how I made every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous

We had already been in Zambia for two years when we got married, and as soon as our zam-tastic wedding was over, we were anxious to get back. Being the first foreigners to ever live in the Fimpulu, everything we did was intriguing to our neighbors. They loved to watch the way I braided my hair and washed my dishes and piddled around in my garden and so when we returned to the village as newlyweds, it was no surprise that everyone was waiting to watch and see how we’d "do" marriage.

My neighbors were worried that I’d do it wrong, so they promptly pulled me aside for training. They taught me how to sweep my home and cook his food and make him ***real*** happy.

After a few months of blatant failure in the wife department, my teachers pulled me aside again and told me to step up my game. Their first threat was: “We taught you better than this. Get your act together or we’ll beat you.” Why yes they did. Greater love has no Zam-Mama than this, that she will slap the white off your face if you don’t get your crap together. And their second threat was, “Because if you don’t do it right, he will find someone who does.”

In self defense, let me say that "bad wife" is a relative concept. If you were supposed to rise before dawn to sweep the house and scrub your floors and thrice daily cook elaborate meals for your husband while you ate leftovers in the other room, and kneel before him and never look him in the eye... you might be a failure too.

I should also mention the added concern of my elders that we had been married for three whole months and I wasn’t pregnant yet, which meant, clearly, that I was either not doing my marital duty at all, or that I was doing something to hinder conception against my husbands obvious wishes - both of which are cardinal sins.

But the real disappointment, and the reason why the mamas were ready to slap me back to the cold land, was because not only was I failing at my obvious duties, but I was also letting JEREMY do them.

They watched in horror as they saw him sweeping the house at all hours of the day! They saw him stoking the fire and putting pots on it! They saw him scrubbing my underwear! Good heavens woman, have you no shame?!?! One woman asked what kind of juju I was slipping into his porridge to get him to behave like that. Theological underpinnings of the question aside, I explained to that woman and others who were genuinely concerned for our marriage that I had in fact not witched my husband, and that he was doing these things of his own volition. I tried to explained the counter-cultural concept that my husband serves me simply because he loves me.

They still told me he’d leave me within six months. I relayed that message to Jeremy who, being quite offended, retaliated by making out with me on the front porch.

Six months later, Jeremy was still sharing the work load and I still hadn’t born him a child and we were still sleeping with each other and no one else… and all the elders just sort of raised eyebrows and kept watching. Fascinating, they said.

 Two years later, Jeremy hadn’t returned me to my parents or asked for his dowry back and our circle of gawkers grew larger still. I think most women accepted that I wasn’t slipping magical herbs into his porridge, but they still weren’t entirely sure what the X factor in this relationship was. At least I was finally pregnant and giving him his first child, so I wasn’t a complete waste of womanhood.

Turns out the baby was just a whole other realm of radical for my husband. If they thought kissing on the front porch was bold, nothing could prepare them for diaper changes. The reaction to that stunt was so addictive, Jeremy took the show on the road. We had gone to town together and I had entered the market to get some vegetables during which time Jeremy changed Bronwyn’s diaper on the hood of the Land Rover. The next week, there in the market again, I walked across the dusty selling space and noticed an above average number of people staring and pointing at me. (I mean, a handful is normal, a crowd is a little curious.) Finally one of the onlookers approached and all she said was, “You’re the woman who is married to the man who changes diapers!” Umm…  yes! Yes I am! Were you wanting an autograph?

Jeremy’s fame rapidly spread from there. We were hard pressed to go anywhere in a 25 mile radius where we didn’t hear “Jeremy! Jeremy!” being called out by various members of his unofficial fan club. And as for me? I was just “Mrs. Jeremy,” the lucky lady connected to this beast of wonder, who would sweep and cook and change diapers and remain faithful without needing to be bewitched and was still manly enough to build things and drive a tank of a vehicle and kill things… and other such measures of manhood.

manhood - like caring for your infant while slaying cobras. no big deal.

Now jealous though they might be, it's not like any of these ladies are coming after my man. Feelings about Jeremy waver between admiration and sheer terror. He is, after all, a bit of a powerful mystery which keeps most ladies from coming too close. Any woman in the village will still insist on talking to me even if they really have a question for him.

But truly, my husband's acclaim – the stares and pointing and side comments about how lucky I am – these are treasures I store up in my heart. I adore that in a context where we work tirelessly to fit in, that for the handful of ways we actually work to stand out, we do it for love. Jealousy can be healthy if it stirs up motivation to step out and try something new. We feel not at all guilty for the ways this crazy idea of serving your spouse has caught on with a precious handful of men whose end game is happiness and have observed this as a good way to get there. The women on the receiving end know who they have to thank for that novel idea.

I had no clue, really, that I was stepping into something so rare and compelling, making every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous of me, just be simply saying "I DO." And yet, nine years later, as I reflect on the significance of this marriage, I’m thankful all the more for my maven man – the one who turns heads with his flip of pancake and stops traffic with his road side diaper changes. You’re what every woman wants, babe - especially me.

third culture kids and America first

Like most holidays, the Fourth of July is kind of a funny thing to try to celebrate when you are living in a different country. For us in the village, we are the only Americans for a good distance and I’m terrified of fireworks exploding in someone’s face, so my inclination is really to just let the day slip on by. I think I’m giving it greater consideration this year only because our oldest has recently become more aware of her American-ness and honestly, it has made our whole family pause a bit.

These are turbulent times in the Colvin house, to be frank. I don’t know why I expected smooth sailing forever. I mean, we are raising third culture kids, famous for their angst and exhaustive search for belonging. Wishful thinking maybe?

For six years, Bronwyn believed she was actually, ethnically, Zambian. Everything about her life would have told her so. After all, she has spent roughly 2,153 days doing typical Zam-kid things like eating nshima, climbing trees, dipping un-ripe mangos in salt and digging for rats after the fires go through. She’s never heard the Pledge of Allegiance or the Star Spangled Banner but she can sing the Zambian National Anthem flawlessly – Zambian accent and all! And what always made us chuckle is that, until recently, if you told her she wasn’t Zambian, she’d fight you. (She gets her feistiness from her father, obviously.)

I think my bio kids have always known they are a bit “different.” They get teased, laughed at, stared at, stroked – every form of unwanted attention possible. They get pulled into pictures with people they don’t know, asked to “perform” at random times, and get reminded often that their Bemba is noticeably a second language.

Their otherwise beautiful Zam-life – up in the trees, making banana stalk babies and rolling in the dirt – has always outweighed any sense of “other-ness.” They’ve always attributed negative experiences to the indiscretions of those who cause them… but never to their being American.

Until recently.

posing at the Chief's palace

Our family did a thing earlier this year where we sent mom to America for two months which apparently un-caged a multi-cultural bird that has desperately been waiting to fly. America has existed for our kids only as a figment of their imagination. Out of all of them, Bronwyn has spent the most time in that country – a whopping eleven months, actually, which transpired for her between the age of two and three – a time when a child’s memory is totally accurate, of course.

And so our beloved six year old’s recollection of her parent’s birthplace is basically Grandma and all of the benefits of living in her house, which includes, but is not limited to:

No set bedtime

The absence of the word ‘no’

Presents just because its Wednesday so why not

Bathing in an oversized tub under 18 inches of bubbles

Eating whipped cream out of the palm of her hand at 7 o’clock in the morning

Watching Micky Mouse for six hours a day while being served fruit and cheese on a tray

Etc., Etc., Etc.

And so when mom boarded that plane and went off to gallivant around the United States, it clicked for the first time in our eldest’s head that that was a thing. And once a trip to magic grandma-land was within the realm of possibility, it was a short jump in logic to start begging the question, Well then why in the name of all that is good and right in this world are we not all going there?

Because America is, in her unformed mind, a place of perfect and utter happiness, going there naturally became the knee jerk response to anything unpleasant.

You are making me eat my vegetables? Fine I’m going to America!

I have to do math? Fine! I’m going to America!

I don’t want to share with Leonie! I’m just going to America!

Not that that her declarations ever materialized for her – I mean, the child still ate her vegetables and did her math and had to share with her sister – all without boarding a 747. But still the magical possibility of escape to never-never land not only stayed alive but also grew in influence.

Feeling out of place in this environment combined with the known possibility of going to a “perfect” one, had the effect of pitting the two countries against one another. America could do no wrong and Zambia became the scape-goat for everything. All those little reminders that she’s “different” – once brushed off as other people’s bad manners – now became a dark spot for a whole nation. All of that third culture kid insecurity now had a perpetrator in her mind. Zambia was the problem; and so it followed that America would be the solution.

She started communicating those feelings in different ways. Boycotting chitenge dresses and refusing to curtsey before her elders and suddenly hating nshima. Her teachers told me that she’s racist because she got “sick” during Bemba period every day. Eventually she gave voice to her internal crisis, telling us directly, “I don’t belong here. I’m too different. I don’t feel like this is my land.” (My land? Who are you, Abraham and Lot?)

We sat outside one afternoon, Jeremy and I did, pondering if we had blown it all, ruined our first born by asking her to straddle an ocean, something that even we – with fully formed frontal lobes – fail to do perfectly. As we sat and talked, we watched our emotionally entangled child tangle herself up in a tree, chatting away (in Bemba, mind you) with three of her besties, and then come down and ask if they could all stay for dinner. She doesn’t hate this place like she thinks she does, we assured ourselves.

And thus begins a new phase of parenting for us. For the record, this is way more challenging than getting them to sleep through the night or learn to use the potty. This new stage of helping them navigate a world in which they belong everywhere and no where at the same time – light a candle for us.

We want our children to understand that loving one place need not require hating the other. Acknowledging our ties to America does not require rejection of Zambia. A love of nshima is not infidelity to hotdogs. And because the “I’m going to America” line is clearly unproductive, we’re finding new words, – something more healing and less toxic.

We started reciting every single day, sometimes with her teary face resting in between our hands, these truths:

There is hard everywhere.

There is good everywhere.

God loves absolutely every person on this planet the same.

And so we do too.

Go and chase beauty.

Go and be kind.

Every. Single. Day.

We speak the hard words, and she repeats them – less resistant all the time. A rewiring of synapses until her soul agrees with what her mouth obliges to say. And as we go on joy hunts and count our blessings, Zambia regains its good standing.

nshima and lounging with her favorite uncle emmanuel

On the flip side, we continue to deconstruct the well-supported myth that America is the land flowing with milk and honey. She hears us rant about ‘the state of America’ enough that she’s not totally clueless, but really most of it is above her. And yet, as Jeremy and I discuss the drama of our homeland juxtaposed with the drama of our family, the irony is not lost on us.

America as a whole is not entirely unlike my six year old. Both are trying to figure out who they are. Both are guilty of blaming the “other” for discomfort and trouble. Both are fighting to preserve a fictitious image of an America-past where everything is apparently rosy. Both have been convinced that a love of one necessitates a hatred of another. The definitions of culture have become muddled and nationality is a vague construct. The relational strain is more palpable than ever. The good times are gone.

Raising a nation is quite different than raising a child, so I focus on the three littles in my care and pray for the rest. All I know is that in our quest to produce happy, functional, morally responsible human beings, we take a hint from America’s present crisis and we pass the following conviction on to our kids in as many ways a possible:

You are citizens of heaven, and that changes everything.

Human decency demands we think about citizenship through an ethical lens, but our Christianity demands we think about it through a theological one as well. There is no sense in fighting for “our people” and against “their people” when our citizenship is not of this world anyway. There is no reason to love ourselves and hate the other when we are all “other” because heaven is our homeland. There is no logic in building a wall or locking others up and out when our cultural identity is wrapped up in Christ.

This is not about politics. This is about eschatology.

This fourth of July, we in the Colvin home will give a nod to history and heritage and we’ll probably wave like goofballs in the general direction of Grandma’s house. But there will be no celebration of nationalism or patriotism or ethno-centrism, because as long as we have life on this earth, we as a family declare that our home is in heaven. We can meaningfully sing, God bless America and Zambia and any other place we might dwell for a while. We want the best for the people of Mexico and Russia and Pakistan and every location on this glorious globe. Any other attitude belies our faith.

There is no such thing as America first for a people whose anthem is

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be done.

Nothing else can help our third culture kids make sense of their weird experience on this planet until they grasp this beautiful truth. We can belong everywhere and nowhere because the third culture to which we really belong is other-worldly. Home is not Zambia, really, and it’s not America, really; it’s heaven, really, and heaven is forever.

Our existence between here and there is defined by how well we love every nation, tribe and people while we’re en route. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces wrote, “No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.” It’s a small extrapolation then to say that you can rightly banish no man when you remember this is his city too.

I imagine God weeping bitterly as our ancestors drew fraudulent lines on a map and as proud men scrambled to claim more of it for themselves. And I imagine Clive Staples rolling over in his grave as his American brothers and sisters fight for the whiteness of their arbitrary territory.

We don’t get that angelic immigration stamp in our passports until the very end, but truly, we become better citizens of any country when we strive to make every place a little more heavenly. Jeremy and I pray that through our actions we preach this for our children again and again. Wherever we are, we welcome in every single person. Wherever we are, we seek peace for every single person. Wherever we are, we do justice to every single person. Wherever we are, we extend mercy to every single person.

This is not hardship, it’s the gospel.

Our children may always wrestle with place, identity, and the inherent awkwardness of being a third culture kid. When you eat nshima and pay in kwacha but read Beatrix Potter and watch the Lego movie you accept that all TCKs are a little eccentric. And through all the ups and downs, I pray they learn: the only way to live happily as a third-culture kid is to check the weight we give to our passports as we remember where we really, truly belong. 

Happy Fourth of July.

the women we don't know what to do with

When I was a little girl, I attended a church that supported a dozen or so missionaries. These missionary families would visit every so often and when they went up front to share, it was a pretty standard gig. The husband stood on the stage and his wife stood four inches to his left and and two inches behind him. He held the microphone. She wore either a denim jumper or floral skirt, because the 80s were the holiest decade. He finished talking and then half-started to hand her the mic while asking, “do you want to say anything?” And she would giggle and wave her hands ‘no’ and the congregation would giggle right back because shy women are so cute.

I’m sure it happened in other ways too, but this is what I remember. From my 16 years in that church, that was the defining memory I had of missionary couples, and in particular, missionary wives.

A few years later, in college, I was majoring in a foreign language and this thing they called “government” because I liked words and leadership and wanted to dabble in both. The summer after my freshman year, I was invited by my then pastor to attend the Global Leadership Summit. I was the only student invited and one of only a few females. I had no idea why I was there, really. Our church wasn’t small, so, why not invite someone important? During one of our breaks, out in the parking lot as we waited for the rest of our carpool, that pastor turned to me and out of the blue asked, “Do you think you have a speaking gift?”

He might have said more to me after that. I might have responded. I think I was pushing gravel around with my flip flop. I don’t remember. My brain was too busy trying not only to answer the question but also to sort through the ramifications. Do I have a speaking gift? Maybe? So what if I do? Will I ever get to use it? I mean, do women ever get handed the mic? Had I ever seen that happen? How do I develop a gift if I can’t practice it?

Good question. You join the Peace Corps, that’s how.

I spent two years talking, learning another language. Practicing cross-cultural communication. Overcoming fears of rejection and looking stupid in front of people. Trying new things. Making mistakes. Reading and writing and thinking. A lot. I taught things. To men! And no heads exploded! It was incredible!

Fast forward a few years. Newly married, back on the field with my strapping husband. Ready to go be amazing. And I had a complete and utter meltdown. We called another pastor friend and told him I had lost my mind and he said, “Mmm, no, I think you’re just having an identity crisis.”

Is that even a real thing? It must be, because I lived it. I came to realize through time and soul searching that in the transition to wifedom, I had lost myself. Quite suddenly, I wasn’t just a person, I was a missionary wife and I had a very narrow picture of what that meant. I had never really seen any missionary wives do anything other than look cute. The flashbacks from my childhood told me that the husband did all of the important work and she, well, she giggled and said she didn’t want the mic – and everything that implied.

I didn’t even own a jean jumper! What on earth was I doing with myself? The thought of tending the hearth and darning the socks and nourishing my dear husband to strengthen him for daring expeditions into the bush made me feel more purposeless than I’d ever felt.

Thankfully my husband is more of a feminist than I am and he had fallen in love with the Peace Corps/courageous/“of course I can do anything,” version of me, so in his loving leadership, he basically shoved me out the door. 

You are good at organizational management. The school should be yours. No one relates to women like you do. All maternal/child stuff should be yours too. You write better than I do. I feel like you should do all of the newsletters.

He wasn’t asking me if I had some gifts, he was telling me frankly that I did, and that I needed to use them. I said to him what I hadn’t said years earlier at the Leadership Summit: “Do I really get to do that?” And Jeremy’s loving and blunt answer back was simply – “Well, why not?” (His theology is more robust than that, but accountants are also really good at cutting to the chase.)

I stammered to answer his rhetorical question. Well… well… because I thought I was just supposed to wear ill-fitting clothing and cook and stand behind you?

God bless my patient husband.

We figured it out together. He pushed me to write more and speak more and lead more and I began believing that that was ok. Even for a “missionary wife.” For Jeremy, it was never about “man’s work” or “woman’s work,” nor was it some gender-based affirmative action. It was about what needed to get done and who was best gifted for the job. Period.

In God’s goodness to me, we started connecting with churches in our region of Zambia who stretched me all the more. We started getting invited to do a lot of speaking and when we confirmed what exactly they wanted, the response was always, “Both of you. We want both of you. We need to hear from Bethany too. She has something to say to us.”

She has something to say to us.

She has something to say to us.

She has something to say to us.

My soundtrack started changing and each time I stood up to speak, a new picture filled my head. Slowly; repetition will always do its work. Bless you Zambia for giving to me what my childhood memories did not.  

It’s remarkable how the pictures we see – or don’t see – in our youth shape what we think we’re capable of when we are older. In some circles they call it mirroring – the idea that we need to see our future selves in the adults around us. The key principle is this: we don’t become what we don’t see. I didn’t grow up seeing Christian women lead and teach outside of children’s and women’s ministry. My struggle to accept myself in co-ed speaking/teaching/leading roles was a struggle precisely because I had no picture of that in my mind.  

Stepping into water known to have the sharks of disapproval is basically terrifying. I went back to the states this spring for the sole purpose of public speaking; that thing I had never seen a missionary wife do. Every state-trip before this, Jeremy and I had always done our presenting together, and somehow his presence always seemed to make mine more acceptable. Flying solo was a whole other deal. I started out with my knees knocking.

The number of times I was asked, “So why isn’t Jeremy the one doing this?” – approximately 563 million.

The number of times Jeremy was asked, “So why aren’t you the one going?” – approximately 974 billion.

At first I made excuses – a lot of them. Oh, well, he had conferences to run and I had a wedding to attend and this and that and the other (all of which were true,) … But after the 800^th time, I borrowed Jeremy’s confidence and script and just said, “Well, why not?”

Why did I come instead of my husband? “Why shouldn’t it have been me?”

The struggle is real. While my experience is not at all universal, I know it’s also not unique. In a hundred subtle ways it gets communicated that missionary wives are background decoration. From the missions articles women aren’t featured in and the mission conferences women aren’t speaking at. From the classes women aren’t leading and the policy they aren’t making. From the gatekeepers who say that wouldn’t be appropriate anyway.

The lack of affirmation translates as condemnation and creates a setting in which every feminine move feels controversial. I have sisters who have accidentally breached boundaries and have been questioned why they feel the need to do this or say that and in those places. And if they answered, “Well, why not?” they were branded “contentious.”  

It took me eight weeks of presenting to really find my voice – to feel like I was joyfully sharing my gift and not timidly auditioning on behalf of women everywhere. The churches along the way that were clearly used to working with women were inspirational. She has something to say to us! The Zambian soundtrack had followed me across the ocean and I stood up a little straighter because of it – only to be taken down a notch when later someone would say, “Wait, they let you speak?!?!”

When a woman feels called to be a wife and mother and has a heart’s desire to serve quietly in the church nursery, this is easy – for everyone. But when a woman feels called to lead or teach or preach, and is actually gifted to do so, it is real work for her to figure out the right spaces to do that. And the question plagues me, and so many others – should it really be hard at all?

Indispensible people with essential gifts are being tragically neglected as whole swaths of the American church can’t seem to figure out what to do with these women. Too often, the action plan is to have them serve children and other women – basically keep them busy – but heaven forbid they might actually have influence!

And all the little girls are taking notice.

they are watching. and who they see matters.

Those girls will grow up, you know, and some will end up following husbands to the far reaches of the earth. This is my story, and my experience is this: global missions is hindered when 50% of the population doesn’t even know what they are good at.

We met a fellow missionary couple some time back and in the course of getting to know them and sharing about our respective ministries, Jeremy and I and the other man all talked about our areas of expertise after which the other woman just stared at us blankly and then finally said, “I don’t know what my expertise is. I guess cooking.” And then she did that shy giggle thing.

Maybe she’s following her heart’s desire. Maybe she’s meeting others’ expectations. Or maybe she just never had an picture of anything else. Now that I’ve been spoiled, all I can think is, Where are all the Jeremys???

Where are the brothers serving as cheerleaders for their sisters saying:

You have a gift of compassion – you should be running this outreach.

You are an amazing teacher – you should lead a co-ed class (because the men need to hear this too.)

You lead brilliantly – take this seat at the table and share your views with us.

Where are all of the men saying on repeat, ‘you have something to say to us’?

We have a job to do, and there is no logic in marginalizing half of our best talent.

I know that there are young girls who are growing up with amazing examples. Those who see women up front every Sunday. Who hear them preach and watch them lead. Who see ladies on boards and serving in a variety of places outside of the nursery and I am so excited for their future. These girls are actively developing their gifts while they are still young because they can see themselves using those gifts when they’re grown. And when they go out? They are going to hit the ground running and will have no need for identity crisis because they’ve known all along what things would look like. And they will gift us with Christ in them, without explanation or hesitation.

And the world will be blessed.