What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?

When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club, one of the programs I was in charge of was the behavioral health curriculum. It was my job to occasionally plan activities about feelings and emotions, and the way our brains work, and I loved it. One of the things I implemented as part of the program was the “Today I am Feeling” board. Youth could come in and write their name by the emotion they were feeling, and sometimes it led to some really important discussions. I loved watching children of all ages pause in front of the board, and stand quietly for a minute as they examined their inner thoughts and identified how they were feeling. I have a theory that the world would be a better place if adults had a feelings board like that.

One of my favorite memories associated with that board is when a teen girl came in one day and without saying a word, grabbed a marker and wrote her name in bold letters beside “angry”. She then gave me one of those crushing glares that only teenage girls are capable of, as if she was daring me to challenge her. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it, and she said no. I then told her “Anger is a valid emotion, and you’re allowed to be angry, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else, or being destructive.” She seemed surprised by my response, and sat quietly be herself for a few minutes before joining her friends and moving on with the day.

That was the day I learned that something really significant happens when you give people, especially teenagers, permission to be angry. We are often taught to suppress our negative emotions, and be ashamed of them. I’ll never know what she was angry about that day, but I believe I gained a new level of respect when I validated that emotion that is so often viewed as an inherently bad thing.

As much as I loved that moment, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to my own anger. Out of all of the emotions, anger is the one I  am least comfortable with. Whenever I feel it, it is followed quickly by shame. I have been trying for so long to figure out how to write about the past two years without mentioning anger, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I just can’t get around it. Like I did for that teen that day, I have to give myself permission to be angry.

I couldn’t, and still can’t say much about my work experience during my time as a US-2, because I worked for a very prominent nonprofit in a very small town.

What I can say is that I experienced a lot of anger about the way I was often treated, and the fact that I felt like I was held to a completely different standard than other people simply because I was a missionary. I also watched the kindness of people I cared about be constantly taken advantage of, and that made me even more angry.

But as much as I could rant about the injustices I encountered in the workplace, I can’t deny the fact that the person I have become the most angry with is myself.

Because I couldn’t fix everything I wanted to fix in two years. Because even though I had the title of missionary, I was no holier than before. I still got cranky when I was overworked, hungry, or things just weren’t going my way. I still said things I regretted in moments of frustration, almost every day.

Because when people tell me about bad experiences they have had at a church and ask why they should go back, I do not have an answer. Because I go through phases where I ask myself that same question. Because even though I worked as hard as I could for two solid years, there are still countless insurmountable problems in this community that I now call home.

As I reflect on all of this, a quote comes to mind from my favorite philosopher, Mr Rogers. It’s actually a song that he sang, called “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?”

Since trying to ignore the anger that I felt and hoping it would just go away did not work, I now have to figure out what to do with it. I could use it to try to inspire change, but I have learned over the past two years that change is often a painfully slow process.

And so for now, I will start by simply acknowledging it. The thing about anger is that, at least in my experience, it starts to lose it’s power as soon as it is brought into the light. Even as I write about the work related trials I faced, I think of all of the children I worked with, and how much joy they brought me. And when I think of all of difficult things I went through, I know that it was worth it to get to know them. They are some of the best people I have ever met.

Lamentations

I recently completed my term as a US-2, and spent a week at home visiting my family and friends.

During that week, I was asked nearly ten times if I had "found" a boyfriend, as if people thought I had been commissioned by the church for the sole purpose of moving across the country and searching for someone to enter into a relationship with.

I was not asked about the children I have spent almost every weekday with for the past two years. I was not asked about the culture of this community that I have grown to love. I was not asked about the friends I have made, or the things I do for fun.

I was not asked about the state of my faith, about the ways in which it has been challenged and changed by this experience. I was not asked about the things that I have struggled with, the things I have seen that have broken my heart, the things that have made me angry.

When I returned home after spending two years of my life as a missionary for the church, I was not asked to share any of my experiences with the church I am a member of. I also did not volunteer to speak, so perhaps that one is on me.

I was told by several people that they could never move to Alaska because it's too cold, a backhanded way of saying that they don't understand why I would enjoy it. I resisted the urge to respond that nobody ever asked them to move here, and that I could never stay in Virginia because it's too hot.

Once during that week, a friend sat down beside me and said "tell me all about it," and then listened while I did. And then on the way to the airport to return here, in the midst of talking about farming equipment and boats and trucks, all of the things I grew up rolling my eyes about when they dominated family conversations, but are now oddly comforting when I hear about them, my brother asked the question that meant the most to me. "Are you happy to be going back to Nome?"

Over the past two years, it has often seemed as if my happiness is the last thing on anyone's mind. And I tried my best not to complain about it, because that's what I signed up for. But I have not yet reached a point of selflessness where I never have the urge to talk about myself sometimes, or just feel like someone cares enough to want to know how I feel.

During this experience, I found that it became difficult to write about situations as they were happening, and my demanding job never seemed to allow my mind to slow down and gather my thoughts together enough to write a decent blog post anyway. But now life has slowed down a little, and I'm ready to look back and remember, and to look forward to what's next.

Perhaps it is not in my best interest to return with such a brutally honest post, but if there's one thing that this experience has taught me, it's that sometimes a brutally honest conversation is the best way to move forward.

A Good Enough Christmas

     When Pastor Charlie asked me to speak today, he mentioned that the topic should relate to Christmas. At first, this seemed like a pretty easy task. There’s no shortage of material, because out of all of the stories in the Bible, the Christmas story is the most well-known. Even those who don’t attend church regularly have most likely heard about the birth of Jesus at some point, or at least heard a reference to it in a Christmas song or movie. 

     The problem turned out to be finding something to say about Christmas that hasn’t already been said. I grew up in a family that went to church pretty regularly, and If I add up all the years of my life, that’s twenty-three Christmas sermons I’ve heard. And considering the fact that most pastors start talking about Christmas at the beginning of Advent, it feels like I’ve heard just about every aspect of Christmas talked about at some point. 

     I’ve heard the same narrative throughout my whole life, about Mary riding to Bethlehem on a donkey and Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room in the inn. I can tell you how many wise men showed up, and what they brought with them. I don’t lack knowledge about Christmas, but there have been times this year I have felt lacked the usual joy this season brings. I have always been taught that Jesus was born to bring hope to the world, and I’ve always trusted that. My problem during Christmas since moving to Nome is celebrating a holiday that represents hope, when I am surrounded by circumstances that often feel hopeless. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in Nome and I know that there are many great things about this community. It is probably because I love it so much that I get so discouraged when I see all issues that I would still  

like to resolve.

     How do I make the connection between Bethlehem and Nome? It was easy to get excited about Christmas when I was growing up. I knew that the world wasn’t perfect, and that suffering existed, but I was still able to celebrate Christmas and find hope in what it represents. But now, the suffering is personal. It happens to children I’ve grown to know and love. It happens to people I’ve gotten to know at the food bank. There were many nights before NEST opened up that I found it hard to sleep, knowing that several of my neighbors would be spending the night outside in the cold. 

     Many of you know that I am here as a US-2. We are sent out by the Methodist church into communities that we become a part of and serve alongside. I am very proud to be a US-2, and I take it very seriously, sometimes to a fault. We are supposed to be seeking justice and connecting the church in mission. I remember thinking when I applied for the program that two years was a long time. It didn’t take me very long to realize that it is actually an incredibly short time in which to accomplish all of the things this program sets us up to do. I worry a lot that I am not doing enough, even when I am exhausted at the end of the day from all of the things I have tried to do. 

     In the process of trying to sort out all of these thoughts in my head, and make the connection between the birth of Jesus and the hope it represents, and all of those situations around me that feel hopeless, I considered a person in the story I’d never given much thought before now. As a woman, it’s fairly easy to empathize with Mary, especially knowing how young she was when she was given such a huge responsibility. But Jesus had another earthly parent, who also had a great responsibility, and I’ve never really given him much thought.

     I wasn’t able to find many details about Joseph in the Bible, but I can’t help but think that there must have been times he felt inadequate. And that is the root of my Christmas problem this year. I have been aware of this hope forever, and I became a US-2 so I could share it with others. Looking back on the past sixteen months, it would be easy to tell you all the times I’ve made mistakes, and all of the ideas I’ve had that just didn’t work. But if you asked me to pinpoint a time I brought hope to someone, I would have to think for a very long time before I could come up with anything. I made a covenant to advocate for justice, and I think about that lot, when I’m standing in the kitchen at Boys and Girls Club, trying to put together a meal that covers all of the demands of the USDA, and looking up every five minutes to ask yet another child to please stop sitting, or standing, on the pool table. As I was working on writing this, I thought that if Pastor Charlie heard the way I sometimes speak to children when my patience is being tested, he would seriously rethink his decision to allow me into the pulpit. The fact that I so frequently lose my patience even though I’ve worked with these children for over a year now is just another way I feel inadequate to do the job I promised to do. 

     Working at the Boys and Girls Club, I spend a lot of time with other people’s children. I am obviously not their parent, and I have never even met most of their parents. Yet, I play a role in helping them with their homework, making their dinner and correcting their behaviors when needed, all things my parents did for me. I feel a great responsibility to help them reach their full potential, and I also struggle with the reality that at the end of the day, my position as a staff member of an after school program has its limits. I can help them create some positive memories for a few hours after school, but that is where my sphere of influence stops. I wonder if Joseph felt this way about raising Jesus. He could provide all of the important things that earthly fathers should, but he knew that Jesus was on earth to complete a mission he could take no part in. 

     At a conference about after-school programs I recently attended in Anchorage, there was a speaker who gave a piece of advice to all of the attendees. She said that when making difficult decisions, we should let good enough be good enough. When I initially heard this, I did not like it at all. I am constantly aware that I only have two years to be a US-2, so every decision I make feels very important. I also work with children, so it often feels like everything I do is going to affect their development either positively or negatively. I don’t want to look back on these years and see that they were just good enough. As I thought about Joseph and his role in being a father figure to God’s son, I realized that I can’t let the fear of being wrong stop me from ever making a decision about anything.

     When Joseph first heard that Mary was going to have a child that wasn’t his, the Bible says that he had in mind to divorce her quietly. At the time, he could have had her stoned, so divorcing her was actually one of the most honorable things he could think to do. One of the few things we are told about Joseph is that an angel visited him and told him not to be afraid to stay with Mary. In that moment, Joseph had a decision to make. He could say that raising a child he didn’t plan for was too much. He could have cracked under the pressure of raising such an important person. But he did what he was asked to do, and history unfolded in the way God intended it to. 

     He was good enough, and that was all God needed him to be. For the rest of this Christmas season, I am going to try to focus on that. I wish that I could provide the kind of Christmas I grew up with to every child who comes to the Boys and Girls Club, but that is out of my power. So, I will keep making ornaments with them, like the paper chains I used to make with my brother when I was growing up. Christmas won’t change their circumstances, but I have to trust that if I do everything I can to make it good enough, God will do the rest.

     Recently, someone offered to make me a kuspuk. I have wanted one for a long time, but wasn’t sure if I should have one since I am not Native. I know that plently of non-native people where them here in Nome, but I still felt I needed some reassurance that it was okay.  I decided to ask one of the teens who comes to Boys and Girls Club what she thought of non-native people wearing them, since teens can usually be counted on to be brutally honest about things like that. She assured me that she saw nothing wrong with non-native people wearing kuspuks, and I laughed when she said her only request was that I never ask if she lives in an igloo. 

     When she came in a few days later and I was wearing the finished product, her eyes lit up. She said that she liked it, and in that rare moment, I felt that I was good enough. 

I was just a white person wearing a kuspuk, trying to have a positive impact on Native youth, showing up and messing up a lot, and losing my patience a little too frequently. And like Joseph tasked with raising the son of God, it was enough, because that’s the way God planned it. 

This year, I hope to not have a Merry Chirstmas, but a good enough Christmas. And I hope the same for all of you. 

A Time of Wrestling

     In every writing class I've ever taken, from high school journalism to research writing in college, I've been taught that one of the most important rules of writing is to know who your audience is. This makes a lot of sense, because if you know who you are talking to, you can say what you want to say in the most effective way possible.
With a blog, it's hard to know who my audience is. I can see how many people are reading and of course whoever leaves a comment, but that's about it. Based on what information I do have, I used to think that many of the people reading were people who went to my church and I based the way I wrote on that information.
     I have not been to that church in fourteen months and have not been in contact with many people from it in that same amount of time. Since I left it, it has gone through an interim pastor and now has a new pastor who I have never met. It would appear from what I can see on social media that many people who attended there fourteen months ago do not anymore. I have a lot of opinions about some things that have happened there, but I also understand that I'm hearing everything secondhand from thousands of miles away. Now more than ever, I don't know who my audience is.
     I just got back from visiting one of the Native villages near Nome, and I had four days of no internet and fewer hours of work than I'm accustomed too, and a lot of time to think. I thought a lot about this post, and what I wanted to say. I thought a lot about why I have a blog, and why I think it's worth my time to write things for people to read, especially if I'm not sure who those people are.
     I've given myself a lot of excuses for not writing much lately, but during my time in the village I finally let myself face the real reason I haven't written much lately, a frustration with my supposed audience.
     Maybe I'm mad because church taught me about the hungry being fed, and the homeless being taken in, and it let me believe that that it genuinely cared about people.  It painted a picture of a world where justice prevails, and led me to believe that goodness will win in the end. It did not prepare me for all of the times it won't. It did not inform me that following what Jesus said only matters to the church until you no longer have enough time, resources, or money to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless.
Every time I drive down Front Street, it makes me sad when I see so many people who don't have a permanent place to live, and seeing the way even the church treats them hurts me deeply. Maybe I'm just naive, but the faith I inherited from my grandmothers at a very young age led me to believe that no one should have to go without food or shelter, regardless of the life choices they have made.
I've wanted to write about this subject for a long time, but I shied away from it because of my fear of what my audience would think. No church wants to hear that the missionary they commissioned is angry, they want to hear the success stories that happen once the anger has passed. And no community wants to hear that a missionary living among them is struggling with these issues, because we are expected to put aside our own problems and always be helpful.
   A few years ago, I was going through a hard time and tried to keep a scheduled speaking arrangement at church after I wasn't able to go on the mission trip I was supposed to speak about. Needless to say, that did not go well. Afterwords, my pastor at the time told me it seemed like I was wrestling with God. I was initially embarrassed to receive this comment from a pastor, but he did not seem to disapprove of my wrestling, he only seemed to be making an observation.
     I think I'm having another time of wrestling right now, maybe not with God, but with everything I've been taught about God and what it means to be a person of faith, and how that holds up, or doesn't, against the harsh realities of the world. And maybe I am breaking the most important rule of writing by saying things my audience might not want to hear, but I do not think I will be able to continue writing further until these things have been said. Maybe I'm breaking one of the most important rules of writing,  intentionally writing things I know it could be hard for m audience to hear, but in a way I'm honoring another piece of advice from a very influential journalism teacher who encouraged his students learn the rules, so we could break them.

   

A Year in Review

     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. 

     

     

     

Long Term Lesssons

     It's the middle of summer, which means it's the peak of short term mission season. There are currently two mission teams here in Nome (that I am aware of), one of them staying in the place where I live, and the other coming to the place where I work. This is the first time in my life that I will see these teams come and go from a place that I will stay in, and it's given me a lot to think about.
     First, I should say that short term and long term is all about perspective. When I started out here, two years sounded like a long time, but now that I'm almost a year in, I know that it's really not. I'm almost halfway done and there is still so much I have left to learn. I also know that to people who have devoted their entire lives to mission work, two years is short term.  I have been on a ten day mission trip, a three week mission trip, and now I am in the middle of a two year experience that I don't like to call a trip because I have a permanent address and I am living as a part of this community. This has been my experience, and it is only from this experience that I can speak. Other people will have different experiences, and that does not make either of us right or wrong.
     When I look at these teams of people and try to see the world through their eyes, I admit that I think of some of the things they will not do. They will never have to experience what it means to be a mandated reporter, and they will never sit in Trauma 101 or suicide prevention training. They will be gone before they become familiar, so they will not know what it's like when you're no longer new and exciting. They will get tired, exhausted even, but they will not be here long enough to go through periods of burnout. They might learn a little about the boarding schools and generational trauma, but they will not be here long enough to see how it is woven so tightly into the fabric of the community that you can almost miss it if you don't know where to look.
     One of the things I've noticed about mission work is that everyone loves to call it "God's work." Although I think this title is quite pretentious, (imagine the reaction if an accountant, or teacher, or stay at home parent dared to give their work such a title, even though their work can easily be just as Godly as mine), I guess I can understand where it comes from. And if there's one thing I know at this point in my life, it's there is a whole lot about God and God's work that I do not know.
     So, the short term teams will do what they feel is their part of their work, and I will continue to do mine. When they express their excitement about being in a place where a reality show was filmed, I will try not to roll my eyes, if only for the sole reason that my mother taught me that it's rude to do that, and I suppose missionaries should try not to be rude. When I see them excited for the work they are doing, I will be happy for them. I will do my best not to join the debate about whose work is more important and more effective, because my desire to do this comes from a selfish place, not a call from God.
     These teams will leave soon, but not without teaching me something. I have very strong feelings about the way mission work should be done, especially in a region that has been so deeply damaged by people calling themselves missionaries. But my strong feelings do not make me the ultimate authority on the subject. And if we are indeed going to have the boldness to call this God's work, then I should be so busy consulting God about how my part of the job is to be done that I have no time left over to criticize what anyone else is doing.

A random picture of a wildflower I took recently, because nothing else seemed to fit with this post.

Do I Look Busy?

     It was a young volunteer that asked the question, after the rush of people had died down and we had a moment to sit quietly at the food bank.

She held up a nearby clipboard, pretending to write on it.

"Jennie, do I look busy?"

     She was just playing, probably mimicking actions she's seen from from adults. She had no idea she had just vocalized a question I'm constantly asking myself.
     Being this busy is a somewhat new thing to me since moving here, and that's part of why I cling to it so much. In the months before I moved, I was without a job and bored out of my mind in an unhealthy way. For this reason, I sometimes equate the busyness I now experience with the overall healthy mental state I feel like I'm in, and I know that this association could potentially lead to problems if I'm not careful. But it's more than just my own mind that tries to tell me that busy is good.
      I had lots of opportunities back home to do Sunday school classes and Bible studies with women just a few years older than me, and I always found it a bit backwards how much time was spent talking about how to fit God into our busy lives. I never understood how it has become such an admirable thing to be so busy with our own lives that even God is just another commitment that we scramble to fit in somewhere.
     When I think of the women in my own family, I think of busyness. There's always something to be done, usually something selfless and helpful to others. One of my favorite pictures is of me as a young child, laying on the floor surrounded by my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother. When I first discovered this picture, the thing that struck me the most about it was that it showed four generations of women in my family all sitting down at one time. But it also serves as a reminder that no matter how busy the women in my family were, they were never to busy to love people, including me. There have been a few moments over the past months when I've been able to see a glimpse of them within myself, and I can't think of many things at all that make me prouder than that.
     As I sit here trying to finish writing this post, my mind keeps wandering to the last minute things I need to do for the day camp I'm leading starting tomorrow. I want it to be a success, and I've tried my best to make sure that it will be. But what if my best isn't good enough?
    That question is often the driving force of my busyness, and I wonder if the women of the generations before me ever asked themselves the same thing. What I do know is that their busyness came from, and still does come from a place of love and a willingness to serve others, not a desire for self promotion or worldly recognition.
     I think it's going to take me a long time to figure out how busy is the right amount for me, but I hope that I will always remember the women who taught me what it means to be busy for the right reasons.