Speaking of Missy's OVARIES.... (a.k.a. "How Annoying is Your Fish Bowl?")

Once I heard an American complain about all the rude foreigners at Disney World who pushed right into him as he patiently waited in line for the rides.  North Americans have an enormous bubble surrounding them, which they fully expect strangers to respect. 

Touching is perceived as pushing. 

Most global workers eventually adapt our concept of “personal space” so we can survive without being so prickly with those we came to reach, where personal space is an almost non-existent concept.  However, what about emotional space?  Have any of you experienced the trauma of having a very personal issue treated rudely?

Today I am calling on the collective wisdom of our WOTH readers to address a tender subject: how do you handle infertility cross-culturally?  Short of wearing a t-shirt saying “Please stop talking about my ovaries!” what can be done to get the message across that this is a private matter American women do not want discussed publicly?

Missy (not her real name),  a global worker in her early 30’s, works here in Mexico and has been married for almost five years with no children.  She is a private person who struggles with the fishbowl effect of living in the public eye, where everyone seems preoccupied with her apparent inability to give her Mexican husband offspring.  Mind you she has never seen a doctor or had any “problem” diagnosed, but since her sister-in-law seems to be “Fertile Myrtle” it is presumed there is a “problem,” and that the "problem" is hers and not her husband’s.

The humiliation she has endured is unbelievable.  Can you imagine having people actually touch your belly and weep aloud over the death of your ovaries?  What’s worse, people say hurtful things about how Missy is selfish for not caring that her poor husband has the embarrassment of having an infertile wife.  One woman told her she should stop focusing her attention on helping other people's children (which is her ministry), and then God might consider giving her a child of her own.  Really?

Almost comical (if it weren't true), meddlers regularly offer Missy home remedies like powders in her drinking water, special teas, and fermented pineapple cores.  Once she was given a foot massage to stimulate her reproductive organs.  The very worst are men who make public prophesies and suggestions too graphic to print here, and tell of visions they have had of Missy’s birth canal.  Really!

Missy herself would be at peace with God opening and closing her womb according to His will and purposes.  She would be content to wait several more years to start a family or to adopt children if that’s what God wants.  Her husband and dmil* (see side bar) are supportive, though probably clueless as to her predicament.  If and when she does get pregnant, she would like the glory to go to God, not to the "friends" who offered advice and potions.

Her question to you is this:  How can she communicate to her adversaries that she is a private person who is quietly trusting God?  How can she be gracious, while calmly but strongly telling people to shut up stop meddling and leave her alone?

Is it possible to relay this message without offending people cross-culturally?  How would this scene play out in your part of the world?

IRL:  Living in a fish bowl can be pretty annoying sometimes.

P.S.  I voted against the "Stop Talking About My Ovaries" t-shirt, but I did find this one at www.AdoptionBug.com.
that says "mom-to-be:  Just waiting to find out WHEN." 

What's Your [Furlough] Blessing?

People genuinely do want to “bless the missionaries” while we are stateside.  Really they do.  Okay, at least some do.  Churches who regularly pray for us are the first to find tangible ways to bless us while we are here.

Hopefully all of us could share a long list of blessings we have received, and maybe we can even rejoice with our colleagues (without jealousy) in the provision of things we have personally never received.  I  once struggled with envy when I heard of other global workers returning home to free dental work, car mechanics, restaurant and gas cards, and trips to amusement parks as a family.

It’s taken 26 years to accumulate quite a list of lovely tokens of love and appreciation from friends and partners in our work.  But let’s face it, what is a tremendous blessing to me might fall short of that objective in your case.

For example, a friend gifted me with kefir grains, fresh raw milk, subsidized nutritional supplements, and even a kombucha starter!  All of my hippy, happy, just-a-bit-out-there friends will say “Cool”!  The rest of you are scratching your heads saying, “Huh”?

With this said, let me share some “blessings” my kids have experienced in real life on summer furloughs.  My oldest daughter remembers being in a supporting church at age six or seven, and being forced to stand up in front of about fifty children she didn’t know and share about life in Oaxaca.  (Don’t your children hate that?)

To make it worse, the teacher then said, “Because you are our special guest we will let you take our offering this morning … but first you can start us off by praying in Spanish!”  Now whoever thought that would be a treat for a shy little visitor?

Another story happened to one of my boys who was too young at the time to remember it.  One of our supporting churches is a lively little church, very different from the denominations we usually attend.  We were sitting on the front row, all however-many-of-us-there-were at the time. 

The pastor had asked people to come up for special prayer. He proceeded to holler at the devil, until one person after another fell at our feet, slain in the spirit.  When the pastor ran out of standing people to pray for, he came over to pray for us. 

My youngest son began crying loudly, “Don’t let him pray for me!  Don’t let him pray for me!” until I shushed him and rushed him out as though he needed a sudden diaper change.

Sometimes blessings fall a bit shy of their goal. 

What amazes me about WOTH is how they truly minister to such a diverse group of women, touching mind, body, and soul.  They “get” our lives in a way few people do.  It was a blessing to be a co-presenter at the Writer’s Workshop last week at the WOTH Furlough Retreat in Denver, and a pleasure to introduce many new readers to this blog! 

Now it’s your turn to share.  Please share with us some of the greatest blessings of your current or past furloughs.  I promise to rejoice without (much) envy, even if your list trumps my kefir, kombucha, and raw milk.  Feel free to add your own stories of things your kids have had to endure on furlough.

No pressure to comment, but I did tell lots of the women at the retreat that the stories in the comments are the best part about this blog, so don’t let me down! 

IRL* Blessed.

Zest that Exudes

When I die, just put me in the box as is, or is it as am?  As I will be? 

Some women beg their friends to promise there will be no open casket when they die.  Why?  Mercy, they say, what if my hair isn’t done just so?  What if they put on the wrong color of lipstick?  Ew, what if I look gross?

As for me, I say put me on display for all to see.  Don’t bother with my hair or make-up.  Let everyone comment about how horrible I look.  Maybe people will finally appreciate all the effort I put into looking presentable at this season of life.

At the same time, tell everyone that for the first time ever, I do not care about my appearance.  Finally I will be free from my mortal body and sin nature that always cared too much how I looked and what people thought. 

Then I will be truly beautiful inside and out with no vanity or wrong motives.  Let my decaying body be a reminder to all who see it that I am not there!  Don’t waste money on embalming and beautifying my corpse.  Let my pale wrinkly old face serve as an object lesson.

I’ve shared before about my ongoing struggle against becoming a frumpy missionary, but as I grow older and wiser I wonder why on earth I fight the inevitable.  Money is precious, and worldly beauty is costly.  How can I rationalize the haircuts, the makeup, the clothing, and the shoes? 

Yet I look in the mirror, and I shudder to think what my family would be seeing all day if I didn’t touch up the results of a restless night’s sleep. Lord, help me to find balance!

This past week I met an exuberantly vivacious (is that redundant?) old woman who epitomizes true beauty.  I want to grow up to be her.  She radically changed my definition of loveliness.  True beauty has nothing to do with glamour, jewelry, clothing, hairstyles, or even teeth. 

If there were a missionary magazine looking for a centerfold of the most beautiful woman on earth, I would submit Valentina.  She has curiously split ear lobes, no teeth, failing eyesight, wrinkles galore, unruly gray hair, feet that shuffle, posture that stoops, and a voice quality that warbles and squeaks.

But you know what else she has?  Valentina possesses an inner glow, a zest that exudes joyfully from every pore of her being, even though she lives spitting distance from a cemetery and within sniffing range of the city dump. 

She is the me I want to be when they put me in that pine box someday. 

I want people to stand around and tell stories about my life, not about my decaying body.  I want people to smile and remember the real me, the radiant me who reflected God’s beauty and glory, just like Valentina.

What made me chuckle is that even my hero, Hermana Valentina herself, attempted to smooth down her long gray braids when she saw the camera, braids that were once carefully tied with red satin ribbons.  Vanity is an issue even among the world’s most astonishing beauties.

IRL* When I grow up, I want to be a Valentina who still acts young, not an old person trying to look young.

Magnified and Scrutinized

Something weird happens whenever my grown kids visit. It’s taken me years to pinpoint the short-circuiting in my brain, so bear with me while I attempt to articulate this discovery. Even if you have no adult children, you might experience this with other visitors from the U.S. I know do.

Normally I live my life in a state of acceptance of things-as-they-are. Not everything about my marriage, family, and home is ideal—not by a long shot; but I somehow arrive at a position where I simply overlook the bad and focus on the good. It’s called survival. Or like the motto in my mom’s kitchen that sums it up in another word: “whatever!”

Then these adults-I-used-to-call-children come home, or in the old days, my dmil would come to visit. Suddenly every flaw becomes magnified. It’s not that these people are necessarily criticizing (sometimes they do), but something in my head shifts gears, and like the emperor in the fairy tale who suddenly realizes he is wearing no clothes, all of a sudden I feel ashamed of myself, the people closest to me, and most of all, my (can I say crappy on a Christian blog?) house.

This has been going on for years, but it wasn’t until I was talking to a friend who experienced the same phenomenon this Christmas that I began to see the pattern. Love overlooks a multitude of sins. Peace in the home for the long haul requires large doses of selective blindness, don’t you think?

It’s not until others are watching that it starts to bug me.
 

Why do I put up with this? Why have we never painted that? Why, oh why can we not fix that crazy drawer that has never opened properly? Why have we allowed this child to get away with such-and-such a habit? Why does my dh… Nope, I’m not going there. Worst of all, why do I always….

You get my drift.

Again, it’s not that our visitors necessarily say anything about anyone or anything. Just seeing things through a different lens is what I don’t like. Our marriage, family, and home are fine most of the time, as long as no one is looking too closely. I guess that’s why having guests can be so stressful. Suddenly all our oddities, imperfections, and interactions are under scrutiny.
 

After a month of having dd here, and two weeks with ds and ddil, we are settling back into life-as-it-was. I want to make some changes so that we don’t settle for mediocrity when we should be striving to be the kind of people and have the kind of home that can be scrutinized and found godly in most respects.

This week I splurged on four new pillows to replace the ratty ones I subjected my adult children to over the holidays, hoping that will help future guests overlook all the other quirky things about my home and family. Next we need new mattresses, some better sheets that don’t come from K-mart, and towels that aren’t all shredding and sun-rotted. And then…. Where does this all end?

IRL* Praying for grace to accept what cannot be changed (others), and strength to change what I can change (myself), also patience to accept what I cannot afford to change, and finances to pay for what needs to be changed.