The Perfect Husband

So, if I had my way, I probably wouldn’t post a single sentence on the web not related to Africa.  You may have noticed I talk about it a lot.  If you could read my thoughts, you’d know I think about it a lot more.

However, in leu of growing repetitive . . . After a talk with my profoundly wise older sister, I decided maybe just once I should write about what y’all are really thinking about me.

Hence the post title.

Once you turn 30, people start to sort of give up on trying to set you up.  Instead, they go to the local mall and pick out your size in nun’s habit.  And send you quotes that sound a lot like Hamlet’s, “Get thee to a nunnery!”  Not that I’m complaining.  You are completely welcome to send me any nun outfit you find.  And I rather enjoyed reading Hamlet.

But my profoundly wise older sister and I did finally pinpoint the characteristics of the perfect husband.  Just wait till you hear about him.  You’ll be impressed.

He follows me everywhere I go.

He sits at my feet while I read a book on the couch.

He looks at me with big brown eyes that spell absolute a-d-o-r-a-t-i-o-n.

He’s so upset when I leave, he sleeps on the floor in the living room.

He never wants to drive my car or complains if I make him sit in the back. (This is written in fond memory of all the LIFE games we played growing up where I would always shove the little blue man in the farthest corner in the back of my little plastic car.  Did anyone else do that?)

He’s always thrilled to see me, even if I just went outside to get the mail.

He’s disappointed if he doesn’t get to go on a walk with me every day.

He loves anything I give him to eat.  Doesn’t matter if it’s burnt . . . fell on the floor . . . a week old.

Oh, and just in case you’re starting to get sort of freaked out by these rather specific details, he also looks like this:

Apparently, the perfect husband doesn’t really exist.  But I do love my dog. :-)

Now That I'm Older . . .

I turned 30 last week.  I feel like a piece of history now.  Like I’ve finally been around long enough for them to put me in a museum right next to Pocahontas and Kermit the Frog.

I think I’d like to be in the Ice Age section.  Definitely not ceramics.

Other than that, 30 feels about the same as 29.

I’d give you an update on what’s happening with my future, but I’m afraid there’s not much to say.  Just imagine us having a conversation and you asking me all the questions you have, and my answer always being “I don’t know.”  That’s a pretty fair summation of things.

I have one more story to tell from northern Uganda (and if I’m allowed to have favorites, this is definitely it), but I’m waiting for the picture that goes with the story, and I’m not sure how long that will take.

Patience.

It seems to be an overarching theme these days.

In the meantime, I’m receiving updates from my friends in Lira.

They send you their greetings and wish they could meet you and hope you are all doing well.  They ask you to pray for the people of northern Uganda.

They tell me of a fatherless teenage boy who had to drop out of school last year because he had no money for school fees.  A month ago, someone picked up the cost, and now he can go back to school.  God is faithful.

They tell me of a daughter who fell sick at school and had to come home, and now with hospital expenses, there is no money to send her back to school.  God is still faithful.

They tell me of street boys who were accused of stealing car parts.  Eight of them were beaten, four so severely that they were put in the hospital.  Two are still in critical condition.  God is always faithful . . . but what is He doing?

And the echo comes back: What am I doing?

See, I know the faces of the street kids now.  I know their names.  I watched them play football and sat under the tree outside where they go to church and talked with them about God and family and life.  I wonder if one of the kids laying in a hospital bed now is someone I know.  I wonder if his name is Solomon or Daniel or Ronald or Jared or Dogo.

I’m not okay with the idea of any of them getting woken up in the middle of the night by sticks and machetes wielded by enraged adults.

As though anyone could be okay with that.

It makes me want to know how to pray.

It makes me want to better understand God and my place in this world.

It makes me want to write less and do more.

Sisi: The Result of Pain

I haven’t told you much about where I spent the bulk of my time in northern Uganda.  It is a resort . . . hotel . . . center . . . place . . . called Alpha Resort Hotel.  Which really makes me laugh, cause the first time I heard it, I imagined a big stone mansion in the Swiss Alps.

My imagination isn’t always the most accurate description of things.

Alpha Resort Hotel was started by Pastor Johnson and his wife when they saw a need for a building to hold conferences and conduct training sessions for Ugandan pastors, teachers, and other community leaders.  It’s grown from one meeting hall to a kitchen, a dining room, something like twenty guest rooms, and a second meeting hall being built right now.  During my two-week stay, there was a conference for area pastors, an AIM group visiting, and another conference for clean water programs.

Alpha Resort Hotel is a good place.

Strangely enough, it reminded me of the Christian retreat center I worked at in Hong Kong ten years ago.  Only Africanized.  With a family breaking up a cornfield with an ox and a plow across the road.  And motorcycles and bikes meandering by at all times of the day and night.  And a mango tree in the middle of the parking lot.

I’m afraid you’ll have to make up the picture in your head.  I wasn’t very good at taking photos at Alpha.

The thing I most enjoyed about my stay there was the staff.  When I remember them, I think of one word: Service.  It’s what they did; it’s who they were.  Whether I sat down to breakfast or ran out of drinking water or locked myself out of my room (again), they were always available and, oh, so ready to help.  And in the process, they made me feel like their favorite guest ever.  I actually got a picture of one of them, so I can introduce you to her.  Meet Sisi.

Sisi and I sat under the mango tree one morning and talked.  She is currently finishing her college education in business.  After graduation, Sisi hopes to get a good-paying job so she can care for her mom who broke her arm and can no longer work in her garden.

But Sisi didn’t just tell me about her future hopes.  She also told me about her past.  When she was 13 years old, her father fell sick with a strange disease.  He went to the hospital, but the doctors didn’t know what to do.  So, her dad died.  When fathers die in Africa, life gets very hard for the rest of the family.  Most women don’t have jobs.  Sometimes if the mom can’t find a way to earn money, the children must work instead.

Sisi told me she often wondered why God let her father die when she was so young.  Wouldn’t it be better to grow up with a dad?  Couldn’t God have healed him, even if the doctors didn’t know what to do?  Wasn’t there a better story that should have been written?

But Sisi has found good even in the midst of her father’s death.  She told me she wouldn’t know the value of hard work if her father had lived.  He would have paid for her schooling if he had been alive, but because of his death, she had to work for it.  And get this . . . She really said that like it was a good thing.

But that wasn’t all.  She also told me this: “I want to help at least one orphan because I know what it feels like to grow up without a father.”

Are you seeing a pattern here?  All these people with really hard pasts.  Dying parents, violent soldiers, burnt houses, no education, not enough money.  Yet now because of their pasts (not in spite of their pasts), God is shaping their hearts to look more like His heart.  He is giving the former street boys a heart for the current street boys.  He is giving the widowed a heart for the widows.  He is giving the orphaned a heart for the orphans.

It makes me wonder if maybe pain isn’t such a bad thing after all.  If God can turn anything - really, anything - into good.  If He’s doing it in Uganda, if maybe He wants to do it in America too.  If maybe He wants to do it in me.