Sometimes I feel surrounded by suffering. While there is some suffering that we encounter personally, most of it is those we love suffering in our midst. I cry so many tears for this community: for individual children, for vulnerable women, for seemingly hopeless situations. For poverty, for abuse, for addiction, for loneliness.
There was a point a few years ago where I needed to learn to mourn for these things: to let myself cry, to let myself hurt deeply; to see that I am mourning with God, for things that hurt him even more. This has taken many forms: writing, worship, meditating; most recently, it took the form of a jar. My sister gave me the sweet gift of a Bottle of Tears jar. It became a physical way to write down griefs and losses in our lives and community, and really, to release them. To drop them into a bottle, where they are not forgotten—they are recorded, literally, and yet no longer mine to carry.
It filled quickly over the past few months. There were a few days, a few events, where I would simply walk out of the community, overwhelmed, to write things down and drop them in the bottle. And while it was a beautiful way to mourn, to record, to recognize suffering and pain: sometimes I didn’t want to go back into it again. I didn’t want to return into the community, the community center.
Ever.
And yet I can’t really avoid it: it’s my house, my kitchen, and honestly, my life. I’m there all the time.
But you can be present somewhere and not be there. And so I was.
Quite a few painful encounters happened over Breakfast Club hours. It has naturally brought the community together and brought ailments and sorrows and requests. So while I kept popping in, I stopped sitting with the kids; I stopped chatting with the parents. And while it is Thida’s job and she doesn’t need me, and all the other million excuses I could use, I know that I was hiding when I could.
During Playhouse, my goal is to engage with the kids. To play games with them, to ask about their days and families; to learn who likes who and who passed their exams. And sometime in recent weeks, I noticed I was playing the rock game everyday—a game I can focus on; a game I can play and not chat; a game that looks engaged when I know I’m not. I’m using it to hide amidst forty children. (A feat, nonetheless.)
Flour & Flowers has also been difficult as of late. I had some interesting encounters with one of the ladies, and they were painful. She was frustrated with me and handled it somewhat elementary—imagine a junior high cafeteria scenario, and then play it out in your kitchen and street. I was exhausted of the work we’ve put in, the sacrifices we’ve made, only to be hurt. I started wishing it would end; that business would dry up; that this business endeavor could be over. I was tired of all my Fridays being consumed.
And as you can see: I lost joy in the work, which is also our whole life and our house. It’s so hard to escape.
But it’s also so much more than I can bear: too many problems to fix, to hear, to carry. Too many to even write down and drop in a jar.
And while I tried to keep mourning each piece of sorrow, it became easier to avoid it. To hide. Mourning defined my heart more than anything else. And while I still believe that God carries those tears and sufferings—and I’m thankful he’ll continue to, because they come day after day—I can’t stop there. I can’t let that hide my hope, my salvation, the joy of the Lord.
And if I’m hiding from my life, from my best friends, from my ministry: I don’t look much like Christ.
If I’m exasperated at the first call or frustrated that someone is sick again: I don’t look much like Christ.
Friedrich Nietzsche once said of Christians he knew, “I would believe in their salvation if they looked a little more like people who have been saved.”
How do I show my salvation? How do I show the goodness of God? How do I show his joy? How do I find pleasure in my toil?
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I was listening to a podcast recently on celebration (an excellent one, if I may say: Upside Down Podcast, episode 26: Commitment to Celebration). They referenced the story of Esther, where she fasted, along with all the Jews, for three days and three nights before approaching the king.
The task was too big for her; for all of them. She was in over her head, and so they fasted.
He had heard their cries; he rescued them. In their inadequacy, he took care of them. So then they celebrated all that God had done.
Esther 8 says that the city “shouted and rejoiced. The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday.”
I see a parallel in the feeding of the 5,000+, where Jesus tells his disciples to feed the crowd. It’s quickly apparent they are inadequate to do so: to provide the food or even the money for such a crowd. It is too big for them. But in their inadequacy, he took care of them. And then they feasted.
And here, this is where we sit: we are inadequate for this neighborhood. We are way in over our heads (and have been for years) to handle the language, the lifestyle, the suffering, the needs, the poverty, the problems.
We can’t fix so many of them. It’s like saving an entire people group or feeding a host of families with a few loaves of bread and fish.
But in our inadequacy, he will take care of us.
And we must celebrate that.
Enter our weekly celebrations! We’re now taking once a week to fast, followed by a small “feast”–really just something fun for Mae Sot, whether that’s a homemade pizza or ordered in Indian food or a homemade funfetti cake!–whatever feels like a “feast” to us! We’re setting up a little party.
In the podcast, they referenced this organization‘s Commitment to Celebration, and there are two pieces of it we are using as a form of liturgy for our weekly feast. The first is this:
I will listen for the echo of rejoicing in heaven when those I minister among step into the light or even take a small step forward, and will remind myself that persistent celebration rolls back the power of the enemy.
Just a couple weeks in, it’s been incredible to dwell on this. Each week we’ve been sharing the little ways we saw the kingdom come this week; the little joys; the littlest steps forward. And some weeks, we are just celebrating the fact that this is not the end, and HE WINS. Sometimes we are just choosing persistent celebration.
But we’re finding that’s a powerful thing.
I’ll end with the second piece of liturgy we are using at our weekly shindig. This has been one of the warmest concepts to me lately, and I’ve been wrapping it around me:
I will celebrate
the light of Christ in a world of darkness,
the life of Christ in a culture of death,
the liberty of Christ in a kingdom of captivity,
and the hope of Christ in an age of despair.
I will rejoice always & in everything give thanks.