live with hope. We decide to make life choices that will respect and honor not only our ministries and the people we are called to serve but also ourselves and our families. We choose to life full and whole lives, not lives on the margin, lives of desperation and chaos and fear. Proverbs says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Waiting for the someday when life will become calmer, when the school will feel more under control can be prudent but it can also be a deferring of the hope I choose to live with today.

How does all this fit together? What does it mean? I don’t have a lot of answers yet but I am thankful for David and I together, discussing these things. I am thankful that we are in the same place with our concerns and our dreams for the future. That we both love this ministry and our family and are unwilling to sacrifice either. God has good plans for us and for our students and staff. We trust that as we prayerfully look for his leading, He is going to show us the way forward. Hope is a verb; He is the one who will complete this work in and through us.

But what does this look like? Ah, that is, as they say, the biggest question. It looks different for each of us, different for times and different for places. It means not memorializing or making sacred that which we have decided before. It means being willing to let fresh winds from the Holy Spirit blow through our lives. It means taking another hard look at the life of Jesus and asking Him how to incarnate God here in Bundibugyo with OUR lives.

We will move forward, day by day, choosing hope and freedom over resignation and fear. Asking God to show us what that looks like for each of the 400 in our care and for ourselves and our precious children. And we believe IN FAITH that He will provide a way of escape – a way not out, but through.

We’ve been in the city since Saturday evening; feeling the highs and lows of enjoying the good life while realizing that it’s not all you imagine it to be while you’re in the jungle. Saddest of all, for me, is the lack of good internet connection this time round – one of my top reasons for coming to Kampala is to research things long overdue (by internet), download new songs, and get online chats with friends . . . .I’m frustrated that none of that has been able to happen.
But in the meantime we have been enjoying great food; Chinese and Lebanese, for example. And David has begun the endless errands of Kampala. Making relationships at the Ministry of Education has been particularly important, though replacing shredded tires and buying groceries are high up there too! Naomi got her chipped tooth fixed, beautifully, by a Canadian dentist that has been in Uganda since before I was born. God provides amazingly. I will post pictures of her new face; she is so happy, the big gap in her mouth was really bothering her.
I am also doing a lot of reading and thinking. I just finished the book on contemplative ministry by Mark Yaconelli and wonder ” how can we apply that here?” Things always look simple in theory but complicated in application, especially against cultural norms. I am also reading several books about feminism, women, and the failures of the church. All of this is simmering around as I contemplate how to encourage our Ugandan women and girls through the muck and mire of valuing themselves, seeing God’s value for them, and living with unfair assessments and treatments by the men and often the churches, around them.

The highlight of my time here has been a wonderful conversation with my good friend, Dana, catching up on the news of her three little ones and sharing my own life. We just passed the two year anniversary of our entrance to missionary life, to Ugandan life. I realize that in some ways I feel ready to be done, instead of to be just beginning. I am sad how much of my relationships at home I am missing. Sad that two of my best friends babies are growing fast without my hugs. Sad that I am not there to see the gestation of my longest friend, to see her glow, in person. And aware that I am not cultivating these friendships well, that I am having trouble loving people well across the miles and that perhaps I risk losing some of what I hold most dear because of my life here.

And even here, relationships are hard in these conditions, as they are hard, always! Pray particularly this week for David and I to love each other well despite all the stresses. Pray for good times of talking and hearing each other, of truly being present to our children, of loving into our extended family and friends who are so sorely neglected by us. Most of all, of course, that we would be available to our Lover who longs to meet with us and to heal and help our hearts.

Scott and Jennifer toasted us last week; here’s to the survival of your first term leading CSB alone. More than that, here’s to the survival of a crazy term 2 – the term which seems to have a habit of bringing violence at schools. We said a hearty, Amen.
In Term 1 (January to April) we, as a school, are all getting settled. It’s a new year with new classes and teachers and students are finding their pace, figuring out their schedules, making new friends and reacquainting with the old. Term 1 is also football season and the weekends are full of spectating and cheering and generally letting off steam. In term 3 (September to December) everyone is buckling down to serious study, disciplining themselves for those fearful and all-important end of year exams. Term 3 is short because of the national exams, and carries huge academic weight in students minds; it’s the cramming term.

But term 2 (May to August) . . . . It’s a term for discontent and distraction and disturbance. Students realizing all they lack and teachers realizing how ill-equipped we are to meet all the needs. Students need families – and families are absent and often ineffective. Students are teenagers craving relationship and the release of their hormonal urges; yet sexuality is rife with danger. They crave movement, action and the pushing of new ideas but they are within fences, held by class schedules and curfews and the restrictions of meal lines for every bite to eat. It’s a hard life for kids; and it’s hard for us staff, too. Boarding school doesn’t seem a natural environment for growing up. And Uganda doesn’t encourage exploration or independence or the valuing of uniqueness or new ideas or rebellion; all natural phases of growing up.

Of course we know why they’re here; here in this unnatural boarding school environment. They’re here to learn enough to pass national exams and have a hope of higher education. They’re here to learn that Jesus loves them and that He invites them into His family. They’re here to gain weight and increase hemoglobin through good feeding. They’re here to learn to speak and read fluent English. They’re here to learn to gain through service and to bring the Kingdom to others. They’re here to play sports and discover how amazingly their bodies can work. But it’s a challenge; for them, and for us.

So, last Friday students packed up and headed home. We were woken by happy singing in the morning, the singing of kids who are leaving school. Sort of disappointing to realize how happy they are to be going home, but also a dose of reality. School life, no matter how well-intentioned, does not replace family, community and freedom – no matter how lacking those things are for these kids.

Campus is empty now, except for our staff who are furiously marking papers and entering grades for report cards. Everyone is dressed in smart casual clothing and radios blare in the staff room – we are relaxed without the kids around. I commented to David how running a school feels almost ideal without students to worry about!!! David and I are trying to dig into the big picture, talks with staff and starting more projects. Thinking about things that daily life is often too busy for.

Next week we take off for a working week in Kampala; doing errands, using internet to explore new options for home and work and generally having a restful, caring environment to brainstorm and plan. Meanwhile 1/4 of our student body will come back on Monday to begin the Candidates Camp – three weeks of intensive study for those students who will sit for their national exams. One thing has ended, the next will quickly begin. I like the cycle but I crave balance in our family and home life and ministry life. We’d appreciate your prayers that we’d love each other well, that our kids would feel their value despite busyiness and that we would pull CSB staff together as a team; all the while taking care of the mundane and extraordinary daily details. It feels like a lot to juggle. So perhaps God has new things to show us, new ways to let go and let Him or to relax our standards for ourselves or others. Pray that we would give Him the time to speak and ourselves the time to listen.

I’m reading Contemplative Youth Ministry and thinking deeply about what it means to love the kids in our school, to love people . . . And to be loved. Unavoidably, inescapably, these thoughts bring us back to experiencing the love and presence of God. We can’t help others to experience Him if we ourselves aren’t touched by His presence.

I’ve been thinking about this within the context of marriage. Since I am reading through Captivating with my book study group, I have noticing the universality of a woman’s desire to be pursued, noticed, desired, CONSIDERED. That last word is one I had not thought much of before. It’s true though, we want to be considered. We want to be noticed and to be noticed with thoughtful regard. Perhaps this is really true of all people, but women’s needs are more acutely felt and expressed in this regard. I know I need that and a lack of consideration is an easy way for me to felt hurt, unknown and unloved.

One practice Contemplative Ministry discusses is the Lectio Divina – an ancient practice of meditation and reflection using Biblical words as a starting point. The other day I began my morning by using Psalm 90 for the lectio – I have been finding it difficult to wake early these mornings and often don’t get time alone with God, yet I am clearly thirsting for him, I need His presence and His comfort. Lectio is so simple as it requires reading a short passage three times and then waiting for God to reveal personal truth from the passage. It is not study or exegesis or passionate prayer, it is a showing up.

The verse God showed me from Psalm 90 was this, as read in the The Message: “awaken me with your love in the morning, then I will sing and dance all day long.” I felt God was calling me to time with him, calling me to awake each morning, to spend time in his presence, to reap the joy of being close with him. He was asking me to consider Him, much like women world-round call for their husbands to consider them. Today I read another quote, “God is right there, it is YOU who have gone for a long walk.” And Psalm 22 says (in the Message) “He has never wandered off to do his own thing; He has been right there, listening.”

While I wish that God was more connected with me, that He spoke more quickly and clearly to my heart, that we were working more hand-in-hand; God is asking me to spend time with him, to acknowledge and enjoy His presence, to consider him. He doesn’t ask out of an incompleteness in Himself, yet somehow He is completed by relationship, something like we are. I wish for God not to be distant, and He wishes that I would make time to hear His heart and to pour out mine. Sounds a lot like the universal withes of women within marriage!

My heart is thirsty yet I drink from cracked cisterns, from pots whose water is ever-flowing away. God calls me to drink His water of life and I complain that I can’t hear him, can’t see him, don’t know how to find him. Just show up, He asks, much like I ask my husband to sit and talk with me. Wait in my presence, enjoy just being with me, then My heart will become clear and we will walk hand in hand, He says.

And what joy that will be – the slaking of a deep, dry thirst.

Adoption has been a life-long dream. And since Naomi was an infant in my arms I have had the distinct understanding that someday I will adopt two dark skinned children, that their lives and ours are inextricably linked. That I am waiting to step into this destiny. I have been sure for the last eight years that those two children will come to me; that they were designed from before the beginning of time to be carried in the womb of one mother and walked through much of life by another. Someday, I believe, I will receive into my arms the treasures of a woman’s heart, her very lifeblood in the form of two small and fearful children. And for the rest of time, they will carry my heart around in their growing bodies, opening me to new fears and joys, pain and delight. Giving me more heartache and happiness than I dare to imagine.

Over the last few weeks I have had a growing sense that my children are coming “soon.” Soon is a relative term when you have been waiting eight years. I would need sure signs from God to bring new children into our family during this time of transition and instability. I would need permission from our mission agency too. All I know though, is that none of this is mine to fix or figure or find solutions to. He brought us here to Christ School as part of our journey, if His plans for us include two adopted children, He will bring them to us and work out the details too. The journey can include whatever He wants it to. New adopted children may give us longevity here or a shortened stay. If it’s part of the journey He’s called us to; it’s all good.

It’s the oddest sense, though, to be cleaning and sorting a room and to suddenly know that you’re preparing for THEM. To suddenly be surprised by the realization that it seems He may be preparing our home for new little ones. Reading this week through a book about international cultures of childrearing, about parenting around the world, I found a beautiful quote that only increased my longing for these someday-maybe-if-He-wishes children of my heart:

Did they say you were born during hard times? When there was famine drought war disease?
When they had no wealth, no food, no medicines? Did they say you arrived during good times? In a world of calm and abundance? Did they protect you? Abandon you? Embrace you? Neglect you? Cherish you beyond measure?
I hope someday to cherish beyond measure not only my current two amazing children, but two more. Would you pray with us for God’s leading and for our heart-children to find their way home in His perfect timing.

Hospitals take away much of our identity, some of our dignity, some of our humanity. Last year I submitted to a six hour surgery on my thyroid and tongue, removing tissue, cysts, bone and cartilage . . . Removing something that had never formed quite right in-utero, something that had given me ten years of difficult health.

Walking into the hospital that morning, stomach empty, I remember having the rest of my identity emptied too. Wear this gown, they said, put your clothes and shoes into this locker. Take out your earrings and take off your rings, send them with your husband. Lay on this gurney amidst a sea of other pre-surgery faces. Your husband can’t come any farther now. And so I journied forward, without a clue of myself, not a shred of my own clothing, nor an id, and trusted myself into the hands of masked and robed strangers who told me I would be okay. A cold room filled with cold and serious hands, a warm blanket given with compassion. A large needle in the arm and a few moments of sleepy fearfulness, then nothing.

I awake to the sound of hoarse animal crying, to an insistent beeping and bright, bright lights. I struggle and meet the resistance of endless lines wrapping this way and that around my body. Six hands push me back towards the bed, soft voices quiet me. It is then that I realize that the animal sound is mine own, the pain is my own; I can not move, I hurt and I am afraid. I am not free to pee or cough or speak. No words can come, only the hoarse cry. I know no one around me, for the masked and gowned are a different set than those who prepared me. Yet I somehow feel less afraid when I realize that three nurses are watching me. Maybe I am sicker than I realized; why are so many with me? But they give me peace.

Over the next day I navigate relatively quickly to an improvement in health and independence. I walk, supported, to the bathroom within a few hours though I nearly fall and am supported by the kind hands of one of my helpers as I complete the most ordinary and personal of tasks. I learn that they have removed something that they did not recognize but worry may be an essential calcium-regulating node. They are watching to see if I will plummet, if I will need calcium regulation multiple times a day for the rest of my life.

Since the back of my tongue has been cut out and the remainder reattached, it hurts to swallow, to breath, to try to talk, to cry. Drugs from the anesthesia have hit me hard anyway and I sleep and sleep and sleep. David appears shortly at my bedside and I hardly seem to care. I care about drugs that ease the pain in my throat and mouth, I care about soft hands that turn my body and readjust my wires, I care about the smooth straw in my mouth delivering heavenly cold liquid into the fire in my throat.

I woke up today remembering this helplessness. Remembering that I didn’t have a voice to speak my pain or my thoughts. Remembering how hard it was over the next few weeks to think about typing anything to express it either. I was able to move into and out of that experience with a fearful, quiet, confidence because I was convinced that God had planned it, had found my surgeon and led me to him, had given me this chance. I trusted that His plans were good and I was not disappointed. My surgeon wrote to me this week and I was reminded of the miracle that God did through him. Sheer miracle. The best thyroid surgeon in the Navy, the very man who would operate on the president himself, should he need this surgery. God provided him for me and gave me a chance to share God’s heart for him, too. The day I met him he briefly introduced himself, suggested that he do my surgery in the next two days (despite normal delays of one or two months), then sprayed a numbing spray in the back of my mouth and inserted a wide and long tube down my throat to look at my internal neck structures. It’s hard to swallow when the back of your throat is paralyzed; I was afraid but I trusted him, I trusted the One who had led me to him. I felt alone but I knew my very being there was a sign that I was so not alone, He was with me.

We are journiers . . . .we work so hard to maintain control, to limit pain of heart and body, to stay where we feel called to be, to help. We feel competent, we work hard, we improve ourselves and deal with our issues, we try to parent better than we were parented and to carry on relationships that don’t contain the same traps that our friends’ relationships do.

It’s an illusion. A thrashing, crying body clothed in hospital blue surrounded not by those we know and love and trust but by others who are equipped to help us. I am not competent here, not working through anything but my own pain. He’s the one who’s holding me, who has surrounded me with pain experts and readers of noisy machines. He’s the one who gives me pureed food to eat and allows me to enjoy nothing better than the feeling of softness in my throat. I am a journier; afraid to lose control, afraid to not have the answers. But sometimes it’s in being flawed, in needing help, that we will finally find His comfort. Cry out, for your God hears you. He will respond, He will answer, and do great and marvelous things which we can not understand. Cry out for your Redeemer hears you; He will redeem you, He will buy you back. He will hear your heart’s cry and He will answer. He will show you your worth and the limitlessness of value. He will comfort you with his tender voice and soothing hands . . . He will give you Peace.