Mother Teresa and Me

There came a time in my life, just about 10 years ago I believe, when I just got fed up with myself.  I took an honest look in the mirror and I didn't like the person there.  So I decided to change.  I looked around at what everyone else was doing; if I wasn't going to be me anymore, who should I try to be like?  I focused in on Mother Teresa (aim high, right?).  Although she passed away while I was in high school, I don't know if anyone has yet to cast their shadow over her reputation as a humanitarian and a living saint.

Okay.  So I sat on my mattress (it took getting married to finally start sleeping on a bed frame again) and tried to think where I could go and how I could be the next Mother Teresa.  She had cared for lepers in Calcutta, breaking the social mores of a society that cherished its hierarchy and really looked down on touching diseased, poor, unworthy folks.  Well then.  I could, I don't know, go to Africa and care for people dying of AIDS?  Except, um, I didn't know where exactly I would need to go, and I didn't know what qualifications I had or could get quickly to make myself useful.  And I was engaged.  I was pretty sure my fiancé wouldn't be excited about this change of plans (CORRECT!).

Okay.  So I planned my wedding and continued working and sat with this tension about who I should become and who I was.  A few months after I got married, I was hanging out with some friends.  One of them told me he was going to a poor neighborhood in the area every Wednesday and helping some people serve dinner to the families who lived there.  My husband and I were working different hours, meaning I came home four days a week at 5pm and sat around our apartment (reading, cleaning, napping) until he came home around 9pm.  I thought about Mother Theresa.  I thought about Africa.  I thought, maybe I can't be her and do great things, but I can do this thing right now and maybe make a positive difference right now.  The following Wednesday, I met up with my friend at the appointed time.  And I found out that he had left out some details.  Like that he went to this neighborhood with our church's youth group, and by showing up to go with them, the assumption was made that I wanted to help lead the students, not feed the neighborhood.

I kept going, even though my husband said "You went where?!" with a freaked out look on his face after the first night, even though I didn't want to be a youth group leader, even though serving dinner to strangers is kind of uncomfortable and I didn't really think I was making a difference.  After the summer ended, the Wednesday nights continued.  I was given a group of sixth grade girls to visit patients at the local hospital and organize stuff at Goodwill.  But some nights we just stayed at the church and talked about God.  Then it was my task to sit with the girls and generate discussions about whatever the youth pastor taught.  I remember facing a line of 11 year old girls and drawing a complete blank, so I just started babbling about baptism.  I figured out that I didn't need to stick to a script or ask the right questions, or even stay on topic.  I just needed to get them talking.  We got to know each other, and I was surprised to find myself kind of being a leader.  The next summer, I went with the girls to camp, and I found myself in a super awkward conversation with a girl from another church who had some pretty serious questions about boys and sex and, while I hope I handled it well, my 11 year olds did not prepare me for that.

When the girls were in 7th grade, I had my first baby.  I was still able to come on Wednesday nights (mostly), but I wasn't able to help chaperone trips and my priorities had changed a little.  Still, I wanted to do something.  So taking what I had learned so far, that I understood middle school girls and enjoyed spending time with them, I signed up to be a Big Sister.  I was matched with a 10 year old girl who liked to play basketball and didn't live too far away from me.  It was no Calcutta slum, but then again, Mother Teresa didn't have a baby at home.  So I spent a year picking D up and trying to find thing to do together.  She liked more active stuff, so we played basketball at the park and had a snowball fight after Christmas.  She came to my house and we baked cookies and we went to Steak and Shake and shared a plate of fries.  As our match year came to an end, I was about to give birth to my next baby, and she decided she didn't want to continue with the program.  I was relieved, because, although I liked hanging out with her, it was hard to make separate time for this girl and take care of my kids at home.  I found myself thinking that it would be easier if I could mentor a kid who lived with me instead.  And that's how I became a foster parent.

The idea had been germinating when I happened to meet a lady who had adopted her three daughters through foster care.  I was supposed to have a quick 10 minute meeting with her about a completely unrelated matter, but we ended up talking for close to two hours, as she described the process of getting licensed, told me the stories of how she'd gotten her daughters, and talked about life as a family.  I went home that night and told my husband we had to do it.  He wasn't so sure (but at least we didn't have to go to Africa...).  A few months later, our church arranged a weekend service trip to a local children's home for their annual fundraising carnival.  I used a little coercion to get my husband to come with me and we left the kids with my parents.  We drove out on Friday night, my husband gritting his teeth and not saying much, and we drove home Sunday overwhelmed with the desire to get licensed.  We just had to do it.  A year later, we were approved and our next son was born to another woman.  We brought him home and fell in love.

In the last year or so, I've been given some opportunities to speak and teach.  It's not something I've sought out or felt prepared to do, but it continues to happen.  I'm still not caring for the dying in a developing country on the other side of the world, but I look back at the past decade and I see the steps I've taken to distance myself from that selfish, miserable 22 year old.  Have I made a difference?  Am I getting close to Mother Teresa status?  I don't know.  I don't know how many people remember me after our time together ends.  I don't know whether I've influenced people to live better lives or care for the poor, but I know that I've changed.  I know that these experiences have transformed me.

And let me tell you something I learned recently about Mother Theresa:  it took her decades to become the woman serving the lepers in India.  She left home at 18 to begin her life as a nun, and studied and trained and spent the next two decades teaching in a school not far from where her better-known ministry would launch.  She was almost 40 when she finally left the safety of her convent and began working directly with the poor and sick.  She spent the last 37 years of her life building her Sisters of Charity from one person (herself) to a network of more than 5,000 nuns and priests operating more than 600 facilities for the "poorest of the poor".  I find this very encouraging.  There's still time.  I'm not Mother Teresa...but maybe someday I'll be known as Mother Rachel.

If we want to reap a harvest, first we have to plant.  If we want to be known for something, then we have to get off our butts and do it.  If we want the world to change, then we have to follow Ghandi's advice and be the change.  My heart breaks for orphans and vulnerable children.  My hands are itching to hold them close and keep them safe.  And my mouth can't stop telling people to join me.

Sweetly Broken

I've been spending time revisiting the past.  It was my choice to go back to those places that I had walled off and tried to forget, but it hasn't been easy.  It isn't easy to be a child in this world, to be vulnerable in every sense of the word, because we live in a harsh world.  We break our children through cruelty and abandonment, through our words and our touch.  All it takes is one adult to violate a child's sense of safety, her sense of self.  One moment of selfishness, one moment of anger, and WHACK!  Life breaks her with force, with no concern for what comes next, and she clutches desperately at the pieces, tries to put herself back together before anybody sees.  She tries to go through life pretending that she doesn't limp, that her jagged exterior doesn't reveal what is inside.  But her attempts to fix herself don't really work.  She has been mangled, like a broken limb that isn't correctly reset.

And we can continue in this way.  We can finish school and get jobs and maybe even start a family.  We can buy a house in the suburbs and join the PTA and fill our days with Pinterest projects.  But just like the broken arm that didn't set right, the human heart won't do everything it is capable of without an intervention, without REAL healing.  How do we fix something that happened years ago, decades ago?  How do we repair not only the damage, but the way she's been carrying herself ever since to hide her weakness?  She has to be broken again.  Not with the baseball bat.  Not blindsided and bewildered.  No, this time it will be her choice.  This time she will be a willing participant.  This time she won't break in the dark, in secret, but in the light.  And she won't break alone.  He will be there with her this time.  He will make sure the broken pieces fit back together, that the fractures will heal completely.

Courtesy of FreeFoto.com

As the song goes: "At the cross you beckon me.  You draw me gently to my knees.  And I am lost for words, so lost in love.  I'm sweetly broken, wholly surrendered." (emphasis mine)  Not every break is bad.  Sometimes we need to break, to repair, to build again, because in the process we are refined and made new.  And this is where I find myself, sweetly breaking, becoming vulnerable once again, allowing the cleansing waters to penetrate and flush out all the bitterness and shame, letting go of all the ways I tried to cope, and allowing myself to be bandaged, and waiting nervously for the final result.  It's all new for me, and I ask that you all be tender with me in the process.

"The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.  He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

Leaving Home: Part 2 #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!   This is the second part of my post about leaving, and ultimately finding, home. 

What image comes into your mind when you hear the word "wanderlust"?  Do you see a woman on a mountaintop, arms outstretched, wind whipping her hair?  Or maybe exotic locations, waterfalls and ancient temples, a road less traveled?  When I was 21, hopping all over North America as a flight attendant, I would belt out the lyrics to Sara Evans "Born to Fly".  I had the Wanderlust, and I was not alone.  Most of my co-workers lived as nomads.  We had our base city, bare apartments shared with several other people called "crash pads", friends and family that we visited on our days off, but nowhere we called home.  Ever since my family had left Texas, home hadn't been the place where I lived.  So I was searching for it in every city I visited.  In August 2003, I lost a friend.  A roommate.  A fellow flight attendant.  It rocked my world.  I wasn't sure what I believed or who I was, but as I emerged from the haze of grief, I realized that the rest of my life could be a few more weeks or 75 more years.  What was I waiting for?  Finally, I planned a trip that was sure to cure my wanderlust:  I was heading to Paris.  I pictured myself at the Eiffel Tower, eating crepes and wearing fabulous jeans and finally pulling off red lipstick, visiting art museums and in general being the best version of myself.

Somehow in the months to come, my European adventure included my mother.  For me, it was the realization of an adolescent dream, a first step to the life I was meant to live.  I don't know what it was for her. (A week before we left, she asked, with a crinkle in her nose, "Now what is there to do in Paris?"  I gave her an exasperated look and began, "Well the Louvre for one..." and she interrupted, "OOO, yes!  Can we go for a gondola ride on the Louvre?"  I couldn't even begin to explain everything that was wrong with that sentence.)  We flew in to Spain, took another short flight to Frankfurt, where we stayed with friends (Germany in a nutshell:  terrified by the Autobahn, entranced by the medieval castles, loved the cake in the Black Forest, sampled blood sausage).  And then....we boarded a train for Paris.

I felt euphoric as we hurtled toward the City of Lights, my nose pressed against the glass.  We found a cute little hotel run by a married couple (who made cafe au lait and baguettes for breakfast), ate some dinner at a nearby restaurant, only had 3 fights between the train station and our shared bed, and I fell asleep to the noises of the city.  In the morning, I was ready for Paris to sweep me off my feet.  My mom and I walked all day.  We saw a brasserie, a bucherie, a pharmacie.  The Arc de Triomphe.  The Louvre.  The Champs Elysee.  We bought chic clothes.  At twilight on my mother's 45th birthday, we dined at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.  And I fell asleep disappointed.  Because there was also the endless claxoning of emergency vehicles.  The overwhelming smell of Armpit on the Underground.  The aggressive Asian tourists.  And my mom was the only familiar sight.

When people asked, "How was Paris?", their eyes alight, waiting breathlessly for some tale of adventure, all I could say was, "It wasn't what I thought it'd be."  In all my planning, I'd forgotten a very powerful force.  Like Lord Voldemort, I had underestimated LOVE.  Going to Paris was the most important thing to me....even more important than the ring I was wearing on my left hand.  You see, all through school and flying, I'd also been falling in love.  I kept returning to Ohio for him, once a week, every other week (3 weeks apart only twice, and how those weeks dragged).  A month before my trip, he'd placed the ring on my finger and asked for my hand, but he hadn't factored into my plans.  Each day I had struggled with European pay phones and walked away frustrated, unable to connect across the time zones.  I just wanted to hear his voice.  And, while it didn't have the outcome I thought it would, my journey across the ocean did help me realize where my home was.  It was in his arms.

I started to resent Ohio a little less as we settled there, not far from the place where I'd felt like a Texas girl in an Ohio world.  In 2007, I gave birth to my beautiful baby James and we bought a house with a big yard and rooms for the other children I suddenly wanted.  And it's through the eyes of my boys that I see and appreciate what makes Ohio our home.  Jumping into a pile of multi-hued leaves.  The many, many uses for snow (snowballs, snowmen, snow cream).  The excitement when football seasons starts, though I'll never forsake my Dallas Cowboys.  And the church downtown that welcomes us, loves us, teaches me the truest meaning of family.

Chris asked me recently if I still wanted to move away, and I was finally able to answer NO.  My need to feel significant isn't defined by a place, it's filled in the arms of the people I love.  It doesn't matter where we lay our heads, as long as we lay together.

Emily T. Wierenga, award-winning journalist and author of 4 books, has released her first memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. They say the book is like “Girl Meets God” meets “Wild” meets “Eat, Pray, Love.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy here.

Leaving Home: Part 1, a #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! 

Have you seen these ads on Facebook that try to get you to buy custom t-shirts?  Ones that say "I crochet so I don't strangle people" or "I'm a programmer; trust me", because some sort of computer algorithm (look at me, using words I don't fully understand) has taken your personal information in order to sell you something.  One that pops up on my feed frequently says "I'm a Texas girl living in an Ohio world", and every time I see it I think about when I used to be someone who would have bought that shirt and worn it as often as sweat and body odor would allow.  I remember being a scrawny tomboy who loved the Dallas Cowboys and pecan pie, who helped her mother make tortillas in a special pan and wore the burns like a badge of honor.  I remember ducking into a large sewer drain with my sister to get out of a sudden hail storm, riding bikes for hours, neighbors named Bubba and Nacho and Fay.  And I remember the mutiny that rose up in me when my mother announced that we were moving, that she missed her family and we were going home.  Except that Texas was my home, and Rocky and Cathy and Jayne and Freddie were my family and I had finally reached the age where I had real friends that would call on the phone, even though it bored me to talk about clothes for more than a minute

But I really couldn't do anything to stop the move, other than watch the boxes pile up in my room and glare at my mother whenever she talked about how great our lives would be in the North.  This is how little my opinion factored in:  the day that was chosen to pack up our house and leave was my last day of fifth grade.  The day when teachers threw out the lesson plans and brought in sno-cone machines, when recess lasted for hours instead of 30 minutes, when children were emboldened to tell each other their true feelings.  I was sitting beside my mother, the Dallas skyline whizzing past us as we headed to Oklahoma, then Missouri.  And I still remember the conversation that we had that morning, the promise I made to make new friends in our new home, to get along.  My sister apparently made no such concession, because she kept the clock in her room on Central time for more than a year after we settled in the Ohio suburbs (and I wish for the life of me that I knew what happened to finally make her change it, but I'm drawing a blank).  I kept my promise that summer, as we walked our new town to get our bearings, since there were sidewalks everywhere and quiet streets  and everything fit in six square miles.  And I kept my promise as I walked to school each morning, after my dad had left for work and my mother took my sister to the middle school on her way to the hospital.  I listened to the kids around me talking, and I felt like an anthropologist studying an aboriginal tribe.  They used different words, like clique for the way people clumped together at recess and queer (which I thought meant when a boy liked another boy) for when something was strange.  And when I finally did speak, they asked me why I didn't have an accent, and I just shrugged, because the accent I heard most in Texas was the lilting way Hispanic women spoke, and the "Texas" accent heard on tv was more common further south.  But I couldn't keep my promise at our new church, when my parents brought me to the Wednesday night program, when I was expected to walk down the hallway by myself to a room full of people I didn't know, never mind that they were my own age.  That was when I cried and begged them not to leave me, but they did anyway, so that I had to walk down the hallway into a room full of strangers with a splotchy face and red eyes. (This is one of those moments I think about now, and I still don't know if they did the right thing.  Do you push your shy, awkward baby out of the nest or let her stay home with her nose in a book?)   Then one day, on my walk to school, I saw something I'd never seen before.  It was like little ice on each blade of grass.  Later, I learned it is called "frost".  When I got to school, I asked if it had snowed, and I got funny looks. (Much like labor pains, once you've experienced snow, you don't mistake a tiny pattern of cold for the real thing again.)  Actually, I seemed to get funny looks most of the times I spoke.  The boys called me by my last name and the girls had apparently decided who their friends were in kindergarten, and I bounced around trying to find my place.  A year is a long time to go without a friend.  But suddenly sixth grade was ending and I had found Melissa.  Of course, I didn't know then what she would mean to me over the years; pretty much all I knew was the distance from Texas to Ohio, and that people stopped saying Coke and started saying Pop somewhere in between.

That was the turning point for me, finding one person who liked me just the way I was.  The next year, I joined the school band and made more friends.  I had a boyfriend or two, which was more a cause for anxiety than excitement.  I found an identity I could live with, at least for a few years.  I was the nerdy girl who got good grades and used her quick sarcasm to make her friends laugh.  "My So-Called Life" aired for a year, and I watched each episode, entranced by Claire Danes and her struggle to be a good daughter, a fun friend, a desirable girlfriend.  Like many adolescents, I struggled to have control.  It seemed that everything that went wrong could be solved by a change of location.  The kids at my school are snobs.  The winters are too cold.  The budding trees make me sick every spring.  My 18th birthday stood out like a bright yellow Finish line.  Once I got there, everything would be different.  When the college brochures started arriving in the mail my junior year, I tossed every one that was located in Ohio.  I perused the ones from Wisconsin and New York, but they went in the trash once I found out how snowy their winters were.  What remained were schools in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, and of course, my beloved Texas.  I had the grades and test scores to go where I wanted, and that was anywhere but here.  But I didn't have the money to pay for any of them.  I still remember the desperation as my senior year drew to a close, trying to come up with a plan, some kind of loan that would get me out of Ohio and on to the life I was supposed to be living.  Finally, in June, after graduation, I admitted defeat and took the short trip up the highway to Kent with my dad, filled out an application and took a tour and went home with an acceptance letter.  It was affordable and offered the degree I wanted, but it was not the grand experience I thought college would be.  So I graduated early and took a job as a flight attendant.  I stepped off the plane in a new city every day, and I invited the world to audition for me.  DANCE.  SING.  Give me a reason to never leave.  I explored New York City and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I strolled through Jacksonville, Florida and Greensburg, South Carolina.  I ate barbecue in Charleston and lobster in Maine.  I flew to California and Canada and Cincinnati.  And I felt like Goldilocks, because none of them felt quite right.

There was one trip I was saving, a destination I had very high expectations for, the one I was certain would fit like no other city on earth....

I'll be posting the conclusion of my journey on Saturday.  In the meantime, purchase Emily T. Wierenga's new book, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look on amazon NOW!!  ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards Emily’s non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree (www.thelulutree.com) is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.