Not The Same As Family

 

 More and more, it seems, my life is measured by spaces of time spent on either side of the globe.   I’m either here or there, Canada or Thailand, Highview or Hot Springs, home or--- home.  And now, one month into this new reality into which I’ve been released , this sense of both/and is getting stronger.

In less than a month now, I’ll be heading for a visit with the spectacular children at Hot Springs and the superheroes who care for them, aka Suradet and Yupa.    By now it goes without saying, this is my ‘other’ family, and after seven months apart I am aching to be with them, for sure.

As Missionary In Residence I am hoping to be able to stay in Thailand twice a year for six weeks at a time.  But not this time.  This visit will be for two weeks only.   Just a timing thing, really, and taking into consideration that I was there already for a month in January. 

But even for fourteen days worth, there’s been a lot to get ready.  I have two sermons prepared, just in case.  Ten stories about the miracles of Jesus, complete with a ‘cup of miracles’ brimming with little story-related trinkets for each child.  I’ll be introducing a new vocabulary list of 100 words to build on the ESL we’ve already done.  There will be another ‘reading club’ complete with prizes.  And of course I’ll be taking along packets and envelopes lovingly prepared by our Sponsors.  (Already I anticipate some luggage challenges, but that seems to be that happy problem that is part of every preparation.)

 

In a bigger way, the focus of this trip will be on addressing the challenge of our current property deeds, and how the lack thereof makes our kids vulnerable to possible displacement by the government.  This is a situation we’ve known about for about 2 years now but are seeking to be more proactive in securing a solution.  There is a strong possibility that I will be able to meet together with Suradet and Yupa, Asia’s Hope National Director Tutu, and John McCollum, Executive Director while I’m there.   Prayers for timing, discernment and solutions are appreciated.

 

But mostly, for this particular visit, I’m just looking forward to being together with them in the gentle, loving community that is Hot Springs.  Home or ---- home.

By necessity I am away from the deeply important-to-me community called Highview right now, taking a hiatus during a transition that just needs this ‘away time’ component.  I am feeling the absence of my peeps in cavernous and uncomfortable ways.  Yet, in all things, God supplies.  Part of what I find so massively abundant in my life is this great lavish profusion of love and family and community that comes to me from so many varied places.  Hot Springs is one of them.   How comforting it will be to sit and receive that love for a bit.  I can only hope that what I have to bring, as meagre as it seems in comparison, might serve to encourage and sustain them too.

When I was there last January, something happened.   I used a phrase they started saying very early in the relationship to describe how they were experiencing the connection.   “Meun gum korpkua”  ‘Same as family’.    I didn’t trust it at first, or maybe just didn’t believe it.  I thought it was just Thai manners.  And maybe even a little bit of the way they would express thanks and respect to someone who is seen as the connection to the practical support we provide.  But gradually, visit by visit, they convinced me they actually mean it.  And then at Bee’s funeral, in that tragic circumstance, there was no question.  I was treated ‘meun gum korpkua’. 

But last time, last January, something happened with that.  Yupa changed it.  “Mai chai” she said, Mai meun gum.  Korpkua townun.”    No. Not ‘same as’.  Just ‘family’. 

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed. 

So yes, I am eager, painfully so as is often the case, to see them again, and worship together, eat together, work together with my family.  Not the same as.  Just as it is. 

Home or --- home. 

Not Another Moment

“No one has to wait another moment to make a difference in the world.”

Anne Frank

Is there something inherent in all of us that desires this;

this thought, this compelling hope that somehow our lives have made a difference?

At funerals we catch a glimpse of it, I think.  No matter who is being ‘laid to rest’ those who knew them want to speak only of the ways this friend, this brother, this mother made a difference in the lives of those around them.

So maybe it is. 

Something we all want.

But I’m wondering, on this strange-for-me Sunday, if sometimes we are discouraged from such a noble desire by the frustrations our self-perception of inadequacy or unimportance presents to us.  We have somehow come to believe that to have an impact we have to be more spectacular than we feel.

I have recently left a role that helped anchor my desire for relevance.  It was a role that had a huge Sunday presence in my life, and so this morning feels strange.  It’s a transition I am finding somewhat disorienting for my psyche, even with all the support and love and blessing I’ve received, and with other things, mostly Thai things, to focus on for the future.  It’s made me even more aware of my own desire, compunction even, to be a difference-maker.  And the question that’s uninvitedly banging around in my head is, “Can I still make an important enough difference without this particular anchor?”

In the midst of the weekend where I was released to new things, I had an encounter with a ‘stranger’ that I find helpful to reflect on now.  Two weeks ago I was marching valiantly through a long list of ‘had-to-be-done-so-it-makes-it-seem-that-much-more-important’, in order to finish off what I would still say were my urgent responsibilities.  One item was a stop at our local Christian bookstore for a marriage certificate, because one of the ‘important’ things I was up to was officiating a wedding.  The sales rep recognized me, and, to my surprise, took the time to thank me for something I said to her thirty-five years ago.  We were at a support group meeting together, and a simple suggestion I made apparently made a huge difference for her colicky baby.  She’s never forgotten me, she says.

Really? 

Here I had been assessing my ministry life, both past and anticipated future, by things way more ‘wow’ I hoped to accomplish.  And yet my simple, fleeting interaction with this mom had been very ‘wow’ to her.  Made a big difference to her.

Anne Frank was a little girl in an impossibly wretched world.  She wrote a diary.  And maybe it is contrary to my point that we now all know her name and she’s famous in her own right.  But from her observation that ‘no one has to wait another moment to make a difference in this world’, I would bet, that even if no one had found the diary, even if no one had published it, even if we all hadn’t been introduced to Anne Frank in school, this young woman would still have made an impact. 

Just by not waiting.

I think to some my work with orphan and at risk children in Thailand may seem more on the spectacular scale than the simple and ordinary.  It’s easy to write about it with a ‘wow’ factor in mind.  Stories of cobras and gigantic spiders and crazy roads and being chased by a wild pig are good for re-telling, for holding a reader’s attention.  And yes, I admit, that being up in a mountain village, or at a Thai wedding, where everything’s strange and exotic is kinda out there for me.

But the truth is that most of the time when I’m actually there, it’s the simple stuff that makes the difference.  Making stumbling attempts at learning the language.  Reading to a child.  Watching the latest song-game they’ve learned.  Comforting them when something’s made them cry.  Or just being there to listen to those who care for them, encourage them, tell them they are my heroes.  Or, one time, taking blood pressures for an afternoon, a task for which I was not trained except for on the spot.  Or picking up garbage after a party held in the village.  Or paying for a pizza lunch for someone who hasn’t had pizza in fifteen years because it’s considered a luxury.  Or visiting a man in hospital with gangrene in both feet, who asks me to pray for him, and I do.

I will, of course, continue to write about the wild and different stuff.  It’s interesting.  Hopefully it’s inspiring.  But it’s not what makes the biggest difference.

And no one has to wait another minute.  Not even on a strange Sunday morning.