Babies Raising Babies

Last year as part of my eleventh grade Bible class, we spent a few weeks discussing healthy relationships, conflict management, family dynamics and so on. I thought it would be helpful to have them construct genograms, which are similar to detailed family trees that document relational patterns within a family. I hoped this activity would help unveil some of the negative norms that are commonly accepted in the local community. And it did.

The students learned a lot from looking at their families of origin and the patterns that were evident from generation to generation. They realized that there’s something freeing in understanding one’s family on a deeper level.

There were a few things I was not fully prepared for when the kids turned in their projects. One was the sheer size of their families. Countless uncles, aunts and cousins covered the corners of their posters. Somehow it seems like everybody is related to everybody else.

Another surprise was the untold stories of brokenness summarized succinctly in their diagrams. I felt such a heavy burden as I graded their genograms, aware for the first time of the depth of suffering some of these kids have experienced – divorce, early and unnatural family deaths, abuse of all kinds, men with multiple families, neglect, teen pregnancies, and so on. Too heavy a load for such young shoulders. My heart ached.

But there was one final surprise for me in this genogram activity. While reviewing their documents, I noticed that two of my students had written that they themselves had children. What?!  My students have babies? How could this be? I had never heard about this before. And from past conversations with our school’s administration, I had been sternly told that any students who became teenage parents were to be kicked out of the school.

So what was I to do? Tell the administration? Talk to the students? Pretend I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary on their genograms?

I decided my best course of action was to have a gentle one-on-one conversation with each of the two guys who had included a baby in their genogram. First was Ricardo.

“Hey Ricardo, can I talk to you a minute? I noticed something interesting on your genogram, and I was wondering if you wanted to tell me more about it. I saw you included a son on your genogram. Do you have a son?”

“Aww, yes, Miss… I do. He lives with his mother in my hometown, about an hour away. I see him whenever we have a break from school, and I am a good father to him. I bring him toys and clothes and help pay the bills.”

“Oh, okay. That’s alright. I know that sometimes things happen. How old is he?” I say, hoping my shock and judgeyness aren’t too obvious.

“He’s a year old. He’s really cute.” Ricardo pauses. Then bursts out laughing. “Ah, just kidding, Miss! Hahaha! I don’t have a son! I’m just kidding you!”

Relief floods over me. My heart rate returns to normal. “Ricardo, you’re such a punk. But I’m glad you were joking. Why did you write that on your genogram?”

“A few of us wanted to see whether you were actually going to read through the genograms, so they dared me to put a baby in there to see if you’d notice.”

“Oh, okay. Well, that’s kinda mean since I’ve been stressing about it all weekend, but I guess you proved your point. Now please don’t have any babies for at least five years.”

I proceed to pull aside Student With Supposed Baby #2. I say, “Hey man, I talked to Ricardo. The joke’s off. He told me about your genogram test and the fake baby.”

Baby Daddy #2 says, “What? What are you talking about?”

Oh, shoot. Quick and complete change in tone needed. “Nah, never mind, forget it… Hey, I noticed that you had included a baby girl on your genogram. Do you have a child?”

“Um, yes, I do. She’s six months old and she lives with her mom. I’m not with her mom anymore, but I see my daughter a lot.”

“Wow, okay. What’s her name? Do you any pictures of her?”

“Her name’s Victoria, and I do have pictures of her, but not here.”

“Well, I’d love to see her. Or even meet her sometime. If I can help with anything, please let me know.”

“Miss, I’m going to be a good father. You don’t have to worry. I will provide for her.”

“Great, I’m really glad. Kids need their fathers in their lives.”

But who am I to tell this to him? His father left seven or eight years ago, after he accidentally shot and killed his brother-in-law one drunken night. The shame was too much for him to bear, so he skipped town and never came back. And so my student, Baby Daddy #2, was left with his mother and his brother to fend for themselves.

I recently met little Victoria. My student stopped by to drop something off at my house, and there she was, firmly planted in his arms. She is a gorgeous little thing, eleven months old and full of dark curls and shy smiles. And she clearly adores her young father. But it was kind of a jolting experience. This is my seventeen-year-old student’s baby. He’s still a baby himself. With no father to imitate. What will their future be?

And it’s not just their future that I worry about. In fact, I think the town slogan of La Unión should be: Babies Raising Babies. It’s so sad. I hope that my presence here will have some small impact, breaking negative relational patterns in this special place. But I know my efforts are tainted with arrogance and lack of understanding.

So with helpless hands thrown in the air, I again place this town, and my students, and little Victoria, and all the babies raising babies, back into the hands of the Father who has never left them, trusting in his all-knowing parental wisdom and hoping for his restoration of loving families, all throughout the mountainside.   

Tales of the Volcanic Shower Monster

About five weeks ago, our shower exploded. Yes, this is a real story.

So, it’s a Tuesday evening. I undress, excited to rid myself of the day’s grime, ready to embrace the tiny, warm trickle that is our normal shower output (assuming that both the water and the electricity are on at the same time). I reach in to turn on the shower, and immediately the shower head starts shooting out highly pressurized steam, which then turns into highly pressurized, hot, black smoke. Panicking, I then notice that the showerhead itself has turned into a glowing orange fire ball, complete with unidentified black ooze (lava?!) and melting white plastic.

I scream for my husband, for two reasons. Reason 1: I want to verify that this event is in fact happening and is not a strange hallucination. Reason 2: I dare not attempt to rectify the situation in my vulnerable state of nakedness, fearing for the wellbeing of my skin and my hair and my life.

Lenny comes to the rescue, in all his clothed glory, bravely defying the volcanic shower monster, and he turns the nozzle off, eliminating the shooting smoke. Yay, Lenny!

I proceed to dress myself and march over to our landlord’s house to share the details of my harrowing exploit. In Spanish. (La ducha es un monstruo volcánico!) They listen calmly and say they’ll send the electrician to check it out in the next day or so.

Four days later (during which we have been trekking over to a friend’s house to shower), the electrician comes, muttering a bunch of unintelligible Spanishy phrases and moving wires here and there. He says he can fix it with the right tools.

A few more days go by, and we come home from school to the pleasant surprise of a “fixed” showerhead. Against all odds, the showerhead, now half covered with electrical tape, has been salvaged. Cautiously (and with my clothes on), I turn on the shower nozzle, not believing that said showerhead is fixable. But alas, out comes water, and no burning balls of flame are in sight! What a typical American I have been, so eager to throw something in the garbage at the first sight of trouble!

I rip off my clothes and hop in, only to realize that the water is scalding hot. Never in the past did it even reach any temperature near hot. It is so hot that I cannot even touch the water. Somehow the shower has been fixed in such a way that the new set of wires are super-heating the water. There is no other temperature – only boiling hot.

Well, this is not a problem I can’t handle, so I turn the shower off, which turns the showerhead mechanism off. The water slowly transforms to cold and then goes off. I turn the shower back on. The water slowly transforms to hot. Once too hot to handle, I turn the shower off again. And repeat. A million times. Until I can get my body relatively clean.

But then a new problem occurs: the shower has tripped the electrical fuse. So the power is off, and only cold water is coming out. Lenny again to the rescue! He stands next to our fuse box, flipping the switch back and forth every time the shower trips the electricity (which is about every twenty seconds). And this is how we proceeded to shower for the next week – one person in the shower, turning the water off and on, and one person standing next to the electrical box, flipping the switch back and forth.

We decide that this is probably not safe, and so back to the landlord we go. They say the voltage is too high for this slightly injured showerhead, so they decide to have the electrician come back and redo the wiring so that it connects to a lower voltage hook-up. And so he does.

Finally, our shower should be a dreamy water wonderland! But this is not meant to be. Our “fixed” shower no longer trickles out boiling water. Now it is only cold. Take-your-breath-away cold. Shivering, teeth chattering cold. And now when we shower, we are constantly shocked by the electrical current. Many times I have emerged from my rapid-speed, chilly showers with my fingers and hands numb and tingling from all the electrical zaps. They are constantly getting shocked while I wash out my hair.

Supposedly they’ve ordered a new showerhead for us. It’s supposed to be coming next week. We now have a better understanding why these heat-as-you-go shower contraptions are dubbed “widow makers.”

Last weekend, I was feeling all “woe is me and my shower situation.” And then God smiled down at ridiculous me, and the water went out for the whole weekend. (It goes out every day from 7 am to 7 pm, but not usually 72 hours straight…) After a sweaty, frustrating weekend, I came to the realization that I was being an ungrateful infant who had lost perspective.

Because most of the world does not have running water. Jesus never had a hot shower. Around here, people can’t believe that you would waste perfectly good drinking water for bathing, like most Americans do. Hot, clean water is a luxury, not a necessity.

And there are lots of people in the world who aren’t even getting their daily necessities. Who am I to complain about not getting the luxuries I want, when I am consistently given the necessities I really need? A roof over my head, clean clothes to wear, three meals a day, reliable income, a fulfilling job, health and strength, a husband who loves me.

My blessings abound.

Thank you, LORD.

Forgive me for my fickle spirit and for my self-entitled tendencies, and give me a renewed and grateful perspective on the gifts you’ve piled up high around me, cold showers and all. 

The New Crew

We’ve been back exactly one month. In most ways, it’s been easy to slip back into the routine of life in this tiny town: teaching, eating, sleeping, repeat, with an occasional shower thrown in when available. The transition has been much smoother than last year, knowing what to expect (rocks and mud, rice and beans, roosters, nightly thunderstorms, and such) and knowing what not to expect (hot water, nights free of fireworks, cheeseburgers, healthy-looking dogs, and such).

But there is one thing that I didn’t expect. The loneliness. After all, I am surrounded by sticky, loud, affectionate teenagers all day long. And on the weekends, there are always kids around, ever ready for a pick-up volleyball game or a game of Uno. But that’s not what I mean.

It’s different this year. Last year, we quickly developed our crew, our La Unión family. Six gringas and my husband, facing the culture shock together. And although our constant interaction had its moments of drama and tension, it was more often a source of support, challenge and encouragement. We knew each other inside and out, sometimes uncovering more information than we would have preferred to know. We knew about each other’s crazy families, and terrible teaching days, and idealistic dreams for the future. It’s the kind of intimacy that can best be fostered while crammed together in the back of a pick-up truck, huddled together under a tarp, hoping that the rain and hail will soon let up, so that we can actually enjoy our four-hour mountain trek back “home.” We would never have survived the past year without each other.

This year we have met a whole new bunch of foreign teachers. They seem like perfectly nice, good people. But we don’t know them. And they don’t know us.

The first few days of school, I kept looking at the new teachers and thinking, “What are YOU doing here?! That’s not your classroom!”

Being the quiet-loving introvert that I am, the thought of starting over with new people has seemed kinda overwhelming. The relational journey from strangers to co-workers to friends to family has seemed like a long and tiring one. And so I’ve been holding myself back much more than last year, guarding my heart from those who have yet to prove that they are upright citizens who are worthy of my time and affection.

But slowly, despite my best efforts to keep the newbies at arm’s length, I’m starting to warm to them. They are different, but they’re not all bad. They, too, have crazy families and terrible teaching days and idealistic dreams for the future. And they, too, are imago dei-bearers, unique and lovable and broken and amazing.

So, I’ve decided to keep them. As if I ever had anything to say about the matter. After all, we don’t get to choose our family. And as much as I’d like to say that I can make it through another year of Honduran mountain living on my own, it’s just not true. I need them, and they need me, and that’s the way life’s meant to be.

So, newbies, welcome to the family.

Round Two

We’re back. Round Two in Hondurasland. Some say we’re crazy. Some say we’re courageous. I say we’re doing our best to follow a God who has been whispering to our hearts, “This is where you should be. I’ve got you right where I want you.”

And as always, submissive me responds, “Yes, God. Whatever you say, I will obey.” Yeah, right. A more accurate picture would be of me plugging my ears and saying, “La la la – I can’t hear you! You’re going to have to speak LOUDER.”

In other words, it hasn’t been an easy decision, this whole coming back thing. In June, when the classrooms emptied and we packed up for a summer in the U.S., I had this sneaky sense that maybe I wouldn’t be returning, maybe I could walk away from it all and go back to the easier version, Life Before.

This feeling continued as the allures of American life greeted me with arms wide open. Soft clothes, warm showers, comfy beds, smooth roads, fast internet… And movies and malls and restaurants. Plus, don’t get me started on the people. My people. The ones who know and love me deeply, the ones whose affection for me even included those ugly middle school years.

Two weeks home in Michigan and I was ready to stay forever. The very thought of returning to Honduras found me on the verge of tears. Outwardly I kept up the charade that I planned to return for another year of teaching in Central America, but inside that was not my plan. In fact, any other plan sounded good at the time.

As if there weren’t already enough reasons bolting my feet to the land of the free and the home of the brave, then came a suspicious medical check-up, which led to more tests and more doctors. And finally, the diagnosis, which went something like this: “There’s a ninety-nine percent chance this isn’t a problem at all, and a one-percent chance you’re about to die a terrible, horrible death. We can do a surgical biopsy and be sure, but that will cost you a minimum of $8,000, seeing as your Honduran health insurance isn’t valid here.” My first reaction: “Ha ha ha! – this is so funny and ironic, considering this is the only time in my life that I haven’t had health insurance.” My second reaction: “Ahhh! - we need to find U.S. jobs immediately so we can get health insurance so we can get the test so we can get the treatment so I won’t die.”

Oh, Fear. You are a manipulative little demon.

So the reasons to stay were piling up. But at some point during our summer of trekking around Guatemala, Michigan, New York and California, something inside me started changing.  It might have been the growing detestation for living out of a suitcase. It might have been the constant over-eating that was leaving me feeling like a blob of lard. It was definitely linked to the fact that all of the comfort and ease started to feel, well, kinda uncomfortable. And I stopped hating the idea of going back.

We flew back just a few days ago. It was a heart-wrenching goodbye. Mostly because I hadn’t convinced any of my people to come back with me (except my husband, of course). And also because I hadn’t convinced anyone to open a Thai restaurant in La Unión.

On the plane ride over, I felt weird. Not happy, a little sad, a lot confused. I wasn’t convinced yet that this was the best decision, the coming back.

Within a few hours of landing in San Pedro Sula, I found myself in a Honduran emergency room, clasping my fractured hand, which had managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a car trunk was slammed. Sitting in the ER, I had a fleeting thought: this is a bad omen for our return to Honduras. We shouldn’t be here. We should have stayed. We made the wrong decision! AHHHHH!!! But then the pain meds kicked in and I could have been convinced that any idea was a great idea, and so our four-hour drive into the mountains continued.

We arrived late and it was dark and there were eight suitcases to unpack (well, eight suitcases for Lenny to unpack, seeing as I had a gimpy hand). It felt overwhelming.

But then the morning came.

As we walked to school early the next day, I was flooded by peace. Mixed with joy. I love that combo. And I was overwhelmed with the sense that I was exactly where I needed to be. That I would be okay without the soft clothes and the smooth roads. That the mountains and the students and my whispering God would be enough.

Tomorrow it begins again. Year Two, Honduras-style. Bring it.

Feeling Old

I’m feeling old lately. And it’s not just because my thirtieth birthday has been gradually marching toward me, one day at a time, with only two short weeks left until a dizzying day of collision. That is a big enough reality check of its own. A new decade. Goodbye to my 20’s.

For much of this year, the thought has left me with a pinch in my stomach, an air void in my lungs. Am I really old enough to be thirty? Is this what life feels like after three decades of completion? Shouldn’t I be more wise, more successful, more knowledgeable, more in shape, more financially secure, more [insert adjective here]? Shouldn’t I be more than I am?

It doesn’t help that I am constantly surrounded by a bunch of blonde, vivacious, leggy things, just barely adjusting to the reality of post-college life. These young creatures are my main pool of friends here in our tiny Honduran town, ranging from 19 to 23 years of age. This has been in stark contrast to my New York friends, of whom I always seemed to be the youngest. But this new crew has been a daily reminder of how much energy and idealism and spontaneity I have forfeited over the last ten years. For example, these days I like, even prefer, to stay home and read or watch a movie. I don’t enjoy drinking for the sake of drinking. I don’t notice cute guys around every corner (unless it’s my Lenster, or George Clooney, and I have yet to see George walk through the streets of La Unión. On another note, these girls barely even know who George is!). I am no longer covered by my parents’ health insurance (or any health insurance for that matter). I don’t own a single neon belly shirt or any brightly patterned stretchy jeans. I guess I have grown up.

There have been many days this year when I struggled with wanting to be youthful and cool, so as to be more relevant to my friends here and also to my students. Frankly, it was exhausting. And it wasn’t a true reflection of me, the person I am today, as opposed to the person I was in, say, 2005. I have slowly come to the realization that I actually like being my age. Twenty-nine going on thirty comes with its share of advantages. My last decade of life has been filled with adventures and mistakes and learning and unlearning, and I gratefully get the sense that I might just be a better person now than I was straight out of college.  Still a broken person, but more aware of my brokenness, and – on good days – better able to learn from it and live in spite of it, breathing in Grace.

When I think through the span of a life filled with eighty or ninety years, it almost blows me away. All the memories, all the maturity, all the living. In comparison, thirty years seems trivial. I still have a long way to go in understanding myself, in loving people well, in fully recognizing my brokenness and then fully resting in Grace.

And so, with a strange sense of peace, I am looking forward to giving Thirty a big ol’ hug.

I will leave you with this, from the writer of Ecclesiastes: “You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your hearts give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.” 

Here’s to replacing the anxiety in our hearts with joy. Here’s to another year of living and learning. Happy birthday, Me. And a happy birthday to you, too.