for those who have been cancelled

Cancel culture. Ubiquitous in recent years, the phrase started as a way to call people out and has evolved into a dynamic of judging and defining people by snapshots of their imperfect lives. Cancelling provides an easy out for frustrating relationships or people we’d rather not get to know. Thanks to polarized politics and a pandemic keeping us in front of our screens all day, this special kind of rejection is now a familiar phrase and I’m guessing it’s here to stay. 

 

I don’t know how all of you have fared in recent months or years – how many of you have spoken up, how many have just shut down, how many of you have taken risks that panned out or ones that put you in facebook jail. I have friends across the spectrum – activists and passivists alike – and I’ve noticed in general that cancel culture has a lot of us on edge. 

 

I realize a blog post about cancel culture would probably have been more timely six months to a year ago, but I’ve been too timid to write, still recovering from the sting of cancelation myself. Not a lot of cancelation mind you, but when you’re an Enneagram 3, and a little bit addicted to approval from others, it doesn’t take a lot of cancelling to feel wounded. 

 

I’ve always been a truth teller, but in the last several years have added in the Christian practice of lament. With the number of injustices that have been upheld by people hijacking the name of Christ I’ve found it increasingly difficult to hold my peace. 

 

Opinionated as I am, I’ve never been a keyboard warrior and I don’t think even my harshest critics would label me as such. But I’ve not been silent about many things – namely, my belief that black lives matter, that immigrants are humans, that guns shouldn’t kill kids, Christian nationalism is heresy, racism is real, corporate greed is gross, vaccines save lives, patriarchy sucks and health care for all would be super duper nice. And not to diminish the love and solidarity from the overwhelming majority, I also never realized I could strike so many nerves without even trying. 

 

In the online world, cancel culture takes on many forms, ranging from the tacit unfollow to the flamboyant one-two punch of unfriend and block. 

 

Typical social media users have friends, while more public figures tend to have followers. By virtue of my work, I have both friends and followers, with a good amount of overlap in a special group labeled funders. Missionaries are a bit of a public commodity and financial support is used as a sign of approval – both personally and professionally. I’ve unfortunately learned that cancelling donations is a special kind of cancel culture with its own pointed message. 

 

Our true friends have always stuck with us, even when we’ve gotten a bit fringy. This past year though, our followers who assumed that “missionary” was synonymous with conservative, Trump-supporting exporters of white nationalism, (it’s not,) got a whiff of our actual relationship with Jesus (justice, mercy and Kingdom of God) had a choice to make. In 15 years we’ve never experienced anything like this. Only since cancel culture really became a thing, have funders who disagreed with us personally begun to show their disapproval with their wallets. The cancellation has occasionally come with a written explanation – We can’t send money to support socialists (we’re definitely not). Other times we’ve just picked up on the correlation: when on Monday I lament the loss of Black Lives and on Tuesday I see the cancelation by known MAGA folk it doesn’t feel coincidental. 

 

Our close friends have tried to encourage us, you don’t want people like that on your support team anyway, which is soothing in one sense but troubling in another. I’ve always believed that the ministry we run is so absolutely worthwhile – in a global, macro, human-kind sense. Our tag line is Seeking the Peace of Luapula, our ministry geared in every way towards the total flourishing of every dimension of society. Our non-Christian friends (we have lots!) are largely unmoved by our motivation – for Christ – because the common ground we share is more than enough. The logic of Christian cancellers however is far more fixated on nuance – I smell a hint of feminism in the air and I’m highly uncomfortable with the implications of this and will therefore be withdrawing my support for the feeding program because your egalitarian marriage is somehow incongruent with lunch for little Mwewa and I will pray for you.

 

I’m not actually radical. Or that outspoken. Honestly. I have plenty of friends for whom I am the most conservative person they know and I have other friends for whom I am the most liberal person they know and really I’m the same person in front of all of them – it’s just where we all land on the spectrum. I follow the Gospel Coalition and Mother Jones. Don’t try to make sense of it. I don’t fit in many boxes and I’m happy with that, but I do hate feeling like I have to shape-shift simply so that my neighbors here aren’t punished for my authenticity. Because canceling me for personal ideologies never just cancels me. It cancels a web of people who are connected to our funders through me and that is what keeps me awake at night. 

 

I’ve played the chameleon for so long and I’m really good at it. I know every word in the Baptist hymnal but have also shared office space with the Stop Walmart Campaign so yes, I can hang with all sorts. I’m also at a place in my journey where congruency is really important to me. There’s a Seinfeld episode where George Castanza is having a characteristic freak out because his girlfriend and regular friends are mixing and he can’t cope. “There’s friendship George and there’s relationship George, and the two can never meet!” I too played this game through most of my 20s and 30s and maybe it’s because I’m now old and cranky but I just don’t want to anymore. You can cancel me if you like. But please don’t cancel my people. 

 

It’s mostly for the 400 school aged children and the 250 adults living with HIV and the 300 farmers and the 50 pastors who are direct beneficiaries of programs that I administer that I don’t want people to cancel me over my completely unrelated views on whatever is coming out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. Caring about current events is not a “distraction” from my life’s work nor is it a reflection of missional drift. We’ve had some advisors remind us that we must be “diplomatic” and we do that too. I bite my tongue ten times for every one time I post something even loosely debatable. But this isn’t the way things ought to be. In my heart of hearts I don’t want to completely overhaul our donor base to include only ideological carbon-copies. Nor do I want to walk on eggshells pretending I have no opinions beyond what happens inside of this little village. I want something healthier than that. 

 

I want curiosity.

Those who have written to say that they are withdrawing support of the ministry because of a clash of personal views have never actually dialogued with us. I wish so much that someone would say, “That’s a really interesting perspective, can you tell me how you arrived at that conclusion?” Or, “I see that this is really important to you. Would you mind sharing what your experience has been?” Without curiosity, there is no connection. Without connection, there is no empathy. Without empathy, there is no humanity. And just like that, cancel culture fuels itself by vilifying because it’s easier to label someone as evil and move on. 

 

I’ve watched so many cancelers explain their “unfriend and blocking spree” as simply wanting to “get rid of the negativity in my life.” Boundaries are reasonable, but I don’t think that’s what cancel culture is. Canceling someone outright for a difference of opinion isn’t being boundaried, it’s a sign of low differentiation. Low differentiation can’t cope when another person sees the world differently as it feels personally threatened by a plurality of viewpoints. Differentiated people however are confident in their own thinking and can either support another's view without becoming wishy-washy or reject another's view without becoming hostile. Differentiation is the polar opposite of cancel culture – and if we’re adults, we should probably take note of that. 

Even well differentiated people have boundaries. I can be friends with you if you think BLM is a terrorist organization – we can stick to what we have in common, like cake-baking or needle point – but if you start spewing hate in the presence of my black son, for his sake, I’m going to ask you to leave. And I would expect that others would respond the same to me. But cancel culture says, there is zero redeeming quality in you, and that can’t be true. 

Our human hearts are wired for more than this. Would you know the real me and love me just the same?Isn’t that what we all want – empathy, kindness, connection? Is that asking too much? I don’t think so. Are empathy, kindness and connection incongruent with passion, activism, or even righteous anger? I don’t think so. Nuance matters here, and I think Christians could stand to manage nuance a lot better than we currently are. 

We can’t remain neutral because that’s not being present in the world. 
We ought not fight with everything because that’s undifferentiated.

We do have to fight with some things because that is what’s Christlike. 

Jesus flipped tables. He also healed. All of his actions were intended to restore relationship – never to break it. Cancel culture prioritizes rightness over relationship, cause over curiosity, yet it doesn’t yield the fruit it’s hoping for. In trying to balance what feel like contending energies (ie, righteous anger and loving kindness) I think a good rule of thumb is “bear more pain than you inflict.” 

When I read Luke’s gospel and scan the headings, in-between all the parables I read:  Jesus heals, heals, preaches, cleanses, heals, ministers, heals, forgives, calms, heals, heals, feeds, heals, heals, heals, JESUS BRAIDS A WHIP AND CLEARS THE TEMPLE… and finally, Jesus gives his life for those who were still trying to cancel him. 

When I look at the life of Jesus. His ministry of restoring right relationship between people and God included a whole lot of healing and only a little bit of table flipping so when Christians reverse that balance, they are doing it in the name of ego, not the name of Christ. 

I recently listened to a friend explain that Christ is the cure for human arrogance. He said, “There is no idea more powerful for humility than the gospel because the gospel invites us to embrace our wrongness and to recognize above all that Jesus is right.” It’s a dramatic reorientation. To be a Christian is to admit, I don’t have to be right because Jesus is right. It is so freeing to not have to defend your own rightness tooth and nail to protect your own pride. Because your pride has died with Christ. In this way we experience the healing of self-righteousness and receive an invitation to something more holy and this is the place I want to find myself.  

 

I’ll admit there are some butterflies in my stomach even at the thought of posting this. I’m afraid of being canceled for talking about being canceled. Oh the irony. At a time when I’m ready to sell a kidney to build a library, I’m wondering, are my readers curious and differentiated enough to hear my heart and love me anyway? I don’t know. I hope so. And if not, you still matter to me. 

 

 

re-framing the adoption narrative

She came to us on a Saturday night, after lying alone in a room for nearly 48 hours. We hadn’t planned for her. In fact, earlier that morning, I stood together with Jeremy in the storage shed while we debated getting rid of all the clothes our youngest had outgrown. 

We’re done, right? 

Uhhh… I think so???

…

Let’s just hang on to them a little longer, ok?

Ok. 

And an hour later, Bana K was at our door explaining what happened. 

Mom had been on the way to the clinic when baby M came. Somewhere between home and safety, she birthed, bled and died. A neighbor pulled them both into a hut and the funeral began. Baby M was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a back room. With no one to nurse her, the family prepared for not one, but two burials. 

Something in her cries that night must have pushed the family to think differently. Several of the funeral attendees knew us, and a messenger was dispatched. I arrived to find Dad, his seven other children, and the 200 or so mourners typically found at a village funeral. I was ushered into a two room house. The four-year-old on the other side of the brick wall was wailing for his mom who wasn’t coming back. The family sat with me on the dirt floor while other curious bodies crammed in, blocking what little light would have come through the door and triangle windows built into the exterior walls. Dad leaned on the wall across from me, no longer coping with the two-year-old fussing on his lap. The fifteen-year-old next to him was little help. They both looked like they'd been run over by a truck. 

The family asked me to speak, and I asked first to just listen. In turn, old women said the same thing, one after another. “We need help. We can’t manage. Please help us. Please help.” I said, “I want to help. She needs to eat. It has been too long. I can have milk here in a few hours.” 

They had already decided though what kind of help they were looking for. 

“Take her.”

“Uhhh…”

“We just can’t right now. We’re not managing with the other seven. We need you to take her.” 

There we sat, between a rock and a hard place. A shell-shocked family desperately asking for help. Me, rolling over attachment theory in my head. Above the clamor expressing this challenge and that, I blurted out, “She needs her family!” And they upped the volume a notch and yelled back, “We need YOU.” And ten minutes later, someone was shoving into my vehicle a bundle of blankets, at the center of which was a darling little girl. 

Every year when Adoption Awareness Month (November, fyi) rolls around, I get this sinking feeling in my gut as I see the internet filled with stories and pictures of happy adoptive families who would center the narrative around the beauty of adoption. And truly, adoption is beautiful. To choose to love is beauty incarnate. But, truly-truly, it is beauty from ashes. We owe it to the adoptees in our midst to acknowledge that ashes are a bi-product of something being burnt to the ground. 

There is no other way to arrive at adoption other than extreme trauma and loss. A mother dies. A family breaks. Addiction. Disfunction. Abandonment. We can’t manage - take her.

Sometimes I feel like we are so busy celebrating the redemption that we hold precious little space for the tragic. It is both lovely and awful at the same time. Like my favorite Ann says, “Joy and pain are arteries of the same heart,” and intentional orphan care means we handle both well. 

It might seem unreasonably pessimistic to even suggest re-directing the conversation towards trauma. Who doesn’t love a happy ending? What’s wrong with you, Emo Adoption Lady? 

What’s wrong with me is that I grew up in the first world and have lived my entire adult life in the third, and now as a foster and adoptive mother, I see the trajectory of orphan care from two different continental views, and I’m still unsettled. 

In America, we have focused on keeping children safe, and with family when possible, which means we major on two actions: removal and reunification. “The system” is swamped and foster parents, bless them, are doing their best. In Zambia - to our shame - we have largely focused on crisis management which has meant institutionalization. As I’ve written about before (here and here,) the funding flow out of the West fuels the glorification of orphanages and the result is thousands of children in “care” (a misnomer) while their DNA is out there. 

What has my gut twisted in knots and wrapped around my heart is that, on either continent, in any context, when I hear talk about adoption awareness, the thing that I’m NOT hearing people talk about is prevention. 

Every single adoption is the result of a brokenness which we, the community of privilege, have failed to prevent. I think about this for our own son, and for all of our adoptee friends. I cry about how scared my son’s birth mom must have been, and how someone clearly wasn’t there to support her. I think about the parents who sign papers and hand kids over because no stepped in to say, “keep your child, I’ll pay for everything.” I think about the homeless mom and the addicted one and the one with an abusive boyfriend and I feel the burden of responsibility. How many steps along the way were we not there for you? 

Baby M stayed with us for three weeks at which point, I won’t lie, we kind of wanted to keep her. There’s something about waking up every two hours at night to feed a baby and wearing her close to my heart throughout the day – I think any mother would have to be a little off to not feel the bonds of love forming. And truthfully? It would have been easy to make her ours. 

Her family already had asked for a long-term placement. We could have shown off our house and resources and promised her the world and her family would very likely have made a “smart” and terrible decision to leave her with us forever. And we would have been praised by the internet as a beautiful, adoptive family. But thankfully we have super good and reliable friends who snapped their fingers in our ears and just repeated, “She needs her family. She needs her family.” And they were absolutely right. So we set our feelings on the shelf and got serious about getting her home.

Convincing the family to receive her back was easier said than done, but we kept at it because we know it was right. We can never bring her mother back, but we can work to PREVENT the trauma of adoption. 

And work it is.

The first week baby M was home, Grandma called me several times after midnight just to say, “M is crying and won’t stop.” I never slept after those calls. On my first visit to the home to deliver more formula, I was given a list of things they needed. She wreaked of pee and I noticed that the rats had chewed through every one of her bottle nipples. We talked about burping and why babies cry and why laundry soap is too caustic for newborn skin. I taught them what a selfie was because the day deserved some levity. I drove away feeling like the band-aid had been ripped off too fast. 

Driving home, the thought rushed into my mind and I pushed it out the other side – This is a huge commitment. We are paying for everything anyway - it would be easier to just keep her with us. Thankfully the grace of conviction swelled again – prevention is worth the work. 

Unfortunately, our adoption culture celebrates the exact opposite. How many times have I seen a viral facebook post of a cute couple offering (begging) to adopt some other woman’s baby. We christen them as saints and speak nothing of birth mom’s story out on the margins. And after 6 million likes and 50,000 shares, the words “We’ll take her!” have become more admirable than, “We’ll move heaven and earth to make sure she stays with you!” And just like that, we facilitate loss instead of preventing it. 

Is it possible that the narrative of redemption in adoption has desensitized us to the flaming mess we didn’t address on the front end?  Is it possible that we aren't serious about family preservation because we don't yet believe in the primal wound we are inflicting? Do our meager efforts through pregnancy centers and WIC programs really amount to all that we can do? Are we skilled at putting out fires before they create the ashes out of which adoptees must then rise? 

I don’t think so. Not yet. We’re not nailing access to health care, marriage counseling, education, mentorship, therapy, childcare, job support. Not even close. Smart people have made these lists for us: they have curated research around what destabilizes parents and what kinds of structural and relational safeguards must be in place to support and preserve families. The stats are there: we're not doing it.

It feels like, in November, of all months, when we are supposed to be most “aware” of adoption, that prevention is the message we should be pouring over. Prevention is what we should be discussing and rallying behind and setting goals for. Because we love our adoptees more than life – this is a fact – but we need to get honest and admit that our adoptees wouldn’t have needed the "traumatic blessing" that is adoption if someone – WE – had done the hard work of prevention in the first place. 

Obviously not every person of privilege is in a position to help every mom and family in crisis – for reasons of geography if nothing else. None of us is omniscient and unknown crises are impossible prevent. Which is why I think the overarching narrative around adoption is so important – because while you may not be the neighbor to the newly pregnant woman who needs long-term support to keep her child safe and in her own home, that facebook friend of yours who thinks adoption is all rainbows and sunshine certainly is. It is our responsibility to cultivate a climate that is wise enough to know what needs to be done, and courageous enough to do it. 

For my part, I write words. I hug my son and mourn his loss with him, and celebrate the beauty of our forever family too. Together, we deliver tins of formula and become full-time cheerleaders of families preserved. We pour out, and advocate and hope. We do our best, which is all we can do. And we pray that you will too. 

the missionaries you should actually support

There are two types of missionaries in this world: those that enjoy raising support, and those that absolutely hate it. I fall into the second group. In fact, even though I know hundreds of missionaries, I’ve only ever met a handful of people in the first group – those who can actually say, “YAY! FUNDRAISING!” without being completely cheeky.

I just spent two months in the States doing this thing called raising support – a really important task of connecting God’s people with the work He’s doing around the world. It’s a privilege. It’s humbling. It’s encouraging. And somehow very stressful.

It’s a reminder that everything belongs to God, and this work of ours is actually His.

I shared with a friend over lunch one day that I was not at all worried about reaching my goals because I know that the money is out there. Our father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, I said. My measly $210,000 to build a school and dig wells and run camps is pocket change for our God.

But, I added, I also realize that God has entrusted all His pennies to His children, and I confessed that as I traveled the country and interfaced with affluence, materialism, and keeping up with the Joneses, I was maybe a little bit concerned that the trustees of God’s account might not be so eager to hand it over.

Nevertheless, I persisted and wrapped up my time in the States with over half my goal reached. (And with plenty of faith that God would have a chat with the rest of His kids to bring in the remaining balance…)

Despite the challenges inherent in fundraising (I’m still nursing my introversion back to health), the main benefit is to be on the receiving end of affirmation again and again. Even from dirt-poor grad students I heard the words, “This ministry is amazing! I have no money, but this is amazing!” We praise God! What He’s doing is amazing. I did not talk to a single person who was not overwhelmingly supportive of God’s movement in Zambia. After all, the evidence is clear. People are being cared for, educated, fed. They are being set-free, blessed, changed. The school is an obvious success. Our camp has exploded and outpaced our facilities. We’ve seen a decrease in water-borne illness and a decrease in infant mortality. These are facts and they are compelling.

When people would say, “This is wonderful – we want to be a part of it!” I honestly wanted to blurt out, “Well of course you should!” Now, I’m classy so obviously I said something a bit more refined, like, “Thank you, that would be so helpful.” I did realize though that for the first time in our fundraising journey, we weren’t asking people to fund a what-could-be dream so much as an expansion of and improvement upon what already has proven to be successful; and this meant I could receive their affirmation with less relief and more concurrence.

I saw in the faces of each new member of our support team, a certain amount of discernment. They’ve seen a good thing and they’ve gotten on board, as they should. But in these personal encounters, I also took a few steps back and thought about the days when our presentation was quite different, like when Jeremy was in a tent and had nothing to show for himself. In those early years, there were ideas – hopes, possibilities, faith – but nothing material to offer as proof of future success. And predictably, precious few people enthusiastically got on board. A few did join us in the hope/possibility/faith boat, but the majority offered well wishes – some even coming right out with it: “we’ll support you after you’ve proved yourselves.”

Before Jeremy and I were married, he was subsisting off of $30 a month. It’s probably a good thing that he was under-funded, otherwise I might never have taken pity on him and offered him weekly suppers which never would have turned into nightly suppers which never would have turned into a marriage proposal or a family or a life. And so, we thank the good Lord for those $30 a month days.

When I first met Jeremy, he was more faithful and more faith-filled than any person I had ever known. (I suppose you have to be to live in a tent on a dollar a day.) And as he talked about Grandma Shirley, the one little old church lady who comprised his support “team,” it was obvious that she was  supporting this barefoot kid out in the bush for one reason: she was convinced he was being obedient.

I married that barefoot kid for his obedient faith, and have never regretted it. It was obedient faith that led us through our years as newlyweds, and through the various trials that come with pioneer missions. I remember our first fundraising trip back to the states, sitting down ahead of time and thinking about what we were going to say in the days of “we’re still trying to get things going,” – hoping to sound more impressive than we actually were, and then coming back to Zambia feeling a little deflated and praying that there were still Grandma Shirley’s out there who would sense the faithfulness and be generous for that reason alone.

And now fast-forward a decade. Our presentation sounds totally different. (You can actually watch me present here if you want!) We not only have a handle on what we are doing, but why we are doing it and why it’s important in the grand scheme of things. We love what we do and we believe in it fully, and this makes it pretty easy to talk about. It also makes me insanely thankful for the people who supported us before there was anything impressive at all.

Track with me for sixty seconds, because I think this is really important. I think given the modern, interconnected landscape, and an age of “asks,” where people have to sift through a few thousand good giving opportunities per year, we have fine-tuned our “worthy-cause-o-meter” so much so that we can pick out a sustainable, strategic, high-impact operation from a mile away. It has become a game of sorts, and missionaries have learned what it takes to win. These servants of the Lord have become part-time marketing professionals specializing in social media and Bono-esque jargon. Of course, the use of facebook get spun in a more “holy” light, but still, the landscape of missions is changing, and perhaps not for the better, as it’s the ones who play the game the best that get funded – not necessarily those who are being the most obedient.

We know a few hundred missionaries personally and, thanks to internet, can keep tabs on a few thousand more. The spectrum is impressive, ya’ll.

We know missionaries who accomplish little to nothing, but their instragram feed is so exotic that people throw cash at them.

We know others who secretly hate their life abroad, but out of fear, stay in it and raise thousands off of the pity of how much they are suffering for Christ. 

We know those who for their own business savvy have weaseled their way to something quite impressive, but in reality have just build their own kingdom.

We know those whose actual mission is an abomination, but whose public speaking style is so inspirational, they could convince a crowd to fund seafaring boats in the desert.

But then I think about that young man with ribs all sticking out, not complaining once about walking to town eighteen miles away because he had no gas for the vehicle, just happy – called that walk to town a “prayer walk”  – waiting on the Lord in all the literal senses… and now, in retrospect, all I can think is, “that kid had a clue.”

This I now know to be true: Obedience is absolutely the most undervalued indicator on the “who to support” rubric. Impressive work done disobediently is of no value, whereas even ordinary work carried out with obedience is of immeasurable worth.

The 21^st century fundraising game is depressing, and watching it from the inside, all the more so. What we see too often is that it’s the unassuming ones – the ones who spend their time in ministry and not marketing, who are better at doing stuff than photographing it, the ones who fear God more than man and therefore walk an unimpressive, but obedient path… they are the ones who take a hit financially.

God’s will, done God’s way will never lack God’s supply – needle point that on all the pillows, ye weary, faithful missionaries lacking funds tonight.

But, to be fair, looking at the other half of the equation, we must also reconcile this: As much as God blesses obedience in serving, He also blesses obedience in giving. While God will always provide eventually, disobedience in giving has its own earthly consequences. As resources get diverted to White Savior Barbie and the guy who probably should have just been on Shark Tank… the obedient ones plod along and wait for God to provide in other ways.

As frustrating as lost time and wheel-spinning are, the true pity however is what is forfeited when the flashy, smooth-talking, insta-everything folks get pushed to the forefront – namely, that the donors miss out on being a part of something truly of God – something that will last forever, something that matters beyond a short season of hustle.

We need to be smart about where our limited resources go. If you are introduced to someone or something that looks inherently unsustainable, disrespectful of the host country, un-integrated, too-much-too-soon – just run the other way.

But here is my simple plea. Add “obedience” to the check-list of requirements. And not only that, put it at the top. Make it a matter of honest prayer. And if you feel like the barefoot kid sleeping in a tent with nothing to show for himself is being obedient? Back him. Back him with everything you can afford because ten years from now, you’ll be a part of something really amazing and you’ll have the added blessing of having been there from the beginning.

Thank you, Grandma Shirley, for valuing the obedience. May a whole generation of givers follow your lead.

my "hard" life in Africa

Social media has been a total game-changer for those of us abroad. Facebook, instagram and the like provide the perfect platform to share life across the distance. Birthdays, anniversaries, a beautiful garden or craft project… With a click of a button our joy goes out to the world and we receive the gift of being known. But it’s not only the good we share. We let loose on the hard too. Social media has made it easy for us to be vulnerable. The brevity of status updates means I don’t have to look you in the eye or answer any questions or let you actually see my tear streaks to let you all know that I’ve had a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

Expats are particularly adept at online communication since for most of us, this is THE WAY many of us communicate with our friends and family back home. We use it to supply information, but also to solicit responses. It’s a powerful tool, this sound-bite communication stuff, and truth be told, most missionaries are masterful at milking their daily drama for all its worth.

“I have a cold. In Africa. Colds in Africa are so much worse than the colds in America. I don’t have a neti pot. I will likely suffer for three days and not be able to save anyone’s life during this trying time. In Africa. Life is so hard.”

“My kids are on their last box of imported Cheerios and re-enforcements are not coming for another eight days. The sixteen other kinds of circular cereal in this country obviously weren’t blessed by angels and my fragile, third-culture kids have been asked to sacrifice so much. This is clearly a scheme of the devil. Please pray for us.”

It’s possible I’m exaggerating a bit, but really now – I do run in these circles and I see this blubbery, yet persuasive mess every day. Sometimes I even author it myself! While many of the struggles shared are legit and painful in any context, some of these “terrible” situations are just so run-of-the-mill-part-of-life, that, upon reading, I fully expect to reach the comments and find a steady stream of “suck it up buttercup”… But you know what? Time after time, the comments section EATS IT UP. All the single tear drop emojies. Pity heaped upon pity. Donations to fund the neti pot. People who haven’t prayed in a month are all of a sudden hands to the heavens casting out the demon of deprivation and praying for provision of Cheerios. I have no idea why some budding psychologist hasn’t made a winning PhD thesis out of this crazy. 

It would almost seem as if the folks back home have actually bought into the myth that E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. in in the third world is harder. It’s our own fault, really. When missionaries talk about their life in “the bush” or “the jungle” or on “the islands” without clarifying that that is a geographic marker and not a classification of hardship, we create a suggestive void to be filled by nothing but imagination and worst-case scenarios.

Honestly, misperceptions flow our of our thumbs so easily. When our Provincial grocery store burnt down I’m pretty sure I made it sound like we would all starve to death. I appreciated the solace, at the time. Cheeeeeeese! How will I live without it! But I never did tell you that a few weeks later they opened up a little outlet and lo and behold, we haven’t wasted away. They are even stocking cheese. It’s a selective game, and whether we mean to or not, we all play it.

Admittedly, for those of us overseas, our sharing is often curated to achieve a certain response. This is something I’ve wrestled with a lot. When I read or write posts about the traffic or the tropical diseases or the long waits for absolutely everything, and people react with some variation of “wow you’re amazing and I could never…” the conscientious objector perched on my shoulder whispers, Is our life really harder than theirs?

I’ve been sitting on this question, rolling it around in my head… When I share (whine) about my Zambian problems, am I really any different than my children who are honestly convinced that getting their hair washed is some form of torture? Am I showing my immaturity by failing to balance my problems against those facing truly dark situations?  

To my dear friends in America, let me say this: my life is not harder than yours. How dare I complain about the fact that my children have giardia when I have friends in the states whose children are undergoing heart surgery. How dare I complain about goats eating my begonias when I have friends who have to get in the car and drive to find green space.  How dare I complain that there is no decent ice cream when I have an unlimited supply of avocados for 30 cents a piece. Just. Shut. Up.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down all attitudinal with my journal and instructed myself – COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS. YOU HAVE NO REASON TO COMPLAIN.

I have the best life ever, actually.

The Zambian bush is the best place ever to raise children. My kids get approximately 6 hours of outdoor nature play every day, all year round. Eat your heart out, Charlotte Mason.

My work allows me to be creative, inspired, sacrificial, inventive, risky and loving which is a character bundle that describes not a single for-profit, 9-5, cubical ever. I am spoiled beyond reason.

I have zero debt and live in a house that is paid for and drive cars that are paid for because home and auto loans aren’t a thing here anyway. This is ridiculous luxury.

We can go on a legitimate African safari for the same price our friends pay for a day at the zoo. We can travel to and hang out at one of the seven wonders of the natural world for the same price our friends pay for a day at the water park.

We can country-hop the way our American friends state-hop. You zip down to Florida, we zip down to South Africa. Such is the nature of regional transportation for us.

I have not seen snow or been cold for over 700 days and counting. (And don’t tell me that some people like being cold. No one likes being cold. People like getting warm after being cold, but that is not the same thing.)

I have zero commute. I have survived the traffic in NY, LA and DC and NO THANK YOU. I am blessed and highly favored that I walk a dirt path to all my jobs and pass zero cars on the way.

I shave my legs approximately 3 times a year and strap on a bra approximately never because Zambain women are not oppressed in these Western ways and thank heavens Jeremy is basically Zambian and just lets me live.

Mango season is a thing here and there are so many mangos that they are rotting on the ground before they can all be eaten. Never will we pay 2 for $5 at an American Safeway. That is heresy.

But here’s the thing: I still struggle. A lot. I’ve spent a really long time trying to process how, with full awareness of all this awesomeness (and so much more), how I can still find life here to be hard more often than not.

What in the blazes is wrong with me? It’s like I have a gratitude processing disorder or something.

I was actually starting to be really hard on my self until I finally went on a mental health hunt to figure out why the impressive list of good was not compensating for the modest list of bad.

And finally, it took having someone with special letters after her name to explain it to me to stop feeling guilty about feeling the way that I do.

When you move overseas, you take your First World expectations with you. Slowly those expectations do melt away, but the memories and habit of comparing and contrasting, do not. While I no longer **expect** the clinic to have the medicine for my children on hand, the automatic recall of, “but in the States, they would” can often introduce a surprising angst over what feels like unnecessary pain.

The First World butting up against the Third creates dozens of little moments each day in which we are keenly aware that it doesn’t have to be this way… and all the mangos and warmth and creative inspiration of the village doesn’t blot out these thoughts.

Two of our neighbor babies are in the hospital, slowly dying under a heat lamp because the hospital does not do alternative feeding. (But if we were in America…)

We’re being hounded by the ZRA, RTSA, the ABCDEFG, choose an acronym it doesn’t matter, we’re being hounded because we are white and these offices want money. (But if we were in America…)

My husband lost half a finger because the closest surgeon to reattach it was 12 ours away and we were told it wasn’t worth it. (But if we were in America…)

My third born child sat in an institution for 400 days for no other reason than because a few people were too busy to sign a paper. (But if we were in America…)

We have forfeited a bazillion kwacha (hyperbole) to every shop in town because no one ever has change and pleasing the customer is not a thing. (But if we were in America…)

It took a month to figure out that our kids had giardia because the hospital held onto lab results only to report back to us that they didn’t have the reagent. (But if we were in America…)

And its not that these things are hard-er than any of the trials that our friends in the US are facing. As much as I sometimes want it, I don’t deserve that pity party. However, to be fair to my own emotions, I have to admit that most of these things are hard-different – a byproduct of life as a foreigner and the admission that, if we were in America, these things would likely play out differently.   

I’m willing to stick around a few more decades to find out for sure, but I have a suspicion that no amount of integration or cultural acquisition lets you turn off pre-recorded message in your brain that says, “This dysfunction and/or different value system is causing unnecessary trauma…” And having to process that recoding, day after day, makes the hard-different a unique kind of burden. 

I’m bothered by things that my neighbors don’t think twice about because I have had a different set of experiences. Everything from how families operate to customer service to health care has been colored from my earliest upbringing. And realistically, most people around me carry on just fine because they’ve never encountered a different reality.

It absolutely blows my mind that my daughter’s best friends go to bed hungry two or three nights a week because their parents just didn’t collect food for them. (But that’s the way things are…)

It drives me bonkers that I have to debate with the post-master to give me my mail just because it is addressed to Bethany and Jeremy Colvin. (But that’s the way things are…)

I have to take actual deep breaths when life-saving drugs are only provided on certain days and on certain times. (But that’s the way things are…)

My face gets hot when my paperwork is delayed because they think I’ve falsified my age. “You can’t be that old, you don’t have enough kids.” (But that’s the way things are…)

It kind of makes me want to quit every committee I’m on when rules are made but never enforced and development shoots itself in the foot over and over again… (But that’s the way things are…)

And the balance must exist – to not whine and carry on about it like a five year old, but to create space in my own head to recognize why it all takes a few extra seconds to process and put all the junk away.

And sometimes, in those crucial few seconds, I grab my phone and Mark Zuckerberg does his magic and brings you into my brain-space and it comes out in the form of my life is harder than yours… and for that, I am so sorry. I will continue to count my blessings, as we all should. I SHALL REMEMBER THE MANGOS, FRIENDS. But the next time I post a picture of a snake in my house – please know that I’m not suggesting that the snake is hard-er than your frozen pipes or the flu or cracked iphone screen. It’s just hard-different – for whatever that’s worth.