Confession

For a while I was a bit panicky when I realized how many of my friends were saying goodbye to Facebook. There were days living out here in the boonies that my once-every-three-months binge fest on internet back in East Africa felt like my only thread of connection to college friends, cousins I hardly ever see, random childhood friends etc. and I gobbled it up like a rare luxury whenever I could. But now that we have internet access on our compound out here (at least most of the time) and I can pick up snippets of near strangers’ political opinions, belly pictures, memes of pop cultural references I no longer understand, and albums brimming over with near-identical sepia-tinted portraits of families of four on a quilt in a field laughing gorgeously at someone just beyond the photographer…I am feeling a bit more sympathetic to the droves of people disconnecting from social media. It’s not just the waves of envy and guilt and homesickness that come with the never-ending newsfeed. For me it’s often trying to figure out which version of myself to put out there. Wondering who is seeing what and if their opinions of my opinions are as divergent as mine are of all of theirs.

I know I worry too much about what people think. I worry about what my American friends would think about my opinions of how they let their daughters dress and what my North African friends would think about how I dress on vacation at the beach. I worry about what my liberal friends would think about my opinions on homosexuality, and what my conservative friends would think about my opinions on gay marriage. I worry about what my MusIim friends (and grandparents, come to think of it) would think about my opinions on the occasional glass of merlot over dinner and what my in-laws would think about what I let my children eat off the ground. And if my indy-music loving friends with good taste in everything musical ever find out about what I think about Pentatonix covers of Nicki Minaj songs I am absolutely going to die.

Maybe some of you can relate.

But as an American (from one of the most conservative counties in one of the most conservative States) who has close MusIim friends and who is living in this age of global political polarization, I find it most difficult to talk about working with MusIims.

The people who read this blog, or at least have at one point or another, are from wildly different walks of life. And when I write I am always worried of upsetting at least one of them. Like the relative who posts about how a MusIim could never be a “real” American when he senses just how bigoted, ignorant and downright ungodly I find many of his ideas. Or the best friend from high school, whose husband left his Christian roots to convert to Islam for her when she hears about the masses of people down the road from us who are seeking Jesus (and how happy that makes me). Or the precious old lady back in the States who daily prays for us when she hears me tell of how being asked if I am a MusIim by people here is a question that greatly honors me. Or the MusIim high-school coaches and teachers who I will always love and respect when they hear me talk about how communities I work with have been devastated by the violence and bigotry of a certain brand of Islam.

Sometimes I don’t know which is worse: unintentionally feeding the fears and abusive politics of the culture wars into which my nationality, “religion” and skin color all drag me, or denying the legitimate horrors my friends and neighbors have faced at the hands of their “religion”.  

Yesterday, seven young women walked a couple hours from a neighboring camp and came by our house for a visit. They are members of a tribe of refugees who are predominantly MusIims, but who have also faced some of the most horrific  things imaginable at the hands of their conservative Islamic government and, of their own initiative, have recently started seeking the way of Jesus en masse. Our visit yesterday was lovely. I don’t know them well yet but look forward to getting to know them better and the conversations still ahead. While we sipped mint tea under the Neem tree in front of my house and watched our kids play yesterday, I sat there thinking, I am drinking tea with a woman in a headscarf named Jihad (I am not making that one up) and we are talking about Jesus’ way of love and how we are going to celebrate the upcoming Eid holiday. How the heck am I going to write about this?

So this if how I decided to do it. To just admit that it is hard. And it is going to keep being hard. So please bear with me, however delighted our uncomfortable my thoughts or experiences might make you. Bear with me as I struggle to communicate sometimes. We are all on the same journey. On many days my closets traveling companions are church-going Americans from whom I have much to learn about faith, joy and generosity. But on other days I keep step with my MusIim brothers and sisters who teach me about patience, forgiveness and prayer. A part of what I am doing here, alongside literacy classes, teacher training, and vernacular language development, is to offer Jesus to those who seek him. He has meant too much to me not to share. But that doesn’t always look like or even mean what you might think. And even as I hold him out open-palmed, I am continually surprised by the ways I find him so graciously  extended back to me in ways I have never seen him before, sometimes offered back by people who don’t even know him yet.