Reflecting Back to One Year Ago

I was looking back at pictures from March a year ago. We were in Africa. It was dry season and we were all thankful that the political situation seemed to be improving. We had had nearly 3 months without having to wake to gunfire or fear what was going to happen next. The kids were playing happily in our yard. Joshua had caught a beautiful irredescent green sunbird, much like a hummingbird. He was building a fort in the back yard. Jim had installed an exercise bar on the tree house so the kids could learn to do chin-ups for P.E. That was the month Jim repaired our washing machine. It was also the month we were revamping the electric wiring of our house because a bolt of lightening in an unexpected storm had fried our wires. He was building a really cool electric solar panel control center, and I was painting the battery room, all in anticipation of preparing the house for another family due to arrive in July, who would live in this home which we had so lovingly cared for and improved for 12 years. We had put in hundreds of trees in an orchard out back, and planting a cool inviting garden that was a peaceful place to relax after a stressfull day outside the gates.

We knew we were going to be leaving Africa soon. I was having health issues and we were emotionally weary. Weary of many long years working cross-culturally, speaking two languages not our own, constantly battling logistic problems in a country with poor infrastructure, with constant plumbing and electric problems, fuel shortages, phone and internet aggravations, and cross-cultural stress on a daily basis, treating sick people with less than adequate supplies, and getting sick ourselves on a monthly basis with malaria, amoebic dysentery, or typhoid. We sewed up lacerations, treated countless burns, machete wounds and the like. We lived through periods of political unrest, not knowing at times from one day to the next if we were staying or leaving, and/or even wondering if we could leave I we needed to, all while trying to get the job done that we came to do.

Secretly during the last three years there, I lived with a growing awareness that I wasn't okay, and that I had not recovered from some of the traumas I had lived through in Africa. Those of you who know me know what those are. I won't go into the details. I struggled to cope on a daily basis as constant triggers bombarded me, all without warning, and my body reacted in ways that I had no control over. I hated feeling paralyzed by this thing. I hated admitting that I was weak.

It wasn't always this way. I remember when I was younger when I first arrived in Africa I wasn't afraid of anything. I remember seeing the mountains for the first time, and the feeling that they took my breath away, and I had a sense that I would never want to leave this enchanted place. There, I felt empowered to do anything that God set before me. There I became a somebody in a world of nobodies. I found that I could walk through an open door of uncharted waters, and amazing things would happen. I had courage, not knowing where it came from. I was the one who would walk up to soldiers and instead of being intimidated by them, I would befriend them, offer them a book, some medicine or a piece of sisterly advice in their mother tongue, and then be allowed to pass, having spread "world peace" and leaving warm smiles behind.

Now, 19 years later, I know that years of living amidst the cross-cultural tension that was always under the surface, coupled with multiple traumatic events, many of which I apparently came through fine at first, some may even say heroically, can have their toll on your psyche in the end. Having half my thyroid plucked out didn't help. 2 years ago, struggling to cope, I went to one of the trauma counselors who was visiting our field, and was told I had PTSD. I already knew it to be true. But somehow now that I had that label, I felt like I had to admit that I was "crazy" or something. Labels are hard to get rid of. But I also began to feel like I was not alone. I was given a book to read about PTSD in war veterans, and soon began to feel a kindred spirit with them. I began to realize that there are millions of people who struggle with this. Your body and mind do strange things. Your face gets hot and flushed and your heart begins to race at the sight of something that somewhere in the recesses of your brain sub-consciously reminds you of some peripheral aspect of a traumatic event you lived through, benign things like the paint peeling off a wall, the back-firing of a car or a sick child. You shut down emotionally and block out conversations of people around you at random moments, while inside you feel like crawling up in the corner and hiding. You have memory lapses where you can't remember entire conversations with people and you lose your ability to multi-task. You get teary-eyed when you least expect it.

That was my reality 2 years ago. So many people have told me they considered me their hero. I felt the farthest thing from it. A hero would have fought to the finish. I felt like a failure. I had to confront the fact that this place in the world that was once my dream and had become my life for so many years was now becoming my nightmare and a threat to my well-being and my health. My counselor advised that we "get out of our Vietnam". So a year ago in March we were taking steps to do just that, and bring closure to the "Africa chapter" of our lives. But we wanted to do it slowly and on our own terms.

As we were preparing the house for another family to move into it, Jim and I had begun laying the foundation for building a new dream that would carry us into the next phase of our lives. We made a commitment to move toward using our gifts more to enhance our lives and the lives of others, and this in turn would help us find ourselves again and become whole. For the first time in about 20 years we began to pursue some of our other passions: art for me and writing for Jim. These things really helped us bridge the last 8 months in Africa that became increasingly difficult for us as we longed to bring closure to it.

That was a year ago. Little did we know that just a few weeks later our time-table for departure would get an abrupt kick into light-speed, when on a quite leisurely day while visiting with friends from out of town, a couple soldiers came to our gate, marched into our yard, painted those dreadful red X's on our walls and told us the house was being reclaimed by the new government, which had just a few months earlier taken power in a bloodless coup. So much for well-laid plans. Now my home which I had nurtured and which I had been slowly saying good-bye to was being ripped out of my hands before I was ready. We could have tried to stay and "wait and see what happens", but we knew the safest and wisest thing to do then was to leave. Our emotional state at that point was already such that we were resigned to leaving, and this only confirmed in our minds that we needed to go. At that point we mustered up the courage to bring closure to everything in just 8 days, the house, the possessions, the friendships, the neighbors, the lifestyle, the community, Africa. It was the most exhausting, bittersweet week of our lives. I still remember seeing Jim lying face-down on the tile floor of the guest house, looking as if he were passed out, from exhaustion. We headed out of town, never looking back, and a few days later flew out of Africa, for me probably the last time.

I look back and think how hard it was to leave while at the same time easy. I'm glad we left. It was time. I don't feel like a failure so much as I did then, but more so that a season of my life has drawn to a close and a new one has begun. I admire those colleagues we left behind, those who are still full of that courage I once had to stay in a very difficult situation and, with God's help, make amazing things happen. They are my heros. And if someday they find it is time to leave, I will understand.

For the past year we have been operating on auto-pilot, trying to take the necessary steps to start a new home and keep our family functioning during a huge transition period. It's been hard, but not nearly as hard as the last three years in Africa were. Healing has begun. But now we find ourselves so incredibly busy just trying to make ends meet, we are wondering where all the creative energy went that we had committed to using.

I long for the day when we are finally settled in our new home we are building, in a place where we can finally relax, take inventory and find those creative moments once again. This new home is very symbolic for us. We so desperately need to have a place we can call home that no one can take away from us, that embodies our dreams for the future, and our hopes for rebuilding our lives and ourselves in this new season God has given us. I do realize that this is not a perfect world and that anything can happen. I know that all too well. But the new dream God has put in our hearts is what has kept us going and moving forward, and God willing, by his mercy we will realize it.

Too Old to Start Something New?

Six months ago our family returned to the US and started a new phase of our lives. It has been trying at times, but one of those things you just do because you have to, like breathing. As part of our new life, it has become necessary for me to go back to "work" as a nurse in the US, at the age of 44. I have been working as a nurse in Africa, but it had been over 13 year since I had worked in the US. There was a lot to catch up on, but I'm slowly getting up to speed. For four months now I have been working in the Emergency Room of a small rural hospital.

Funny that I ended up working in the ER. I never thought I would want to - always thought that would be too stressful, and after 15+ years of striving to survive, let alone thrive, in the African continent amidst disease, cultural challenges, language barriers, horrible roads, corruption, evil, unending logistical hassles, sometimes living in fear and trying not to, not to mention bullets occasionally flying and racial tensions mounting, caring for the burned, the sick with tropical diseases, the insane, and those severely wounded from a war and strife filled region, and trying to live something of a normal life for me, my husband and four children, you think I would run as far away as I could from Emergency room care. I thought I would. Crazy enough, each time I applied for a job after returning to the US, the ER was what was available and what I was "suitably matched" to do. Hmmm. Well, I stopped fighting it and was hired in an ER. It has not been that bad. I thought I would struggle more with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ironically the ER has been thus far rather mild compared to some of what I witnessed in Africa, and I am thriving in the atmosphere of a team, where I am not alone in deciding the fate of the individual, if there is any deciding at all, where there is access to the best of medical care and hope is not completely lost, and where most people come in for less than emergencies.

It is a far cry from Africa. There is nothing more grim and disheartening to bear witness and feel deeply the grief of those doomed to their lot in life without hope in the "Dark Continent", those whose bodies are eaten away day by day by the grotesque tumors that are slowly claiming their bodies without any hope of escaping them, those whose only water source is poluted with countless microbes that kill them daily, those who live and fear daily the autrocities of evil war lords who terrorize without accountability, giving into fatalism and accepting it as normal and unavoidable.

Yet the contrasts in what people fight against to survive is astounding. I come from 15+ years of working in a country whose mothers lose half their children on the average before the children reach adulthood, some of whom have died right before my eyes. I come from a world where men, women and children die daily from tetanus, rabies, bacteria, malaria, amebas, typhoid, Schisto, Hemorrhagic and Yellow Fever, to name a few, of the diseases resulting from the war of man against nature and microbes, where people fear what they cannot see that can really kill them, where natural selection has left only the strongest to survive (no, I don't believe in Evolution, by the way), where no hospital has ever seen a neurosurgeon or heart surgeon, and where the average life expectancy is 42. Most people don't live long enough to ever experience heart disease, lung disease or the miriad of other co-morbid conditions experienced by the vast majority of Americans today resulting from indulgence, addictions, sedentary lifestyles and poor health habits. In the US the strong and the weak alike have the privelege to survive and escape the onslaught of most microbes through the invention of vaccines, antibiotics and eradication programs, yet end up killing themselves by overeating, underexercising, and indulging in everything from food to drugs and alcohol. Even sadder, the youth of this nation who should have the greatest potential of ever realizing their hopes and dreams more than any other generation or culture end up committing suicide, lost and misguided without God. All too often ER's around the country see people suffering from anxiety, mental illness and out of control. It begs the question, have we done any better? Has all that we have achieved in this country made a difference?

I believe the answer is no, not without God. God's presence in a person's life is the only person that can help them make sense, wherever they are in the world. We are all going to die, the only difference is how we die and when, and whether we have hope or not for something beyond this meaningless life. Having that hope while still living on this earth is the only thing I believe that can really allow us to truly thrive. I have been all too close to death myself, and to losing my own mind from witnessing and experiencing some of the atrocities, desperation and evil that exists across the Atlantic. Only by God's grace was I pulled up from that darkness and given something to grasp a hold of, something to find hope in.

I noticed that there weren't too many other nurses older than me working in the ER. One colleague commented that most ER nurses burn out at 45. Hmm, I just got started at 44. The stress is certainly there, but it is a change from where I have been, a merciful change, and God willing, I will endure whatever comes my way during this next phase of my life.

Painting, a long-lost passion revived

This past year has been a life-changing year for me. Lots of hard things to wrestle with, some ups and quite a few downs. But I made a decision last year that I was going to begin doing things that I was passionate about against all odds, and begin pursuing dreams that have been tucked away for a long time, almost forgotten by the business of life. One of those passions is art. As a child I always seemed to be drawn to a pencil or paint, and at the age of 13 was mentored by a great Junior High Teacher in watercolor painting. Over the next decade I dabbled in art, and was even offered some prestigious 4-year scholarships, but I was restless and wanted to do so many other things.

Well, having done those "so many other things", getting back into some of long-lost passions like art has been a stabilizing thing for me, and has helped me reconnect with who I am, especially at this point in my "mid-life" when so many things are changing.

With our move back to the US and our need to have extra income to save up for a house, I'm brainstorming many ideas to make extra money. One way I have decided to try is to sell my art.

Last fall I did several pieces, which I was able to sell (see my link to the right), the first time I have tried sell anything I've done besides a cake. It encouraged me to keep trying to do more and do better. Over the past four days I painted a picture that has been haunting me for many years, a picture taken by a friend in a remote African village while we were doing a mobile clinic, a place where I almost didn't go, but where I felt God prompting me to go, where no white person may ever again show their presence. This picture, entitled "Window to the World" is now for sale, and should be posted on boundlessgallery.com in the next 24-hours.