It's the journey of any Christian who lives in a secure neighborhood and reads the words, did you clothe me when I was naked? Did you feed me when I was hungry? Did you visit me in prison? (Matthew 25), and doesn't know what to do with them.
It's the journey of the girl who is cared for, who has money, and yet understands something about Jesus loving the poor and doesn't know where to start.
It's our journey to love Christ while surrounded by affluence.
It's our journey as we ask ourselves, "is there more?"
..........
When I was in Bolivia, I spent a lot of time looking out of
windows. From the room where I stayed in the restoration home, I could see the
whole neighborhood. I could see the dogfights, the tiny market outside, the
beer glasses left on the table of the restaurant next door. I saw women with
lines on their faces from worry and hard physical labor, walking down the street
to buy more potatoes. With make-up and some computer training, they could look
like the women I lived with, professional and well-rounded. But they would not
have a moment of spare time to daydream of desk jobs. They would always have
one reality to face.
I memorized what I saw without intending to. That’s what happens when sights, smells, and touches hold emotional weight. These sights
represented my girls’ realities, the realities they were stuck with, the realities that I would get on a plane to
leave behind.
And that is what I did. I left. I got home and I stopped writing. I
felt numb, overwhelmed. I found myself curled up in corner in my college apartment looking out a similar window at the strange, white-washed
world. I saw well-dressed college students stressing about the work for today,
suburban moms with their kids secured in carseats. I saw people in pea coats
with Starbucks mugs. And I cried. Not because I don’t like nice clothes or car
seats or Starbucks. I have nice clothes, I drink Starbucks, and I will in fact
use a carseat. Yet I was sobered.
Partially I faced culture shock, reentering into a pace I learned to live without for six months. Partially I faced the Chicago winter. But most of all, I cried because these people, my people, had so much time to
daydream about other realities. About future jobs, future homes, hobbies, and
hallmark moments to come, because they had the resources to. And I hurt, because their striving, working, and upgrading would keep them from meeting the people who could desperately use a friend. Especially a friend who could spare some time, some resources, some energy. It hurt to see these Starbucks drinkers and minivan chauffeurs, because part of me knew that they would keep on dreaming without ever teaching someone who desperately needed to
dream again.
I want my girls to dream again. Not of wealth, not of CEO
jobs outside of their educational reach. I want them to dream of healthy
marriages when men stay no matter how tight the budget gets, where birth
control is within reach, and poor families are not stretched beyond what they can bear. I want them to dream of living
in sanitary conditions, of working and investing in their children's education. I
want them to dream of jobs where they can be home at night so their kids feel
secure like they never did.
My parents helped me dream. They helped me train. They
educated me and invested.
My husband’s parents did the same for him. So, we know
that in this crazy world, we will be okay. But for what purpose? So we can
drink more Starbucks and buy cuter pea coats?
Something is wrong about the scenes outside my window. They
are so far away from one another. And so I sat by the window in Wheaton, crying. And now I sit by
the window in St. Louis, wondering:
If
only we could have heard their cries, what we could have done. Julia may have had her
own bedroom to keep her safe from a drunk father. Vanessa’s mom may have been
diagnosed with depression before she commited suicide. Betti may have gone to
school and learned about her rights to her body.
My friend's parents asked me, "so what do we do about all the
inequality?" I said I didn’t know yet. But if I love my girls, then I will be
brave enough to ask the question. And more so, if I believe that God loves
people, then I will not dismiss it as too complicated, because dismissing it has huge
implications for Vanessa. For Julia. For Betti. And they are in our family. And
we will answer to God for them one day.
So what do we do about all this?
