Throwing up in a squatty potty is not cool.
It’s just not cool.

We visited another refugee camp this week called Mae Ra Moe. It’s about seven hours north of Mae Sot.

It prompted thoughts.

Upon first look, a refugee camp doesn’t seem so bad. That sounds horrible at first, I know, but it’s true.  You can look at a refugee camp and look at surrounding villages, and it doesn’t seem so different. They have homes, made out of bamboo and similar to what they’d have within their own country. They have food, they have schools, they have community.  And for our western minds, it even looks a little dreamy.  There’s an adventure appeal to the bamboo huts with leaved roofs set against a breathtaking backdrop. There’s even a beautiful simplicity to a life where you can walk to gather vegetables or visit a local market. You start your own fire to cook rice and bathe in a nearby river. It’s simple. It’s natural. And to our “developed”, concrete-filled, use-your-car-everyday lives, it’s refreshing.

But if you look deeper, it’s actually horrifying. It is simplicity, but by force. It’s being unable to move forward.  It’s being unable to work and earn a living. It’s being unable to leave–to visit family, to move, to see other places. It’s life within a few square kilometers. It’s not making choices, but taking what you’ve been handed forcefully.

As we walked around this refugee camp this week, I saw a sign hanging throughout the camp, posted by the TBBC who provide all of the basic needs to all the camps along the Thai-Burma border (food, bamboo, leaves, clothes, etc.). It reads, in three languages (English, Karen, Burmese):

Please be reminded that unless your name is on the authorized exemption list with the Section Leader,all persons 18 years old and above are required to present yourself at the distribution point with your ration book and UN registration in order to receive your rations. People without UN registration must be verified by TBBC staff with official TBBC photos inside the ration book.  No attendance = no rations.

For some reason, this sign brought it all home. I think it’s the word “rations.”

Suddenly, this refugee camp becomes a prison.

We have been passing quite a few IOM (International Organization for Migration) resettlement trucks recently.  They leave the camps filled with families chosen for resettlement on their way to Mae Sot for a week or so of “preparation” and training before they will fly half way around the world into another life.

I have so many mixed feelings. Part of me is so excited for them: they’ve been chosen! They’ve been waiting, and it’s here. They are about to experience freedom in ways they’ve never known. They are walking through grand doors of opportunity.

All at the same time, I ache for them. I ache for the car sickness I can see in their faces having not ridden in cars much, but facing hours and hours of traveling ahead.

I ache for the stares they will face at the airport; the feeling of being so small in a world that is growing so quickly in front of them as they travel from place to place.  I ache for the doors of opportunity that are also doors of so many challenges.  I know just a small picture of what they will face, and I know they will be safer; they will be freer. But they will also be faced with so many choices, so many temptations, so many surprises, so much love and so much hate.

…the person across from you is having coagulated blood for lunch.

Yum.

Things we are learning about working with and NGO on the Thai-Burma border :

Things change.

And when you think they are done changing, they’ll change again.

What a good Monday!

First, we were up at 6am today to deliver our weekend guest (a fellow Partners staff member from Chiang Mai) and our volunteer all of last week (also headed back to Chiang Mai) to their ride.  I came back to the house pretty exhausted and overwhelmed at the mess of dishes, the bathroom needing cleaned, the floor needing swept, the trash needing to go out, and four loads of laundry waiting to be done. And plus the work at Partners ahead of us: we’re a little swamped currently with our job, the children’s project fill-in we’re doing, and our language learning.

Doesn’t sound like a great start to a Monday, right?

In sweeps Stephen. He decides I should go back to sleep a little this morning while he heads off to the office and staff meeting, then have time today to clean and get caught up while he “represents us” at the office.

Amazing.

One of the sweetest things he can do for me. I slept for an hour more, got nearly all the cleaning done (only half the laundry because it has to air dry, which just takes time), and generally wrapped my head around all that had to be done this week. It was so sweet of him to see me at the end of my rope and save me 🙂

So I had a wonderful morning and afternoon, then Stephen returned later today for us to work together on some Partners things. And then…

…We got an email from my brother-in-law, Chris, telling us they he & Jenn had booked tickets to come see us in October and November! We are so excited to officially have our first guests on the calendar with tickets purchased and an itinerary to visit for three whole weeks!

I’m nearly bursting with excitement and anticipation 🙂

And then we had a fun night out with the Conway team in town, enjoying dinner and ice cream. It ended a really wonderful day where I’m really thankful for Stephen.

Oh, and the best quote from Stephen today as he told me about his time at the office: “In staff meeting they asked me to pray in Karen. Are you kidding me? Tdah blut, Yeh suu. [“Thank you, Jesus”] That’s it.”

I’m realizing it oh-so-slowly.

It’s taking a variety of situations to sink in.

But I’m learning that we’ll be returning to a different place when we go back. A different place full of different people.

Life keeps happening without us there. Of course we know this, but seeing it happen is very, very different than I could ever describe.

Consider family: the family I knew as a child is very different from the family I’m a part of now. We’ve been changing and growing and moving around and letting life happen slowly over many years.  And sometimes, when I realize it won’t ever go back to just mom and dad and four girls piled into a blue minivan on a very long drive through the midwest, it’s a little sad. But the growth was good. The place we’re at now is good. And so you celebrate it as movement.

[Movement: that’s the best word I have for it right now.]

But not being there is different. The movement continues, but you’re not there to appreciate it; it’s simply missed. And you return to a new place, new people, new growth; a completely foreign place.

Sometimes in my conversations with people I can see the changes. Being in a completely different place with a completely different life changes me and thus changes our relationship. I can sit around talking with the closest friend or my dearest sister, but I can see: her life has continued, my life has continued. She has changed, I have changed. And now, we’re in a new place as new people that have missed a part of the others’ life.

Fast forward that about two years.

Every time I think about it, it overwhelms me. Like a sick feeling in your stomach. The only other thing I can think of that gave me this feeling was the thought of eternity when I was a kid. I actually used to do everything I could to not think about eternity; it freaked me out that there is no end.  It would make my controlling brains explode to think of time never having a beginning or completion.

In that arena, I’ve moved on. I’ve learned to trust that God is much bigger than me and it doesn’t matter if I don’t get it. I’m here for now, I’m hoping for something greater, and I’ll be there forever. And somehow that’s enough truth to rest on.

And I guess that’s what’s missing from the current equation of missing out on the life that continues in America and the new places and people being created. I don’t trust it. What if I don’t like the new changes? What if I don’t fit into them?  My controlling brain explodes at the idea that I simply can’t be [wholeheartedly] a part of both.

Yep. Same feeling in my stomach as when I was five.

And though I can’t yet grasp in my heart, I know the answer is the same: that God is much bigger than me and it doesn’t matter if I don’t get it. I’m here for now, I’m hoping for something greater, and I’ll be there forever.  And somehow, that will be enough truth to rest on.