i almost missed it

It’s so surreal that I’m here. I’m writing this from the floor of Holy Mountain Methodist Church in Phnom Penh, Cambodia while listening to 30 women from districts all over Cambodia discuss what the most desperate problems are in their respective communities. Every district reports the same problems: illiteracy, kids dropping out of school at age 7, persecution as Christians, pointless violence among young people, no clean water, drunk husbands, disempowered women, no sanitation, no concept of hygiene, no health care, migration to Thailand, babies born on dirt floors and women bleeding to death hours after the baby’s born, no teachers, un- or underpaid pastors. They’re trying to decide among themselves how they as Methodist women can use information they’ve learned from this 3-day women’s conference to counter them…as if a series of lectures, even pertinent ones, could really solve nation-wide, age-old crises of chronic poverty, injustice, and governmental corruption.

Yesterday, we had people from Cambodia (34), the Philippines (4), Singapore (2), Kenya (1), Zimbabwe (1), Bangladesh (1), and the US (me!) all in one room listening to presentations on what women leadership looks like in the Cambodian church. Most of my attention was fixed on the Khmer speaker and Tola, our interpreter, because I was taking a steady stream of dictation for future publications. But once in a while it hit me: Wow. I’m here sweating in a church cooled off by fans, sitting on a cushion on the floor or in a wire chair for 14 hours a day, complaining in my mind to high heaven about the inefficiencies of the workshop and how Cambodian Standard Time isn’t quite to my Western liking and that I didn’t get my coffee that morning…and I almost missed it.

Most of what I do here is help the missionaries share stories: stories about blind acid burn victims who are now struggling to keep their family alive, stories about modern medical miracles and the transforming the power of healing prayer, stories about how hard-working people with only a small micro-loan can build for themselves entire businesses and send their children to school. When you’re hearing so many stories, you can sometimes miss it. I guess it’s like becoming desensitized to violence in the US because all our movies are painted with it – or, probably more accurately, like living on your own personal island in the Bahamas and, after day after day of monotonous beauty, eventually taking your little isle of paradise for granted. It’s a fine balance, visiting children in an orphanage and having to sit and smile while they perform dances for you, their cherished American visitors; it’s a fine balance you have to maintain between holding it all at a distance – keep it in a picture or a Word document, just don’t let them get too close – and cratering into a little ball of sobs right on the spot. I’m only here for four short months. There are enough wrenching stories here to make you want to hide where it’s pretty and clean, where there’s potable water available to the public and a solid justice system and freedom and functioning child protection services. Where you don’t have to hear about a mother threatening to sell her six-year-old daughter into the sex trade unless her 16-year-old daughter reenters it…a place where you don’t have to hear about all of that unless you want to. But see? I almost missed it again.

I almost missed it as I listened to and wrote down the testimony of Srey Aun, a woman blinded by an acid attack at age 19 and now, with the help of a vision from God teaching her how to crochet (!!!), now sells bags at the market to support herself and her family. I kept her story on the page and wouldn’t let it sink in – there are so many acid burn victims here that an organization has founded BABS, “Bags by Acid Burn Survivors.” One Srey Aun is one too many. But I almost missed it, too, as I listened to my housemate talk about her work at Bloom, an organization that rescues women from the sex industry and trains them in a craft. She told me about a brothel owner who’d become so sick that he was even coming to Christians for help and prayer. Half of me tried to be indifferent to the incredible pain she deals with every day, and the other half empathized with all the women under the brothel owner’s power. And, torn between the two extremes, I nearly missed it.

On one hand, apathy; on the other, overwhelming despair that flirts with fatalism. Sometimes it’s so hard to recognize God’s face, his hope, in it all.

One Zambian song goes like this: “When Jesus comes, everything is going to be great.” I think they got it.

I’ve only been here a month, but every day it’s a struggle to wade past the incredible brokenness here to see hope. Sometimes the needs are too overwhelming, and I switch into “protection mode” – I hide in my little safe house of apathy. It’s difficult to know that I’m only one person, that God only gave me a limited amount to do here on earth, and that he will take care of the rest. I forget that he’s God and I’m not. It’s hard to remember that I’ll only be able to survive in situations like this if I cling to hope not half the time, not even most of the time, but every single moment. Without hope that this world isn’t all there is and that Jesus is coming again, I’d give up. But with it? Phew, Cambodia is beautiful.

I’m here for three more months. I don’t want to miss it again.