Arthropods in Africa

When it is time to go to Africa, the one thing that creeps me out is the bugs. Spiders, centipedes, scorpions, mosquitoes that carry death, beetles that are the size of your hand and have vocal cords (I have heard some of them scream)... When I am here, thinking of there, the bugs scare me. There is a part of me that knows that they will find ways to invade my house and my space, and that I will have to come face to face with them. From a distance, I am afraid of the bugs in Africa.

There, it is different. When I am face to face with them, the time to be afraid is past. When a scorpion (or several) have invaded my tent, and I am searching them out in the black of night with a headlamp to make sure my sleeping space is secure, sandal in hand to crush them, it is too late to be afraid. The only way I can secure my house is to not act out of fear.

Recently I was faced with an equivilant to an African arthropod. At the thought of it, I was afraid. I imagined what it could do to me, how it would affect my future, why it had come. From a distance, it made me afraid. For several days I dreaded it in a deep place; the thought of it made me ill; I was robbed of joy. And yesterday, that thing came. With the derailment of all the plans I have made as of late, the time to be afraid was over.

I don't think that arthopods in Africa and facing fear in life is a perfect analogy. If it was, I would break down every aspect of it with a cheezy line of peppy encouragement. But, that's not how I roll. In a nutshell:
Bugs gross me out.
I don't get God when I think about them.
Unwelcome, they invade anyway, and living in fear is incompatible with contentment and joy...

So I don't know if you have a scorpion in your house tonight, or maybe one at the door. Here's a secret: people dealing with bugs are under grace to deal with them. A dear friend prayed when I went that I would find wonder and not fear in all of the critters. That prayer stood firm, and I believe that is possible with figurative arthropods too. Another dear friend, who radiates life and beauty, has her own deep reasons to be afraid. But today as we shared truth and raw and real about the arthropods in our lives, she posed the question a step further ... What if we were to embrace arthropods, like Both Paul and James suggest. What if they are a gift that brings life?

Another secret is that everyone who has ever really had impending suffering - even Jesus - begged that it would not come. The third secret of the night, is that despite how you are feeling as you read this, when the invader gets in your house, you will be more ready to deal with it than you are now. You are being made ready. You are going to be ok. And I have decided that I am too.

 

Birthday Cake

I thought about you all day today; from the moment I woke up til the moment I went to bed. Actually, for days and days I've been thinking about today and thinking about you. Not that that is anything new, you run through my head all the time and the things I want to share with you. Things you'd find funny, like inside jokes that there is no one to tell anymore.  Sometimes I try to tell other people but they never really get it.  But hey, there is no one else whose name was my first word and the subject of my first sentance, so I forgive them. How could they possibly get it?!?!?

It's funny (peculiar, not haha) when a day just isn't a celebration anymore. A day of phone calls and well wishes and thoughts and milestones becomes dreaded. Silent. Almost overwhelming. The conversation I have with myself every day - wondering if you are really gone - lets the disbelieving voice be especially convincing today. Not possible, right? At least 3 times I traced the pattern of your number on my phone and wished that dialing would prove truth wrong. Because I am healing and therefore not totally crazy (though I get how it happens), reality sets in with its force and the debate stops. The loss of you always saturates me and every part of my life, but it is the moments at the end of the debate that it hits me the most. Waking up from a dream, shaken into reality, hard to breathe.

But this post isn't about me, it's about what happened today, and it's about you. Today after bootcamp, a stranger said "It's our little girl's first birthday today, and we brought cake. Did you want some?" "Hey", I said, "It's my brother's birthday today too!" They're strangers so I can say stuff like that and they don't get all awkward and fidgity, which is nice. So this is what I did. I ate that little girl's cake, but I pretended it was yours.  I celebrated you.

  For the first time in a while I remembered that you being gone is not the most important thing; the most important thing is that you were here. Your life was too short... like an adventurous, unique, funny, love-and-know-me-like-no-one-else, nature loving, brilliant book with a terrible and untimely ending... A loved, dog earred, familiar book that I will treasure in the deepest part of my heart until the end of time. Though I lament that others cannot read you themselves and you have become a story, today is not for wishing. Today is for being thankful for what I had. You; my brother and my best friend. If I thought words would convey you, I  would type volumes trying to explain what the world has lost... But I don't think they'd get it.

PS: Readers feel free to leave a memory, if you so desire!

A Future and a Hope

I was leaving a friend's house late one evening last week when I saw her in the lobby. A tall, dark-haired, beautiful woman in her mid-40's, crying softly as she sat on the bench. When she saw me she tried to conceal her tears.

For a minute I stood and felt a little awkward. Fiddled with my phone. Thought about what to do. Prayed for wisdom.

So tentatively I asked her (not wanting to be intrusive) "it's clear you're not ok, but is there anything I can do?"

She shrugged. "How could you possibly help?" Is what I imagined was going through her head. But I asked again.

"Do you just need a stranger to vent to about whatever is going on?"

She made eye contact and moved over on the bench, giving me room. As I sat next to her and we exchanged first names, she asked me only one question in an accented voice: "Do you know what pain is?" I said I did, but did not elaborate. That is all she knows about any of my story.

As she shared hers, of abuse and betrayal and of dreams that died, for a moment we were close friends. She had now found a man who was good, and she was afraid to love him; afraid of what betrayal of love can do. She knows first hand the consequences. Every day she went to church to ask God for clarity. She trusted that He would answer her.

I prayed for her outside before I left, as she savoured a cigarette with her head bowed. Then unprompted she prayed for me too, and said a blessing over me. Then she grabbed my shoulders and looked me squarely in the eye and said emphatically "You need to know that everything's going to be ok. Things will be just fine again".

Now you need to know, in the last 6 months, I have been asking God to tell me that things will be ok again, someday. I don't know if I believe that yet, everything is still just too raw. And had anyone who knew me even suggested words like "fine" or "ok" I would have scoffed at them in my heart even if my lips agreed. What does anyone know of fine or ok who has lost what I have lost?

But from this stranger, her words spoke straight to my heart. She had been given a message to pass on to me, whether she knew that or not. It's hard to say if I believe it yet... But I have hope that someday I will.

So I don't know if I have ever seen an angel, but if I have, she is a tall dark haired woman who hails from another country, smokes cigarettes, and has been broken by pain. And from that place she has reminded me of a promise of a future and a hope.

Making History

It is referendum week in Sudan from January 9th to 15th. The Southerners are voting to determine if Africa's largest nation will remain one or divide into two. Please pray for the decision of the people to be held on both sides of the border, and that peace will prevail for all of Sudan's people. The results of the vote are set to be announced sometime early February.

The wind and the waves

I was in Victoria this last week, and one morning run took me down a cement barge and down to the lighthouse. The wind was strong that day, and waves crashed into the barrier and sent spray up and over the edge. One one side the sea raged, on the other the harbour was calm. Few of us made it to the end, and those who did arrived soaking wet.
The next day, my mom and I tried it again. But that day, the winds were even stronger. The waves were even higher. The danger was even greater. We were saturated by the waves, and battered by the winds. We did not make it all the way to the lighthouse. In consideration of safety, we had to turn back. I saw no one make it to the lighthouse that day.
It struck me, as we were heading back into the howling wind, fighting to stay on course, that sometimes, the only way to stay upright and on course is to walk into the storm. Thus far, it is a literal observation, but I am filing it away for when I will need it figuratively.

Painkillers

Painkillers are standard fare when a person becomes a palliative care patient. The number one priority in end of life care is to keep that person free of physical pain. Around the clock, the medicine does its job; though it doesn't stop the pain from actually occurring, it does stop the brain's ability to recognize that pain. There are other benefits that the drugs provide. In post-operative care, providing pain control theoretically helps a body to recover more quickly. And, for any paitient, being pain free helps to improve a person's sense of their quality of life and in doing so can provide people with mental strength as well. In some cases, a dying person regains resolve and a will to live.

With all the benefits, there are also risks. Pain killers slow down metabolisms, making it difficult for the body to rid itself of waste, and also allowing the medication to build itself up in the body. This means that blood levels must be monitored, as too much can lead to overdose and death. "What does that matter to a dying person?", you may ask. Well, a lot of dying people don't want to die, they just want to be pain free, and to live in that state as long as they can. Painkillers also slow down the Central Nervous System, which slows heart rate and breathing rates, cause fatigue, may cause hallucinations, and can also slow down thought processing. Emotions become numb. So though the benefits can be great, so can be the risks.

But, as we know, there are different kinds of pain. Pain of the heart and mind does not find relief from painkillers**, though addictions to them may mask the symptoms. Many painkillers of this kind are not pharmaceutical at all, but are behaviours and habits one has acquired to block out pain. Examples of such are getting submerged in work and other obligations; countless hours of television, video games, reading, or internet; withdrawing from life; over-participating in life; food addictions; emotional numbness; emotional walls; and an overemphasis of trying to just be "normal". Dealing with it and moving on, but skipping the deal with it part.

Sometimes these mechanisms are used to pass a little time. Then, when the wound isn't so fresh, we can go back and attend to it. But often this is not the intent. Often we kill pain with the hope that it will go away permanently and we will never have to experience it again. The problem is that no matter how many pretty flowers and new sod we put on top of that churned up dirt, roots of old will poke through somewhere, sometime, somehow.

There are too many kinds of pain, and too many kinds of possibilities of what that pain can do to go into things. I am not a pain expert, though I have great experience in certain kinds. But it really struck me how it is such a goal of our culture to be "pain free". Is there such a thing? Is it a healthy thing if it is? And is pain really the worst thing in the world, when in its terrible way it is a direct side effect of love lost? I am going to be bold enough to suggest that happiness is not just an absence of pain, as I'm sure joy is not. It bubbles from a different place. But in choosing to feel at all, in wanting to feel all the good that we sometimes so desperately must, it is impossible to block out the sorrow that rushes from underground.

In summary, if I choose to experience life, I must let myself feel. Painkillers are not meant to be permanent for someone who has a lot of living left to do. If I let myself feel, I can't control what I get to feel. There are some deep rivers of sorrow under the same ground that the springs of delight bubble up from. If I numb myself from the pain, I numb myself from all of that too. Part of healing is hurting. Sometimes a deeper hurt that I would have ever thought was possible a few months ago. I would give or do anything I can think of if it was possible to return what I have lost. But since I can't, I must learn to love life without him. And so I must feel, and so I must hurt. And so I must heal.

**(Please note some illnesses, like depression and bipolar disorder for example, can respond to anti-depressant medications enough to evert crisis and give an individual a chance at wellness. If you may have one of these illnesses, please give it a shot. You've got a lot to lose).

Some highlights of the days

Though I've been out of Doroji 6 weeks and out of Africa over a month, tonight - as I often do - I'm thinking about it. So here are some of the memories that are surfacing. By no means is it a complete list.

Laughter:
- Watching our adult male students act out the part of the mother during the childbirth classes - complete with sound effects! Oh the days I wish my camera was in class :) This is only one of many reasons that I loved being in class every day.
- Ridiculous laughter over language and culture with a friend while on vacation in Kurmuk. Good for the soul :)

Wildest missions:
- Being a part of a rescue effort when one of our team members lost their phone... in the latrine. Check out Amelia Jane's "crap phone" post for more details.
- Shoveling dirt and gravel and being a wheelbarrow mama. Being complemented for my efforts like this "you're like a man". Ummm... thanks?

Favourite Journeys:
- Heading out to Gasmala with Kata. Hanging out with the women there and reuniting with old friends. Even sleeping in the goat pee bed.
- Going on outreach with the guys. Love the conversations we could have while walking together. Love the adventure of trekking through the bush. Love watching them grow with each time we went out.
- Vacationing in Kurmuk to reunite with friends I hadn't seen for 11 years, and the love and fellowship we shared that week.

Favourite TV show
- Definitely the "Scottish Hour" over lunch for those few weeks in June/July. It could be prime time programming. Can I just say that 6 Scots in one place is really fun to watch. Witty banter galore.

Favourite Food
- Anything with K3. Can I just say - you guys are the bomb! Foundation and Development, Julie Cakes, P-31, and Kev (why didn't you get a nickname?). I'd eat dinner with you guys any day of the week. Hey wait - we did that! Inside and outside of the kitchen, I miss you loads. The atmosphere, the candles, the creativity, and even Sudan's greatest playlist on ipod. Sensational.
- And - I really like Sudanese food too. A lot. I especially like the fellowship and the unity that takes place around sharing a table. I miss sorghum. And coffee.

Remembering the deepest parts of mankind.
- Faith and love are deeper than culture. Take my word for it; they just are.

Favourite Sport to watch.
- CHW vs. Khawadjia football (soccer) match. Maybe my favourite sport to watch ever. Remind me, who won again? Oh, yeah ;) GO CHW's GO! From then until forever, I pray that you will play your best and work together and go strong. GO CHW's GO!
- And I really enjoyed watching World Cup Soccer in Bunj. I was going to tell someone about it today, but felt like it would be bragging. Seriously, how cool is that?

Favourite critter stories:
- The 4 scorpions in one night with Jo. We tag teamed that pretty good, I'd say.
- "Cake! Cake! Cake!"
- The narrow miss with the night adder.
- Finding wild... hedgehogs. One was stuck in a bag of coconut and his quills wouldn't let him pull himself back out. It got rescued.

Favourite Routine things I don't do here:
- Bucket shower under the stars. Sigh. It's fantastic.
- Floss my teeth outside under a multitude of stars.
- Take 3 hours to make dinner.

There's so much more, but it's time for bed now. It's good to remember; I don't want to forget.