It has been a long, long time since I have blogged, almost a
year. That has been mostly by choice. I have gotten to a point where I feel
that my blog is either a “woe is me” blog (which, let’s face it, are the worst
kinds of blogs!) where I talk about how strange and awful life is in a third
world country (when I chose to live here- and love it actually- after all)… OR
a description of the mundane things in my life and how we are living here which
can lean toward the boring- I mean, I don’t know what you do at your church and
how your personal walk with Christ is, do I? So why should you need all our
details. I just have felt a bit of this sort of self importance-ishness of it
all. I have started numerous entries and always end up deleting them for one
reason or another. Some people have asked if I still blog and why it’s been
long and I never have a good answer. I guess I am still thinking it all
through.
I think the other weird thing is that I used to blog as a
sort of “outsider looking in” to the life and culture and weird food and power
cuts and water shortage and being the odd white lady. When I would tell stories
I was separate from it. The people I wrote about were acquaintances and the “strange”
and new things they did or said were humorous or noteworthy to an American
audience and I was an American telling stories about a strange world I was
visiting. But now I live this life. The food is no longer odd. The power cuts
and water shortages are a nuisance, but there a nuisance to my neighbors too…
it’s just part of life and we all laugh about it, complain about it and live
with it together.
Now the same people I used to talk about are my friends. The
same houses that brought tears to my eyes 4 years ago and shocked me- the
houses I tried to sneakily get photos of and show people back home how crazy
the poverty here is- are houses of my sisters and brothers who I go and visit
with, barely noticing that we are on a bucket and not a couch. Most of the time
when something happens and I think- a year or two I would have blogged this- I
now feel like it would be a violation somehow. These are the people I live
with, I shop with in the market, I wait in the line with at the clinic, I
worship with at church. They’re no longer a story to tell.
On the flip side, I know people want to hear stories. It is interesting
to hear the funny and crazy and shocking stories, especially if you’ve never
been here or done missions overseas. It’s definately much more interesting to
hear about our next door neighbor coming out of her house into the middle of
the road and screaming in front of the whole neighborhood “PASTOR, PASTOR. Get out
here!!! Don’t you know people are poor. You have a white wife and you can’t
have mercy on your poor neighbors. In Jesus’ name, get out here.” (Yea, that
happened on Wednesday. It went on for a good 10 minutes and made my blood boil-
Knowing we make a miniscule salary and give all our time and a substantial amount
of our already small amount of money to whoever we can help, and because my
skin is white- it’s not enough) Those kinds of stories and ones like me waiting
2 hours to have a scan done at the hospital because the power was out (But that
was kinda fun cause Sydney bought me these killer chocolate biscuits from this
tiny shop and we just sat in the sun and talked for two hours about how many
things were not happening at the hospital due to the “load shedding” (organized
power outages), and both of us having a two hour excuse to not do anything).
Even those things are so normal to me now that they don’t seem noteworthy or
blog worthy.
Sydney bought me a new purse, which is a luxury we don’t do
often. Neither of us have gotten new clothes since we were in the US for our
wedding, and I wanted to write about it and how crazy it what that I used to do
weekly trips to Walmart for purses and jewelry and clothes and workout tapes
and underwear and decorations and candles… and It has been 2 years since we’ve
done that. Then I felt like it would sound both braggy and “poor us”-y. See the struggle? I don’t know
why my conscience has opened up to all this. Sydney keeps telling me to just
write a book which may suit me better than the whole ‘read my blog once a month’
shtick.
I don’t know if I will keep blogging or if I’ll stick with
just facebook. Sydney writes a bimonthly update about our ministry as far as
the church goes, so I know people hear about our ministry life through that. O
thought at least I would write this, explaining why I haven’t blogged in almost
a year and just get that off my chest. Right now though, it’s Monday night.
Monday night is our date night and we have a jar with 52 “dates” in it, and
yesterday we picked “stargazing”. The sun is setting fast and the power is out
so it looks like I am about to be late for a very important date…. J
