Comparison, moms, and ministry

Life for a young mom can be a sometimes arduous exercise in building character.  I'm not talking about the kids, I'm talking about the mom.  We get the questions about what we do all day, the comments about how 'oh, it must be nice' (it is, but not in the way you are implying), we get asked what else do we do, and on and on.  At home, it seems the cooking, cleaning, diapers, nose-wiping, and discipline never ends, as raising a kid can't really be done in a day, week, or even a year.  It is a time during which we wrestle with our importance, our purpose, and we are constantly re-evaluating that illusive state of being, called 'balance'.  If we let the perceptions of the world lay heavily upon us, the task of remaining focused on our families is daunting, if not impossible, to do peacefully and confidently.

Since we've been here, I'm beginning to wonder if our living situation is an advanced course of the mom-building-character thing.  If there's one thing that is so tempting to do in this close community that is focused on one ministry, it is to compare.  We compare our daily schedules, we compare who-does-what, we compare what we think is "too much" or "just enough".  In this environment, in which something inevitably always needs just one more person to do something, that chameleon of comparison creeps in.

It might be in the form of defending one's self, thus putting our worth in what we do, or it might be in the form of pointing at others, with blame, judgement, or resentment.  Anything to make ourselves feel better, or to aim the attention elsewhere, right?  Comparison also might create that monster of insecurity, which is a powerful tool of the enemy, especially in us women.  Let's face it, there's always something we could do better, something we could do more of, something that maybe five years ago, we should have done totally different that would have been life-changing.  Seriously.  There's always something.

But when we are looking at others as our measure of success or greatness, we'll always fall short.  Yes, we were all created in the image of God, but we were each given unique gifts and personalities.  I wasn't created in the image of my neighbor, so I shouldn't strive to be like her.  I won't ever gain any ground if that is my goal, and that comparison will most likely lead to jealousy and envy,  good poisons for any relationship.  Maybe she has some Godly attributes that I recognize aren't so fruitful in my life, but I need to first go to God and ask the Spirit to work in me to be more like Him, not my neighbor.

Christ is my measure, to which I will certainly fall short.  But He is also my redeemer, the one who took my sin as his own.  The one who loves me so dearly that He longs to share eternity with me.  He is my salvation and what I do for Him counts, not what I do for anyone else.  If I am serving others to look good in my neighbor's eyes, or to feel like I'm doing my part because of what everyone around me is doing, I'm completely missing the mark.

Last week, I was the Advanced Cooking teacher for a grand total of three days.  I've been a mom for seven years but every once in a while, I begin to wonder if I should be doing "more", and in my mind, the importance of mothering seems to fall a few ranks.  These thoughts always come when I'm looking around, instead of up.  In theory, the idea worked very well for our schedule. We hashed out the idea of me teaching over more than a few days and felt that we made a careful decision.  But in reality, it didn't work for our family.

There are no badges for the busiest mom, the stay-at-home mom, the homeschool mom, the mom who only feeds her kids organic food, or the mom who seems to 'do it all'.  We've all been given a unique path, life, and personality.  God is my guide, my goal, and my judge.  No one else.  Nor am I anyone else's.

I'm thankful for the crash course in this I received this month,

and I'm sure it will happen again.

(Disclaimer: This perspective of the fallen-ness of missionaries' thoughts about ministry is not criticism of the administration and leadership at RVA.  It is more a reflection on the general struggle of women in ministry, young moms in particular.  The administration has been beyond helpful, loving, and encouraging to me during this time of "figuring it out", and I am thankful.)

The One Percent and Me

I (Jim) have been wanting to write something about this for quite some time but I've been busy and I don't really know where to start.  I've been reading a lot about the "Occupy" movement - for quite a while.  First off, this isn't a political article - just some perspective.

It's been hard for me to get a real clear picture of what exactly the protests are about, but hearing the facts about the 1% making 1/3 of Americans' income made me start thinking.

In the US, I felt poor.  I had a masters degree and a steady teaching job and yet our family qualified for WIC (Food aid for low-income moms and children), our heating bill was subsidized through LEAP (again, for low-income families), and our kids qualified for free (but nearly impossible to use) state medical care - all because we were considered a low-income family.  From that perspective, it's easy to agree with the occupy movement - income distributions in the US are not fair.

Here, I feel wealthy.  We end up giving a lot of money away, lending money to people with hospital bills, buying antibiotics for people...  We 'bring home' even less now that we're missionaries but here in Kenya it's a lot easier to see how wealthy we really are.  I feel guilty when our house-helper sees avocados growing nasty molds - especially on days she has no lunch.  When the crippled guy peddling flowers asks if he can have a ten-dollar loan to buy his weekly batch of flowers to sell because he spent all his capital on medicines for his son who has pneumonia I see how richly we've been blessed.

Because I was curious, I looked up some facts about incomes worldwide - here's one that really hit home for me:  over 50% of the world's population lives on under two dollars per day.  (Over 80% live on under ten dollars per day.)

My parents visited last month and we celebrated an early Christmas with them - ham, cranberry sauce and all.  After eating, I took some of the traditional meal to our yard-worker, Edward.  He had a great time trying all the foods.  He really liked cranberry sauce, enjoyed the ham.  His favorite part was the stuffing; he didn't care for the olives.  NONE of it was familiar to him. After he'd eaten it and had seconds of the stuffing and that precious cranberry sauce he asked, "You eat like this every Christmas?"

"Yep."  I couldn't admit to him that I would have normally eaten twice the amount he'd just had OR that we'd had a meal like that only a month ago when we celebrated Thanksgiving or that we'd probably do it all over again when Easter came around.

"Wow!"  Wonder filled his face.  That he couldn't really fathom being wealthy enough to eat one meal like that was obvious - and Edward's a guy living on MORE than two dollars per day - better than over 50% of the world population!

I'm rich.  I use the internet, own a car, buy health insurance, have running water (hot water, no less) and listen to an ipod.  Maybe I'm not the one percent - but I eat until I'm full.

I'm not sure what to make of all this but reading Luke 16 has a different feel now.

Visiting Edward's House for Christmas.

We weren't eaten by lions, I promise

It's been almost a month since the classrooms were emptied... we've been winding down from a whirlwind first term at Rift Valley Academy.

We've been busy learning to eat,

learning to hunt,

  and trying to stay dry in the very abnormal, very wet weather of Kijabe these last few months,

which, if you are Joel, has its advantage of a yummy termite crop!

 So we took off in search of some warmer adventures... which sometimes were more than we bargained for.  Yes, we crossed this in our car.  It's not lions that might keep us from blogging, but it's the raging rivers we should be afraid of.

Oh yes, and Grandma and Grandpa came and we were able to show them our home and the beautiful country we live in.

 We've prepared our home and our hearts for remembering the birth of our Savior,

 and also celebrated with our neighbors around us.  

Our hearts and minds are full of so many wonderful things.  We've had a lot to think about this term, and frankly, since we've come to Kenya.  Where does the Lord want us to be?  More importantly, what is he asking us to be doing with our lives?  We pray that we can grow to honor him in what we do, more and more each day and in the coming year.