love languages in missions

Hickory Dickory Dock

The Zambian mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one

The mouse started running down... but then he stopped to talk to his neighbor for a while and three hours later he reached the bottom without feeling at all late…

Hickory Dickory Dock.

There, I fixed it.

One element of Zambian life that I’ve imperfectly chosen to embrace is that of time. Zam-time is enough to make even the super-relaxed white girl crazy. I mean really. I knew white people were uptight about time but I didn’t realize how clock-centered I am until Zambia beat every last bit of sensible time-orientation out of me. For years I showed up to church at 9:00 because every week, they announced that church would start at 9:00, and every week, I sat there by myself for over an hour until the church secretary (who the week before had said the words, “come at 9:00”) rolled in at 10:30 and asked me why I was there so early. I learned that my pace of “casual stroll” was basically a dead sprint as the people walking with me started wheezing while we walked together. And after a few dozen scheduling debacles, I accepted that when someone said they’d stop by for a minute, that the rest of my afternoon was shot as we would indeed be enjoying that minute for a few hours.

White privilege means that my clock-orientaiton is honored in most parts of the world but in rural Zambia I simply unclench my fists and accept a more fluid concept, which is, in many ways, a true gift. 

This gift of time has come into focus for me in the past several months as I feel like I have less of it now than ever before while also finding myself busied with some of the most time-consuming activities possible.

I don’t know exactly how it started, but for quite some time, I’ve basically been running a burn and wound clinic out of my house. We’ve long known that the clinic doesn’t really do burns or wound care. They will tend to you once, swabbing you down with bleach and wrapping you with gauze but Lord help you if that wound needs more than a day to heal because “once and done” is all you’re getting at the rural health center.

Some time back, a patient came to me with a massive wound that was getting no better and after begging for help, I agreed to care for it. This particular woman’s story found its way into village twitter and it became known that I possessed ointments and bandages and skills that actually prevented scaring and gave people their bodies back. The clinic knows this and lets me be, accepting that they can’t complain about my lack of official licensure when they aren’t willing to take over for me. And the patients keep coming. Recently, it has felt like as soon as one person gets better, someone else is wounded and we’re just blowing through sterile gauze and antiseptic ointment and literally hours of my day – every day – are now gone.

honest emotions as I wished for everyone to stop getting hurt

With a school to run, funds to raise, my own children to tend to... I still feel guilty saying that I don’t have hours to spend on this task; I hate that: that by virtue of my clock-centered complaining I somehow make light of what some of these people are enduring. By and large, these are not minor boo boos that need a band aid and a prayer. The majority of people who end up at my front door are there because they need intensive care and the government medical system has utterly failed them. If they were in a first-world country, many would be in burn units and ICUs. My house is, for at least some of them, a last stop before amputation.

its not pretty underneath

I have had to excuse myself from tending to a patient so that I can go and sob on Jeremy’s shoulder over the injustice and the medical malpractice that makes our front room better than the hospital. This should not be, and yet, sometimes it is. The time that this particular outreach takes up feels like it should be of no consideration to me, and yet, with everything else on my plate, it is.

The pain and the injustice and the guilt take their toll and so it meant something that at a particularly low point, a mom of a boy I had treated came back to me to say, J has been asking about you. He told me, “Mommy, Bethany really loves me.” This is the boy that screamed bloody murder every day for six weeks while the burns on his arm healed at a snails pace. He can now hold a pencil, and the grace in his words healed something in me.

this boy - he has spent more than his fair share of sick time with me, but the smile is how I know he's better.

Later, the mother of a child that scowled at me and pushed my hands away as I wiped weeks of dirt out of the filleted skin on his foot came back and said, “Every time we walk past your house, C looks up and smiles and when I ask him why he’s smiling he just says, that lady who loves me lives there.” And as if two rounds of Hallmark quality lovey comments weren’t enough, God gave me the gift of a third and then a fourth who said that word LOVE and I wondered if there wasn’t something to this.

The adults are less cheesy, but I’ve seen a similar affect. When the bandage changes are done and they want to sit and talk a while. When our kids start calling them grandma and missing them when they aren’t there. Every visit hurts, physically, but there’s a deeper healing at work too and all present can sense it.

daily snuggles with grandma, before and after dressing changes are good for both of them.

Despite the fact that I continue to pray through every bandaging and treatment session, “Lord, heal them quickly – for their sake and mine” the un-asked for bi-product of the daily care and the daily concern is that it communicates love in ways that a once-and-done couldn’t have.

to make you feel extra cared for, the babies will put bandaids on your perfectly healthy skin too. 

I’ve spent the last 12 years trying my best to love people. That’s our mission statement in a nutshell. And if I really assess our work properly, our best programs and projects are the ones that afford us the opportunity to spend concerted amounts of time with people. When an area of our work puts us in front of the same people day after day, there is a love language being spoken and clearly heard.

Twenty six years ago, Gary Chapman taught us all that there are different love languages and that if you really want someone to feel loved, you have to speak their language. After the six hundredth super-long chat around someone’s fire or even just standing in the bush path, Jeremy and I started joking that it felt like all Zambians possessed the love language “quality time.” And after logging hundreds more hours spending time with people in the burn and wound arena, I’d say that yeah, it probably is. There is nothing efficient about loving someone through the time it takes for a third degree burn over ten percent of the body to heal, but in terms of communicating love, the relational investment trumps my productivity every single day.

waiting for pain meds to kick in with the distraction of America's Got Talent
(we've watched all of the Zambian gospel YouTube videos already.)

The western world historically has “loved” poorer, third world nations with money. It’s fast, its easy, and above all, super efficient. Even amongst overseas workers, there still exists a mentality of “present the gospel, move on” or in development-worker speak, “dump and run.” We make up for in material gifts what we aren’t willing to give in time. And suddenly, the mission field sounds really noisy.

First Corinthains 13 says that if you don’t have love, you are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. I think that if we, the west, take an honest look at our programmatic efforts, even those that try to be gospel centric, we’d have to admit that the love language of the recipient has not been considered.

If spending quality time with people is the greatest act of love in this context, then I wonder if 1 Corinthians 13 could stand an update:

If I speak an African tribal language, but am too busy to love with my time, I am a clanging cymbal.

If I plant churches and build schools at all over but am too busy to love with my time, I am nothing.

If I sacrifice my American comforts and move my family to the bush but am too busy to love with my time, then I gain nothing.

Love is patient with those who want to be with us; 

love does not boast of how busy she is;

it is not arrogant or rude in needing to do “more important” things;

it does not insist on getting back to work;

it is not irritable when things take too long or resentful of lost hours;

it does not make light of the hospitals shortcomings, but rejoices in best-practices; 

love bears tears and the blood;

believes that God is good;

hopes that healing will come;

endures the pain when it all takes time.

Love never ends. As for development, it’ll fall apart; as for workshops, they will cease; as for sermons they will pass away. … So now faith, hope and love abide, but the great of these is love through time.

I still struggle with feeling inadequate – not accomplishing what I need to and feeling like I’m coming up short in every area. And I still hate that so much of my time is going to medical care that isn’t my field of expertise nor really – in the grand scheme of things – my responsibility. But for every person, to step into that space, and allow me to place hands on tender spots for weeks on end in order to see them heal and enjoy their body again  – the process that takes so much care and so much time – if that is what it means to love, then bless it.

why you should think twice about giving “gifts” to the poor

A gift! How thoughtful! Thank you!

I remember back in the day, driving to spend Christmas with certain relatives, my mother would always prep us with, “now remember, no matter what, you need to say ‘thank you’ and be grateful, ok?” Now that I have kids, I’ve taught them a similar script – A gift! Thank you! – and I’ve communicated my expectation that they not embarrass me by being ungrateful brats.

I’ve thought about this lesson a lot lately – how saying thank you is an act of both gratitude and basic decency. Furthermore, I’ve thought about it outside the context of my childhood Christmases in America. I’ve thought about all the gifts that we personally are asked to hand out on behalf of donors and even more about the thousands of OCC gift boxes being packed NOW that will pass through our region next spring. OCC is by far the largest “gift-giving ministry” working world-wide and as such they provide the most obvious examples. Among the many negative articles circulating about OCC lately (like this, and this, and this, and this) one push-back comment I keep seeing is, “Remember, these are gifts.”

I’ve written about OCC myself – more than once, in fact – so I obviously have thoughts. But it wasn’t until recently that I honed in on that repeated phrase – remember, these are gifts. Every time my eyes read that line, I’d think, yeah, so? until Jeremy and I were talking about it and we remembered to pass the phrase through our magic ‘America filter’ and it donned on us – Mom’s telling us to be grateful, regardless.

The third world and missionaries like myself who are attempting to serve here, have spent a good amount of time and energy trying to communicate a specific message to the generous peoples of the first world: random stuff from America is not helpful. But then mom reminds her kids again to be grateful… and what’s left to be said?

WELL, how about this:

The following is why I believe “But it’s a gift!” is neither relevant nor appropriate, and why you should think twice about giving “gifts” to the poor.

Let’s say a friend of yours has been struggling financially. She finally comes to you and says, “hey, I need to fill this prescription for my kid, but it costs $50 and I just don’t have that,” and you respond, “Aw, girl, you know I love you! Here’s a gift basket of stuff from Toys R Us worth $50!” And she just stares at you and doesn’t immediately say thank you and you get all feely and annoyed by her ingratitude… Your actions would have been unreasonable, right? No one could be that insensitive or crass as to not meet their friend’s stated, pressing need… Right???

Meet the need first is fairly intuitive in this case. But the reason why most Americans don’t respond as instinctively when it comes to giving unnecessary gifts to the poor overseas is that they are too far removed from third-world poverty to get it.

America has a lavish gift-giving culture; we give presents for everything!  New Baby! House Warming! New Job! But despite this generous tradition, many, if not most, of the people we are giving these gifts to aren’t simultaneously looking for solutions to life-threatening situations. Most Americans have never been confronted with the either/or dilemma of “meet a desperate need” or “give a random gift instead.” The struggle is quite literally foreign to them.

The driving proviso behind, “But it’s a gift!” is that Americans (as a generic unit) can afford to spend money on unnecessary things all day, every day – and we assume others do to. BUT, the developing world does not function this way. Luxury is appreciated when it comes, to be sure – but by luxury, I’m not talking fancy jewelry and the latest iphone. Luxury in our village is water that has spent time in a fridge, a car ride (instead of a bike ride) to town, and getting to eat the gizzard of a chicken. So let me say this: it is ignorant and tacky to pretend that frivolous luxury is a reasonable replacement for basic human needs that are not being met.

You can give any single unnecessary item from Target to your best friend and rightly expect a thank you from her because she probably has a roof over her head tonight. You can give a bag of party favors to your neighbor kid and even tell the goober to say thank you to you because chances are good that kid is getting fed tonight. If your friend didn’t have a house and your neighbor didn’t have food and you knew that but decided to use your expendable cash to buy trinkets instead, the word ‘negligent’ would be appropriately applied.

In the place where we live, families routinely go hungry, don’t have shoes and can’t send their kids to school. Our neighbors sleep in crowded huts, wear the same clothes for a week and walk miles to see a nurse. And yet, with this scene as the backdrop, the same American Church that can manage to buy millions of dollars worth of “Just because we love you!” gifts refuses to use those same dollars to alleviate human suffering.

Americans have the luxury of having skewed priorities because, by and large, their needs are already met. What would truly change the American-gift-giver’s perspective is an exit from the first-world bubble and a true desire to know what the legitimate, third-world needs are. From much experience, I can say that, once on the field, it does not take long for American bauble to look alien and offensive when the intended recipient in front of you is either hungry, sick or afraid.

In case I sound like a gift-giving curmudgeon, let me free ya’ll up: Buy the candy and the bouncy balls and the glow in the dark toothbrushes. Yes. Go ahead and buy them. And send them! But here’s the caveat: Do that AFTER you’ve made sure that each and every recipient has a home and clothes and food and everything she needs.

You see, that same mama who taught me to be grateful at Christmas also taught me how to spoil the people I love. Here in the land of Where there is no Target, we have to wait for many of our American items to come across with visitors. Because space is limited and our list is usually pretty extensive, I have to do some negotiating with my mother to make sure that the innate Grandmother urge to spoil her grandkids doesn’t usurp actual necessities. Because I know she loves me, I’m free to say, “Grandma, the kids don’t need sugar. They need vitamins and socks and school supplies. Can we prioritize that instead?” And Grandma always says, sure! Because as much as she loves – and lives – to spoil those grandbabies, she cares about them enough to make sure their needs are met first.

So she sends vitamins and socks and school supplies… and all the s’mores ingredients that the left-over luggage space can handle. Despite my joking protest, the spoiling with sweets isn’t bad. We just need the other things as first priority. If I had told Grandma our needs and she had said, “I DON’T CARE. IT MAKES ME HAPPY SO I’M SENDING MARSHMELLOWS AND NOTHING ELSE…” Well shoot, Grandma. That wouldn’t be very loving, now would it?

If your gut reaction to negative press for OCC is, “they should be thankful,” you need to recognize that it is your purchasing power speaking – not compassion towards the poor. Because yes, all humans should be grateful for gifts, no matter what. But it is not ingratitude that leads those of us working amongst the poor to make the needs known. It is necessity. And urgency. And Stress. And if that does not call you to sympathy, you are in this for the wrong reasons. 

Giving gifts to the poor aught not be a consumer activity. But when first-world donors announce that they will only pay for that which makes them feel good, this “generosity” takes on a controlling element that needs to be exorcized. A true gift is one without stipulations, including your desire to “participate” or “teach your kids the true meaning of Christmas” or to foster some artificial “connection” to a small child far away.

Leveraging financial privilege in a way that self-gratifies and puts the rich-giver ahead of the poor is not Christ’s way.

Psalm 41:1 says it right:

Blessed is the one who considers the poor.

Are you considering?

making friends

One of the funnest parts of our last two months of visiting under-five clinics is that Bronwyn has had the chance to meet a gazillian new people and make all kinds of friends. She has had the time of her life playing with big kids, little kids, babies, adults – the whole range of people and every game imaginable. I often look at her with great envy at how easily she adjusts to new situations and people and puts herself out there without reservation.

Though on the flip side, it has been sort of funny/tragic in some instances when the little tyke on the receiving end of Bronwyn’s super-friendly advances reels back in sheer terror of the pale toddler hurling herself towards him. The horrified “Mayo mayo mayo…” can roughly be translated,“MOM! The abominable snow lady has offspring!”

I’m super thankful that Bronwyn has not yet figured out that her would-be playmates are crying because of HER. When she is met with emotional melt-down on the part of the little people she was hoping to play with, she always looks back at me as if to say, “Ma, why she crying?” And I tell her the same thing every time: “Its ok baby girl, keep loving her, don’t give up.”

I feel sympathetic to the challenges of making friends when you don’t look like you belong. I’ve walked into a room with all women and hear them all start talking about the mizungu – it doesn’t exactly make me feel welcome. I’ve struck up conversations with people who think its funny to mock my clothes or my accent or my use of Bemba. At the ripe old age of 30, I still get my feelings hurt when someone communicates through word or action that they really don’t want to be my friend.

Right now, Bronwyn doesn’t seem to know that she’s different. She lifts up her little arms to be picked up by black people and white  people without reservation. I wonder how it will make her feel when one day she realizes that that lady is shoving her child towards us to purposefully scare him and get a laugh out of it. I pray she responds gently and is not easily offended. When she realizes that kids are stroking her hair because its so blond and fluffy, I pray that she is feels loved and honored and not like a baby goat in a petting zoo. I pray she learns to have a thick skin when dealing with insensitive actions or even rejection, but always keeps a soft heart when trying to initiate friendship and win over a pal who might be initially timid.

These are the thoughts on my mind and the prayers of my heart.

Baby girl, you have the bluest eyes ever and they absolutely sparkle with life. Anyone who catches your gaze for more than two seconds is enamored. I pray you always remember the power you have to win people over with that love. Love always wins.

After all, "if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another"... 1 Jn 4:11

hunger pains

I shared a post recently about our nutrition outreach with mothers and children. My point was that nutrition outreach is holy work because children matter to God and good nutrition is so vital to the wellbeing of God’s littlest worshippers.

It has been such a good time for me personally to be able to connect with so many mothers and young children in the past several weeks. There is something unique and wonderful about gathering with a group of women for one expressed purpose: we love our babies! There’s a certain maternal vibe in the air, and I thrive on it.

There are also some challenging aspects to the under-five clinics. The lack of organization makes my type-A personality want to screeaaaaaaaaaaam and start herding everyone into straight lines. I also find it ironic that a program geared towards the health of young children could possibly be so not-kid-friendly. Where are the “be kind to me, I got my booster shot today!” stickers? Not here. And I hate it when mothers try to shove dewormer down their kids throats instead of taking it home and sneakily hiding it in their nshima. These are things I’ve come to expect and (for the most part) accept, and sometimes I even let down my hair and laugh about it.

But there is one thing that really pains my heart and I’ve never gotten over it. The sound of the small child whimpering because she’s hungry is by far the most upsetting sound I’ve ever heard. In these crowds of women with all their little ducklings, many of the kiddos are crying because they are tired or bored or hot or annoyed that someone stole their toy. But in every group, there is one who is too tired, too weak, too dehydrated to cry with gusto – all that is heard is a pitiful moan. The sound from that one child is worth a thousand shouted phrases though not a single word is uttered. Someone feed me, I’m so hungry is what it says. And my heart breaks. Sometimes I can justify not really worrying about all the other kids – they’ll probably be ok. Being small for your age isn’t that bad. Hopefully they’ll catch up in their development once they get to school – these are the things I tell myself. But it’s the one that’s on the brink of ruin that always catches the ear, and by extension, the heart. For you, dear child, I must care. For you, dear child, I must pay attention. For you, dear child, I must do something. And yet, you are not mine. Herein lies the horrible tension I carry around with me at every growth monitoring clinic. Every maternal instinct in my being wants to take that one child and snatch her away when her mother isn’t looking; to feed her with my own milk and prepare for her colorful foods and take off that bonnet that’s making her sweat and dehydrating her further.

Try as I might, I have a hard time stopping myself from thinking thoughts that begin with: “If she were my child…” I cringe a bit to accept that I think this way – thinking that I can do it better than some of my fellow moms at under-five. But, I think, what about my home country of America where parents loose their children for less egregious reasons than what I see here? What about the orphanages we support all across Africa that are full of children whose parents are still alive? These global attitudes towards children and first families confuse my concept of justice and sometimes even seem to support my otherwise arrogant attitude towards mothers whose performance doesn’t stack up.

And yet, as much as I know that the family policy and attitudes of my home country would often have my back when I think and feel like I want to snatch that child and make her mine, there is something else that tells me “this is not God’s best.” These are heavy words and again, I’m blinking away tears as I think about Mable, Maggie, Impundu and Timothy and my heart hurts for them and their tiny frames. But I still believe to my core that they were meant for their own mothers, no one else. There have been so many times that I myself have felt like a horrible mother – like when I found her eating cat poop, or when I failed to shut the door and she fell off the same set of stairs - twice, or when I left the wipes at home on the poopiest day ever, or how about every single time I bang her head into the door frame as we walk outside. More than once I have thought, jeepers, I’m sure someone could raise this girl better than I can. I think about how I have made the “terrible” choice to keep my baby in a Malaria infested country, far from good health care, no where near Grandma, without viable public educational and devoid of any of the familiar features of my own enriched upbringing. I half expect someone to show up at my door one day, succinctly explain that I am not fit to keep this child, and whisk her away to a better life, probably with an upper-middle class family in a pristine neighborhood in a top school district in Connecticut. As I play out the scenario in my mind, I understand the rationale but still hear myself yell in protest, “But she’s mine! God gave her to me! God gave her to ME!”

The thought that Bronwyn girl was designated to me, entrusted to me, commissioned to me and no one else, all with the foreknowledge and intentionality of almighty God gives me great pause when I look at other women. As much as I may want to swoop in and rescue the whimpering little one, I remember, she is being held by a mother who loves her, who was hand picked by God to care for her and be responsible for her. In those instances when both mother and father are totally unable to care for their child, I am thankful that orphanages and international adopters are ready and willing to humbly step into that role of providing familial care. It’s God’s grace to children all over the world that second families are there. But something in my heart tells me that God’s heart is for the first families. 

It’s a necessary good that the systems and structures are in place for rescuing children and placing them with second families when no better option exists, but far be it from me to enable such action before working my tush off to see that the true mother has every opportunity to do right by her child.

Our attempts at nutrition outreach are meant to do just that. Teaching moms to make soy milk and explaining the dietary needs of babies and making home visits to counsel and advise on feeding plans and offering food support to mother’s whose small-for-age children need a serious boost… it all communicates a certain level of respect. I respect the fact that God chose you, not me to raise this child. It is therefore my privilege to walk with you in that journey. There is no shame in imperfection – Lord knows I’m not much better. But perhaps, by God’s grace, we can see these children become all that we dream they will be. Now, who wants to whip up some fishy-vegetable porridge!