Celebrating Mother's Day in a Church Full of Orphans

How many orphans under the age of 25 were present during your church's Mother's Day celebration?

Today I sat in a church service celebrating Dominican Mother's Day, surrounded by 10 children and young adults whose mothers have passed away (4 of whom lost their mothers within the past year) and another 15 who do not live with their mothers for reasons including abandonment, abuse, mental illness, and extreme poverty. In addition to those 25, there are 4 other girls who stayed home today because going to church on Mother's Day is too painful for them since the loss of their mothers. 

I watched as these children and young people wiped tears from their eyes as we sang songs about moms. I watched them lower their eyes when mothers were named and honored from the pulpit. I watched them put their arms around each other in silence and give an understanding nod. 

You might ask - Isn't that torture? Shouldn't the church be more sensitive? Shouldn't more acknowledgment be given to those children on Sundays like today? Don't they deserve more than a line in a prayer asking for comfort and peace?

I'm going to tell you something.

You're asking the wrong questions.

Look back at the first question at the top of this blog entry - How many orphans under the age of 25 were present during your church's Mother's Day celebration?

If your answer was 0, or if you had to struggle to think of one or two orphans (by death, abandonment, or abuse), then I respectfully and humbly suggest that your church has bigger questions to be asking than those which invoke judgment on a congregation that is following Christ's command to love and care for orphans. 

We are imperfect people trying to fulfill a perfect God's purposes in the world. That means that we imperfectly try to care for orphans. We imperfectly try to be sensitive and end up saying the wrong things. We imperfectly try to provide orphans with families, house-parents, and church families that will never fully take the place of their biological families. But the key word there is "try." God's call to care for orphans is not optional. He even goes as far as to call it "pure and faultless religion," - the call to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27) The world says that orphans aren't our responsibility. The world says that it's the government's job to look out for orphaned, abused, and abandoned children. We fault government agencies and child protective services for imperfectly doing the job that God calls His own people to do. We pass off the responsibility because it's easy to look the other way. But I refuse to be polluted by the world's beliefs about God's unmistakable call to the Church. I refuse to accept the lie that orphan care is not for everyone. If you have received adoption into the family of Christ as I have, your response to God's gracious gift should be the extension of that gift to those who are in great need here on earth. We are called to be imitators of God, so if God did it, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to do it, too.

So sponsor an orphaned child. Become a foster parent. Investigate adoption as an option for your family. Use the financial resources God has blessed you with to enable others to adopt. Refuse to be complacent. Ask God to send orphans your way and show you how He wants you to be involved in their lives. 

Maybe next year on Mother's Day it won't be so hard to answer that first question.

The Choice of Re-Entry

I'll admit, I never paid attention when people talked about "re-entry." They were referring to the period of time that includes the last moments a missionary spends in her host culture and the first several months she spends back in her home culture (in my case America in general, not Arizona). Re-entry seemed so far away, so speculative, and so hypothetical to me that I figured I would pay attention if, and only if, God called me to leave the Dominican Republic one day. If I'm being honest, that call came before I ever expected it to and now I write with only 10 days left in Monte Plata before I pack what I can fit into a couple suitcases and get an exit-stamp in my passport without knowing when it will be stamped again.

In 10 days I will re-enter American life...which means what, exactly? 

People warn you - some missionaries say that their period of re-entry was the hardest part of their entire missionary experience. They say it is harder than living in a third world country without constant water and electricity, harder than adjusting to an unknown and misunderstood culture, harder than living life in your second language, harder than making new friendships and saying goodbye to them. They say it is lonely, isolating, and frustrating. They say that you won't realize how much you've actually changed until you get back to your home culture and see how different you are from others. They say you won't realize how much others have changed until you see that your friends and family have lives that have continued while you were away which means they have new friendships, new support systems, and new activities that don't include you.

I am anticipating all of that. I know this will be difficult. I don't think I'm going into this blind. I believe that, by the grace of God and with the support of my closest friends, my incredible family, and my caring and loving fiance, I will be able to navigate the stormy waters of re-entry into my new American life. 

But the thing that scares me is my re-entry into consumerist, self-centered America (and sometimes even the church) - as one writer recently wrote, re-entry into...

..."a world where a pair of shoes can last longer, have more worth, be treated with more value, than a fondled, raped and discarded 9 year-old-girl."

...a world in which "we let blinders be stapled to our hearts" because the pain on the other side of the world doesn't affect us or our family and we "can't do anything about it anyway," so we choose to be apathetic. 

...a world in which we "keep up with the Kardashians or whatever flash of skin is being flaunted on red carpets - when there are little girls being devoured on bare concrete floors."

...a world in which "our churches are fundraising for building expansions and plusher chairs while children [around the world] are dying."

And as I write today, I understand that re-entry into the physical, geographical land of America is not the scary part of will happen in 10 days. Re-entry into a culture of self-love, self-indulgence, and self-prioritization is the scary part - but choosing to re-enter that culture is a choice. It is a choice that every single one of us has - the choice to wake up each day and re-enter the culture of self or the culture of selfless others-focused-love. God's work of "Cross-Shaped love" is the call to not turn away out of distance or convenience but to consciously turn your face directly towards global suffering - because that is where the face of Jesus is fixed. And that call is everywhere, every day.

"You are where you are to help others where they are...Caring isn't a Christian's sideline hobby. Caring is a Christian's complete career. It is our job, our point, our purpose."

My realization about re-entry is this: Re-entry is my daily decision. It is my daily decision to re-enter the world where God has currently placed me bearing the mark of Christ and spending myself for others or the decision to re-enter the world-of-me, turning my eyes away from the suffering of my fellow man (whether my neighbor in America, my students in Monte Plata, or a widowed mother in Iraq) and focusing instead on my own personal happiness and fulfillment. My identity, my calling, and my purpose does not change when I say goodbye to "Kristin the foreign missionary" in 10 days. In fact, I want to say goodbye to her. I want to say goodbye to every single part of my identity that is not "Kristin the Jesus follower, the others lover, the God imitator." I want to choose each day to leave the culture-of-me and enter the culture of loving as Christ has loved me.

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:1-2

*Quotes taken from this article.