The Elephant in the Room, Part 2, for empty-nesters: How can we leave our kids and live on the other side of the planet?

We need to look at that elephant in the room—I told you about it last week, the topic I’ve been ignoring.

Wait. Not “ignoring.” It’s been much on my mind and heart, but I’ve been unable to blog about it.

Recent posts, however, helped me stand closer and lean in, and now I’m looking that elephant in the eye.

So here it is:

I didn’t want to move to Africa because I didn’t want to leave my kids. If you’ve read Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, you know what I wrote:

“Just when our youngest finished college, both Dave and God hollered ‘Africa!’ Stunned, I asked myself, How can we leave our kids . . .  and live on the other side of the planet?”

“Everything within me cried out that my children still needed their parents. I recognized they didn’t need us the way they did when they were little, but I believed they needed our behind-the-scenes support to transition out of the world of college and into the world of professionals.” (from the Preface and Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)

I had taken my mothering role seriously. My commitment throbbed deep in my heart because, I believed then and believe now, God Himself put it there—He had given me that high calling. As a result, I had made numerous choices so I could do the job right. My role as Matt and Karen’s mother was my joy, my delight, my privilege.

And since God had given me those precious children as well as the job of raising them well, it didn’t make sense that He would ask me to move half a world away from them—and the grandchildren that would surely join the family soon.

I continued in Chapter 2:

Silently I cried out, When I became a mother, I did not plan to walk away from my children after only twenty-one years! I always dreamed our children and grandchildren would live nearby and that we’d get together often—but now this! This felt like a tragic surprise ending to the motherhood I always envisioned. . . .

I spoke about this at our Port Angeles church and I wrote about it in the book. Blogging about it, however, feels like ripping sutures off a wound, and that caught me by surprise.

I could skip this topic and move on to others in Chapter 2—if it weren’t for some of you.

You see, the reason I published the memoir (instead of only making copies of my stories for my grandchildren),

and the reason I’m blogging about it,

is this:

God is asking other mid-lifers and empty-nesters—maybe even you—to move into overseas missions work.

And because I know that can be scary . . .

and because I remember that leaving young adult children and grandchildren can wrench hearts . . .

and because I recall how much other people’s stories helped me . . .

I’m doing this for you, readers! I’m doing this for you!

Read this carefully:

Because other people took time to tell their stories, 

they changed my heart 

and strengthened my faith 

until I could say “yes” to God’s invitation to Africa.

Perhaps God will use my story to help you 

write new chapters into your life.

Do come back next week 

because we have gems and priceless treasures to mine 

m the rocky soil beneath that elephant’s heavy feet.

Do you need to stare down that elephant in your room?

For some time now, I’ve been blogging about our arrival in Kenya—our three-month orientation course in the bush, living alongside lions and baboons and hippos, sampling new foods, singing worship songs in Swahili, and other adventures from Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa—but I still have not blogged about that elephant in the room.

(The Oxford English Dictionary says we’ve used the term “elephant in the room” since 1959. Did you know it does not mean the same as “the 800-pound gorilla in the room”?)

I’ve done a pretty good job of crouching in one corner or another and avoiding eye contact with that elephant. 

So far, stepping closer to it has been more than I can handle.

That’s why I keep circling that elephant at a distance.

But believe it or not, with several recent blog posts I’ve been circumnavigating nearer and I know that one of these days I’ll have to stand up close and lean in and look that elephant in the eye.

What am I talking about? What’s the elephant in the room?

Do you know? Or can you guess?

Leave a comment below or on the Facebook Page for Grandma’s Letters from Africa.

Come back next week and I’ll share more of my story.

But for now, LET ME ASK YOU:

What elephant in the room do you keep circling

from a distance?

Do you need to lean in and look squarely in the eye of

YOUR elephant in the room?

Perhaps my story will encourage you

to stare down your own elephant.

See you next week.

What was that crazy American woman doing?

I’ve already admitted my angst over living for three months without a proper toilet.

Instead, my only choice was a pit latrine. Well, maybe not my only option—I could have squatted down behind bushes, but with wild animals and snakes and biting insects also hiding in those bushes, that option would have been worse than a pit latrine. And besides, at least our latrine had a yellow plastic tarp around it for privacy.

My friend Joy outside our pit latrine

Have you ever noticed how comforting it is to know you’re not alone in your suffering? With that, today I’ll share a story from missionary B. Arnold about . . . well, you know. . . .

B. admits to life-long anxieties about restrooms and says that when she arrived in Burkina Faso, West Africa, she was introduced to “the thrills and chills” of “multi-bathroom experiences” and concluded she needed to make some changes.

In this excerpt from her article, Bathrooms of the World, she recounts her first trip to a village for an open-air evangelism campaign:

“We were greeted and then led into a very nice courtyard where we were fed supper by the host family. After supper I used the facilities in their yard which consisted of a three-sided mud brick building with no roof and a hole in the center of the cement floor.

“The hole in the center of the floor meant that this outhouse [unlike some others] was a multi-purpose unit and could be used for all ‘needs.’ For a bush village these were very deluxe accommodations. The ‘outhouse’ provided for some semblance of privacy and luxury as well.

“Once the veil of darkness fell upon the village we began our open air evangelism campaign but part way through the service I had to once again use the ‘facilities.’ It was then that I realized that I had forgotten my flashlight. I asked one of the pastors if I could borrow his and he gladly loaned it to me for my little private moment. . . .

“I entered into the deluxe accommodations

and then discovered my dilemma:

what to do with the flashlight

while making use of the hole?

If I placed the flashlight on the wall

I could not see to find the hole

and if I held the flashlight

I could not manage my dress while busy.

What to do? What to do?

“… My only choice would be

to place the flashlight in my mouth

(yes I know that it was dirty!)

and then be as quick as possible before I gagged. . . .

“I looked down to find the hole and when I did, the flashlight shone down into the dark abyss. Soon I was ‘busy’ and at almost the same time thousands of giant cockroaches began pouring out of the hole having been disturbed by the light.

“I could not scream as the borrowed flashlight would fall into the hole—I could not stop—and I could not stand still. Soon I was dancing back and forth, stomping and tromping and shaking off the critters as they tried to crawl up my legs! . . .

“Finally I was able to leave the ‘deluxe’ facilities and leaned against the wall trying to compose myself. I began to shake at the thought of it all and then just as suddenly, I began to laugh. . . . I must have been a site [sic] to behold.

“I’m sure that the people who were watching the beam of light dancing around and around in the dark [from inside that roofless outhouse] must have wondered what in the world that crazy American woman was doing. . . .” (B. Arnold, ©Women of the Harvest Magazine, Sept/Oct, 2001. www.womenoftheharvest.com. Now part of Thrive Ministry and The Thrive Ministry Magazine. Excerpts used by permission.)

Originally published July 22, 2010

Water: An Essential!

A page from my scrapbook

In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I wrote that in Maasai-land during the second phase of orientation, our water came from a stream a few inches deep and maybe fifteen feet wide.

Maasai bathed in it, washed their laundry in it, and herded cattle through it.

Other wild animals splashed around in it, too, and baboons up in the trees pooped into it.

I also used water from that muddy little stream to hand-scrub our laundry.

To get laundry water, you’ll see in the top picture that I tied a rope to a plastic bucket, lowered it down the bank and into the brook, then pulled water up. Because the stream was so shallow, I could get only a few inches of water in the bucket at a time.

In the bottom picture, I used the enormous roots of a fig tree as a table for the wash basin.

That stream was also the source of our drinking water.

What?!? you might gasp.

Have no fear! We set up water-filter systems that removed microorganisms that cause diarrhea, vomiting, typhoid, and other illnesses.

We set up our gravity-fed filter system with half a dozen red plastic barrels, rubber tubing, and ceramic filters. Those filters, called candles, looked like rolling pins without handles.

We immersed them into a barrel of dirty water that, in a few minutes, passed through the slightly porous ceramic. In the process, that murky water turned clear and pure and it came out through rubber tubing.

A crew of people cleaned the candles on a regular basis because slime from the brook built up on them.

Water! It’s essential for living!

Safe drinking water is essential for health

and, by God’s grace,

we had both there in the desert.

That was a cause for sincere rejoicing and thanksgiving.