Good work

I was chatting with one of my dearest Khmer friends today. Tears began to surface as I realized I have less than 24 hours in this amazing country.

K- "You have done good work here, Mercy. You have done good things for this country."

Me- "I don't know about that, it seems like all I did was make amazing friends that I now have to say goodbye to."

K- "Exactly. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God and your neighbor, that is what you have done here. You have loved us."

I could hardly contain myself in response. Because the truth is they have loved me. My community here has loved me so fully and deeply that there was no longer any room for self hatred. They healed me by loving me completely, in my brokenness and my passion. If they can love me, maybe I can love me too.

I came here expecting to do good work. To fight trafficking, to bring healing, to make a difference. I felt called to change the world, and I still do. I still want to do good work.

But now I see that the only way to change the world is to love her fully. Income generation programs are great, education is important, rescue is critical. But none of it will leave lasting change without love.

So what will I do when I get back to America? I will show those around me how to love like the Cambodians do. I will show them that our greatest work is not how we make money or who we help, it is how we love. My work is love. 

Sing

Sing little bird, sing even though it is not yet morning.

Does this late sunset and light fog have you confused? If it weren't for this clock I would think it was the morning too, the way the light is hitting the sky. The sweet wind makes me want to sing along with you in a morning song of joy and new beginnings.

Still, deep down I know it is not morning. The sun will set soon, not to return until the darkness has run its course. The clock endlessly ticks, reminding me of how much time is left.

So sing your song, and I will sing along. For your morning song is my mourning song. I will weep as you rejoice and somehow it will still sound all the same.

Manna

A huge part of the biblical narrative is the Israelites traveling through the wilderness to the promised land. The journey took generations. It was filled with loss and turmoil, along with growth and change. Frequently the people would setup camp at a particular spot and stay there. God would continually call them deeper into the wilderness, and over and over they would resist that call. Maybe the Promised Land was too good to be true anyway?

I've been feeling a lot like the Israelites lately.

I feel as though I have finally found my safe place. The journey has been long and hard, I want to stay in the place I have found comfort.

Yet this voice continually calls me to journey deeper, further into the unknown. She assures me that there is more beyond the horizon. She promises I will be given Manna to sustain me. Still I doubt provision, I try to work within my own means to make the transition doable. Which only leaves me spiraling into self-doubt and fear.

Until this week, when people and places filled my heart. They reminded me of why I am chasing healing. They showed me that this is only one step of the journey, and there is so much more to come. They were Manna to me.

This place

This place. This path that isn't quite a path. My holy place. Where God asks me to dig deeper, invites me to open my eyes. To see that the path will always be here, but it will never be what it was.

There's a grieving for what's lost, a cry that ends in a hallelujah for all that's been revealed.

Here I learned who Cambodia is and who I am. I realized why this unwanted child was drawn to a country of unwanted children.

Here I learned about separation. I saw the walls we build to keep us from vulnerability. I saw the ways development and ease bring us further from each other.

Here I learned that we can love anyway. We can look for those outside the walls, we can push ourselves through the cracks to find the ones off the path.

Today I learned this-
I can't stop the walls from being built. I cannot stop the world from hiding her heart away. But I can climb these walls and step into the wilderness on the other side. I do not have to be contained by the well worn path. There is an entire world out there that is open to me. I only have to be brave enough to climb the wall.

Malaligned/Healing Again

When I was a child I went through a traumatic situation. It left me emotionally crippled, with a metaphorical gaping wound and a broken bone.  Unable to deal with a certain range of emotions and unable to receive love.

Then I healed. Eventually the wound stopped bleeding, a scab formed and over time fell away. Until all that remained was a scar, gently caressing the memory. Noticed only by a perceptive few.

Until recently there was a situation where I work. A child with a story that was shockingly similar to my own. As I sat on the street with this abandoned child, I felt a slew of memories rush back. I had sat exactly where he had sat. I had spent years trying to heal, and he was only at the beginning.

But hindsight is 20/20. As I looked at him and all the hurt he had endured, I saw the confusion of a child. I saw the struggle of a parent to deal with a child who has already been traumatized. I saw how self defense can look like selfishness to outsiders. I saw it all so clearly.

I realized that while my wound had healed on the outside, the bone was not properly aligned. As I cared for this boy with my same story, I felt the bone break again. I felt the Spirit say, "You thought you healed, but it was always in the wrong place. Now that we have set the bone into place, now you can heal again."

So here I am, healing again. 

Because you are rich

I had a beautiful night tonight. Laughing and eating with one of my best Khmer friends. She has this depth of wisdom that comes out when you least expect it, and a unique blend of humility and strength that is stunning. She always wants to cook for me, and she never lets me pay. She tells me that I have blessed her, so eating good food together is her way of blessing me. And let me tell you, it is one amazing blessing (nothing beats home-cooked Khmer food).

Tonight as we ate our food I told her how scared I was to make new friends in America. I told her Americans don't love so easily like Cambodians. I said most Americans don't want to share about their great joys and sadness unless they already know someone, they don't usually share their lives with newcomers.

She responded without hesitation- "Mercy, it is because people in your country are rich. They have money for everything they need, so they do not know they need people too."

She always has these great one liners that leave me thinking for a while. I realized she is more right than she even knows. Physical poverty and spiritual poverty always seem to balance each other out. Those who grow in physical poverty have a natural inclination for spiritual and emotional depth. they have to in order to survive. On the flip side, when all our needs are met we have no perceived need for spirituality and community. In America, our affluence is our own leprosy. It keeps us from being willing to touch each other and truly connect.

Momma T said it best- "There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

It's no wonder Jesus chose to live his ministry in homelessness. It makes sense that most of the saints took a vow of poverty. Because there is a richness to life that the west will never know until we remove these golden chains that weigh us down. 

How many kids do you have?

I had two but I gave one away.
...

I had two but one died.
...

I spent this weekend in the village where our organization's second center is. We did some kids programs, visited some families, and built a well. There was one family living in a shack who we visited. A sweet toddler boy ran around, pretending to be shy while also begging to play. I asked the mother how many kids she had. "I had two, but I gave one away", she responded nonchalantly. Kind of like she was telling us the milk spoiled so she had to toss it. The conversation continued as if nothing important had been said, giving away a child is not so uncommon here. Even though we all know many children given away become slaves, working in brothels or as beggars.

I kept looking in her eyes, standing next to her and trying to sense some emotion. Did she miss her child? Did she feel remorse for letting that baby go? Was this nonchalant attitude a defense for an ashamed heart, or did she really not care?

As I knelt down to play with the toddler, her remaining child, she told him "why don't you go with the pretty foreigner, maybe she will take you home." People have offered their children to me countless times, of course I never accept. But this time I wondered how she would have reacted if I did. Would she have been surprised? Would she have even cried while she said goodbye to her child for the last time? Or had she become too numb to care?

The next day we came to a second village to build a well. I sat with a beautiful girl, she was younger than me and 7 months pregnant. I asked how many kids she had. She replied that the one she was carrying was her second. I asked where the first was. With averted eyes she responded that the first had died a week after being born. Her eyes were full of sadness and shame, she rubbed her full belly seeking a little bit of hope. In a culture where negative emotions are kept behind locked doors, she was brave enough to hold the sadness of her lost baby girl.

I couldn't help but compare these two women.
One a teenage girl grieving the child taken from her, and hoping beyond hope that she could care for this new child.
The other, an older mother asking that her child be taken from her, and willing to send the second child down the same path as the first.

There's something about the contrast of the two stories. Both women no longer have their first child and instead hold their second.
One holds the second child with optimism and admiration, the other as a reminder of what she has already given up on.
One with a soft heart- holding hope and suffering in her arms. The other with a hard heart- trying to keep the suffering at arms length.

It makes me wonder how much we lose because we have already given up.