a change of season

"He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."  - Ecclesiastes 3:11

            Before I begin, I must apologize for the abrupt and apparently alarming shutting down of this blog nearly a month ago.  I really am sorry that I couldn’t just leave the site up with an explanation of my current circumstances.  The series of events I’ll describe below was sudden and startling: the simplest thing to do was to remove the page until I was out of the country.

            I am fortunate enough to be a guest in a friends’ beautiful home.  At the moment it is totally quiet except for the occasional chime of a grandfather clock, or the intermittent barking of the puppies.  Today seems a timeless September day, sunny and cool, on the brink of autumn.  Among other things, today I did chores around the house with machines we don’t have in Kenya, I went to the craft store and to the post office, and I had two hour-long cell-phone conversations without getting booted even once.  I’m sipping a cup of tea that was undoubtedly purchased at Wegmans. 

It’s a lovely day.  Here in Pennsylvania.

How did I get here?  What am I doing here?

It was just a month ago that I found myself hastily packing my bags at the children’s home, throwing clothes and belongings into my suitcases.  The two large pieces of luggage still had duct tape stretched across them that read, “In Step Children’s Home”.  I knew all along that the plan was for me to leave the home after several months and return to the States to fundraise for the long-term long haul.  This planned departure was scheduled to take place in the mid-to-late December, not mid-to-late August.

I’ll do my best to just give it to you straight.

It was a plain-old Monday morning.  I got up at my usual time, relieved after recovering from another bout of malaria-or-another-strange-African-illness.  After breakfast I wished Ray a safe trip – he was riding his motorcycle to Eldoret, sixty miles away, to get his passport stamped for a three-month renewal of his tourist visa.  He had been trying to get a work permit for a few months but encountered several snags and delays that were out of his control.  It was a clear and sunny morning, per usual.  The little kids could be seen and heard around the property giggling and playing, making mischief, and clumsily toddling around.  It was back to school season.

I was mopping the floor in the hospitality room (a combined kitchen/living room area) when my phone chirped; it was a text from Ray.  I felt an odd spasm in my stomach when I read what he had written.  He told me that he had ran into some trouble in the immigration office regarding newly-required documentation he couldn’t produce: some kind of special pass required to be at a children’s home.  Ignoring a strong suspicious of my own tendency to worry and occasionally overreact, I messaged Carla anyway (you know, on the other side of the building… we’re still Americans) about the situation right away.  I wondered if Ray would have thought me a little hyper in that moment.  She and I messaged about the situation and about the documentation issue.  Hours later it was obvious that Ray wasn’t getting his passport stamped to him that day.  As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even returned to him at that time.

He returned that night without a passport.  There had been some talk at the immigration office questioning the legality of his stay in the country sans documents.  A third-party liaison had become involved and provided an incredible about of insight regarding how to proceed. 

            Ray returned to Eldoret the next day, accompanied by a Kenyan staff member for support, who could help navigate the obviously turbulent social and political misunderstandings thought to be taking place.  I tried to keep a positive attitude: I said, “Everything’s going to be fine.  He’ll come home tomorrow with his passport stamped, no problem.”  I thought, “God wants Ray here, and He’ll make a way for him to stay.  The kids need him.  The rest of the team needs him too.”

Phone calls were made, fingers were crossed, and prayers were said. 

I’ll cut to the chase, bypassing the details of an ample helping of troubling interactions Ray experienced related to him being an American mzungu (white person) in Kenya, and tell you that he was ordered to leave the country.  Generally speaking, the new documentation that was now required by law for him to be at a children’s home was not yet being processed, so it was literally not possible for him to uphold the law he was now violating.  (If you’re curious about these “troubling interactions” I’m glazing over, I encourage you to visit Ray’s blog, as there is an entry outlining them.  This can be found at http://raydsmith.blogspot.com/2013/08/integrity.html)

Similarly to Ray, I also lacked this newly required documentation, and I would also not be able to obtain it for some time.  One of the directors at the home spoke with the third-party liaison about my hypothetical standing with immigration, had I encountered them in person, and the suggestion was made that I leave the country as well until I could obtain the newly-required special pass or a work permit. And so it happened.

It was earlier that evening, on that Tuesday, the second day Ray went to Eldoret, that it was first mentioned to me that it might be wise for me to consider “going home” for the time being until all of this paperwork business could be figured out.  I was resistant.  I refused.  It wasn’t going to happen.  I believed that.  I figured that there was no point in me heading back to the States.  After all, having waited almost a year to return, having raised the funds for the trip, having arrived at the children’s home only to come quickly into the knowledge that “this is where I belonged,” it seemed unimaginable that I would be packing my bags that very evening.  I prayed about it after the discussion and it wasn’t even an hour before I approached Carla and told her how I had realized that it was the safest decision for me, and for the home, that I leave.

That was more than a month ago.  I left the home that night in the third week of August, stayed off-site and got to be a “tourist” for some time, and then returned to the states in the first week of September.  I’ve been staying with friends in Pennsylvania, who have shown me an incredible about of hospitality and support, for which I am deeply grateful.  Since my return I’ve had the opportunity to fellowship with some members of Ray’s church who I had met during their stay in Kenya, to visit with my family on Long Island, and to even make a short jaunt up to Binghamton, New York, where I have been living for the better part of the past seven years.  The first-world was waiting for me when I got back, having carried on in its own unstoppable rhythm all the while.

I’ve had the chance to go to Wegmans, to shop in an American mall, to drive my car again wherever and whenever I please, and to enjoy practically every common first-world luxury regularly experienced in the United States.  I consider it ironic that in my last blog entry I expressed feeling homesick but that now having been forced to return to the States I would gladly exchange everything I enjoy here to be able to go back to the home.

I don’t miss the home the way I expected to.  I figured I would feel down-in-the-dumps all the time, feeling like my heart had been ripped out, and like there was a big hole in my life that couldn’t be filled by anything else.  I imagined that I’d dream about the kids all the time, spend most of my time studying tropical medicine, and feel uninterested in the first-world lifestyle altogether.  Although my attempts to anticipate my reaction to this change were unnecessary, as my presumptions were imprecise, I’m not surprised that I’d hoped to brace myself for what I’m now experiencing.

Instead of feeling generally upset, I just feel detached and unsettled from the home that I began to call my own.  I “don’t feel right” in a way I have never “not felt right before”… it’s like a malaise in my soul that infects my brain with its illness.  I think about the kids everyday, look at their pictures, daydream about the time we had together.  I close my eyes and imagine what it was like to hug and kiss them, give them their medicine, and to hold them when they were sick.  When I open my eyes to find myself in a virtually empty, silent home, however beautiful it is, it seems completely unreal to me that I’m not with those babies at this very moment.  Part of me is still waiting to wake up to the sounds of the boys on the veranda making a raucous at bath time before the crack of dawn to find that this has all been a bad dream. 

My heart doesn’t feel like it has been ripped out, it just feels like it disappeared out of my thoracic cavity overnight.  I don’t at all feel like my heart has been broken, I just feel like it is missing.  There’s no pain there, just numbness.  The sway of the rhythm of each day seems limp and off-beat compared to the hearty tempo and brilliant movement of life in Kenya.  There was a depth and richness to working at the children’s home that I haven’t experienced since I’ve returned here.  Even though I am actively working to go back, and even though I appreciate all the luxuries I’ve been afforded here, it’s just not right for me.  I can’t even exactly explain to you how or why I know that to be true, except that this is simply not the lifestyle I want to live, and that life at the home is.

As a medical professional it is my job to search for and treat the causes of illness.  As a woman of faith I errantly tend to similarly search for and attempt to treat the causes of my life, often when it is not my place.  Of course there is much that can be done about this situation – I can begin to undertake the project of fundraising long-term for my return to the mission field, finding individuals or groups who are willing to sponsor me monthly for the long haul – I can study all that I can while I’m here so I am more prepared to take care of those little loves when I get back to the home – I can have my work permit documentation processed so that my immigration status is legal and intact – I can do my best to make every day here the most it can be.  At the same time, I know it’s senseless of me to try and hunt for a cause of this chain of circumstances.  In the past I might have found myself asking and saying things in my mind like, “Maybe God doesn’t want me in Kenya, otherwise He wouldn’t have let me get kicked out,” or “Why is this happening to me?  Why did this happen to Ray? Where’s God in all of this?”  Instead I am grateful to say that I haven’t tended to question God’s goodness at all in these times, as I continue to see His hand guide this process every day here stateside.  I don’t doubt the original plan –I will return to In Step as their nurse.

When I was first in Kenya in July 2012 it was stressed to me that my return would be in God’s time.  Through series of setbacks or apparent delays I did return there in less than a year.  I remind myself today that this situation – and all things – are happening in God’s time.  This turn of events is a part of the original schedule of “God’s time” that existed from the moment I set foot on Kenyan soil, I believe, and I have zero doubt that I will return to Kenya soon to continue to do the work prepared for me.

As for the babies: they are in good hands.  It’s like the auto insurance commercial, only better – they’re cared for by the Kenyan staff, the missionary team, and by God.  My responsibilities have been delegated to different individuals on the staff and the team, and everything that needs to get done is getting done.  I look forward to being reunited with them as much as I am looking forward to being reunited with the children.  I can’t wait to kneel on the baby mat and give splurts to all the kids’ bellies once again… although it will be a different group of babies on the mat.  Kids who were crawling will be walking.  Those who were in highchairs will be eating at the big table.  They’re all growing at this very moment, under the diligent and attentive care of those who run the home, and in the loving arms and heavenly light of God.

The last night before Ray and I left the home, we were all very upset.  Amid phone calls and messages to the other side of the world, performing our usual duties, and conversations among ourselves, the night was passing rather quickly.  We were all so preoccupied with the circumstances that by eight o’clock we hadn’t done our usual scripture study and prayer time as a missionary team.  Our usual practice was that the six of us (with visitors, when present) would read a chapter out of the Bible every night, discuss it, exchange prayer concerns, and pray together.  Amid the preoccupation of my disbelief and shock at the realization that this would be my last night sleeping on the compound for a long time, I remembered suddenly what our Bible chapter would have been for the night.  I knew what we had been reading the past several nights, and when I realized which chapter would be read this night, if we hurried to seize the opportunity, I felt that God had a message for us.  We had arbitrarily picked a particular book of the Bible to begin reading several nights before, having no knowledge that any of these events were to take place.

We got the team together in a pinch – we delayed Adam a few minutes from taking the Aunties home – we all came together in the hospitality room for our nightly ritual.  It was from my Kindle NIV that I read the following from Ecclesiastes 3.  Yeah, that was the chapter we just happened to be up to.  I’m sure it was “just a coincidence.”

There is a time for everything,
 and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 

    a time to be born and a time to die,
 a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 

    a time to kill and a time to heal,
 a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 

    a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 

    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
 a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 

    a time to search and a time to give up,
 a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 

    a time to tear and a time to mend,
 a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 

    a time to love and a time to hate,
 a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

15 

Whatever is has already been,
 and what will be has been before;
 and God will call the past to account.[b]

16 And I saw something else under the sun:

In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
 in the place of justice—wickedness was there.

17 I said to myself,

“God will bring into judgment
 both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
 a time to judge every deed.”

18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

I felt that night like I was being reminded that God's seasons sometimes don't make sense to us, but they are nevertheless necessary.  He was reminding us that justice is His to watch over, to keep perspective in the big picture of life as we all will live and die as human beings and that it is through His spirit that eternity exists in each of us.  Most of all, being reminded that "God makes everything beautiful in its own time" was something I needed to hear.  This life is mine but this time is His.  Looking at it in this way helps me to trust in this, and every season.