The day I first started writing this post, I was climbing all over a research boat with children who were mentally overstimulated by all of the sights and sounds it contained, and I did not feel anything but frustration and exhaustion. It felt like asking them to focus on the tour guide and follow the rules in this environment was asking too much of them, but I needed to try because they do need to learn to follow directions, even if that means learning it differently and at their own pace. In that moment, I felt defeated. I came home and tried to begin writing an inspiring tribute to my first year of this mission experience, and I could not do it. So, I went to sleep and tried again later.
Today, I have lived in Nome for one year, and I've gotten pretty good at the skill of trying again later, over and over again.
I work with many children who live with a challenge I hardly ever heard of before I moved here, and it is a daily learning experience for me. I feel grossly under-qualified most of the time, but I find hope in the fact that they seem to accept me anyway. The truth is that most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just cooking and washing dishes and doing crafts and playing one more game of UNO, acknowledging the many forms of trauma that surround us and trying every day not to be defeated by them.
At US-2 training, they tell you there will be hard times, but at that point everyone' is talking about God all the time, and you all sing some fun songs together and they give you a fancy anchor cross, and you do not care about the hard times yet. At the start, the hard times sound like just another adventure. And yes, living here in Nome is an adventure. But the hard times come with an intensity I have never experienced before. One of my biggest challenges writing about my experiences this past year has been describing the hardest times while respecting the privacy of children. To put it in perspective, this is the third job I have had where I have been a mandated reporter. At the first two jobs, I never observed anything concerning enough to be reported. At my current job, I stopped counting after the third incident.
I am trying to come to terms with the fact that two years is actually a very short amount of time to make an impact on the life of a child. I am also having to accept that the few hours a day I spend with these children are competing with the rest of their day, which may not be spent in a positive, healthy environment. I was recently told that I'm working with some children who are re-traumatized every weekend, and that gave words to a feeling I've been struggling with for months.
While there is really nothing easy about working with so many children who come from backgrounds of trauma, the amount of fun I have had this year is unreal. Between all the tantrums and tears and bickering, I have had the privilege of spending time with some of the funniest, most creative children I have ever met. I've gotten pretty good at maintaining a rational detachment to keep myself from getting too weighed down by all of the challenges these children carry with them, but sometimes when they're all sitting down to dinner and talking to each other, the thought crosses my mind that it feels like a family.
One of the objectives of the US-2 program is to "grow in personal holiness" and I sometimes cynically joke that this job is actually making me less holy. But the truth is that while my faith has been put on the back burner for the sake of work more than I'd like to admit over this past year, living in a new place, away from everything and everyone that was familiar to me, has given me the chance to explore what my relationship with God really is when there's no one around to steer it in the right direction. And although I'm ending this first year with more questions than answers, I'm also left with the feeling that I am right where I'm supposed to be. And that is all I need to keep trying again later, every day.
