You Know You’re a Mom When

Leave a comment

It had been a long day.

A day with toys all over the floor. A day with a dozen repetitions of the words “Because everyone has to wear pants, that’s why.”

A day when I questioned whether I was even capable of this mom thing.

But even on long days nap time eventually arrives. With torturous slowness, maybe, but it arrives. The older kids would only “rest” in their rooms for “rest time,” but the baby would sleep. I could wash the dishes. Or read a book. Or sit and stare at the wall thinking about the dishes and the book, which is sort of the same.

I gave her some milk and read her a book, thinking how particularly snuggly she was today. I tucked her pink blanket into her arms and laid her in her pack-n-play bed. I turned toward the door.

And then I heard a suspicious cough.

I recognized that cough.

With lightning speed, I turned back and scooped her out of bed. Just in time for her to throw up all over me.

And I didn’t think, “Ew, gross.”

And I didn’t think, “Oh, my poor baby.”

I thought, “Thank God she threw up on me instead of the bed. I can change my clothes in five minutes. It would have taken hours to clean puke out of a pack-n-play.”

So that pretty much put my earlier questions to rest.

Obviously, I was a mom through and through.

The Goofball is Otay

Leave a comment

It was 90 degrees in La Plata, Argentina, and I was cooking a turkey. I was three months pregnant, and my house had no air conditioning. And I was cooking a turkey.

Because it was Thanksgiving, thankyouverymuch.

My kids, wise beyond their years, were spending most of the morning in their little pool on the patio. When the heat in the kitchen was too much, I joined them, sitting in my plastic patio chair with my feet in the water, feeling thankful for the coolness but also thinking about how this was NOT the way Thanksgiving was supposed to feel.

When it was time to get the pies ready, I went back inside. I pulled a precious can of pumpkin from the place we stored the food we’d brought with us from home. Sweat trickled down my back as I opened it and mixed in the sugar and spices. I leaned over the bowl to catch the smell of my childhood. It was barely discernible through the tang of sunscreen.

My two-year-old son burst in, his t-shirt stretched out over something lumpy and distinctly animal-shaped.

“What’s under my shirt?” he demanded.

Not feeling particularly like playing along, I answered factually. “It looks like your lion.”

He grinned. This wasn’t the game I thought it was. “Nope,” he said. “It’s my belly!” He laughed the laugh of someone who has successfully told a terrible joke. I had to smile. He got his sense of humor from his dad, who can always make me smile with those same awful jokes.

“You’re a goofball,” I said.

Pleased with himself, he trotted off to try the joke on someone else.

I rolled out the pie dough to something resembling a circle and then tried to force it into the pan. In all my years of cooking I’ve never been able to shape a pie crust neatly. My mom used to make them with those perfectly crimped edges. I’ve watched her do it a hundred times, but mine still turn out…rustic. I pulled some extra dough from the bowl to finish off the uneven edges. A piece of hair slipped from my ponytail and clung to my sweaty neck.

Bang. Bang. The sound in the dining room brought me running, flour-covered hands held up in front of me.

My son had a red light-saber which he was using to attack the table.

“No banging on the table!” I yelled over the noise.

He stopped, grinned, and began hitting himself over the head with the plastic toy instead.

I decided to just be thankful that he had technically obeyed my instructions. Then he poked himself in the eye.

He stopped, blinked rapidly for a moment. I braced myself for wails. But he looked up and said, “I otay! I otay, Mommy. The goofball otay!”

I knelt down and laughed as I hugged him close, floury hands and all.

Maybe Thanksgiving isn’t supposed to be 90 degrees. Maybe the smell of sunscreen doesn’t trigger the right kinds of memories. Maybe pies aren’t supposed to have bits of crust stuck on to the edges.

But also maybe there are lots of ways for Thanksgiving to feel.

Maybe this goofball can learn to just be thankful, and it’ll be otay.

Captain of a Dirty Pirate Ship

Leave a comment

The stage is set in a poor urban neighborhood in Argentina. Behind the little rectangular house is a small walled patio with just enough room for a washing machine and drying racks and one tiny kiddie pool that has been filled with sand. The tarp that covers this contraption is slightly askew, and last night’s rain has made puddles in the desert.

Nevertheless, two of my adorable children, aged 5 and 3, are playing in their wet sandbox. I stand at the stove in the kitchen, just on the other side of the open window.

Both kids, singing: We’re so dirty, dirty, dirty, we’re the pirates who get dirty all the time. We just sit on our dirty pirate ship and never clean anything. We’re dirty all the time.

Me, in my head: Oh no, they’re in the sandbox! They’re going to be coated in wet sand. Why didn’t I stop them before they got in there? Why didn’t I fix that cover last night? Why am I the worst mother ever?

Scott, singing: We’re dirty every morning and night and afternoon.

Me, in my head: Yes, you are. Because your terrible mother just lets you be dirty all the time, like she’s the captain of the world’s dirtiest pirate ship.

Ellie, singing: We’re also dirty every after lunch and after dinner and during lunch and dinner, too.

Me, in my head: Well, on the bright side, at least these dirty pirates are extremely thorough in their dirtiness.

Both, singing: We’re so dirty, dirty, dirty. We love to be dirty!

Me, in my head: And they’re happy, right? I’m giving them a dirty life, but they love their dirty life!

Ellie singing: We’re as dirty as can be. We’re dirty and filthy. (In a serious aside to Scott): Filthy means we’re really, REALLY dirty. (singing again) and sometimes our mom lets us take baths because we’re so dirty.

Me, in my head: And look, I’m teaching them something. Vocabulary! And occasional hygiene!

Both, singing: We’re so dirty, dirty, dirty all the time.

Ellie: We are both so dirty.

Me, in my head: And they’re in this together! The dirt has bonded them.

Scott, singing: But I’m not dirty. (Seriously, to Ellie) I’m the clean pirate. You’re the dirty pirate, but I’m the clean pirate.

Ellie: NOOOOO

Me: [Sigh]

La Panza Blandita

2 Comments

For whatever reason, being responsible for feeding my family has always been a source of massive anxiety for me. It’s not the cooking–I love making food–it’s the weight of making all the right choices about what to eat.

One of the few meltdowns I had before marrying Nate was when I spiraled out of control thinking about what a picky eater he was and how I was never going to be able to cook food he would like for THE REST OF MY LIFE. He calmed me down by promising that he would always eat anything I cooked without complaining. He has kept that promise. As further proof that I always worry about the wrong things, cooking for him has literally never once been a problem.

That still didn’t keep me from worrying about it all over again when I had a baby.

Can I be honest? My decision to breastfeed was obviously based partially on what would be healthy for my child, but it was mostly based on the fact that it was simple. No nutritional expertise required. No preparation required (not after the first few weeks at least). Everything was just there, ready to go, so to speak.

We can talk about the difficulties of nursing a baby some other time, but once I had it figured out, it bought me several months of worry-free baby feeding. Then, as she started to approach four months and then five months old, my anxiety returned. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to be responsible to make sure this child ate three healthy meals a day FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS. What did I know about proper developmental nutrition? How was I going to find stamina for this never-ending job?

I wrote to my sister-in-law, who had babies a little before me, begging for her help. She sent a chart she had used, laying out how to introduce foods one at a time and which ones should be introduced at which age. It even listed amounts per day. This chart brought relief to my anxiety about my ignorance. But it made me feel even more overwhelmed at the magnitude of what lay before me.

I taped it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet and told myself I’d delay worrying about it until she turned five months old. Maybe six?

Then, the week she turned five months old, we took her in for her regular visit to the pediatrician. Remember that we lived in Argentina at the time. Through a friend, we had found a wonderful old doctor who ran a private practice out of a tiny house not far from us. We had already seen him once or twice, and we smiled through every visit.

He was a short man with delicate white hair and a gentle, soothing voice. When he examined the baby, he would talk through what he was doing in a sing-song pattern, saying the same things at every visit. “Tiene la nariz limpia….tiene la panza blandita.…”

The nose is clean…the belly is soft… (Sometimes at home when we were loopy from lack of sleep and the baby was crying, we would imitate that hypnotic voice: “tiene la panza blandita…”.)

On this visit, after the exam, the doctor mentioned that it was about time to start the baby on solid foods. He said he would give me a list of foods he recommended we begin with, and then he sat down and began writing on his little prescription pad. When he finished, he handed it me, a short list in swooping cursive that matched his voice and personality perfectly.

Translated into English, here is what it said:

  • Baby Cereal
  • Jello
  • Soft fruits
  • Sprite (left out to go flat)
  • Yogurt
  • Soft cooked eggs

I stared at the piece of paper. He asked if I had any questions. I looked at the top where his name and medical degree were printed. I had many questions, but I said I didn’t. I folded up the paper and put it in my purse.

In the car, Nate and I looked at the list together. It was like an artifact from a far-off time.

“Why would you give a baby flat Sprite?” Nate asked.

“Why would you give a baby jello?” I responded.

“Jello is good,” he said.

I laughed, and the weight of anxiety lifted a little. He had a point. Jello is good.

At home, I put the list of foods recommended by a medical professional next to my sister-in-law’s detailed chart.

When the time came to feed my baby, I went with the chart. What can I say? I’m North American, and scientific charts make more sense to me.

But I kept that hand-written list nearby, not because I wanted an excuse to give my baby jello but because I wanted to remember that there are lots of ways to feed a child. That doctor had been giving nutritional advice to Argentine mothers for decades, and their children had grown up healthy. They had turned into functional adults. Many of them brought their own children back to the same sweet pediatrician.

The chart may have answered my questions, but the list spoke to my anxiety. It made the whole feeding endeavor seem simpler. It told me I could do it imperfectly, and things would still be okay.

It also made me laugh every time I saw it. Which definitely didn’t hurt.

Always remember: there’s nothing like some jello and flat Sprite to help keep your belly soft.

My doctor said so.

From the Outside

Leave a comment

When you do overseas mission work, there a million jobs you have to learn how to do. Handyman, teacher, taxi driver, party planner, tour guide, nutritionist, counselor, translator, accountant. I’ll let you guess which of those I enjoyed and which I bungled constantly. By far, though, my favorite job was public speaker. It wasn’t a regular thing, but from time to time, Nate and I would be asked to teach at a youth camp or preach at a nearby church, and even when it was in Spanish, I loved it. Maybe it’s the teacher in my soul or maybe I just loved attention, but I never felt more energized than when I could stand in front of people and communicate something that was important to me.

Then I had a baby. I continued on with most aspects of my job, but from time to time I would have to bow out of things that just weren’t feasible when you were nursing an infant. Like the week when a friend asked Nate to be the visiting speaker at his church one Sunday evening. None of our local churches had nurseries where you could leave a baby (it would have been culturally weird). We didn’t have grandparents nearby, and all our usual babysitters were…well, they were at church. So even though we normally worked together on speaking engagements, and even though we had written the content of his message together, we agreed that Nate would have to take this one solo.

Theoretically, this should have been fine. Nate is an amazing speaker. He does not need my help. And I had an infant who still didn’t sleep through the night. I was exhausted and didn’t need one more thing on my plate.

But that theory doesn’t take into account my personal hang ups.

I could have just stayed home that night. It was getting close to winter and the sun set early. The service would be late enough that I had every excuse to keep the baby inside and put her to bed at her normal time. It’s probably what a sane person would have done, or, say, a person without the world’s most advanced FOMO. All I could think was that I was already missing out on speaking up front. I shouldn’t have to also miss out on seeing all the people.

So I went. And it was a little late for the baby. And hanging out with a bunch of people I didn’t really know very well proved to be more awkward than fun. And the minute the music ended and Nate stood up to preach, the baby started to cry.

She didn’t want to nurse and she was never going to sleep in a room full of interesting new things. She also didn’t want me to sit still or be inconspicuous in any way. I know I said that I like attention, but it turns out I am somewhat picky about what kinds of attention I appreciate.

Desperate not to make any more of a scene that I already was, I quietly slipped out the back door into the courtyard outside. It was a bit chilly, brisk enough that I was glad of my coat, but not cold enough to keep me from sweating inside that coat as I walked back and forth and bounced my baby up and down. I paced and I sweated and I grumbled in my mind about the unfairness of my being out here soothing this baby while my husband was inside doing something I loved.

I didn’t blame Nate for where I was–he wasn’t in any way responsible–but I have found that it’s just as easy to be mad at life as it is to be mad at a person. So I indulged my self-pitying anger for all it was worth. I went ahead and let the moment grow in my mind, so that my situation represented the plight of women everywhere, overlooked and oppressed, all because we are biologically equipped to carry and nurse children.

After a while, I discovered that as long as I kept up a sort of swaying bounce, my daughter would settle down and stay quiet, so I had a new opportunity to exacerbate my resentment and build on the narrative of martyrdom I was spinning. Of course, I seized the chance. I crept up close to the door to try to listen to Nate as he spoke. The window was open a crack, allowing me to hear, and slowly I eased closer and closer until my nose was nearly up against the glass.

I know. The symbolism of the moment was a little heavy-handed. I was literally outside, looking in at where I wanted to be, prevented from being there by the baby in my arms. If you saw this moment in a movie, you’d be like, “Geesh, no need to hit me over the head with it.”

At that moment, though, I wasn’t seeing the humor in the situation. Discontent had squeezed all perspective from my soul, and I wanted the metaphor to be so obvious that even the strangers in the room would have to see it.

They did not, of course. That’s the thing about discontent. No one else ever takes it as seriously as I do.

I’d like to tell you that I had a revelation that night. That I looked down at my sweet daughter’s face and realized that she was infinitely more wonderful than anything I loved doing, that I would have more impact on the world by raising her than by any amount of public teaching. I mean, those things are true, and on some level I knew them. They are the reason I chose to have kids in the first place. But I did not reach a new state of enlightenment that particular night. That night, I stood there and tortured myself with what I couldn’t have and then went home in a dark, unfriendly mood.

Hilarious, right?

Sometimes, I’m really not funny. Sometimes I’m too self-absorbed to laugh.

That’s why I revisit those moments from time to time. To look back at that frumpy new mother glaring through the window at people who didn’t see her situation as a problem and give her the laughter she couldn’t give herself.

It’s not a mocking laugh. That new mom was in the middle of a huge identity shift, and the middle is a place for compassion not derision. This laugh is an empathetic laugh. An oh-crap-I-still-do-that-to-myself-sometimes laugh and a man-I’m-thankful-I-didn’t-live-in-that-resentment-forever laugh. It’s the laugh of someone who sees how easily she could have chosen to linger in self-made misery and is relieved that the story took a different turn.

It’s the laugh of someone who knows that the those moments really are a big deal. And also that they really aren’t.

It’s the laugh of someone who appreciates that kind of paradox. In retrospect, at least.

Irony

1 Comment

My littlest baby came into the world in 2009 in La Plata, Argentina.

Whenever I tell people that my two younger kids were born in South America, I get the look. The one that says that they are picturing me laboring in a grass hut with only a local midwife on call. Let me set the record straight. I gave birth by planned C-section in two different hospitals in two different Argentine cities. Both were clean and comfortable and used the most advanced medical methods and technologies.

Which isn’t to say that they were completely modern.

After experiencing a few cultural surprises when the boy was born, we felt like we had a better handle on what we would experience with our last birth. We had a doctor we loved and had visited the maternity floor during previous checkups. Our C-section was the first thing on the surgical schedule for the day, which was meant to ensure that we’d be there early enough to get a private room. Everything was set to go.

We showed up at 7:00 on a Monday morning, received the promised room, and a nurse came with the gown I was to put on before he escorted me down to the surgical floor. Nate asked if there were scrubs for him. The man blinked a few times before understanding.

“Oh no,” he said, “you can’t go into the operating room. You’ll wait in the surgical waiting room.”

We exchanged a glance that asked each other if we’d both heard the same thing. Some times Spanish is a tricky language, so you never know, right?

“I was in the operating room for both of my other children’s deliveries,” Nate explained.

“No,” the nurse said. “It’s hospital policy. Fathers aren’t allowed in the OR. The waiting room is right outside. I’ll show you.”

My heart sank, but I was already in the delivery zone. I had come here to get this baby out of me, and I would do whatever it took to make that happen. There are moments for fighting the man, and then there are moments for letting the man make whatever stupid policies he wants as long as he gives you your baby safely and makes it so that you aren’t pregnant any more.

I shrugged at Nate. He shrugged at me. “Lead the way.”

A few minutes later, I said good-bye to my husband and was led into a sterile room where I was told to sit on the metal table and wait for the anesthesiologist. I breathed deeply, preparing myself for the worst part of a C-section: the epidural.

There must be something problematic about my vertebrae because no one seems able to get that epidural in on the first try. With my previous babies, I had squeezed Nate’s hand while a stranger repeatedly stuck a needle in my back, but this time, Nate was biding his time in a 1950’s-style father’s waiting room so this time I squeezed the edge of the cold table. It was not as reassuring. The pain made little spots dance in front of my eyes. When the anesthesiologist told me it was over and that I should lie down on my back, I felt nothing but relief.

For about two minutes.

Two minutes is the maximum time you can lie on your back when you are nine months pregnant before the pain in your hips and the pressure on your internal organs becomes all you can think about.

Ten minutes dragged by. Then fifteen.

A new, more chipper nurse entered the room. She had come to apologize profusely. My doctor was running late, as her mother had fallen that morning and hit her head. It would be a half hour or so before the surgery could start. She was really sorry, but they would keep monitoring me, and I could just rest there, and they’d start as soon as they possibly could. Would I like her to turn on the radio to keep me company? Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the music on and bustled back out of the room.

Dazed, I listened to the end of a Spanish song I didn’t recognize and then groaned when a news report came on next. The announcers just wanted to let us know that there had been a brutal murder in our city early that morning. A wife had killed her husband and then herself. She’d used a knife. The report was very detailed. (I briefly wondered if the woman had been pregnant and her husband had suggested she lie on her back. If so, maybe the homicide was justified.)

By this point I was beginning to feel a bit hysterical. Was this the birth of one of my precious children or was I trapped in a badly-written sitcom?

When the reporter finally stopped describing the bloody scene and music began to play again, I took deep breaths to calm myself. Until I recognized the song.

It was Madonna singing “Like a Virgin.”

Lying alone on that operating table like the world’s most uncomfortable beached whale, I laughed out loud until tears streamed down my face.

I didn’t know yet if I was about to have a new son or daughter, but I figured whoever this little person was, they must be something special to be ushered into the world in the company of such perfect irony.

I was right.

That baby turned out to be our little Lulu, and it makes perfect sense that on the day she was born, I discovered that half the things I’d learned from having two other children didn’t apply.

It makes perfect sense that at her birth I felt love and frustration, excitement and bafflement in equal measure.

It makes perfect sense that the last thing she heard before entering the world was the sound of my laughter.

Even Here

Leave a comment

It was Saturday morning, and my toddler woke me up early, obviously. She was restless, my girl who always wanted to go out, out, out, into the world. I didn’t have much energy for going, but staying would have taken even more. We put on our coats and headed toward the playground in the plaza. Outside the air was chilly. We were the only ones on the street. In our impoverished Argentine neighborhood, the weekends were for late night parties. More people went to bed at seven a.m. than woke up for the day.
At the playground, I let go of her hand and let her run free, watching carefully anytime she bent down to pick something up. Broken glass and cigarette butts were as plentiful as the sad tufts of grass, so some vigilance was required. She climbed the wooden slide and swung on the squeaky swing. I tried to focus on my radiant child and not on the dreary surroundings. But it was Saturday morning, and I was tired and sad. It hadn’t been an easy few months.
Then my girl came running toward me with something small held in her pudgy hand. She held it up, this tiny living thing she had found. It was a scraggly flower, a weed really, but the small white blossom lifted my heart. “Even here,” I thought to myself, “Even here there is beauty.”
Then I lifted up my eyes, looked over my daughter’s head, and saw a man peeing into the bushes.
It took him a long time to finish. It wasn’t easy to make sure my baby kept looking at me and only me. When he was finally done and staggered away, home to sleep off the night’s revels, I took my little girl by the hand, and we left in the other direction.
“Mommy,” she wanted to know. “Why are you laughing?”
And I couldn’t explain, but I also couldn’t stop. There’s nothing funny about your child being exposed to public urination. But that doesn’t mean you won’t giggle the whole way home.
Because sometimes you can find beauty in the middle of ashes. And sometimes you just find absurdity and you have to make do.

It’s Not Funny

Leave a comment
I’m the youngest in my family, and though I took myself extremely seriously as a child, the rest of my family didn’t always see the necessity to do the same. To be fair, I was a red-headed waif with oversized ears and constantly-skinned knees. And I didn’t make things easier for myself. I loved the big words and dramatic statements I read in my favorite stories. Those things sounded wonderful in books, but when I said them out loud, my family couldn’t help but laugh. They weren’t mocking me, but it didn’t matter. I hated that laughter with all my heart. I would grit my teeth and tense my body and say as adamantly as I knew how, ‘Its. Not. Funny.”
But it was funny. I just didn’t know it yet. I thought that because what I said was true and heartfelt, that meant it didn’t deserve laughter. I hadn’t yet learned that you can be in complete earnest and still have a sense of humor about yourself. Or maybe I just hadn’t lived long enough to look back on anything from a distance.
So many things in life aren’t funny until you have the perspective of hindsight.
That’s what this blog series is all about. I’m looking back at moments in my life, moments that often seemed deadly serious, and I’m laughing. Not in dismissal. Not in mockery. Just with the recognition that from a little distance even things that aren’t funny can make you laugh. And right now it seems to me that laughter is exactly what we all need.

Roll Like a River

Leave a comment

This post was published on another site in the fall of 2017, but it feels more relevant to me now than when I first wrote it. It’s no longer available in its original home, so I brought it here where I can have the reminder when I need it.

 

“Let justice roll like a river, like a river let it roll.Let justice roll like a river, like a river let it roll. Let it roll. Let it roll.”

A few weeks ago I stood side by side with my church family letting that powerful song flow through me. I closed my eyes and belted out the words and felt them down to my toes. 

The world has been so ugly lately. 

No. Correction. The world has always been ugly, but lately it’s been punching us all in the face hard enough to draw blood. Right? It’s everywhere. Oppression. Destruction. Hate. Pain. Suffering. Nature is cruel and indifferent. Mankind is cruel and indifferent.  

Our only hope…my only hope…is that God is neither of those things. That he is good and that he cares to the point of painful death. That’s the truth I’m trying to cling to.

So on that particular day, so overwhelmed by the evil on all sides that I didn’t even know how to pray orwhat to ask for, I lifted up my hands to him and cried out, “Just wipe it all away! Unmake the evil systems we’ve designed. Wash away our selfishness and greed. Let justice roll like a river!”

Then a cold chill settled over me. I had to sit down for a moment. I stopped singing as the truth sank in.

Straight talk: I am an educated white woman in my forties. I have three white children with bright and promising futures. Under the existing systems and structures, they will be able to have any life they want. So here’s the truth that faces me. It’s a hard truth and a deeply personal one.  

Brothers and sisters, if justice rolls like a river, it will roll over me. 

I have everything to lose. I live in the valley of white privilege, protected by the dam of systemic injustice. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t build the dam. I was born in its shade, and it is sweet down here. The grass is green. My children are happy. Their future is secure. There’s a reason no one wants to blow up the dam, you know? A whole new world might not be as idyllic for me and mine. 

Please believe me: I hate that only a few get to live in this valley.  I hate that people are literally dying of thirst downstream, that others drown in the overflow or get shot trying to find a way in. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love my easy life.

Am I truly ready to put myself in the hands of a righteous God? Am I ready to call down his justice and let the waters wash away the structures that keep my family comfortable? Am I ready for my children to be set adrift with only His mercy to steer them?

But the bigger question is oh so much bigger.

If I am not ready for that, ready to trust in nothing but his mercy, what am I doing pretending to worship him?

Here is the God I claim to follow:

“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. “ ‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,’ says the Lord Almighty.” 

I said I wanted him to care, right? He cares. He cares so much that his anger is burning. 

And try this on:

“So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic. I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place. Your covenant with death will be annulled; your agreement with the realm of the dead will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it comes it will carry you away; morning after morning, by day and by night, it will sweep through.” The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror.”

Yes, it is terrifying. The idea of God sweeping us away along with the structure of lies we’ve built. But brothers and sisters, he already laid the foundation of our new home. The cornerstone is Himself and the foundation is as secure as it is righteous. And all those who were walled out of our little valley have a place inside. It’s everything we say we want. And it’s just on the other side of the flood. 

It’s time, don’t you think? 

It’s time to stop being afraid of the destruction of the valley. It’s time to let the flood carry us on to new heights.

“Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

 Amen. Let it roll.

 

 

 

Cultural Sensitivity

Leave a comment

Lately the word “sensitive” is often used to describe someone who gets their feelings hurt easily. It’s become, in some circles, a code word for being touchy or lacking resilience. I know I probably should roll with the cultural punches and let language shift as it shifts, but I hate giving up on “sensitive.” Yes, I could use the word “responsive” instead. I could call this “cultural responsivity,” but what an awkward and clinical-sounding phrase. “Sensitive” means exactly what it sounds like: using your senses to be quick to detect even small signs of change. I love that. When it comes to cultural issues, we should have our feelers out and finely tuned. We should train ourselves to be quick to detect and respond to how someone from another culture feels.

If you’re thinking you’re a long way from being quick to detect and respond, welcome to the club. It’s okay to be at the beginning of the process. Like a butterfly, we all start out as hungry little caterpillars, focused just on ourselves and filling up our own needs every day. We take in our own culture, live off of our little leaves, and it’s all the satisfaction we need. When we realize that this isn’t enough, that’s the first step, the building of a chrysalis where we can take a long look inside. We turn inward and take stock. We open ourselves up to be changed. But we can’t stay there forever either. At some point we have to break free, our new antennae feeling out the world, our new wings carrying us lightly from place to place. In this new sensitive and active form, we not only experience so much more of the world, we also become useful pollinators.

So how do we get there? Metaphors are lovely, but they lack something in specifics. Again, I’m no expert. Too often I am slow to detect and slower to respond to cultural needs. But I’m learning.

Here’s what I’m working on:

1. I pay attention to my own biases. We all have biases. Assumptions about people who look a certain way. Attitudes or words that rub us the wrong way. Behaviors that make us cringe. Actions that we judge as selfish or wrong. And sometimes biases go the other way: personality traits we automatically approve of, demeanor that puts us at ease. We all have biases. Having a bias isn’t wrong. We have to make judgements about the world or we can’t navigate it. What we want to avoid are the twin terrors of being unaware that we have biases or allowing our biases to be based on ignorance.

I try to be honest with myself about my biases. I’ll try to be equally honest with you and name a few. Because of my life experiences, I often find myself biased against people from my own culture. If you are wearing a t-shirt with an inspirational saying on it, my automatic response is to think we’ll never be able to have a serious conversation. If someone tends to talk big about his life and accomplishments, I automatically don’t trust him. Other of my biases stem from my own culture. I hate it when people play their music too loud (sensitive ears combined with white upbringing). I have a hard time not finding it rudely invasive. I often find that I make the assumption that physically fit people have their lives together more than those who aren’t fit. (This despite the fact that I’m not particularly fit.)

Once I’ve recognized these biases, I need to stop and think why I hold them and evaluate their validity. The only reason I associate physical fitness with being in control is because that’s how it was always talked about when I was growing up. I now know it’s a false assumption (in both directions) but still I have to fight it. I’m never going to love loud music (unless it’s mine and I’m in the right mood), but I can acknowledge that it doesn’t represent a character flaw in those who do. And though I’ll not be wearing any myself, I’ve met quite a few white women in inspirational t-shirts who had a lot to speak into my life. Big caveat here: I do not suspend all my judgment. I can allow for big-talkers in the sense of larger-than-life personalities, but even after long evaluation, I have found that most boastful people of any culture are lying. It’s not necessary for me to place my trust in liars in the name of being culturally sensitive. We’re recognizing and evaluating our judgment here, not suspending it completely.

Once I can recognize my bias, I can put is aside long enough to do the next thing.

2. I listen to others. I am working to ask questions instead of making assumptions. Experts (not me) tell us that active listening involves five steps. First we really hear, by setting aside distractions and prejudices and letting someone else speak. Second, we attend to what they’re saying, paying careful attention to nonverbal signals and emotions being expressed. Third, we seek to understand by repeating back what we’ve heard and asking follow-up questions. Fourth, we respond, still not talking about ourselves but rather using our empathy to give a response to what they’ve said. Finally, we remember, following up with them later to have more conversations.

A couple of notes about asking questions:

Leading questions are not really questions. A question that only asks for a yes or no, or a question to which you already have an answer in mind is a leading question. “Do you think being late is okay?” Or even, “What are your thoughts on being on time to things?” when you really just want them to say it’s important. True listening questions give people an opening to talk about their own thoughts and feelings. “How is the pace of life different here from where you grew up?” “How does it feel to you that everyone talk about being on time constantly?”

Try to avoid asking people to speak for their whole culture. It’s fine to ask for them to describe how things are in their neighborhood or country or even to describe the behavior of people around them. But no one should have to be a spokesperson for the attitudes and motivations of people they don’t know. And they don’t know everyone from their culture. Ask instead what their experiences have been, how they feel about things, what motivates them personally. Listen to them as a person, not a representative.

3. I initiate in cross-cultural relationships. I’m not always good at this because I, like many people, don’t enjoy taking interpersonal risk. But here’s the reality: if we all just did what came naturally and easily, we’d all just hang out with people from our own culture. Go look at the cafeteria at your local school during lunchtime. Kids sit with kids who look like them. They just do. And it’s not necessarily about hate. It’s about comfort and security (or the lack thereof).

We’re not kids anymore, but our insecurities do linger, don’t they. If I want to learn how to bridge cultural gaps, I’m going to have to start by, you know, stepping into the water. I have to speak up, to introduce myself, to offer coffee or set up a play date or invite someone to dinner. I have to be willing to be awkward, uncomfortable, and wrong. I will be, but I’ll also find things I love that I never knew existed. I’ll make mistakes and possibly cause offense. Then I’ll get the chance to be humble and apologize and I’ll learn on a level I couldn’t have any other way.

I can’t wait for it to happen naturally (it won’t) or for someone else to make it happen (I’ll be waiting a long time). I have to step up.

4. I intentionally learn about other cultures. There are a lot of obvious ways to do this. I eat food from other cultures. I read books about them or (seldom) watch documentaries. I travel if I can. But this isn’t a purely academic idea. I also reach outside my usual routine and consume art from other cultures. I sometimes listen to kinds of music I don’t normally love and try to understand it. I read books I wouldn’t normally, watch TV shows with characters that don’t look like me, go to movies not aimed at my demographic. If I am allowed to give one piece of personal advice, this is it: don’t just check out things that describe people, check out the things they’re into, explore the art and entertainment they enjoy and try to see why they enjoy them. The art people produce communicates so much about their culture. Give it a try. (And if you don’t know where to start, email me. I have thoughts.)

5. I consider more than my personal behavior and evaluate the systems I participate in. Here’s where I take it to the next level and really spread my shaky butterfly wings. My field of work, my kids’ schools, my local government, my housing association, my church, the organizations I belong to. I want to be thoughtful and honest about all of them. What are their cultural leanings? In what way are they making it difficult for people of other cultures to thrive in them? Is there anything I can do to make the system more culturally inclusive?

We can’t let ourselves believe the lie that we’re only responsible for our personal relationships. Yes, I need to be warm and kind and open and understanding with those I meet. But as much as I would like to think of myself as just an individual (more on this cultural leaning in a future post), I am also a member of a community. Several different communities actually. As such, I have a larger responsibility to see how the bigger system of my community is affecting people. My personal kindness isn’t helping families who can’t get decent housing because of neighborhood rules and standard real estate practices. It’s not helping the students failing high school because it was never designed to teach people like them. It’s not helping single moms get appropriate health care in a system with rules that raises hurdles to access on every side. To help those people, I need to do my part to enact systemic change.

If that feels overwhelming, well, sure. It is. Remember, we’re taking steps here. Don’t worry, you don’t have to dismantle health care this week. For now, maybe just be willing to consider the ways the system is not as culturally sensitive as you are. Set aside your bias about it. Then ask some people not like you what their experiences have been. Listen to what they tell you.

Break out of your self-contemplation. Spread your wings and fly around a bit. Look at your comfortable place from the outside. Put out your antennae and sense what others are feeling.

Be ready to respond.