We like to share with you about our lives, our struggles, the joy, and the difficulty. I always strive to be a bridge of understanding for those living in a developed country to understand how people in other places of the world live. Thankfully we have made good friends here, some in Salinas Grande and throughout Nicaragua. They follow our story on social media just like many of you. I consistently struggle with how to share with both worlds.
Here’s a trivial example: The kids and I made macrame plant holders for our bathroom out of an old hammock. I was thinking about sharing a picture of our tiny little bathroom that the 6 of us share. It is never clean since it is constantly being used but I am so grateful to have a flushing toilet and a shower with water (usually). If I share a picture (on social media), some of my friends from the states might feel shocked to see us all using one small bathroom and the comments will reflect that. My friends from here will see our bathroom and feel shocked by the extravagance. Running water, flushing toilets, and even plants?! Not to mention, I’d have to wait in line for an hour just to get the picture.
We walk this very interesting balance between two worlds. My son, Nolan, has been so frustrated that we won’t let him ride the bus because of the virus. It was his freedom and as he has shared with us before, “It was the only time I felt like a normal kid in our community.” He actually mocks us for driving our “bourgeois” car. I realize what seems like a necessity to me is not. (But I really like having a car!)
I have been reading a biography of Dorothy Day called All is Grace. She has been such a source of inspiration to me because she lived her life near the poor and vulnerable. I can’t really explain a growing belief inside me completely yet, but I have been studying people who have been drawn to stand beside the most vulnerable people in the world and fight for justice. I am learning that I as I walk beside those living in poverty I have a better perspective. It’s not the perspective that, "I have so much and should use it to alleviate poverty." It’s that if I don’t stand close to the vulnerable I get out of wack. I start to live my life too much for my own gain and comfort and not with the mindset of Christ who lived and walked close to the poor. It’s something broken in me, in us. As I grow each day and understand other people and how my decisions have held others down, I am able to put on the mindset of His Kingdom and not my comfort. It is still a struggle and I don’t even have the words to share all that I am learning. But I have read about how Jesus lived and I want to be like those first disciples that threw it all in to follow him.
““What we would like to do is change the world, make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasing for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute — We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.”
Dorothy Day”