Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Blubbering Turkey


‘Tis the season, in America, for the great holiday rev-up.


Today, a week’s worth of planning, traveling, grocery store lines, and cooking culminates around that famous and DELICIOUS traditional meal, hopefully a bit of giving thanks, and usually some football. Then, a certain species of Americans will push through 3am crowds for extreme Christmas shopping and fill their cold fingers with red Starbucks cups. Let the fa-la-la-la-la’ing and decking the halls begin!

It’s a litttttle bit different here…
Ok, it’s completely different.

The year winds down with some sort of lethargic gusto, if that’s even possible. School, structure and all things normal come to a screeching halt. South Africa seems to sway in a non-celebratory, non-structured haze for the month of December.

A year of growing relationships, digging deep roots, and investment can be sealed or discarded as the safety of routine dissolves and people revert back to how they know how to survive December.

Yesterday, the same day most Americans were making pie crusts and preparing the turkey, I found myself crying like a blubbering turkey in front of the South Africans here that I’m closest to. This week, it feels like all the cultural differences came to a head. Like a wave of this-isn’t-where-you-come-from crashed over me, and I couldn’t keep my head above water.

Because ‘tis the season in South Africa when you go back to your old ways… where it becomes painfully obvious that the people I love the most still default to being the one who’s enslaved and the one who’s orphaned.

This week I saw that, even though we’re doing so much life together, when the December default started kicking in, our differences were the loudest. I broke. I cried. I blubbered through a construction site, on the floor of a daycare, and through a teatime meeting. Then I stomped my foot and said, “IT’S THANKSGIVING.”

I looked at these women.
They are running back into their enslaved and orphaned identities to disappear into December.
They are learning about, but not yet claiming and tasting, their places set at the Father’s table.
I cried hurt, sorrowful and angry tears.

IT’S THANKSGIVING.

I told them about the holiday where work and school stop with the purpose of families coming together around a meal. I told them that people travel great distances, go through great expense, and are intentional about preparing the most extravagant fare. And it’s for the purpose of giving thanks with your family.

I told them that I left my family and my culture and my traditions so that I could be family with them. And I told them that it felt like our cultures, our languages, and my skin color was keeping me from being family.

I left my family to be a voice for His Family, and on this Thanksgiving week, I felt like a December discard. I felt like the white-skinned charity worker who gets put on hold while people slip away into a month of oblivion, secrets and back-pedaling.

Jaws dropped.
Eyes bugged out.
Heads shook fiercely.

“No, Kacy. No, no, no. That’s not it. We are family. We are one.”

They wrapped their black skin around my white skin.
And I longed for their orphan hearts to wrap around the Father’s heart.

I felt something break loose, in me and hopefully in them as well.
I realized how deeply in me I don’t want to work here. I don’t want to feed mouths, build houses and do the Africa song-and-dance of relief work.

I’m not here for relief work. I’m here because Family works.

And I thanked my Father that, on this Thanksgiving week, I’m walking around like a blubbering turkey because I want to be a part of this family, and I want them to know His Family forever. And it’s deeper in me than it’s ever been. It’s how I want to live and breathe and love.

Even when it hurts.

And then I laughed and remembered that this really is right on par with Thanksgiving week anyway, isn’t it America? A family’s history, love, personalities, expectations, and differences are crammed into one room and the dysfunctions seem to surface so much more quickly and blatantly. And it’s all because we want to feel like we belong together. It’s all because we want love to be whole.

I laughed REALLY hard when I remembered the Thanksgiving that the cousins, aunts and his mom were catcalling Cousin John’s catwalk as he modeled his new nipple piercings. And Uncle Neal walked up just in time for the pivot and caught the glimmer of the newly bejeweled man-nipple. Thanksgiving got a LOT louder and then a LOT quieter.

Ahh, family. It all comes up, all comes out, and all gets much more obvious when we all get together. (And now I will find out which family members read my blog!)

The differences and uncomfortable history I’m experiencing this week go far deeper than a difference in a taste of jewelry or acquiring permission for nipple accessories.

The differences have a lot to do with things I didn’t choose, like where we were born: a country founded on freedom with healthcare and education and Thanksgiving… and a country still wobbling out of slavery, with disease and poverty and oppression.

But we have the same Father, and He said we all belong at the same Thanksgiving table for eternity. So, just like any family, when we come together we can pretend we are the same and everything is fine, or we can decide to be one and to love anyway.

I’m thankful on this Thanksgiving. I’m thankful that I’m still  celebrating family with messy dynamics, increased emotions, and all the love that is behind those things. I’m thankful that, even with all the broken parts and holes, there is family and that it’s worth gathering for, staying for, and expecting greater things for. 

[Confession: Some of those tears might have been because I miss my family too. I love you and I wish I were with you today to hug you TIGHT, to laugh with you, and to eat so, so much of NaNa's stuffing.]

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Happy Birthday Mama Charity!

I think the cake was a hit!

24 on the 24th! A special strawberry cake for her Golden Birthday.

And a special guest! Look who came Laura UHC!








Wednesday, November 20, 2013

We start with our hands


We spent most of our last full day in Uganda with Sam Kisolo. He’s adopted more children than he can count throughout the lifetime of his family. Literally, I asked him how many, and he answered my seemingly irrelevant question by saying, “I don’t know how many. I just know their names.”

Upon hearing that answer, I started to wonder if his house was just a place to stay with named-rather-than-numbered little bodies walking around, eating and sleeping. Until I went and saw for myself.

The traditional greeting in Uganda is for a child to bow on bended knees before an adult and extend their hand for a handshake. As we sat on the Kisolos couch pouring through their family photo albums, the children started returning home from school. Each came to greet their father first. (I lost count too.)

Every single one of those children who bowed before their father and reached out their hand was reached back for and pulled into their daddy’s lap. Sam would lovingly pull those children in and put his hand on their face.

There was a secret, intimate conversation - a named and not numbered interaction between a child and a father. This home was not just a place to meet the basic needs of orphans, widows and elderly… even though they are indeed doing that.

This father’s biggest dream for all of his children is that they know who they are in Christ and live it out. He wants them to know they are created in the image of their Creator and to create.

Some of his older children are studying agriculture, some business, some catering... And they are taking these passions, skills and giftings and putting them into practice. They are going together into desolate, hopeless villages to plant gardens, grow organic foods, bring that food into town, start a restaurant and create jobs for other people. 

You know that African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Sam Kisolo is raising a village of creative children to transform the nation. 

This is what family is.
It is reaching out your hand, pulling them into your lap, touching their faces, and whispering secret, transforming Truth into them… and knowing that they’re going to grow up reaching, pulling, touching, whispering, and transforming others too.

I was so excited to get back and reach my hands and heart and secrets to these people I love in South Africa. Especially Mama Charity. Because God has been whispering transforming Truths to us at Ten Thousand Homes about her.

We gathered around the picnic blanket at Sunday Lunch this week, so happy to be back together. And as I told this orphaned mother the story of a reaching father, she leaned in.

Her eyes bulged; her head bounced up and down in the most eager agreement. It was like she was waiting for me to touch her face.

I told her that Ten Thousand Homes wants to live like that family.
Like the Father’s Family.
I told her I wanted to live like that – with her, with the Sunday Lunch crew, and with everyone I come across.

And I told her that, maybe, if we learn how to reach out our hands, pull people in, and live like real family with them, there won’t be orphans any more. Maybe our hands reaching out can change Dwaleni, the community she lives in.

I realized when I looked in those suddenly overwhelmingly childlike eyes that this woman with five children who has only experienced abuse, abandonment and being taken from has never been invited into something bigger than herself.

She’s never been pulled onto the lap of her father. And never been whispered to about the mystery of that kind of love that comes in its fullest when it’s given away. But she wants it.

She physically leaned in toward me during that moment, wordlessly proclaiming she wants to be a part of that thing that’s bigger than her… the Family that transforms.

So I told her we start with our hands. With reaching.

I pulled out paint, stripped the spaghetti-covered shirts off all the kids, and we started making art. Everybody at Sunday Lunch reached out their hand and added their perfectly-designed print to this family creation. It is BEAUTIFUL.





I proudly held it up, and showed Mama Charity, “This IS how you build Home. Everybody reaches and puts their hands in.”



And then… drum roll please…

I choked back tears but didn’t even try to fight the smile as I told her that this reaching, beauty-making piece of art would be the first thing we would hang up in the new home Ten Thousand Homes is going to build her.
She was so surprised she didn't know how to react. :)

WE’RE BUILDING MAMA CHARITY A HOUSE!!!

I’M SO EXCITED!!!

But better than a house, we’re building a gathering point, a reaching place, a beacon of light in Dwaleni. We’re building a family that is learning how to love and transform like family.

And I’m believing that this is going to be a turning point for Dwaleni.
For orphans of every age.
I believe Family is going to win.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.


Our first stop in Uganda was a joy-filled face and a piece of land brimming with possibility. She sat on a mat on the floor next to the beans she was drying. Her eyes, her words and her voice celebrated our presence in her humble, welcoming home.

Teopistar’s words tumbled out in Lugandan, and, through a translator, we heard a story that was somehow laced with hopes and dreams.

Without flinching… well, without her flinching, she said, “I am HIV positive. My husband died because of the sickness and left me with nothing. I had so many small children, and no way to provide.”

I had to remind myself to breathe.
Not because I was sitting with a woman infected with those three letters that come to steal, kill and destroy… but because I was sitting with a woman whose identity, hope and joy was NOT infected by HIV.

She spoke with no shame.
Her face was not covered with those weary, shame-laden trenches that I know so well. She was not aged far beyond her years on behalf of her burdens and her body’s condition. Teopistar’s voice… her laugh… sang a freedom song. “God is so faithful and has provided for me so much.”


She walked us around her land where she grew and sold vegetables in order to expand onto the one-
room home she was left with. Not only does she have enough space for her family now, but she is also building extensively and renting out rooms. One of her daughters greeted us with a smile and showed us her brand-new graduation picture. She wants to open her own cosmetics shops one day.

I was floored.

This is not what I know. This is not what I understand.

In South Africa, you don’t talk about “that condition”. You don’t even use the word “sick”. You don’t ask how someone died. You don’t use any letters… not HIV, not TB, no positives or even negatives.

In South Africa, you can see the stigma smeared on their faces.
Or their secrets stay buried and the sickness spreads.
But there’s no freedom.
And there’s no hope-songs, no glory-giggles, no dream-daring.

Teopistar laughs and hugs. And she smiles.

Later, on that same day, we went to Jane’s house. Jane wasn’t feeling well that day, but it didn’t stop her from welcoming us, sitting down with us and sharing every detail of her story.

“My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.”

Same freedom voice. Same freedom smile. Just like Teopistar.

Also like Teopistar, Jane is a widow. She was left with six young children and incredibly destitute conditions.

The events of her lifetime were flogged with loss.
The story she told was narrated with faith.


I could not make sense of this reality I had entered into with a handshake, a hug and a genuine, “You are most welcome.”
But I could identify abundant life.

 I could see that Jane was living in something… It’s the same thing that I have been sitting on my comfy couch with my over-sized coffee mug and iPod, and begging God for.

I could hear that her heart, her words, and her eyes were set on the glory of God… not on the afflicted child wrapping himself around John, not on the cramps in her stomach, not on the things or the people she could not have in that moment.

I knew the letters written on her medical chart and the letters that could have been written on her husband’s grave… but I looked up in that little living room, and I saw the letters Jane had written on the wall.



And then, while telling the most excruciating part of her life-story, she said the words that are re-writing everything in me.

“I went down into the lowest pit of HIV/AIDS… 
And it was all for the glory of God.”

And Jane smiled.

Jane began our conversation that day with, “My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.” And she ended it with that smile and that satisfied promise, “It was all for the glory of God.”

That’s it. That’s abundant life. That’s what’s really true, Jane.

Jane still has HIV. Jane still has sick kids and not enough of a lot of things.
Jane has what’s really real – and she has it for eternity.

It always starts right here in the present-tense, with names and circumstances and comings and goings.
But I want to my story to end with that smile and that hope.

I’m not sitting on my couch and begging for it anymore.
I’m welcoming people in to see what’s written on my walls, no matter what I feel like today.

I’m praying for a heart and a mind and a smile like Teopistar’s and Jane’s.
I’m exchanging the words of my story in the name of the One who exchanged his life for mine.

I’m smiling and I’m telling the story that goes, “And it was all for the glory of God.”

Friday, November 8, 2013

There were mango trees.


We are in Jinja, Uganda going house-to-house, greeting-to-greeting, smile-to-smile.

John, Carla, Jen and I are here to learn from a network of families that are really living it out. Living like Family.

There are “core families” and “satellite families” within the partnering organizations called Foster Family Network and Orphans Know More. Core families are married couples with their own children, who have taken in other children and welcomed them as their own. Their complete love and all-the-way-through-them joy is overwhelming; their burdens are underwhelming.

Besides their own homes, full of bustling children and chickens, they have taken in “satellite families” as their own extended family members. Satellite families are widows with children that they stand with and stand for in every way you can imagine.

It’s the real thing.

And the best part is that it’s not glamorous. It’s not polished.
It’s not a super-funded program built by overseas super-heroes.
It’s Ugandan people loving Ugandan people.

The structure and the terms came later… after life was already going, the kids were getting married, and the roots of redemption had wrapped around the hearts of so many.

The only thing extravagant is the love… and the pineapple.
It’s unbelievable.

An overview won’t do it.
So let me tell you about Mabel’s house.

We found ourselves on lumpy couches, watching and waiting, while a starving cat sang a hoarse hunger song, and a hen and her chicks ran wild across the floor. I wasn’t sure if the construction of the house was complete, and I was bracing myself to hear a widow’s story from a satellite family.

And then Mabel walked in with a smile as big as Africa and exclaimed, “You are welcome!” with hugs and gushing love. Suddenly, this held-together house and that I-don’t-know-what-that-is-on-my-skirt became the most strikingly beautiful background for a fantastic love story that is changing everything. This was a core family that I want to live like from the core of my being.

She had always wanted a family. One day, God told Mabel that she was going to have a family that was bigger than what she dreamt of. She would welcome into her home the people that needed family.

“The first one, she is called Susan. She followed us home from outreach one day. She told us her story, and we took her in.”

Margaret, another orphan-made-family came in to join us with sparkling eyes. She had just finished university, but wanted to volunteer before beginning her career to “give back” for the ways she’d been given to.

Joshua, a high school student with perfect posture, came to the door with his suitcase from boarding school, a common education policy in Uganda, during our conversation. Mabel’s words stopped as her eyes lit up. “Joshua! Welcome home!!! How were exams? Come and greet our guests!”

Joshua was happy to be home. As he kneeled before each one of us in respectful greeting, Mabel kept going with her story.

This strength and this faith that made her and her husband a core family was not from growing up in a household like Joshua and Margaret’s. Mabel had grown up in a Muslim family and was disowned when she chose Jesus.
She was orphaned when she accepted the adoption of Christ… and then she started adopting.

“God intended that human beings grow up in families.”
Exactly.

Mabel lives something I want to live.
Her giggles escapes like glory-bubbles when she tells the parts of her and her children’s stories that should release tears and mourning because she so obviously encountered Christ in those moments.

Living like the Family of God didn’t start with a rock-solid home life for Mabel.
And it didn’t start with a financial foundation, enough space, enough food, or enough of anything.
It didn’t wait until things were ready.
We asked her how it started… where this came from…

“There were mango trees,” she said.

Mabel knew the God who designed us for His Family. To be welcomed and loved and known.

So all she had to say, with those glory giggles and matter-of-fact gestures was about the place they were living when it all began:
 “There were mango trees, so they could come. “

It was really that simple. That obvious.
There were mango trees. So why would she not live the way she was made to?

In a country flogged with HIV, with parents being claimed by sickness, there are children who wander. There were mango trees at Mabel’s house, and they wandered there.

“They could sit, relax, be free, eat mango. I can cook for them, serve them, and they can tell me who they are.”

Loving God.
Living like family.
And mango trees.

Mabel reminded me that’s all there is to it.

Sometimes, for me, it’s a pot of beans and rice in a too-small cottage. Or a band-aid and a make-it-better kiss. A hug, a handshake, a smile.

For some, it’s a cup of coffee and a conversation. Or just some time together.

It doesn’t matter what the mango tree looks like… There is a way today, in this very moment, to live the way God made us to live. We may not feel ripe, but the harvest is ready. Mabel didn’t wait. I won’t either. 

Mabel's house
Margaret on the far-left and Mabel on the far-right.
Mabel's husband, Dickson, was attending a burial.
They have 15 in their family + a widow with four children.






Saturday, November 2, 2013

Not Your Average Nursery Rhyme


There once was a woman who’d never had a dream.
The ways of the world were just too loud, it would seem.

They told her, for true love, she’d have to give herself away.
She was beaten and abandoned when she wouldn’t do it for pay.

She got stepped on and walked over all the days of her life,
Her five babies crying only magnified the strife.

No parents remain and not a single thing in her name,
Mama Charity trudges on; every day seems the same.

Hope tells a new story about her tomorrow,
But it was so hard to hold on to amidst all that sorrow.

For two years I have come, and we’ve shared in the day-to-day,
Because it takes a long time to trust that Someone will stay.

Road trips and slumber parties, God said, “Be family, and don’t hold back.”
I didn’t come to pay a sympathy visit to the poor lady in the shack.

We started this year in the hospital’s children’s ward,
Even then, we insisted that she find something to look toward.

With a baby’s burns in her lap, still feeling the loss of the fire,
We asked Mama Charity to share with us her heart’s greatest desire.

A flicker stronger than a flame sparked for just a moment in her eyes,
She wondered if it was safe to dream past all those lies.

Maybe it was simply that there wasn’t anything left to lose,
What’s another scar or just one more bruise?

But she picked up her head, a piece of chalk and that board,
And in a hospital yard, she bared her cries to the Lord.

Her deepest longings spelled out, she asked God to give her a stand,
Something to call her own, rather than getting kicked off other people’s land.
Photos and "Year or the Lord's Favor Project" by Carly B
"I want to have a stand." Mama Charity was asking to have a piece of property
in her own name in the community she lives in. 

The months kept going by, and the burns began to heal,
But was this chalkboard God and this family thing real?

She dared, in faith, to ask if there were any stands for sale,
Everything she tried seemed to invite humiliation and to fail.

One day, she gave up. She was packing up and getting out.
Maybe God abandoned her too. She was consumed in her doubt.

I told her I was also still waiting on my chalkboard dreams to come true,
I asked her if she believed for me that this God would come through. 

She scoffed and said, “YES” with her mouth and with her look,
I saw something change suddenly. That was all that it took.

Something broke loose right then, and she learned how to hear God’s voice.
Her life hadn’t changed, but hope became her choice.

She said she would stay because God would give her a stand this year,
There was still no money, but now there was no fear.

On the other side of the Equator, through a girl and her church in Norway.
The heavens opened up and sent exactly what Mama Charity needed to pay.

The finances had been given, but took so long to get in the right place,
It seemed like it was going all wrong, until we saw God’s hand in that pace.

This week I got to tell Mama Charity that her prayers had been heard,
She froze. She just stood there. I opened up the Word.

We worshiped right there, a holy moment in a decrepit shack.
We prayed in two languages to the God who doesn’t turn his back.

We remembered our Lord through communion together,
We celebrated that He was the Branch on which our hopes would tether.

Mama Charity giggled and cheered when we dared to look back again,
God had heard her the whole time, and hearing His voice was the biggest win.

Hope became the language, and stand number 326 is a battlefield of grace.
Mama Charity’s cries have been heard. Her name has been signed on that place.


We had to give the kids a little bit of communion early to keep them busy
while we prayed together. :)

Given's healing hand

And this is how we found Karabo... A communion hang-over.
I SWEAR it was just grape juice in that cup!

Such a happy day! Me: "Mama Charity! I know you're in shock... just TRY to do a real smile."