Hesitant Missionary

You look down on people who don’t do what you do, she said. I love it that there are people in my life who can tell me this stuff. I fully recognized it as truth. I don’t want to be this person. I want each of you to do the things you’re doing, the role you’re called to, without feeling judgement from me. Honestly, I want you to treat me the same way. 

Many days (today, for example) I feel reluctant to participate in the life I’ve been called to, just like the main character in my latest audio book read. Sadly, it’s a novel. I want it to be true. Although reluctant to begin with, Main Character soon has a change of heart and becomes Hesitant Missionary. She gives up her source of income, sells her most expensive possessions, buys a motorcycle 🏍.  Hesitant Missionary devotes her time to driving though the rough parts of town befriending the friendless and then devotes her life and home to supporting women and their children trying to exit drug and prostitution rings. 

Hesitant Missionary made a lot of mistakes. She alienated  friends because they didn’t like the drastic ways she was changing her life to serve others. (Spoiler alert: Like in every good novel, they came around to her way of thinking for a happily ever after ending.) Hesitant Missionary ignored the Holy Spirit sometimes because she thought she had better ideas. She failed some of the people she tried to help but also managed to genuinely help a few. She forgot how to have faith after a woman she was trying to protect dies and a child she was trying to protect is taken into government custody. Hesitant Missionary second guessed herself every other step of the way. These failures sound incredibly true to real life; maybe it’s based on true stories.

Although much less dramatic, there’s so many ways, I recognized myself in this story. I alienate friends and family by my devotion to my kids. I second guess any decision I make. When things go wrong, I forget to have faith. I ignore the Holy Spirit and probably often don’t even notice it enough to ignore it. I disappoint the children and parents I’m supposed to be helping. I sound condescending. My friends helped me realize that it’s a stupid manipulative coping mechanism I use I’m reluctant to do the things I/we feel I/we need to do. I didn’t sign up to be the person I am. Miraculously, I became her anyway, hesitant, but almost willing. Almost willing to do the thing I’m called to do. Always vert willing to project my insecurities on others.

Hesitant Predictions for Tomorrow: 

I’m going to spend the morning trying to get the cooperation of a brother who won’t hear anything I say unless I use the words gloves and swimming.  It’s a foregone conclusion that I will be completely frustrated and energyless and quite possibly resorting to anger by the time I return him to his parents. 

Then I’m going to go to Pelly and spend the rest of the day and evening wondering how to comfort the mom whose teenager OD and nearly died. In all honesty, I’ll be hoping to avoid that conversation altogether, but, like any hesitant missionary, in the end I’ll feel compelled to halfheartedly ask how he’s doing. I’ll inevitably mumble some kind of useless response to her motherly monologue and update on his condition and prognosis. 

At the end of the day I will feel accomplished. I’ll feel happy. I’ll also probably go to sleep wishing I had done something differently. But the Hesitant Missionary taught me something: failure happens. One of my sisters-in-law taught me something else: tomorrow is another day. 

The Ghost of Canada Present

Grief doesn’t always begin as a process that is the result of the death of a Loved One. Sometimes grief begins as a result of a broken heart, and that usually never ends. -Carol Rose GoldenEagle, The Narrows of Fear

One of Brent’s friends recently told Brent a gruesome forgotten story about some local residential schools years ago. It was as horrible and heartbreaking as all the other stories. What made it different to me is that it took place in my community. It makes it personal. Pete is in his 80´s and this story was something  that happened to his father, so it’s safe to guess that it took place almost 100 years ago. The time frame really doesn’t matter. 

The truth really does. I’m not going to go into details here but you can private message me if you want to hear more about this heartbreaking truth. Sometimes my heart feels like it can’t hold more heartbreaking things. Then I start imagining what it must’ve been to be the parents of one of these children who abruptly and silently disappeared from their life forever. Then I decide I don’t know heartbreak.

I spent an hour or two of this Canada Day talking with my husband about our province’s history and its newly discovered mass graves.  That conversation left a haze of melancholy hanging in the stifling air. 

A fist bump from a First Nations stranger who told me I wasn’t racist and that I was pretty cool for a white girl eased my survivor’s guilt a little. The same man told me he and I would each keep loving other people’s children, that that was a way to move forward. 

His words were striking in the face of the renewed grief that Indigenous communities across the country are facing today. This man truly believes that Every child matters. The ones who endured the worst atrocities in the past. The ones who are alive today. Every child matters. 

I know you all have your precious white babies to care for in their perfect little nurseries, but don’t forget to cry tonight over someone else’s babies who weren’t treated as if they were precious and who didn’t have even their most vital needs met. because every child matters.