How do you look someone, who doesn’t have enough food, in the eyes? You don’t. Or at least, most people don’t. At home, we usually walk by people who don’t have enough. We tuck our head low, stare at the ground, and walk right past them. Rarely would we ever stare them in the eyes. At least not for an extended amount of time like I have this year.
We have built a home for a family that consists of Myra and her two daughters. Before this new humble home was built for them, they were living in a shack made of sugarcane straw and big black tarps. Over the course of the month, we helped to build and paint this house. We would spend many mornings or afternoons working on this house, talking with Myra and her oldest daughter Jocelyn, and loving on little three year old, Wendy.
Myra’s situation is not very different from many others in Nicaragua, but it is difficult nonetheless. She works seasonly in the fields, the same fields that are killing off more than half of the men here as a result of a kidney disease. She works seasonly and works 12 hour shifts, one week during the day, the next week during the night. When she is working, she doesn’t get any days off. But then, other seasons, her job simply doesn’t need her, and she is left struggling to find work to purchase food for her family.
There was one day while we were painting her house, that we were talking about this again. Myra was going to get her blood tested and do paperwork to go back to work. She was excited to be working because it meant she would be able to have a good meal for Mother’s Day. My heart was struck with her situation. I felt so heavy for the reality of it. All the things that she has to worry about, look so differently than the things I worry about. I have gone to my Aunt’s house every year on Mother’s Day, and there has been nothing short of a delicious and plentiful meal. My life looks so different than Myra’s. I can be here and I can come and see, but I will never completely understand.
I spend my days worrying about what I look like, will I be comfortable sitting in the back of the truck, does my hair still look okay. I worry about eating too much and gaining weight, while this mother is just wondering where her next meal will come from. When I travel, I have my giant pack full of really expensive well-made equipment, like my sleeping bag that is high-tec and basically made for any type of weather, and always checking to make sure I still have my iphone because heaven forbid I don’t have music to listen to. My heart breaks. Why does my situation have to look so different from Myra’s? I left her house that day with a little bit of crying and a broken heart. I wondered where God was.
The situation went from bad to worse. A few days later, we went to see Myra in the village again. The work that she was excited about beginning because it meant food on the table, fell through. They told her they have enough workers and that they didn’t need her. I was stunned. I had been praying for her these past few days, and I thought I saw this little ray of hope, that although the work she was about to begin sucked, at least she was happy about having food and a great meal on Mother’s Day. What the hell had happened? Where were you, God? She was now going around the village doing just about anything for money. Washing other people’s clothes, selling juices, etc. We offered to pray for her, and while we did, I was standing right in front of her, with my hand on her shoulder, and I looked up, and I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. My heart broke a little more with hers. I got on the back of the truck to head home, and I wept. I wanted to shake my fists at God and scream at him. Maybe if I was loud enough He would hear me and He would come rescue this situation.
I’ve been on this quest for joy and search for God in all things. I’ve been trying to reconcile this pain-filled, bleeding mess of a world and the existence of a beautiful good God. I have learned that a good God gives good gifts to His children. I’ve been trying to change my vision from seeing a world of loss and scarcity, to seeing His gentle, graceful hand smeared all across this earth. I’ve been trying to live with hands wide open for whatever He gives. But then this happened and for some reason, this pain and injustice for this family struck a hard note in my heart. Again, I was doubting. Again, I was shriveling up and wondering where You are. Do You actually care?
I know the theological answers but do my blood and my pulse?
I wish I could tell you that I have found all the answers. I don’t think I will ever be able to explain why things happen; I do not have that type of wisdom. But I will write about what I do know. And maybe, if it were up to me, I would write a different story, a different ending. But only He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. Maybe I have to accept there are things that we simply don’t understand, but He does.
I have learned that when we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. For more than 14,600 days, the people of Israel woke up in the wilderness, where there was no food to find, yet there was bread (manna) found each morning. They took their nourishment each morning from that which they did not comprehend. They find that which they need to fill their soul in the inexplicable, in a mystery. The manna was a mystery to them, but they discovered that thing that made no sense, was like wafers of honey on the lips. There are a lot of mysteries on this earth and I can either reject them, or I can chose to take that which will nourish my soul. Could I let the pain of the world actually become places to see. To see through to God. That which punctures my heart, could it be a thin place to see through the mess of this place?
A good God plans everything. So a good God can only make plans for good? He only gives good gifts? A thing of evil cannot be created by a good God. All God makes is good. Do I believe in a God who rouses himself just now and then to spill a bit of benevolence on humanity? A God who breaks through every now and then, surprises us with a spare from sickness, a good job and house in the suburbs, and then finds himself too busy to deal with all the suffering? A God of sporadic, random splattering of goodness. No, God is in everything. If there are wolves in this place, expect to see wolves. If there is God in this place, expect to see God. Can it be that, that which seems to oppose the will of God is actually used of Him to accomplish the will of God. That which seems evil only seems so because of perspective, the way the eyes see shadows. Above the clouds, light never stops shining.
Sometimes, what He gives feels bad-like gravel in the mouth. But what if it’s only that-a feeling. The serpent- slithered with the lie that God doesn’t give good but rocks in the mouth, leaves us empty to starve in the wilderness. Maybe the rocks in the mouth can turn into loaves on the tongue.
But what perspective sees good in starving children or in death or war, and all the heinous crimes and all the weeping agony and all the scalding burns of this world? I can see all this pain and I won’t shield my anguish by claiming He’s not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he’s a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise. And I can cry and I can howl. God embraces these hearts that pound hard on his heart with their grief. God is in the details, God is in the moment, God is in all that blurs by in a life- even hurts in a life.
But joy and pain are arteries of the same heart of all those who don’t numb themselves to really living. We can’t numb ourselves to one, and not expect to numb ourselves to the other. If we numb our pain, we numb our joy. But I have been seeing and learning that joy is what saves us. Joy is what we need more of. Joy is how we live the fullest life.And the secret to joy is to keep seeking God in the places where we doubt He is.
It will not save the world to reject joy, because it is joy that saves us. Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave, who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, even in the hard, they are the change agents who bring fullest light to the world. I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I’ve seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for warm coffee on cold mornings, and the heavy perfume of wild flowers in early July, and the song of the crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all good things that a good God gives.
Some thing will always come to fill the emptiness. It can be bitterness, or joy. We can take the soil of our hard lives, and open it up to grace like rain and let joy seep into our cracked and dry places. Let joy soak into our broken hearts and deep crevices, and life grows.
In all situations, there is a well. One filled with water and joy. But sometimes, we can be blind to this figurative, metaphorical well. I remember one day we were walking around the village, with my heart feeling as though it was being ripped apart, and in the quietness of my heart, praying for the Lord to show me the well in this situation. All I see in this village is disparity, lack, dry dirt everywhere. There is no green, there is no well. But no. I fight a little harder, I pray a little more. Jesus, show me the well.
It is then, with the help of my teammates I discover what the well is in this situation. It is me, and it is us. Within me, I carry a well. A well of water is where people come to take their daily nourishment from water. A well is what quenches thirst and a soul. In this situation, I am the well!! I can come to Myra and bring her what she truly needs for nourishment. I carry hope that goes beyond this world. The hope that there is a good God who loves and whose plan is to redeem everything about this bloody, busted-up place. Hope that there is something that can quench all the searchings and wanderings of our hearts. Hope for eternal life with the Creator. If Myra is sitting in the shade of the tree, under the shadows, yet I know that light never stops shining, than I can go to all those under the shadows, and shine light and bring joy, and bring them out from under the shadows. I don’t want the tree blocking the light to deceive me of God’s goodness.
I can feel God hold me, a flailing child tired in Father’s arms. And I can hear Him soothe soft, ‘are your ways My ways child? Can you eat the manna, sustain on My mystery? Can you believe that I tenderly, tirelessly work all for the best good the world?’
And so with that, we have an opportunity to be a lifeboat, a lamp, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. I learned in Nicaragua, that maybe our hearts have to be broken and bleeding, in order for the love inside to drip out through the cracks and reach someone.
And I pray that this is what my team was to Myra. On our very last day, we went to Myra’s home for the last time because it was Wendy’s (her daughter) 3rd birthday! What a reason to celebrate. We came with love gifts of food, treats, a present for Wendy, and a delicious, beautiful birthday cake. I have been blessed, and I want to share, and I believe that people don’t become poor by giving, and I want to give until there is enough. I was so happy to just sit and spend time with that family, to celebrate Wendy, to love on them, and to meet their physical and spiritual needs.
I know God is teaching me a lot, and I have not pieced it all together yet. But thanks for reading my random babblings of thoughts!
For now, I have just arrived to Panama with my new team for month 5!
In Christ,
Megs
birthday celebrations!
Myra’s family!
My teammate took some awesome photos that I thought I’d share!
