Day 1 continued

I ran out of words last night and hit a wall so off to bed I went without finishing up my memories from yesterday.
After lunch we divided into team of 4-6 and headed out for home visits. I feel like what I'm about to say is so typical, but you really can't understand what it means to live in squalor until you see if for yourself. In a similar way, I didn't fully realize what damage could be done by a tornado until in late April when I drove to our friends', the Souders, home. The loss of trees and destruction to the houses around them was so severe that I actually stopped the car b/c I had no idea what street was theirs. I've been to their house tons of time - I know exactly what street they live on even w/o looking at the street name. But on that particular morning I might as well been in a foreign city. The landscape looked so different. Beautiful old trees that marked the corner where gone. And as I timidly pulled onto their street looking for something familiar to get my bearings together I literally thought this looks like a war zone. I know, so cliche to say. But there's such a difference in being able to intellectually picture the devastation and then staying there in the middle of it experiencing it with all your senses.
That was a good bulk of my afternoon memories yesterday. The packed in concrete houses winding around the streets with no open grass or even field for the kids to play on was not unfamiliar to me. It looks like parts of Mexico. And even what I hadn't seen myself didn't phase me too much b/c I had a pretty good mental idea of how everything looks based on pics and roger's trips before. But then we rounded a corner and had to duck through the doorway to a room of a family we were visiting. It's a room. A small room where the only light coming in is when the front door is open, the window blocked by the cabinet is open, and the rest comes through the gaps where the ceiling and wall don't exactly met. There were 5-6 chairs,  a table, a small sink area, and a TV cabinet. That was the whole room. A stack of sheets and pillow were in the corner, and I guess at night they stack the chairs, turn the table on its side and all 5 of them (mom, dad, and 3 kids (6,4,2) sleep on a rough linoleum floor. They had elecricity to run one flourescent light in the middle of the room and one fan. There was a small tv in the cabinet and several bottles and such for decorations. They were proud of this home b/c they had it. Renting it instead of owning it but still glad to have a home to call their own.
So there's a bunch of rabbits to trace from my experience yesterday, but the one sticking with me the most is the power of being there. I could have described this family and their home pretty well w/o ever setting foot in their house. But what I can't describe for you is what it felt, smelled and looking like really. There's a multi-sensory experience that is necessary to truly understand someone's situation. It's the difference between knowing someone has a long rode to walk and actually sitting for 12+ hours with them in the waiting room. It's the difference between discussing what tips we should try in parenting our children and then choosing to stand there in support of that mom for 11 minutes while her child tries to find his way. Encouraging someone to be consistent is different than staying with them while they are consistent. Knowing that waiting will be hard is different than being with them through the wait. And being able to describe physical poverty is much different than sitting in the midst of it.
And in all of these situations that one thing that pops out for me is they are not places that last. Waiting finally ends. Power struggles finally break. And poverty is rescued by hope. A lot of even the workers at the Compassion project still live in the same kinds of homes they did as kids. But, in their words, their perspective is fundamentally different b/c now they have Christ. They don't see their life of poverty anymore. Yes, they are financially poor and need consistent education, resources, medical care, etc. but there's a perspective in their life that where they live doesn't define them. What they have or don't have doesn't describe who they are. I want to continue to know that for myself and teach it to my kids. What I have doesn't define me. And what I don't have doesn't describe who I am.
It was good to sit in RoseAnn's home and see her life. It encourages me on mine. Both of us want to be good stewards of what we have, how we raise our kids, how we invest in our marriages, how we run the tasks of our day. But our LIFE is defined only by the love and grace of Christ.