Wrestling through life

Some days I wish I could trade the challenges of living in North America for the challenges of being a foreigner overseas. And perhaps someday I will, but for today I remain here and wrestle through what it means to live here after being there.

I sit and I wonder just when it was that those of us in the North American church lost sight of what really matters. When did the service become more about the show than about seeking and knowing, when did the music become more about notes and rhythms than about worship or about really trying to live the words that we sing, and when did being right become more important than dying to self, even if it means burning bridges rather than building them. And I wonder, if those of us inside the church can’t be the stewards of God’s very grace, than who will? If we choose to love only people who love us back, to be generous to only those who have something to offer, than how are we different from anyone else? No one said this would be easy.

I hear the things people argue about and it all just seems petty. When you have met a Mama with empty arms in Rwanda because every single one of her children met the wrong end of machete, and yet here she stands, surviving when maybe she didn’t even want to. And you talk to another Mama who tells you that her two year old asked her if she wants to know what dead people look like, because after 24 short months of life he saw with his own two eyes those blood soaked streets in Rwanda. And then there, right in the middle of the genocide memorial is a life size photo of a child whose last words were “Mommy, where can I run.” Later that week I sit with a group of children and they squeal with wild joy as they play with my hair. So excited they are that they jump up and down and laugh at the strange way my hair feels in their hands. Joy and pain, side by side inside me, and I’m reminded that life is a paradox. Both extremes right there in the same place and I marvel at the thought that I ever saw anything as black and white. 

I sat there in Northern Uganda and saw the aftermath of war and I realized that rehabilitating a child soldier is so much more than I read about in books. It takes more than a gun burning ceremony and a certificate that says “rehabilitated” for these young people to piece their lives back together. Sometimes they choose to return to war and the only life they know, but if they don’t it might take every single day of the rest of their life to fight the battle to rebuild. I remember the ones I met; they had vacant eyes that had had the life sucked right out and I hope that someday the light will return. That their smile will reach their eyes and their joy light up the room.

Without words, people remind me that all these stories are about “those people” “over there.”  But imagine just for a minute, that Mama with empty arms, she could be your sister, because her and you aren’t really so different after all. The little boy who had nowhere to run, he could be your son, wide eyed with wonder and ready to take on the world. And the stories, they are right here beside me too. Someone tells me that the little boy that I once taught in Sunday School here on the frozen Canadian prairies, he survived Rwanda, because his Mom ran through the bush for 3 months straight with him tied to her back. The two of them, were the only survivors in their family. I watch him colour, no different from the other kids, and yet not at all the same. 

And you know what? That little boy, the one who spoke to his Mom of dead people, he is now bent over a desk studying at an Ivy League school. But he does not forget. Because 2 years old is old enough to remember all those things he saw, and he wants to go back to Rwanda so he can make it a better place than the one he remembers as a child. And people like him and his Mama, they inspire me to love when it hurts and when it doesn’t even make sense, and to go out every single day and make the world just a little bit better.