What My Sign Says

I was so tired that I don’t even remember which of my kids was throwing the fit in the security line in some airport somewhere in America. 

But I couldn’t make him or her stop, or move or hug or listen. Brad wasn’t with me—he’d gone on a different flight for some training. I was going to visit my parents in Colorado, but we’d gotten delayed along the way, adding another day to the grueling trip from Indonesia.

I looked around me and noticed the half-stares—the ones where people look, then look away. And I know what they were thinking. 

That kid is out of control. That mom is a bad mom. What is wrong with them?

And I wanted to hold up a big sign that said,

 “We’ve been traveling for four days through four countries with maybe, maybe four hours of total sleep and my kid is normally obedient, but he’s really, really tired and we need your patience.”

Just like sometimes I want to hold up a sign in this small town in Indonesia that says, 

“Yes, I’m different. I do things that you consider to be weird, and I may get this whole living-in-your-culture thing wrong sometimes, but I’m really, really trying, and I need your patience.”

And thankfully, since Indonesians are about the friendliest people in the world, I usually get that patience, and maybe a piece of candy for my kids, and a free bag of rice from Brad’s passengers and help carrying my groceries to the car from the store clerk who knows my kids’ names and the chance to have some really special relationships.

But now, as I prepare to start a seven-month furlough traveling the States again, I need another sign. Like one that says, 

“I don’t have it all together, and I both like my life in Indonesia and sometimes want to escape this life and while I’m speaking in front of your church, I don’t have all the answers, and my life isn’t really set to some beautiful spiritual song like you see in that video, and sometimes it’s really hard, but it’s hard to admit that it’s hard when you serve people with way worse problems, and yes, that’s probably my kid who took your kid’s toy in Sunday school, and I know I look American to you, but I don’t feel like I fit in here anymore, and I don’t really fit into Indonesia completely, oh, and I’m pretty tired because I was up all last night with my jet-lagged baby, and let's be real, I'm tired because I've spent years living in a noisy place where it's hard to ever get sleep,  and while yes, I consider myself to be a deeply spiritual person, I most look forward to wandering the aisles of Target with a Starbucks tea in my hand and no one staring at me after I’ve finally gotten a decent haircut, and please don’t judge, and be patient with me while I take this break.”

Oh, and can someone give me a hand holding up this sign since it’s going to have to be a pretty big one?

So, if you see the lady with the screaming kid in the airport, it might just be me, with my invisible sign, asking for a bit of extra grace.

photo credit, Joe Shlabotnik

Identity Crisis--my guest post on MAF's blog

It all took some sorting out. My Indonesian friend kept going on and on about some mutual friend of ours who is sick. I kept smiling, nodding, trying to figure it out, feeling stupid. But I didn’t recognize the name.

And then I realized she was calling our friend by one of the three different names she goes by.

I call my friend by the one her parents gave her. She also goes by her husband’s name. Or she could go by her firstborn child’s name.

In this culture, I’d be Ibu Rebecca, or Ibu Brad or Mama Evan. And that doesn’t include the many names I’ve been called when my American names aren’t understood. Ibu Radeka, Bule (white person), and even the all-too-often “Mister.” As in “Hello, Mister!” or “I love you, Mister!”

Those don’t include the identities I’ve experienced over the eight years of living in Indonesia.

Read more at MAF's blog where I'm guest posting today.

Bearing Fruit--a guest post on MAF's blog

When I was getting ready to move to Indonesia, I was willing to give up pizza, my mom’s dirt cake and one-stop trips to Wal-Mart. But I had one hope in return—a fruit tree.

Any type of fruit would do—bananas, pineapple, coconut, or something else I didn’t yet know existed.
Thankfully, I ate pizza the first week I got to Indonesia. I figured out how to make dirt cake with local ingredients. And I’ve adjusted to the several-stop shopping that’s common here.

But my first house was crowded in by other slapped-together shacks. My second house was surrounded by cement ground. And my third house—finally one with a yard—didn’t have a single fruit tree in it.

Find out what happened next at MAF's blog where I'm guest posting today.

What I Wish I Knew Back Then

The fight was a doozy. Back before we were married, Brad and I chased each other down the mountain trail in Colorado, our voices bouncing off rocks during a romantic hike turned heated.

We were discussing our eventual plans to join MAF, move overseas and live the dream of making a difference. But Brad was trying to get me to go deeper with my high hopes. I think it went something like this:

Brad: “What if we have to get our water in buckets from a stream and boil it?”

Me: “What?! I’m not doing that! No way. I do NOT want to spend all my time doing such menial tasks.”

Brad: “Well, maybe you won’t have to do that exactly. But what I mean is, are you willing to do the hard work, the boring tasks, if God asks you to?”

Me. “Why should you get to do all the exciting stuff…fly those planes into distant villages, meet ancient tribes, save lives, while I spend my days boiling water? Oh, no. Don’t ask me to do that. And God had better not ask me to do that either. I have much bigger plans, thank you very much.”

Cringe.

Fast forward some 15 years, and thankfully, I don’t have to carry my water from a stream or boil it. I have running water and handy dandy water filtering system to make it drinkable.

And yet, my life here in Indonesia is filled with other menial tasks. Waiting in long lines in the heat of the day to buy gas for my car while my baby cries in the back. Laying awake, sweating, in the middle of an all-night power outage. Making batch after batch of granola and yogurt from scratch to feed my family breakfast every day.

And then there are the tasks of motherhood…changing diapers, cleaning diapers, midnight feedings…all so very menial made even more challenging on a remote tropical island where life is a lot of work.

Even the exciting things involve hard, sweaty, tedious work. That exciting job Brad gets to do flying his airplane into the wild Borneo jungles? Sometimes he's bent over heavy boxes, loading them into airplanes in the middle of nowhere, on a hot day, with a bad back. No one there to see.

Those messages about love and hope and God I sometimes get to share over hot tea with a friend? They are sandwiches in between a million utterly mundane words spoken as I sit outside of my comfort zone, sweating out my fears. Those orphans I get to teach English to each week? I do it, shouting over the din of chaos, holding my handmade, barely legible flashcards, my 2-year-old running sticky hands through my hair while she sits on my lap. Oh and I’d better add another half hour to my outing to wait in line for gas so I can actually get there.

Sometimes I’m still that girl who forgets that if I want to reach for my dreams, I have to press my knees on hard earth. If I want to make big plans, I have to toil at the little things. 

If I want to do something that lasts forever, sometimes it means I have to do something that will be forgotten by tomorrow.

If I want to be part of reaching the ends of the earth with love, some days it means I have to kiss my husband as he leaves for his amazing job while I stay home all day to hold a sick baby.

But when I don’t fight it, I get to watch my mundane matter, my “big” plans made even bigger, and my life be used by a God who believes in getting His own hands dirty, and making my dirty pride clean.

photo credit, AlphaTangoBravo/Adam Baker

When light is dead

Our son is throwing up in the toilet while Brad holds a flashlight above his head. It’s Mati Lampu again. Literally translated: The light is dead.

The power company has instituted a new rotation of power outages, eight hours on, eight hours off. For three out of the last four nights, eight of those hours have fallen at night. We try to sleep in 90 degree humid heat, taking turns comforting sweaty kids, and in this case, a sweaty, sick 4-year-old.

We’re tired, and wonder when we’ll get to really sleep again.

Evan’s finally in bed, and Brad and I sit in the dark, a tiny battery-powered camp fan spinning thick air over our open Bible.

"Consider it pure joy,” Brad reads from James 2.

And despite all these trials, and despite the fact that my 2-month old just started crying again, this moment feels special.

While I bounce the fussy baby, we talk about the happenings of the last few days. Of the medevac flights Brad flew. The sick baby having seizures. The woman with the fever.

We discuss some difficulties at work. The long days Brad is putting in. Brad’s inability to work on his latest master’s course due to long power outages and intermittent Internet. We talk about whether or not our year-old generator, which the mechanic said is unfixable, can, in fact, be fixed.

I share about the one thing I managed to get done during a day of Mati Lampu. Writing thank you notes, going over the names of friends, family, acquaintances and people we haven’t yet met who give to our ministry. Seeing the response to our need for funds so we can be here.

And I laugh now when I think how I used to wish I was independently wealthy, so I wouldn’t have to need others’ money, so I wouldn’t have to ask for help. But today, those names, those gifts, their commitment provides comfort as we sit in the heavy darkness, sweating and reminding ourselves to believe.

And it makes us feel not so alone in this.

Somehow in this Mati Lampu, this Dead Light, a miracle happens in our tired hearts. Instead of grumbling, we give thanks. Instead of loneliness, we feel connected.

And in the midst of darkness, there is joy. 

photo credit, JuhlDK13

Borneo Faith

Our babies cry and we both do what we need to do. My Indonesian friend nurses with no cover. I hide under a blanket. 

The differences continue. As is the local custom, her child sleeps with her in her bed, waking often. I put mine in a crib in a separate room. Her philosophies center around keeping a baby happy. I, as an American mama, like my kids to be independent…and hopefully to soon sleep through the night.

I won’t change to these local ways. She probably thinks my ways are crazy.

One thing we share is that we pray. And her prayers seem to get answered. Like when she couldn’t have a baby, and the doctor gave her medicine that she didn’t want to take. Who knows if it would’ve worked anyway.

“I knew God could make it happen,” she said.

And He did.

And then she tells me about how her baby fell off the bed, when she wasn’t looking…except he maybe didn’t fall. One minute he was on the bed. The next, on the ground, happy as can be. No bruises. No crying. Her explanation? An angel protected him—maybe caught him.

Who says things like that? Who believes in angels who hold our children and a God who really comes through? Her belief seems so…unbelievable.

While her faith may seem simple, life in Borneo is anything but that. She grew up with almost no electricity in a village a two-hour boat ride from the nearest town. Her parents are farmers who spend all day working in their rice fields. No machinery.  Sickness means boat rides and plane rides to a small town hospital. This girl did not have the easy life.

I admire her. And I want to be like her. I want to say out loud what I really want. What I hope will happen. What I hope already did happen. 

I want to believe in miracles and not mere coincidences. I want to hope for good things that could happen and not settle for the bad things that are happening.

I want the faith of a Borneo girl.

Saying Yes

Just two days back in Indonesia and I was saying, “No” as in “Oh, no, no, no.”

My nice little plans were unraveling. In my eighth month of pregnancy, I’d cooked extra meals from scratch to store in my freezer for our return home from Singapore.  I’d cleared my schedule for my return—no preschool yet for Evan. No ministry commitments to fulfill. My gas can filled for the generator and those power outages. The baby clothes all washed and organized. 

All set up so that I could handle life on my own with three kids on this little Indonesian island.

But in the middle of the night on that third night—I was awake for a feeding for my baby—Brad told me he was sick. Really sick.

Oh no, no. no. Not this. Not now.

I'd heard about the flu-like virus that had been infecting our friends here, making many of them really sick for days, even weeks. Just two days back and Brad was so sick he couldn’t walk more than a few feet without falling over, his fever high, his stomach nauseous. A day later, my 2-year-old got it.

I spent my time torn, having to choose which crying baby to hold—the sick one or the newly born one. And I spent my nights torn between fear and faith. What if my tiny baby got the illness? Could he survive? What if I got it? Who would take care of everyone?

And then my helper, a young woman who helps me keep up with all the housework, asked for a few days off. Then a couple days later, quit her job to be married in very sudden, arranged marriage that broke my heart. I was torn between being glad she’d found someone and sad that she felt like the only option she had was to marry a stranger.

The meals I’d made that I hoped could be used spaced out over several weeks, were gone within a few days. No time to make anything else as I tried to keep up with dishes and dirty laundry and caring for the sick, washing my hands furiously as I went from sick person to new baby.

Sometime in the middle of one of those dark nights, I punched out an email to the MAF wives here, asking for prayer, for help—small kinds of help.  As soon as I sent it, I regretted it, wishing I could unsend all that vulnerability.

I don’t like to ask for help. I don’t like to need others. I don’t like to be so much trouble. I prefer to be the one to give, hiding behind service and babysitting and casseroles. 

I prefer to earn people's love with acts of kindness than drain them with my pleas for help.

Almost immediately, the offers poured in. Offers of meals, babysitting, grocery runs, even an offer of a friend to come over and clean my house for me. I felt embarrassed and opened my mouth, ready with my standard reply of “We’re fine. Thanks anyway.”

Instead, the word escaped my mask of independence.

“Yes.”

Yes, I need. Yes, I’ll take. Yes, I’m a wreck and can’t do this on my own.

We got through those couple of grueling weeks. Everyone is pretty healthy now. The baby never got sick. I never got more than a sniffly nose. My husband is back to being able to help me, able to hold his baby again.  I can pile all my kids on my lap without worrying about the sick ones infecting the healthy ones. And thankfully, I have a new helper, with a sweet smile and a willingness to help me tackle those mounds of laundry and dishes.

But something more happened. A different kind of healing.

After a year of feeling burned out, of going through the motions of ministry with a tired heart, I felt new life. When I said yes and allowed others to give to me, they showed me that I’m worth their trouble. I don’t have to do this alone. And all that vulnerability that I like to keep tucked away behind a smile? They accepted it…and me.

I’m glad to be back in a position to be able to serve and hear others say, “yes” to my offers. But I’m even happier to do it knowing what it feels like to have people say "yes"...to me.

photo credit, mikebaird