anti-racist homeschool

 If there are two things that have massively shifted in the United States in recent months it’s that the realities of race relations in our country are finally getting the attention they deserve; and second, due to Covid, more families are homeschooling than ever before. I, like many of you, never imagined that I would be a homeschool mom, and yet we are now in our fourth year. What I’ve learned thus far on my homeschooling journey is that my favorite part of being my kids’ teacher is that I have complete control over what they learn and how they learn it. I see homeschool as a golden opportunity to infuse family values into the academic culture of our home, particularly with respect to how we engage race. 

Now before I go any further I just need to put out the disclaimer that we are in no way a precious homeschool family. I use the phrase "homeschool mom" very loosely. I still work full time, I have a million things on my plate and I try really hard to not neglect my kids, which still happens more than I’d like. 

I’m not actually sure we got in 180 days of learning last year. I don’t do cute activities. I don’t teach Latin. There is no morning basket or hymn study because this mama doesn’t have time for that. I am eclectic and minimalist and if you want tips on how to do preschool in the bathtub, I’m your person. 

We do school whenever it's convenient, I delegate tasks to unsuspecting travelers, I multi-task to a fault. It's usually not pretty, and some days I cry, but we make it work. 

 

So with that glowing self assessment to set the stage, hear me when I say that even in the midst of chaos, the things that matter rise to the top, and integrating our values into the academic pursuit is always at the top – our values around racial justice included. 

 

I made an Instagram post about this recently that seemed to really resonate with people and so I wanted to share a bit more about what race conscious home-education looks like for us. 

 

For starters, our free-reading shelves are stocked with books that do a good job of celebrating black culture and acknowledging black struggle. We have acquired as many multi-cultural books as we can get our hands on so that our bookshelves reflect the true diversity of the world and do not perpetuate white exceptionalism. These books are highly curated and screened for content and voice. Our living room books are a reflection of us: we don’t do colorblind; we don’t do white supremacy; we don’t tolerate racist micro aggressions – even in children’s literature. 

 

On our school shelves are stocked with books that I expect to read with them. In this lineup we have the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad and the ugly hold their spots simply because there is value in the debrief. With mom as a guide, we let racism come out of the shadows. These white-supremacist authors might be dead but their proud-boy decedents are still on prime-time television so we engage them. We read of early explorers and talk about the start of the slave trade. We read about the founding of America and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. We talk about the beliefs that white people had that justified the dehumanization of non-whites. I don’t screen offensive ideas or language. I just stop reading, rest the book on my lap, and call out the racism in every paragraph. We have conversations about how these ideas are equally prevalent today and what we are supposed to do with that. 

 

These conversations are now so common for us that before the word out of my mouth, somebody is protesting, “THEY AREN'T INDIANS. White people should know better – they stole the land from Native Americans.” The mention of slavery makes one child want to punch a wall. These days, the kids rant faster than I do, and honestly, that feels accomplished.  

 

I didn’t grow up racist. Except for the fact that I was taught that Columbus discovered America and that Vespucci and Cortez were mistreated explorers who received an unfortunate welcome in the New World. We read Little House on the Prairie and not once did anyone say the word “problematic.” I was taught that slavery ended with the Civil War and racism ended with MLK. So yeah. I grew up racist. 

 

I want something different for my kids. And that requires not only a different awareness, but also a different response. Like Angela Davis said for all of us to hear and grapple with, It’s not enough to not be racist, you have to be anti-racist.

 

Anti-racism is a matter of acknowledging the status-quo and taking it to task. It's about assessing whether our kids are receiving an education that reinforces white-supremacy or challenges it. The gift of homeschooling, my friends, is that you can sculpt for your children what their anti-racist education is going to look like. For me, this is invaluable. 

 

In addition to the history reading and literature selections, we talk about inequalities in the sciences. We do copy work from Jesuit prayers of lament. Creative writing prompts are meant to provoke contemplation and action. We create art and memorize key scripture. We engage what matters.

 

Anti-racism isn’t a topic. It’s not a unity study. Anti-racism is an attitude and an orientation and a lifestyle. Racism is the air that we all breathe and therefore as parents and educators, our response to that fact needs to be commensurate. If I’m teaching my kids to identify faces on coins, I need to also teach them to identify systems of oppression that put those faces there. If we’re celebrating freedom, we need to teach the barriers to enjoying it. Education ought to prepare our kids up to be functional, wise, contributing members of society. If anti-racism isn't a central theme in that, our society is doomed.

 

I know plenty of people are pushing back against such ideas by saying, “it’s not all about race,” but… it kind of is. Unless humanity suddenly becomes translucent, color matters, always. In my experience, it’s only white people who struggle to see that. I want my kids to appreciate that wherever they are, and in everything they do, they need to be consciously aware of who is in charge, who needs defending, and how to make wrong things right. This requires making sense of the story of race. 

 

This is not as advanced as it sounds. My five-year-old who doesn’t even know her days of the week yet (I told you I wasn't precious) gets it. Like she said to me last week, “We stand up for brown people. It’s what we do.” It’s that simple. Racism and privilege and justice and oppression – these are not mature topics to wait for a grad school class in critical race theory. When we talk about them early, and if we unbind them from shame, our kids are equipped to engage their world with confidence and a sense of purpose. It really just takes intentionality and time, and thanks to the routine of homeschool we JUST. KEEP. AT. IT. 

 

There's a million ways to do this and and the anti-racist education will vary by age, grade, personality etc. My goal here isn't to be dogmatic about method but just to promote that it should be happening. The point is that, for most of us, defaulting to the educational culture that we grew up in is just going to produce more of the same culture that we're now trying to dismantle. And so my word of invitation to every homeschool parent out there, particularly the ones who are struggling to see upside of the covid-driven choice: you have the opportunity and the duty to run an anti-racist homeschool. It’s important. It’s possible. It’s worthwhile. 

 

The world needs us to do this. Let’s live up to our potential. 

where is the hope

 

A few days ago, I messaged one of my nurse friends. “I think I can be creative with Mary’s bandages until the next crate arrives… as long as no one else gets burned.” Today, a little girl whose pants caught on fire showed up at my door. It’s when your ‘just enough’ turns out to be too little that hope comes hard. 

 

My friends who thought they just had to get through the summer are feeling this too. ‘Just enough sanity’ to survive till school starts has been hijacked by school not reopening, and I see a familiar hopeless look in your eyes. 

 

As I lifted the little girl into my tub, giving her Tylenol and cookies to distract her from what was about to happen, I sized up the damage. Thirty percent of the upper thigh, not over any joints. “The clinic sent you home to care for it yourself, didn’t they?” I asked, judging by the gooped on toothpaste and ashes that are considered “traditional medicine” for burns. 

 

Back home my friends are cleaning up different messes. The protest fires of injustice and racism and hate are blazing in Portland and elsewhere and the “traditional medicine” of white supremacy doesn’t debride without tears either.

 

Where is the hope?

 

The little girl started crying as I slowly rubbed away the crust that was clinging angry to the tender flesh. Not recognizing either the girl or her mom by face, I asked where they live. M’wanguni, the mom said, in between telling her daughter to not cry so loud. “That’s two villages over,” I observed, “How did you know to come here?” “I heard from the man whose finger you fixed that you were kind to people like us,” she explained. Ah yes. The man who presented me with a severed finger that the clinic wouldn’t touch except to cover with a square of gauze tied on with a condom. 

 

It’s never ending, the wounding is. For me or you. Breonna Taylor’s murderer still walks free; the poor are being pushed farther out of affordable housing; and demon sperm lady is practically surgeon general.

 

Where is the hope? 

 

There was a time when scenes like this would have wrecked me. More times than I can count, I’ve left a bleeding person alone in my bathroom so I could go outside and sob heavy. And while I’m holding tight to wound supplies and not BLM signs, I feel your pain too – I do. That I can’t march with you, that I can’t help teach your kids’ pod, that I can’t hand you Tylenol and cookies while we tackle this life together – it grieves me in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

I want to be optimistic; that the Tylenol will take the edge off, that tomorrow the pink skin will magically be brown, that medical neglect will no longer send people to my door. I want to be optimistic for you too; that the Covid curve will angle down and that black communities will be lifted up and that music will return to your streets. 

 

I love the optimists in my life, and I aspire to be one of them. Deeply connected to heart’s desires, goal oriented and stubbornly positive. Optimism motivates us to take risk and study burns and speak truth to power. Optimism serves us well… until it doesn’t. When the next patient is more critical than the last and the next tweet more heinous than the first it’s a sucker punch to the gut and all those Pollyanna thoughts feel childish. Confrontation with reality has sent more than a few optimists into rehab where we’ve tried to make sense of how we could have been so naïve. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

Wiser, more experienced, we get our act together. I order hundreds, not dozens of bandages at a time and silver sulfa now by the gallon. You round up screen shots for facebook ammo and amplify black voices as we try and figure out how to realistically achieve this thing we call healing.

 

But our expectations are tempered more than we admit. Where we no longer pray for miraculous healing and justice is only preached to the choir. Those brave desires have been swapped out for a safer, more cynical version… but at least we’re being realistic, and that feels grounding… though depressing in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope? 

 

Not knowing how to show up for myself, or you, or anyone, I show up to therapy and try to figure out where I am. I learn that the place I find myself is squarely in-between. I learn that God gave us two hands for a reason, so that we might remain deeply connected to our optimistic dreams while also deeply connected to the world’s brokenness. In the space between, wanting so much, and seeing so little, we feel the tension in every cell of our bodies, which opens the possibility of discovering that this is where hope is. 

 

When healed patients feel loved through hours of connection, I find meaning in the pain. Now  I’m hopeful, instead of devastated, by each new story that reaches my door. As I’m watching America from afar, seeing the end of conservative evangelicalism and the emergence of fresh faith, I feel hope for you in so many ways too. Hope lives in the already and the not yet – where we believe that change is possible while still sensing how broken we are. Where the light shines bright and yet darkness still permeates. Where heaven has come and yet is not fully here. This is where hope is.

 

Lament puts words to the insanity of it all. With space for both the longing and doubt that makes us human: That what we experience is awful, but not beyond redemption. That I’m powerless to fix it but I’m empowered by the one who can. That the-God-who-sees is made of everything I am not. That evil is pervasive but there’s more grace than I know. Lament roots us in hope by declaring that suffering is real, but mercy is near, and if everything we long for falls apart, the shattered dreams will, in faith, become the building blocks of a surprising tomorrow. This is where hope is.   

 

And by sowing tears and reaping joy we carry on, hoping against hope that we won’t be disappointed. As I optimistically wrap wounds and realistically still dispense the analgesics. As you optimistically cast your ballots and realistically pray in closets. We can go to task and then go to sleep because the results are not ours to manufacture. It’s in the space between optimism and reality that hope thrives because that’s where God is, involved in what is, working out what will be, and actively transforming everything in the process. And for this reason, and this reason alone, it will be ok. 

 

Hold on to hope, my friends. Let’s hold on to hope. 

  

raising girls amongst karens

Recently, one of my friends of a different race and generation posted a question on social media asking, “What’s a Karen?” He received good responses, mostly copied and pasted from google. I think the tidiest definition for me was:

A Karen is a white woman who feels entitled enough to weaponize her skin color particularly against black men.  

Yup.

Feeling cheeky, I added my own definition, writing, “my face, less woke.” 

Seeing my extra pale skin in the little photo next to the comment I sighed – it’s sad, but true. 

Despite knowing several perfectly wonderful women named Karen, the stereotyped “Karen” as a racist icon has become the meme du jour. They are the wives of Chad, the mothers of Brad and the best friend to Brenda and Becky. All of these people are dangerous but Karen is basically the matriarch of the pro-white movement, so I don’t mind letting her take the fall for the whole lot. 

I was born of white women. Raised by white women. Surrounded almost exclusively by white women. Some turned out to be Karens, others not. Now, having lived a third of my life in Africa, where the white women I interact with are actually one in a million, Karen has its own meaning for me. Here, Karen isn’t going to call 911 for feeling threatened by a black man in a hoodie, but colonialist Karen and white-savior Karen have their own ways of oozing superiority. All that to say, my minority status here doesn’t give me a pass. There’s not a single white woman on the planet who doesn’t need to do business with her inner Karen. Such is the world we live in, and the world we are raising our daughters in too. 

When our first two children came out female and blonde headed, our circle of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, anti-Karen work expanded. “Privilege” in the village takes on specific form, so we started with the basics: you’re not as special as people think you are. We taught them that when they are given free stuff in stores, they don’t deserve it and it must be shared equally with their friends. When an adult takes something out of their child’s hand to give it to the white girls, our kids are obligated to hand it back to the original child. When an adult is displaced in order to put their white butt in a seat, the girls must decline and sit on the floor. These are some of the house rules on par with “chew with your mouth closed” and “say please and thank you.” 

They aren’t perfect. We still have to interrupt their play time to coach them towards kindness. Nine times out of ten they don’t even realize what’s happening when others defer to them. I don’t think your friend is feeling loved, we reflect out loud. Oh, they say, and make a change. The relationship practice gives meaning to the rules. Our goal is to instill habits and attitudes that will support healthy relationships for the long haul. If the rules don’t play out on the playground, they won’t play out in adulthood. There are plenty of right thinking, poorly behaving adults in America right now who know the good they ought to do and are not doing it because theory never became practice. The exercise of relationship hasn’t taken place. 

This is the essence of the Karens who are championing All Lives Matter. They are operating out of a philosophical framework in which “liberty and justice for all” is scrawled across the placards of their lives but for some reason, saying Black Lives Matter strikes a chord. Why? My observation, as I hear their arguments on social media, is that their response is entirely cerebral. I’m not hearing any empathy or connection, and as proof of the absence of relationship bubbles to the top like sulfur, I think about my own girls again.

A few months ago, we were reading for homeschool about Vasco de Gama’s voyages around the horn of Africa during which the slave trade expanded greatly. As I read about Africans being tied up and shipped off as slaves, I could feel the wave of emotion rising in my 8-year-old sitting next to me. As I read on, her gaze lowered, and her brow furrowed. Her fists clenched and she stiffened her whole body until she cut me off with a guttural roar. I stopped reading, knowing that my girl and her big feels was going to need a moment to work through this one. I know her heart and had seen it coming. She sputtered for a moment, the rage flooding faster than her brain could find words for and finally she screamed at de Gama and his crew, “THAT WAS TIMO!!!” (her best friend) “Those are my people! Those are my friends!” And her face fell into her hands and her body flopped on my lap and we sobbed together for a long, long time.

Day to day life for our very white daughters involves constant interaction with people who do not look like them. Their friends are exclusively black. The people they admire are exclusively black. The sources of their greatest joys and most favorite memories are all black. While America is at war with itself over its ingrained fear of black men, our two little white girls are absolutely enamored with a whole community of black men who are not only trusted, but also adored. Through repeated exposure, their brains have been wired to perceive black men as protectors and not threats. So while Karen is calling the police because she’s six feet away from a black man minding his own business, our girls are running straight into the arms of black men whom they love. The idea of black people – their friends – being mistreated is intolerable. And it’s not because our girls are better people, or we’re better parents – it’s simply because they’ve had the right kinds of experience. 

That day, as we read about the start of the slave trade, my daughter got her first taste of dehumanization. By entering into the gallows of the slave ship, she felt helpless and betrayed by her own skinfolk, overwhelmed by 500 years of evil that she couldn’t undo and didn’t know how to make right. I wasn’t going to talk her out of her grief. I’m glad she felt it. The ability to lament deeply the wrongs of people who look like us is a necessary part of growing up un-Karen. 

I’ve been watching the dumpster fire of social media interaction the last few weeks as black folks are BEGGING to be heard and white America is doing a barely mediocre job of listening. The BLM allies are growing increasingly frustrated because they are working overtime in the education department – trying to drop knowledge on every single Karen who is crying taupe tears because her soul is wounded by the idea that anyone else’s life should matter too. I see it. The precious few woke white women are on the verge of hysterics wondering why Karen just doesn’t get it. And of course, Brad, Chad, Brenda and Becky are showing up to add their piece too and the air smells rancid like white supremacy. The riots are visible symbols of invisible pain and moment by moment it's ambiguous whether this is moving forward or backward. 

But none of this should be surprising. Ultimately, America needs to experience healing, and that will never happen if people are not in relationship. What separates the Karens from the people trying to rein them in is that the white people who “get it” all have significant relationships within the black community. 

I’m not talking about “token black friends,” I mean these bridge builders are IN COMMUNITY with people who don’t look like them. They spend considerable time in each other’s homes. Their children are best friends. They share values and a vision for their neighborhood. They break bread. They like each other. They love each other. And the depth of the relational bond is significant enough that when one hurts, the other hurts. Of course their black friends’ lives matter. And it is for these white folks that “dismantling systemic racism” is not an intellectual exercise – it's personal. 

Right now, I’m seeing a lot of resources circling about books to read and conversations to have and that’s awesome, but it isn’t relational enough. Studying black history is essential, but distantly academic. Karens aren’t dumb, they are disconnected – from black pain, from the consequences of their privilege, from reality. I’m pretty sure Karens have google. What they don’t have are black friends. Even if it’s in their heads, it’s not in their hearts, and it’s not in their hearts, because it’s not in their homes. The bridge between knowledge and action is the motivation to care, and that only comes from meaningful relationship. 

Last night Bronwyn was curled up on the couch reading the children’s book Beatrice’s Goat about a little girl in Africa whose family receives a goat from an NGO. Reaching the end, she hopped off the couch and said, “Hey, it says Beatrice lives in a small African village! Do you know where we can find a small African village?” Jeremy and I just looked at each other, and then at her and we both laughed, “Bronwyn, you literally live in a small African village. We literally run a program to manage livestock for 300 families just like Beatrice…” And she just looked at us and was like, Oh. I guess you’re right! Despite the fact that this book was describing the backdrop of her life, it was a story to her and therefore looked new and unfamiliar. Beatrice’s life wasn’t something she was living, it was something she was reading. Text is… textual. But her friends whom she throws her arms around and feels in the flesh – that’s what’s real. 

Children need black hands to shake and hi-five and hold. They need black friends, black teachers, black doctors, and black pastors to admire. Our black son needs to see faces who look like him and our white girls need to see faces who don’t. The key to breaking the Karen cycle is to provide our girls with repeated experiences of sustained, positive interaction with black people – in particular black men – over the course of their growing up years. I don’t believe there is any substitute for this.

I can hear Karen’s brain processing: Not all of us live in Africa, Bethany. Finding this in the middle of Whitesville, USA is hard. There aren’t many black people here.

Good observation Karen! Fostering meaningful relationships might mean changing schools, or changing churches, changing doctor’s offices or neighborhoods or even towns. 

We know families who have uprooted themselves in search of diversity, and I applaud them for that. It may sound radical, but I wouldn’t even be throwing it out for consideration if I wasn’t 110% convinced that it’s worth it. Racial reconciliation requires relationship. Full stop. 

I appreciate that not every family is in a position to actually MOVE, so it does beg the question, how far should the pursuit of racial diversity go? That’s up to you – how much do you want your heart to grow?

Our family would be willing to go pretty darn far. Because we know from experience that it’s not a sacrifice. It’s a gift. To us, and to the Karens who need someone to bear witness to uncommon love.  

closed for inventory: the gift of coronavirus

Our one grocery store in the province does this curious thing where every so often it closes for inventory. In the middle of the day. During peak shopping hours. 

In times past when we’ve made a special trip to town, all excited for meat and cheese, and have been greeted by the rejection sign on ShopRight’s door, I’ve observed that it’s impossible in that moment to NOT become “exclusively American” and question why the store doesn’t do this at night and why is there no concern for the inconvenience to customers and who on earth approved this from a profit and loss standpoint? 

Alas. There are no answers. 

Drama aside, the sign telling us to come buy cheese another day is a minor annoyance… but it’s a major reminder. 

Here in Zambia, we finally joined our friends around the globe in “shut down mode.” Your jobs, schools, stores, and gatherings have been closed down for a while now, and as of this weekend, ours are too. I keep thinking about the sign on ShopRight’s door: Closed for Inventory, and I find myself transitioning into a familiar practice. 

You see, this Covid-19 crisis isn’t our first rodeo. Going through the files of my memory, I believe this will be our fourth lockdown experience in 13 years. None of the previous threats were, in retrospect, as deadly as Coronavirus, but their features of marshal law, shortage of food and quarantine resonates with what’s happening globally at this time. And while Corona promises to register much higher on the death scale, our other Zambian experiences have, I think, matched Corona’s psychological impact in terms of not knowing how bad things would get or how long the crisis would last. 

Our lock-down experiences have fallen under the categories of political violence, public health crises and good old-fashioned cultural upheaval (aka, witchcraft,) each ranging in duration from three weeks to three months. During these times, the severity of the threat has ranged from mild concern, to actually lying awake at night waiting for someone to come and kill us. 

What I’ve learned over the course of many shut-downs is that these life-interrupting, life-altering events that make us curse and cry and question why elected officials can’t get their act together, are actually prime opportunities to do a special kind of turning inward. “Closed for Inventory” reminds us that when life as we know it closes down, this is our call to take stock of absolutely everything.

When Cholera demanded our work be suspended, I noticed how unnerved I was and started reflecting over my job: What do I love about my work? Why am I anxious right now doing nothing? Who do I really work for? What about my work makes me tired? Where do I feel energized? When things resume, what do I want to be different? I TOOK STOCK. 

When we ended up spending ALL THE HOURS OF ALL THE DAYS together as a family, and that made me feel stir-crazy, it presented more questions: What are our goals as a family? When our kids are old, what do we want them to remember about this time? Do my kids know how much I love them? How would they know that they are important to me? When things resume, what do we want to be different? WE TOOK STOCK. 

When our emergency evacuation insurers told us we were too remote and they couldn’t get us out, even if we were in danger, I felt vulnerable in a totally new way. As I noticed the cortisol flooding my system over the idea of being stranded without a safety net, I began to ask questions: Are we being smart? Which ranks higher: my desire to serve or my desire to be safe?  If I get really sick, am I actually afraid of dying? I wrestled with what my responses exposed in my worldview concerning life, death and purpose and pondered the false security that things like insurance tend to provide. I came to a place of acceptance regarding my own sense of control as well as my mortality. I got real meta, in a way that mattered. I TOOK STOCK. 

When “stuff” was hard to get (INCLUDING TOILET PAPER, YA’LL – WE SEE YOU) and I noticed my heart racing when certain items disappeared from shelves, we evaluated our commitments to minimalism and radical contentment. In times of greatest resource-insecurity, we made conscious decisions to downsize. Yes, downsize. We simplified our meal plans and wardrobes and reduced clutter in every space in the house. This sounds counter-intuitive when most people globally are currently hoarding, but we found it incredibly liberating. When stuff was not available in shops, we asked the question, Can we manage if certain items never return? Is this a need, want or addiction? Would changing our expectations actually serve our minimalist goals? When our grocery store burned to the ground (next one being roughly 400 miles away) we said, well then, this will be different. And we pivoted. The loss of material security does not mean the end of life, it means the end of life as we know it. In times of crisis, life is different, but not over and paying attention to what we want/crave/miss when its gone is informative. WE TOOK STOCK. 

I need to confess; this healthy introspection didn’t happen instinctively the first time around. When chaos erupted and big men with big guns started patrolling and everything was canceled, oh we freaked out – like normal people. The default reaction in human beings when faced with danger and insecurity is that our limbic-brain engages and we go into fight or flight response. “Panic mode” is the factory setting, despite not being very productive. I think for Jeremy and me, we were able to shift from panic to productivity simply because, even though we were wrapped up in our first crisis, it wasn’t the first crisis for the people around us. Instead of panic and worry, our neighbors immediately launched into story mode, and it was fascinating. They told us about Independence in ‘64 and whatever outbreak in ‘80 something and the riots in the early 2000's. They told us about how they learned to greet each other by tapping feet and bumping elbows. They told us about changes in local economy and food and what they did and how they felt about it then and now. They narrated from the past what we were seeing in the present and then declared like bosses, Twalikwanisha. We managed. 

Something about their crisis management plan made us both curious and jealous. Their obvious mastery over that default, limbic, panic-setting was winsome and compelling, and it was probably the thing that made me ask the first of all the introspective questions. Through their measured response, I was confronted with a significant contrast: People are throwing rocks and stuff is literally on fire and I’m terrified of anyone who breathes on me and it’s not like the people around me aren’t living with this chaos too… but I’m watching them gracefully change course… and it’s speaking to me that I’ve got some work to do. 

And I did. And as a family, we did. The key to thorough inventory is to pay attention to the felt emotions in your body and observe them with curiosity. When you feel anxiety, fear, anger, panic – any form of disturbance whatsoever – there is a question begging to be asked. And when a question is asked and answered, new awareness and therefore new emotions may arise that need to be observed and engaged, and that process needs to be repeated until you come to a place of ultimate inquiry: Is the way I’m coping with my situation actually serving me, and if not, what is in my power to change?

Now, as Corona presents yet another forced opportunity to stop and notice what’s bubbling to the surface and make a conscious decision about how to respond, I’m oddly grateful. Just because I’ve done this a few times doesn’t mean I’ve reached some sort of crisis-management nirvana. There’s a lot I’m not worried about because, been there, done that. But I’ve still got my stuff, obviously, and Covid-19 is presenting new circumstances and begging new questions.

I’ll just be transparent and share that I'm leaning in, and it’s already uncomfortable. Unlike previous crises which were isolated to Zambia, the fact that America is struggling at the same time means our funding has taken a significant hit and I’ve been feeling the growing pit in my stomach and a racing mind keeping me awake at 2am. As much as I’d rather mindlessly scroll Instagram right now, I now need to stay present to those feelings and ask, If funds continue to drop, where is the fear in that coming from? What does it mean to “have your needs met?” If you have to pick and choose, what populations or programs matter most? Can Fimpulu live with a Choshen scale-back? Who are you trusting for your provision? I NEED TO TAKE STOCK. 

From lived experience, I know that this is important… and the only way to do crisis well. At least I know that if I press into the discomfort, the fruit of introspection will last long after the crisis is over. This is the gift of Coronavirus.

The sign has been hung. This is our time. All of us. To do our work and take stock. Don’t waste it. 

how to grieve: an African primer

I lost my fourth and final grandparent last week. This is the third family death since I’ve lived abroad, and I haven’t been able to return home for any of them. I’m ok with it, in a resigned way – death is a part of life, and missing out on major family events is an expected consequence of working overseas. It has gotten me thinking though.

You know, we’ve attended maybe 100 or more funerals in our time here. With a life expectancy in the 40s and an environment that is constantly prowling for its next victim, death literally comes with the territory. While there are many cultural things that we haven’t gotten used to – such as eating chicken feet or not looking people in the eyes – grieving in the style of our neighbors is different. We are more than used to it – it has become our way of grieving too. It just feels right.

I remember one of my earliest conversations here, as someone asked me about grief and mourning and funerals in the United States. I explained that usually a service would be scheduled and people would attend, and that close relatives would check in on the bereaved afterwards, and others might bring a meal, but that mostly people preferred to mourn privately. My neighbor looked at me with so much concern as if I had told her that Americans grieve by snorting crack and she just said, “Oh Bethany, that’s not healthy.”

I had no idea what she meant by that, but now, with what feels like a century’s worth of funerals under my hat, I appreciate where she was coming from, and I agree with her. Americans mourn the way they do for cultural reasons, not because a band of emotionally intelligent people came together and said, this is what is best for our hearts. The way grief is handled in our community just feels healthy and I wish that all of my friends could experience it the way I have. 

Most recently I attended the funeral of a young boy who died after the clinic refused to call an ambulance. I’ve written about the local ambulance situation before, and again, this death affected me deeply. For many reasons – it’s not our responsibility, we are busy right now, we’ve already gone to town five times this week ­– I declined to take the child to the hospital myself, and when he died, the weight of that decision absolutely crushed my heart. I knew that I needed to be present at that funeral and took myself there immediately. 

Funerals start the moment a person dies and I arrived to find the bulk of the village already gathered, as was expected. In village life, whether you are intimately acquainted with the deceased or only knew him as that kid down the road, funerals are whole community events. The commitment to mourn together reflects the belief that mourning is not only important but also that we need each other to do it well. 

I entered the funeral house which had already been emptied of furniture to accommodate the masses who would be moving in. The body of the child whose soul was no longer with us was laying in the corner, a woman next to him swatting flies from his face. The mourners had already begun their work of shedding raw and restless tears and I received gladly the permission to begin releasing my own. I beelined it to the mother and kneeling, draped myself over her. Instinctually, I clutched her thin body, her head immediately resting heavy on my shoulder. As her sobs grew louder, I just bellowed over her, “I’m sorry mama, I’m so sorry I didn’t take him, I’m so sorry.” I leaned into the catharsis of confession. My body heaved with each “I’m sorry” and hers did too. We held that posture until the tears slowed and the wails softened and I could feel the tension in both her body and mine relax a little. I let her go and sat back on my feet. She began telling me the story of how her son had been fine and then all of a sudden he wasn’t. She told me it wasn’t my fault and I undeservedly received that grace. We shifted ourselves to lean against the hut wall, gladly letting it bear some weight for us as we settled in for the emotional marathon ahead. 

I scanned the room and looked into familiar faces. Their tear stained cheeks were evidence that they had already completed round one of wailing and were giving each other reprieve before starting again. I respect these women so much for their service – I know they attend far more funerals per year than I do, and their tears accomplish so much. They have mastered the art of facilitating the grieving process – a sort of spiritual midwifery whereby the bereaved may come to access, feel and release every single emotion there is. Emotions must be felt in order to be processed and grief must be experienced in order to be healed. Emotional grief is a full body, sensory event – not something contained in dainty little tear drops. 

After a short while, the mourners began again, first with a quiet cry, and then a crescendo of anguish. Fists pounded the floor. The boy’s mother flung herself across my lap and I began stroking her hair and massaging the small of her back while my tears made a growing wet spot on her shirt. When someone in the room found words, they were yelled heavenward, without filter or judgement: Why God! Why did you take him! We weren’t done with him yet! He didn’t even go to school! Who will take care of me when I am old? I can’t go on! I wish I could die too!

In good wisdom, as great midwives, the mourners worked through pain-filled waves one at a time. Crying and screaming carried on until exhaustion took its turn. When bodies needed a break, we sat quietly or just talked. When eyes were heavy, there was no sacrilege in sleep. But the work of the mourners was always to bring us back to the task at hand – feeling the emotion and setting it free. As such, someone would just sense it – that the rest period had been enough – and that the tears needed to start again, and they would release a mournful wail that called forth what was left inside, awaiting its turn. 

While this funeral was deeply personal to me, I have learned through many other experiences that it doesn’t matter whether the deceased was your best friend or someone you only saw once on the street; when others start crying, you will start crying too. Thanks to healthy mirror neurons, our brains are wired to reflect the pain of one sitting in front of us, and as we do, we share the collective weight of it. The implications of this are profound. In short, we need to mourn with other people so that our brain and body can find the emotional relief we need.

I stayed for a few hours and left knowing that the rest of the group (less concerned than I of sleeping without a mosquito net) would stay all night and into the next day and the next. Our friends are never in a hurry, and particularly when it comes to mourning. They know from lived experience that there is no shortcut to grief. There is no fast-track, and trying to speed up the mourning process – or heaven forbid, cut it short – doesn’t actually hurry healing, it only shifts it to a later, lonelier date. 

I had gone to the funeral house feeling sad and shattered, and I went home still sad, but honestly more whole. This is the gift of riding the undulations of grief until the physical body feels differently. This process is so different from what I grew up with which can be described as emotional “management,” something I see now in such a different light. I think we as westerners cause ourselves so much unnecessary pain by putting ourselves through the actual torture of trying to suppress unwanted emotions instead of simply feeling them. We equate short grief and fast healing with resilience, but truly there is no greater resilience than sticking with the hard task of mourning until it is fully done. The clock does not tell us how to heal.

Before getting in my vehicle, I sought out some of the key the organizers. The men outside were well practiced at taking care of a funeral's logistical needs. The strong, 20-somethings had dug the hole. Others were finding a carpenter and arranging a coffin. I connected with the ones soliciting funds to purchase food and firewood and made my contribution. This mobilization is not the family’s job. Their job is to mourn. It’s the community’s job to provide the care.  

My heart grows three sizes bigger every time I see this kind of togetherness. The safety and compassion and care – it reminds those of us who are privileged to participate that we are wired for struggle and worthy of love and belonging.  I can’t imagine tapping into that comforting truth if I were expected to mourn alone at home or awkwardly in a front row pew while shedding only a few acceptable tears. I just can’t. Not now anyway. Not now that I’ve felt how therapeutic it is to sob and to blow snot into the very chitenge that I am wearing and to feel how feeling-the-feels makes it feel better.

For weeks after, I would see a member of that family and say the thing we all know to say in the wake of a loss. We say, “Mwaculeni” (mwah-choo-lay-nee) which simply means, “You are mourning well.” Note that no one asks, “how’s it going?” as if the mourner should submit a progress report or even be able to articulate the mystery of healing. Just, Mwaculeni: the acknowledgement that you are mourning well – whatever that looks like – whether the tears have dried up or still falling freely. There is a permission granted with that blanket affirmation that that has its own healing effect. To hear the words, “You are doing what you need to do, and you’re doing it well,” might be the kindest thing we could speak to a hurting heart. 

I know my family will gather later this week for a funeral. I don’t know whether they will truly grieve or just have a service. I hope they do both, though I doubt that any women will come into the church and flail themselves onto my mother and aunts and uncles and commence wailing… but I wish they would. For all who mourn, now and in the future, just know that I will always hold (a very African) space for you. 

love in the rainy season

Starting in mid-November and lasting until early April, it will rain almost every day in Zambia. It doesn’t rain the whole day – just long enough and hard enough to stop work and keep everything mucky. Life in the rainy season is usually chaotic and always messy… It actually makes me think of romance. 

The parallel is probably not obvious to anyone but me, unless they too have tried to nurture a marriage relationship in a small Zambian village. But as Valentine’s Day approaches and I think about all of the challenges that romance has in this context, the grey-green hues in the distance feel like an appropriate backdrop. 

Ten years ago, after our wedding, we returned to Africa in anticipation of continuing the Rom-Com already in progress. Our first home together was a cozy hut with a grass roof. It was perfectly romantic – like something out of an exotic, destination-honeymoon brochure. The idyllic feeling lasted a whole week, until the awkwardness of the paper-thin walls, proximity to neighbors and people knocking on our door in the middle of the night set in. We knew that the rats and snakes were watching us, and eventually learned that our neighbors were too. 

After several months of marriage, when I still wasn’t pregnant, the women of the village confronted me on it. They were appalled that I clearly was not sleeping with my husband and felt like it was their business to set me straight. Putting aside the embarrassment of telling my neighbors just how often we were having sex, I also informed them that it’s possible to have sex and not get pregnant. They weren’t buying it and chose to send me for training. “Show up at the maize shed on Friday at midnight. Bring a chicken.” This was definitely not an optional event, so I went. I returned home the next day and spilled to Jeremy the details of the raucous sex-capade, rambling nonsensical about half clothed grandmothers wielding corncobs while chickens died in the corner. Let’s just say village life has never been boring.

Dampened only slightly by the living conditions and village gossip, we invested in our romance in many ways – carrying on the habits we had developed before we were married. We played cribbage, had candle-light dinners, and talked for hours under the mosquito net.  As far as physical intimacy was concerned though, we resigned ourselves to the awkward sense of exposure and just kept going. Our love apparently has resilient DNA. 

After three long, disapproving years, we made everyone happy and produced a baby, and eventually another. That at least quelled the rumors, but it wasn’t until year seven of marriage when we re-built our house to include proper windows and multiple bedrooms and door locks that we felt like the rainy season of our love-life might actually be coming to an end. 

Nevertheless, while we enjoyed the safety of our new haven, we experienced other storms keeping us apart too. At times when malaria, diarrhea and fatigue have taken over our house, we’ve found ourselves in too much pain to be touched. In times of organizational growth, village drama and government threats, our minds were often too consumed to even think about romance. There has been more than one season when we just could not seem to catch a break. During one such time, things were so stormy that my hair was falling out and the days felt robotic. Out of sheer willpower, we made romantic gestures through heart-shaped pancakes or a sweet note on the mirror, but physical intimacy felt aloof. I looked longingly at Jeremy and asked, “When’s the last time we had sex?” Returning the gaze, he just said: “I can’t remember.” Occasionally, when it rains, it pours.

They say falling in love is easy and staying in love is hard work. Truth. Sex is not the only way to nurture or show romantic love and I’d argue that it’s not even the primary way. It is, however, a powerful unifier, and disembodied romance will usually feel incomplete. For many marriage relationships, sex truly functions as the barometer for the over-all relational climate – a theory we’ve seen proven in more marriages than our own. 

The culture around us states that sex is a man’s right and that it is also a physical necessity akin to needing water or air. Tradition dictates that a woman’s submissiveness goes as far as putting herself in harm’s way – including HIV and black eyes. A sad truth is that we’ve taken multiple women into our home and put others on busses to get them out of extreme situations. And while not every woman is fearing for her life, most have been beaten and few expect fidelity. From the vantage point of the ladies closest to us, even those who are happily married, romantic, non-transactional sex sounds like a fairy tale. 

This is the context in which our own, very public love story is playing out. The same women who taught me how to keep my husband from “wandering” have watched Jeremy honor my body for over ten years. Our closest neighbors may or may not have heard us have sex, but they’ve definitely heard us fight and then watched us make up. They’ve seen us drop hands after a cold word and grab it again after the apology. They’ve watched one of us leave to go sleep at the farm and the next morning kiss on the porch. At times, it’s been shame-inducing to be so on-display – but that vulnerability is also what makes it so productive. 

As Jeremy and I have walked through the uncomfortable exposure of our own relationship we’ve been given a platform to say yes: love making/tending/deepening is never convenient and it’s usually messy; but the green growth that comes from cultivating the soil of connection on which the rain falls is more than worth it. The challenge of love in the rainy season might be very different in our house than it is in the house next door, but we all live it. While the consequences of Malaria vs. infidelity are vastly different, there is solidarity in acknowledging that forces outside of our relationships are actively working to rob us of connection. The desire for love is part of what it means to be human and the brokenness that keeps us apart – both sexually and otherwise – is a universal foe. Our relationship has always looked foreign to our community, but the honesty of our effort to keep love alive has also made it relatable. There’s not a single man or woman around us that doesn’t want to just feel loved. 

For us, as people of faith, part of communicating the gospel is demonstrating God’s good and redemptive potential for every area of life – including romance. At camps and conferences, with small groups and individuals on our couch, without a hint of mastery or pride, we have shared our own journey. Sex obviously isn’t the only thing we talk about, but given its center-stage, high-stakes role in this community, it ranks right up there on the marriage-topic list. We want people to know that great sex is always possible for God’s people as relationships are restored and as our identity as soulful beings is more deeply understood. Our hope is – through the frank disclosure of our own romance – that we might make relevant “laying down one’s life for a friend… because God first loved us.”

Jeremy and I will probably not be having an overly romantic Valentines holiday. Only a handful of people in a five-hundred-mile radius know that this is supposed to be a lovey-dovey weekend which means we’ll spend time with people and I’ll prepare for school and Jeremy will get filthy at the farm. In short, it’s still rainy season. But I have no doubt that at some point we will pause to look in each other’s eyes and express gratitude to the other for braving the struggles that are as inevitable as mud puddles in February.