Put Me to Suffering: Reflections on my Missionary Experience

     Before I moved to Nome, my first mission trip had been with a group of people, and my second trip had been to visit missionaries who lived in a community of other missionaries. They were both very communal experiences throughout the whole process. After both of these trips, I had the opportunity to stand in front of a congregation of people and share my reflections. The beauty of these short term missions is that whatever struggles that come with them are brief, and everyone's excitement for you is still fresh when you return.
A two year mission term is not a trip, it is a life change. I moved across the country to a remote place in Alaska, and by the time my two years as a missionary concluded, people back home had moved on to new things and so had I. After a week long visit to see my family, I returned to continue my life in Nome.
     That week was full of much needed time with my family, but it also brought up some confusing emotions for me. I wondered if anyone really cared to hear about the kind of work I had been doing here, or if they would just prefer to hear exciting stories about living in a state most people have only seen on T.V.
     It was recently suggested to me by someone who had no idea that I like to write that maybe writing would be a good way to process my emotions about the two year mission experience that is now over. I did not tell that person that I have not written about those experiences because I have become doubtful that anyone truly wants to hear about them in detail. But, writing is what I do, and so here we are.
      I may have written this before, but there was a very poignant moment on the last day of training when we were practicing for the commissioning service. We were reciting the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer, which contains the line "put me to doing, put me to suffering.". We were made to recite that line several times until we said the words "doing" and "suffering" with equal enthusiasm. Throughout my two years, "put me to suffering" became the first phrase to enter my mind whenever something stressful happened at work. Whether I was asked to take on a weekend project on a week when I had already done at least 40 hours, or when I was trying to juggle multiple tasks and find solutions for constant crises while coworkers twiddled their thumbs, my internal sarcastic mantra was "put me to suffering." It eventually became a twisted joke between myself and my cohort of missionaries whenever one of us was given some extra task to add to the multiple projects we were already responsible for.
 When I said the words "put me to suffering", I was picturing occasional, intermittent suffering. I did not realize that for much of my time as a missionary, it would become part of my daily life. I imagined suffering because of the issues within the community, issues I believed I would work with my placement site to improve. It never crossed my mind that the majority of my suffering would be at the hands of the people who I thought wanted me here. I naively believed I was going to a placement site that had a genuine passion for the causes that the US-2 program is geared towards and I never suspected that young adults moving across the country to work with communities around social justice issues would be taken advantage of by being overworked. US-2 missionaries are on a stipend and therefore did not get paid overtime. From a financial standpoint, I guess it made sense to have us work as much as possible, but from a mental health standpoint it was a very difficult role to play.
     The realization that an apology for this treatment is never going to come is an difficult fact to live with. Learning how to forgive people who don't even understand why they should be sorry is a huge challenge for me. But for the sake of my own well-being, I'm trying.
     The missionary experience was not what I thought it was going to be. I was put to types of suffering that I never saw coming, and my inability to live up to the standards of what others thought a missionary should be caused me to doubt myself at times. But even with the struggles, I still believe the good outweighed the bad. I got to experience what it feels like to become a trusted adult for youth who have every reason not to trust anyone. I developed the kind of friendships that only form when you endure suffering together. And if I ever have to work 60 hour weeks in the future, I have lots of experience to draw from.

A Picture of God

Several years ago when I was in confirmation class before getting baptized, I remember one specific moment that really stuck with me. We were instructed to draw a picture of God, and I remember being completely dumbfounded by this assignment.

Up until that point, I had always pictured God as an old man with a beard wearing a white robe. But when faced with the task of committing the image to paper, my vision suddenly seemed childish. 

I think I ended up drawing some flowers and a sunrise, which still didn’t feel right, but it was the best I could do at the time.

I am a different person now than when I drew that picture. I have moved across the country from the place where my faith began, and I have begun to see that things are much more complex than I realized back then. I no longer believe that the image of God is always flowers and sunshine.

If I was given that assignment today, it is not a bearded old man that I would draw, but a series of moments when I saw God’s image reflected in the people around me.

I would draw a huddle of children from complicated backgrounds facing daily challenges, staring in wonderment at the biggest rainbow any of them had ever seen.

I would draw the Alaska Native elder who gave me, a white missionary, an Iñupiaq name.

I would illustrate the moment in which a teenager who refused to say one word to me for the first six months I was here ran to greet me with a hug when I walked in the door of the Boys and Girls Club to visit last week.

I would draw the moment when my fellow US-2 who moved here with me asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, when she will marry the guy who was my first real “non-missionary” friend in Nome.

We have experienced layers of emotions and stress together that I have never had to experience with another friend. I have not always reacted well to those emotions, and she has seen the worst parts of me. Because she possess enough grace to realize that the way I handle negative emotions is not who I really am, we have been able to forge a solid friendship, and that is something I can only describe as holy.

When I started my two year mission, I felt very confident about the state of my faith. After two years of challenges and experiences that were nothing short of life-changing, I realize that everything is far more complex than I realized back then. I am losing my black and white, good and bad, right and wrong view of the world. I am learning to explore the discomfort of the grey areas.

I may have come through this journey with more questions than answers, but there is one thing I know for sure; If someone asked me for a picture of God, I would know what to draw. 

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.