They're no longer a story to tell....

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