34 years of sharpening love and courage: marriage and mothering as tools for holiness

 34 years ago today, Scott and I stood in front of our families and friends and recited 1 Cor 13. 

It was Mother's Day weekend, and flowers were hard to arrange, but in other ways a celebration of a wedding and Mother's Day appropriately intersect. Both look glorious in photos, cards, feasts and speeches, and truly those captures of beauty are true. But both also involve the paradox of choosing to loose life to gain it. Marriage and mothering, living with edges that are filed smoother by another, living with choices that are constricted and space that is unprotected, living with the constant reality of community . . . means a sort of death to unrestrained self promotion, that Jesus calls the path to life. 

Jesus says, if you want to find life, then loose your life. 

And those are paths for all humans to choose, whether biologically producing a child (which for most women in the world is quite risky) or accepting a role to make the vulnerable flourish, whether formally committing to a spouse or accepting the inconveniences of friendship and partnership.  All that God made has been declared good, and we look forward to the unbridled joy of being fulfilled in our unique image of the light and truth one day. But to get there, the path is the cross. I think mothers learn that, as do spouses. Birth itself treads so close to death; a decision to sacrifice for another bonds us in mysterious ways.

Today the two days intersect, and it has been a delight to be with 3 of 5 kids, to get messages from some of our Ugandan fostered-kid relationships, to have just spent solid times with both of our own mothers. A COVID drought has cascaded us into a month in WV/NC, much of it with my mom and a couple of weekend intersections AS a mom with Julia and Caleb. Then a week in CA with Scott's mom, at her home and a memorable drive up Route 1 to explore some quaint coastal towns and admire the majestic redwoods. And now in Utah, where Luke, Abby and Jack reside beneath a backdrop of snow-covered peaks and we can hike in the alpine scrub. They even let me do a classic mom adventure hike that was longer and steeper and more-bramble-covered than anyone anticipated.

My verse for the year was just a bit further in 1 Cor . . . 16:13-14 and I thought of it today. Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. Those are words for a marriage and for mothering. Paying attention to the man I am walking through life with, who is kind and sure. Standing fast in faith when those I love seem to be at risk of faltering, in sickness or persecution or disappointment and loss. Being brave in a long year of separation, being strong when it's time to fight for those we love. And being willing to do all that not by forcing my way, but by accepting God's way of love.

Enjoy some photos, most of the last few days or weeks, a few from further back, of the rich fabric of being mothered, being married, and mothering others.  I am so thankful for the solid foundation our mothers Judy and Ruth have given us, for the faithfulness of my 34-year husband (and 41-year friend) Scott, and the delight of watching these amazing human beings in our life grow in their own directions with courage and heart.

Lastly, the anniversary photo from today's hike:

Ordinary miracles: Home assignment, love, and vaccines,

 We are about half way through our two-month "home assignment". This April half has been based in West Virginia and North Carolina. We tramp through the woods, split logs and stack firewood, prune and clean, drag debris and pick up trash, cook meals with the wonder of Kroger, and jump in the frigid river for an icy plunge. (By "we", I mean royal we, mostly Scott . . . ).  And the weekends have been times to celebrate our family. This past weekend my sister and brother-in-law brought our nephew Micah up to Sago to celebrate her birthday. In spite of a rainy forecast we hiked to some favourite spots from our childhood, played dominoes and crazy 8's, made s'mores around a campfire, read aloud from The Princess Bride, and had a delicious pizza night. In between the weekend visits, we've enjoyed more relaxed time with my mom, including, ironically, a trip to a funeral on Tuesday. Our main supporting church's organist, who had been a member for probably 55 of her 88 years, passed away, and as old-timers ourselves we wanted to join the service. Masks and distance and an outdoor reception in the parking lot allowed us to reconnect with some of the people whose prayers have kept us all alive. We visited my 90-year-old Aunt Ann who is heading into some cancer surgery, and stopped at some familiar points along the 4-hour drive there and back. 

All of these are ordinary miracles. Frozen custard from a stand that has sold it for longer than my lifetime. Conversation with people who have loved us since childhood. Views of rocks and rivers that have been the backdrop of all we know. Stories with siblings. Yard work with parents.

These are the fabric of every day life that we miss. These are the moments that now the whole world does not take for granted.

Because a funeral, an ice cream cone, a day in the car, a visit in a home, are all things that not just we in Uganda but most people in America have missed for a year. And yet here we are. By grace and grit, vaccines have enabled us to interact again as humans.

Except for probably some church members at the funeral and my cousin who is still in line (with whom we stayed masked and distanced), almost everyone we have seen in our month in the USA has been vaccinated for COVID. Tomorrow we will get our second Pfizer dose. A year ago we had barely begun to imagine what COVID-19 would do to our world, and here we are immunised. It's amazing if you stop and think about it. Sadly over 150 million people have become sick and 3 million have died (2%, holding at 10x more lethal than serious flu and 100x more than average flu).  Our whole world has been disrupted. Poor places tried to stay isolated; rich places tried to guarantee expensive treatments. But in the background research skyrocketed and now there are 8 fully approved vaccines, 6 more in limited use, and about 90 in various stages of development. Because of this, we can hug our moms, we can eat with our medically vulnerable nephew, we can visit our pre-op elderly aunt, we can fly to see our kids without worrying that we are putting them in danger. It is miraculous.

Recently, a couple of people have asked me about whether there is any ethical problem with vaccines because some vaccine research for some types of shots used human cells that were derived decades ago from two babies whose tissue became available after an abortion. Many wise people have researched and spoken, including church leaders, saying, GET THE VACCINE. My answer is this: the ethics of getting a vaccine (which does NOT CONTAIN any fetal tissue mind you) I think parallel getting a liver transplant from a teen killed by a drunk driver. It is grievous that a child died, and that it was a death related to someone's choices that were wrong. But the family would take some comfort in knowing that the teen's liver saved others (we know that in our family as our cousin inadvertently met the family of his liver donor, which was deeply meaningful). The family of the aborted baby from decades ago has stated this themselves. The abortion was not done to provide tissue for research. But the tissue was redeemed as it was put to life saving use.  It is also horrible that police or soldiers or firefighters die in the line of duty (though they have adult choice in the matter) but we thank them for their service particularly when their sacrifice saves others. For vaccines the ratio must be 2 to millions. Lastly, there are many many types of vaccines now and most do NOT involve the human cell line in their production. So if the ethics of donor tissue or of sacrifice for others does not compel you, get a viral vector or attenuated vaccine instead.

Secondly, people have feared vaccines because all reports of adverse effects have been taken out of context. If a disease would kill 100 people, and a vaccine would kill 1, would you get the vaccine or the disease? That's the kind of context needed to understand the rare clotting disorders seen in a handful of cases after some types of vaccine. Only the ratio of more like 10,000 times more dangerous to get the disease than the vaccine. No medicine, no minute of life, is completely safe. It is more dangerous to get in your car and drive to work for an hour ten times than it is to fly ten hours from London to Africa, but most people don't think that way. We tend to fear the sensational, the new, the newsworthy. We need facts and context.

But the real question comes down to this: are you willing to inconvenience yourself, perhaps have a headache or chills for a few hours, for the good of others? And that's where our character is seen. Will you wear a mask, stay six feet apart, stand outside, forgo a concert or movie, delay a trip . . . if it means your 85 year old mother gets to live ten more years and see her grandchildren grow up? We are proud of the way our family let go of their privileges, changed their habits, so that WE would get to see them again, so that we wouldn't have to hear about their hospitalisations while we were locked out of travel. Will you take a 1 in a million chance of a serious vaccine side effect so that as a world we can slow down the mutations and spread of a disease that has killed 3 million others?

We are so thankful that our family chose to vaccinate, and had the opportunity. And that we have been given the opportunity as well. India reminds us that this disease of COVID-19 is not over even now in 2021. As long as there are places in the world with poverty, crowding, low access to vaccines and treatment, misinformation, fear, political manoeuvring, poor health, and rampant spread . . the virus will continue to claim lives. And to change. And to become more infectious, or more lethal. We are all in this together.

For us, a month in rural West Virginia with forays to North Carolina and Virginia has been a miracle of ordinary days. Tomorrow we head West to see the other half of the family, Scott's mom Ruth for a week then Luke and Abby (and Jack again!) in Utah. We try to stay in touch with our teams, and there is still a lot of work going on. But we are so thankful for this time.

Treasuring and Pondering, Life Breaking Through

 Today we sent out a prayer letter, so if you're on that list thanks for reading and praying. (If you're not, you can message your email address in a comment which I'll add to the mailchimp and delete here as soon as I see it.) Short story is: we are in West Virginia after a week with my family in North Carolina, snow blusters in waves but the forces of Spring are definitely winning the day, and the major prayers we had for our son who was in training were realised (oh JOY).  Plus the court in Uganda recognised our appeal yesterday as a valid reason to delay requiring payment of the extortionary fees, and our team in Nyankunde escaped with pretty much everyone else in the hospital and aviation compounds after days of escalating violence between a local mono-ethnic militia and the national army. We have had meals and hikes and games and talks with 3 out of 5 kids, 1 out of 2 moms, and the sister who lives in the USA. We entered the WV vaccine system. We tested negative for COVID. All that has been pretty great news in the almost 3 weeks since we began this journey. What is harder to explain is my own reluctance and hesitation to post about any of it. True, for the big family news, we are now entering a new life stage of security so that will no longer be part of what we speak about on the blog or social media. But even given the mind-spinning nature of tracking with people on two continents and multiple time zones, the desire to be mentally and emotionally fully present with people we love whom we've not seen in 18 months, the gaps in tech as I replaced a broken computer . . . perhaps it is just too much. But I have noticed that there are two deeper realities I'm aware of in this time.

First, in Luke 2, Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. April has been a season of treasure and ponder. And second, related perhaps, I think that the last 13 months have taken a toll on us all. Last April, we wondered if we would survive the pandemic. We had been making hard calls for a month about who should go when the occasional evacuation flights opened after all our Area's countries closed borders. More and more Americans were going back to the USA and it was really hard not to second guess ourselves constantly. We knew that ICU care would not be an option, and in many places not even oxygen. An entire year of uncertainty, of pockets of doom, of feeling cut off, of help melting away and little returning, of knowing that if one of our moms got COVID we would not be able to reach them, of concern for our front line essential worker kids, reacting to restrictions, closed schools, protocols, questions. Plus the added layers of ongoing baseline problems like TB and malaria and malnutrition and corruption and broken utilities and no mail and always more work than we could accomplish. And the heart-wrenching near-misses for the above mentioned child. All that time we wondered if we would be here in Sago where my family settled, if we would see our nearest relatives again. And yet, here we are. 

Treasuring the sheer incredulousness of being alive, being OK. Pondering what that means for the next year, and the next, for us and those we love. Grateful to be in April 2021, while knowing that the scars of April 2020 will also always be part of the story. Trying to take this space we've been given to process and breathe. 

Winter lingers. The spiritual battle never ends in this life.

But evil never wins.

Life breaks through. Spring is here.

If you've never been to a special olympics baseball game after a year of COVID delay . . you haven't lived.

Of Death, Daffodils and Resurrection

 Easter Sunday finds us quietly awakening in Sago, WV, less than a mile from where 13 men were trapped by an explosion and collapse in 2006. One was rescued alive, for the other twelve the vigil yielded only grief. That vigil may have had echoes of Easter's. Not our modern Easter, where we know the end of the story. The original, historical one, where the body sealed into the ground could only have been considered lost for good. Some of Jesus' followers ran and hid alone while others did gather together, though none wanted to bring attention to themselves.  Even the Mary's who stood by the cross, who wiped his feet with perfume for burial, who prepared the spices for proper embalmment to augment the hasty disposal of the body after the shameful execution, did not anticipate the events of Sunday morning. They spent their Sabbath in stillness, empty, depleted, crushed. The rescue ended in defeat, thought they would still risk the ire of authority to witness and attend to ritual, they did not dream of any change to the ending. Men in a collapsed mine do not return after days. Nor does a body that has been hung by spikes on a wooden crossbeam, stabbed, declared lifeless, sealed in a tomb with a guard. When the earth covers a life, the end is deep and final.

Unless, of course, that life is a seed.

We landed in the USA in the late afternoon Saturday, and drove 4 hours to the farm, arriving well past dark, making a 10 pm dinner and then falling into bed. So when Easter Sunday morning awakened us, we were delighted to see hundreds of daffodils. I planted some bulbs six years ago when we spent a sabbatical year here, but most have propagated as descendants of bulbs planted over the last century of farm occupants. You would never know that so many daffodil bulbs lie buried beneath the meadow grass behind the barn, until the lengthening of days around the equinox wakes them to sprout. The trees are still bare, just a suggestion of buds at their tips, and the temperatures were dipping to the 20's here last week. We passed patches of snow coming over the mountains. Spring has just begun to edge winter into the past. But the daffodils raising out of the brown grass of last summer, the brilliant green spears of their leaves and the dazzling drops of sunshine in their flowers, testify that the rest of the transformation will follow.

This is the resurrection we celebrate today. It's not summer yet; winter still grips too hard. But there is one who went into the ground and blossomed out in beauty, in life, ahead of the rest. When Jesus walked out of that tomb at dawn, folded his shroud and stepped back into the world, he became the living example of that future we all hope for. Yes, we still live with collapsed mines, and this year with an ongoing pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left us all weary of isolation. The weight of impending doom that we have been carrying for a year; the delayed connections, re-shaped work, ever-shifting coping with barriers and expectations. The extortion we are facing on our land case, the sorrow of death and hunger we touch daily. All of this is barren trees and patches of snow. And yet . . . the daffodils have bloomed. Jesus resurrected.

The first Easter morning was a time of confusion, of questions, of we-hardly-dare-to-believe-our-eyes bewilderment. Of people alone, in handfuls, running, passing a message. Of a paradigm shift so radical we still write books and can't explain it all. Because one man walked into death and back out alive, we all can follow. Because the entropy and despair of this world turned in his body towards health and hope, the entire creation can be made new. Because he led the way, we are invited to follow participatorily. 

Easter begins the mission in which we now immerse ourselves, in which we now get our hands dirty into this earth, in which we now drip our sweat and our blood. The mission of bringing the groaning of creation into the future newness. That might be raising a child, or teaching a class, or performing a surgery, or feeding the hungry. Or planting daffodils.

Liminal

 Liminal-a word that has always grabbed my soul, perhaps one of those words whose sound of breath and cloud imitates meaning. It is actually the word for a door's threshold, which sounds firm enough place to step. But in so stepping, one is momentarily between inside and outside. It is the space that joins two realities, part of both and neither. If we accept that the visible, concrete, perceived-with-five-senses reality in which we live and move and have our being is not the sole reality, that there is a parallel universe of the spiritual realm, then the liminal places are those in which one passes from earth to heaven, from seen to unseen.

Good Friday is a liminal day; the cross is a liminal place. After 33 years of walking the paths of Palestine, of heat and dust and thirst, of reclining at meals and drinking of wells and embracing the sick, of touch and smell and taste and sound and sight . . . Jesus hung at the threshold between earth and heaven. Over those hours, he slowly ebbed from the world of oxygen and lungs and hemoglobin, to enter a space that we know of only in the most foggy ways. Hebrews 10 connects this place to the curtain that separated the holiest inner sanctuary of the Temple from the rest of our existence, the veil between God's presence and the priest. When Jesus gasped "It is finished", the physical earth convulsed and the curtain tore in two, opening the space between God and the world. Jesus' human body, his flesh, became the threshold, the passage, the pathway to connect us. In so doing, that body was torn, that blood spilled, and uncountable shifts in reality occurred.

Chagall, White Crucifixion

We are spending this Good Friday in liminality as well. Our two realities are Uganda and America. Our lives are embedded in both, simultaneously. The threshold for us is an airplane, an enclosure of transport that opens a passage between our worlds, that is neither here nor there. Sometimes the travel feels like suspended time. We have people we love in both places, meaning and work and life and home in both places. We are people shaped by both places, who love both places. The analogy fails at some point of course. But Jesus as a full citizen of both heaven and earth, Hebrews says, transformed the system of sacrificial death to one of obedience to the will of God. In doing so, instead of requiring a surgically painful and bloody operation, God transforms hearts to align with good.

Clifford Possum Tjalpaltjarri, Good Friday, 1994

William H. Johnson, Jesus and the three Marys, 1939

Liminal spaces invite lingering. Like the bewildered core friends, we pause today at the cross. I'd rather gloss right on over into arrival, Sunday, sunshine. But let us stand on the threshold of worlds today, weeping, hoping.

Deliver us from Evil

Pre-dawn star-fade, the quiet slap of our tennis shoes on the asphalt, the early morning jog that has kept us relatively healthy and sane in another year of struggle. One or two early buses careen by with their bright headlights and blaring horns, and a smatter of motorcylce taxis ferrying passengers punctuates the morning, but the road is otherwise mostly deserted. I hold Nyota's leash and Scott holds Bwindi's, a few yards ahead. Once or twice a morning the dogs lurch off to try and chase a cat or some other unseen creature in the darkness, but mostly concern themselves with the density of scents and with jostling each other. Sometimes a neighbour will call a greeting from their dark compound, or someone will call out our names from a group heading home from a burial. The milky way dims as the sun begins to grey the sky beyond the dark shape of the mountains. It is mercifully cool, and the most peaceful time of day. 

So it was a shock a few days ago to come down the hill and hear loud passionate prayers start pouring out from a few teen girls who were kneeling in the grass just meters off the road, silhouettes in the dark, hands raised. Their voices were desperate, intense, edged with fear, and I kept hearing them calling out for help against Satan. The pitch escalated as we passed. I thought of stopping to comfort or question, but I wasn't quite sure if the fearful prayers were directed against us. Bwindi is a fearsome sight, if you don't know that she has a benign heart, so between our white skin and the two dogs and the unfamiliar spot for such a group, it seemed quite likely we were the Evil from which they sought deliverance.

Still, their intensity has stayed with me.

Perks of a team Preacher: Pastor Mike teaching about the Lord's Prayer at chapel. 

I seem them as more angelic than demonic, at least by the light of day.

Someone whose life did depend upon the deliver-us-from-evil prayer this week.

And someone for whom that prayer was answered over the last few months, 800 grams to 2.49 kg!

Bundibugyo is a liminal place. I mostly love that about it. We do not surround ourselves with the illusion that only the material counts, that reality stops at the seen. Every patch of the world is charged, with grandeur (GM Hopkins), with danger, with possibility, with the "repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" immediacy of parallel physics in the barely glimpsed universe. Every moment might be torpedoed by malicious spiritual forces intent upon destruction and consumption. And those girls knew that what appeared as a black dog or a pale spirit out of the night might have meant something worth being terrified, so they dropped to their knees in prayer.

That kind of acknowledgement of the reality of capital-E Evil makes us uncomfortable. As it should. 

In many places, evil is something we manage with distraction and numbing, with walls that not only protect but encourage us to ignore. With laws, liability, insurance, bank accounts, credit cards, 911 numbers. With entertainment and comfort. But in the majority-world, that's not possible. When night has barely begun to melt into day and the road is lonely and there is fear afoot, the only recourse is to pray as if one's life depended upon it.

Tomorrow begins the week of Easter, where Evil gets an apparent upper hand on Friday, only to be proven defeated on Sunday. The word used in the prayer 'deliver us from evil ' or from 'the Evil One' relates to futile toil in pain and suffering, which harkens right back to Genesis and the curse that seeped into labor of all sorts, for children and for crops. Loss, effort that does not match the result, personal cost, death. In the forehead pocked by thorn scars and the hands severed by spikes. In the flesh rending process of birth and the back-aching swing of the hoe. 

Cost of birth being paid in blood and pain

And he says, it wasn't exactly a picnic for me either . . . but in this case again, evil did not triumph.

Deliver us, we pray, and when it pours out of our hearts in the darkness with no human help in sight, I think that desperation burns out the filler-fluff of pious words and leaves purity. 

This week we are praying, deliver us from Evil. On Wednesday, the same day those girls were passionately seeking aid from God against Satan, a few hours later we were sitting in court yet again. We lost the land case in December (short version: a man sold the mission a piece of his land for tree planting and farming in 2000. We used the farm for Christ School agriculture classes and support, and he used the money to put his kids through school. But when cocoa started to become profitable and companies were buying up land in about 2014, his son engineered a case to sue us for trespassing by claiming that the land was never sold only leased and that the documents his father had signed were invalid due to his poor eyesight . . 6 years and countless witnesses later, the judge decided that by virtue of being a foreign NGO we could not own this land, and awarded it back to the family). Our lawyers advised appeal, we reluctantly agreed, not because of the land but because the settlement included a catch: we would have to pay the court costs of the plaintiffs who won. Though the appeal has not yet been heard in the higher court, the lawyers for the family went ahead and presented a bill for 132 million shillings, 36 thousand dollars, more than double (closer to triple) the value of the land, and an absurd price for their dozen or so days of work, in a country where that would be the annual income for several dozen people. We went to court thinking it was a simple matter of our lawyer producing proof of the appeal and delaying this bill. However our lawyer's designated representative failed to show up, leaving Scott alone in the docket with zero preparation, only a vague understanding of the processes, facing the inflated greed of the other side's lawyer alone. Scott gave a short speech about the injustice of it all and the nature of our a not-for-profit work and who this would hurt. But the judge was annoyed with our side and said he may or may not allow the appeal, and the whole day was a pretty disastrous scenario. If you've never been helpless, abandoned, and unfairly treated in court, let me just bear witness that it is miserable. We are praying for deliverance.

Evil looks us in the eye hourly. Sometimes it is finding out medicine has been stolen, or the electricity- fried the oxygen concentrator so a baby has no help breathing. Sometimes it is caring for a child who has been badly burned, or who is in inexplicable pain. Sometimes it is finding an empty bed where the family of a malnourished baby whisked her away at night. Sometimes it is the loneliness we see in a teammate, or the way one of our Ugandan friends is being manipulated by a family member. Sometimes it is a storm that damages homes, or a miscarriage, or misunderstanding. And sometimes, most times, too many times, it is in our own hearts, impatient criticism of the way things are, intolerant judgement, unkind words, unwilling hardness of heart, unreasonable anxiety that God may not be on our side.

This baby came starving, and after a week of small increments towards survival the family disappeared.

However, these triplets are still doing relatively well, though at 9 months old now they are receiving nutritional help from our program.

A year in, we are still battling COVID.

Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from ourselves. Deliver us from injustice, from suffering, from futility, from loss. Deliver us from those cups we'd like to pass on drinking, the ones that contain the wrathful wine of judgement. Deliver us from the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, the consuming caverns that want to devour light, the defeated enemies that still lash out to wreak harm. And after a year poised for COVID disaster, just when we're one vaccine closer to surviving it and getting to go see our moms and kids, deliver us from the pandemic. Kenya just shut down again as a third wave broke there. Sobering.

Team Bundi March 2021

The good news is, of course, that we are delivered. The cross went right through the heart of Evil, a fatal wound. Nothing can separate us from the good intent of God to heal and save. But each bruising encounter with the fatally wounded darkness still stings. And so we pray, like those girls, as if our life depended upon it, because it does. 

Join us in praying for justice in the courts, for healing from COVID in Africa, for vaccines and equity. For protection. And for our soldier who is in the most intense two weeks of the last 5 years, right now. A bit of deliverance there would be glorious.

Wednesday evening after the prayer encounter in the dark and the crushing misery of the court case and several of the medical photos above . . . God reminded us of His promises. And so we hold on.