Life as a Refugee

Tonight I was flossing my teeth, a simple ritual I do every night before I go to bed. As I looked in the mirror at the small thread that was in my hands, my mind flashed again to what life would be like if I was a refugee. As silly as it sounds, there would be no dental floss- probably not even a toothbrush some of the time. I inherited bad teeth, so proper dental care is a non-negotiable if I want to keep my teeth in my head. If I was a refugee, my teeth would likely be rotting, and I would be in the non-stop agony of constant toothaches!

Have you ever thought about what life would be like if you lost everything? If you all the sudden had to flee your house with nothing but the clothes on your back. If you had to rely on strangers for every single little thing necessary to survive until tomorrow. Things like dental floss are a novelty! Do you take any medications or perhaps use vitamins? Would your blood sugar be high without them, or you would be having unwanted pregnancies (pretty much every pregnancy in a refugee camp isn't ideal!), or your blood pressure be high, or would you be having migraines, or perhaps problems with your heart? What about dressing yourself- have you thought what it would be like to receive the only clothes you own from rummaging through a box of second-hand items sent from another country? They likely wouldn't fit and for sure wouldn't be your style at all, but you'd have to wear that same outfit day after day after day. And what about eating? Imagine it has been months, or even years, since you were able to decide what you wanted to eat. You eat and drink the exact same thing every morning, every afternoon, and every evening. There are no times when you are in the mood for something and get to simply prepare that. Or have you thought about privacy? You would be living with your entire family, or another family if yours is small, in a tent that's smaller than any bedroom in your house. This tent is where you spend your entire day: eating, sleeping, hanging out with nothing to do... all on top of one another. There is no such thing as 'alone time' when you are required to live in such a way.

More than all those things is the oppression of endless waiting without a known end. Will the war in your country stop? Will the country where you are living grant you the right to work? Will you be given asylum or forced to spend your entire life in limbo? Days are spent laying on the dirt floor dreaming about the times when you had a job. When you were able to cook your own meals. When your children were able to go to school. When there was a doctor around. Things that shouldn't even qualify as dreams, because they are basic human rights, have become what fills your heart. Maybe one day... That is, if you still have the capacity to still hope. Many people don't. Years of living in survival mode strip away the ability to see beyond making it through this moment. There are no more dreams and no more hopes. It's just the hell on earth you are living in today.

It's not very fun thinking about life like this, huh? The reality is that about 60 million people in the world are forced to face this every day right now. Just because you don't have to doesn't mean you are superior to them or that you deserve the life you have and they deserve theirs. I would challenge you to examine your heart as you think about these things. Do you feel compassion that moves you into action? Or do you feel complacent apathy that draws you to X out of this blogpost and continue scanning your Facebook feed? Sixty million people are crying out- what will you do?

The Fight Against Self or The Fight For Justice

Many years ago my pastor preached on Isaiah chapter one, and since that time it has become a favorite of mine. The Word of God is full of commands, some regarding purity laws, some mention various festivals they were to keep, some about sacrifices to be made, some in reference to how they treated others, etc. As much as all of us like to rebel, our hearts really do desire the structure of orders. My flesh would take the Law over Grace any day, and one must only look to various religions to see it pans out the same way: earning one’s redemption. But there are certain rules we like and others we avoid. In the first chapter of Isaiah this is depicted quite well. They had the sacrifices down pat, they had the routine of coming to the temple for their religious days, and they were good at going through the motions of crying out to God. But God calls their bluff- it isn’t originating in their hearts! Enter verses sixteen through seventeen:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”

In light of the cross and the freedom we’ve received through that, the first part of that should be easy. We’ve been washed, we’ve been made clean, Christ has removed our sin, and we are free to live in righteousness! But what I’ve noticed through the years is that this is where the Church gets hung up. Though there is desire to live in such a way, the follow through isn’t there. People who have had such godly potential spend their entire lives in a cyclical spiral of trying to just do better and being unable to find freedom. And because their focus is so absorbed in verse sixteen, they are never able to reach the second half of the command.

I am not a holy person by any means- let’s grab lunch, and I can unpack the massiveness of my depravity for you- but I would say that I seek to live in the latter part of those verses. I want to fight for justice for all people, I want to love the orphan and oppressed and poor, and I want to intercede for them however God allows me to do so! There’s a lot that attacks my thoughts, my heart, and even physically as I try to live this out. I’m constantly tempted to go back to the first part of those verses. I’m wicked. I know how dirty I am. I can’t do anything good on my own. I live like I’m not free so much of the time. And before I know it, I’m hung up again and rendered useless to live out verse seventeen.

As I look at my own heart and the state of the Church, I feel a surge of anger rise within me. You see, we are living in a world that desperately needs the gospel, that needs justice, that needs someone to enter into the suffering. You and I will never do this if we can’t get past our own sinfulness. We can’t help save someone from drowning if we never stop drowning ourselves! God calls us to live in freedom not for our own selves, but for the sake of those He loves that don’t yet know Him. Oh friend, be filled with the Good News- it isn’t about you cleaning yourself up or making yourself better. He’s done that already- take the steps to open your eyes to this. I battle this on a daily basis, but my hope is that I (we) am never too bogged down to look to the cross, see the victory bought us there, and get back up to enter the fray. 

Uncompromising Pursuit

I was twenty-one when I 'fell in love' for the first time. We were working at a summer camp together, and it was one of the funnest times of my life. He had so many of the characteristics I'd always dreamed of one day marrying a guy with. But there was one thing that really bothered me throughout the summer and even spurred me on to tell him no to dating as the summer drew to a close. I was very imperfect in my relationship with God, I still very much so am, but it was a deep passion of mine to be known by Him, to press on to know Him, and to make Him known. I tried to spend time with Him daily, I tried to spend time in prayer, I tried to talk about Him often, etc. As broken as I was, I wanted to fight hard to pursue Him. He was my Treasure! This guy I liked sort of was all those things, but it wasn't his primary focus. He was a more 'go-with-the-flow' Christian, not a fighter or pursuer. Though I was young and blinded by love, I did recognize this was a problem. So, I went to the Lord in prayer over it. I knew He'd brought this guy to me for some reason, and I was hoping it was marriage. My prayer went something like this: "Okay God, I know that this guy is perfect for me in so many ways. I really like him! But I feel a bit unequally yoked with him regarding loving and following You. Maybe I can just back off a bit and wait for him to catch up to me. I mean, spiritually the guy is supposed to lead, right? So, if I just don't climb any higher right now, then he can be able to lead eventually. Is that what You're wanting me to do?"

There wasn't an audible voice that spoke to me, but I remember it as vividly as if there had been. God told me NO. He told me that I should NEVER sacrifice my love and desire for Him for anything in this world, even when it looks like a good thing. That my purpose in life is to pursue hard after Him. Anything that calls me to compromise this is not a good thing and should be let go of. So, I sacrificed 'my Isaac' on the altar before the Lord, and He didn't raise him from the dead... and looking at my life and this guy's life now, I am forever grateful He didn't. There have been a few other 'Isaacs' sacrificed through the years. Each one extremely pain-filled, but always I could look back with a grateful heart that God stripped them away.

This morning I received an email from a guy friend who got married a few years back. We'd struggled through being single missionaries on the same field years ago, and he understands the difficulty of this. He closed his email to me with a line that flashed me back to being twenty-one: "I pray God brings you a man worthy of your company and spiritual capacity." More than anyone else, I am very aware that my spiritual capacity is small, and that I am a wretched mess of sin and idolatry! But my desire for and pursuit of the Lord is strong. And so I sit at the age of thirty-two still single, bound and determined to never fall into compromise... having watched too many friends do so throughout the years. Yes, I eagerly want to be married, but I wouldn't trade my life for theirs of backslidden complacency. I'm glad eleven years ago God told me a loud and strong NO!

I have a lot of single friends. It's been hard to personally go through singleness, but for some reason it's even harder for me to watch them face it. I hate the loneliness they feel. I hate the doubts that arise. I hate the lies that circle in their heads. I hate the temptations that come. I want so much to take it all away! But the One who can doesn't, and He doesn't slacken His standard of uncompromising devotion to Him. He continuously calls them to climb higher and swim deeper into the vastness of Him, not beholding the fact that there is no one of the opposite sex around doing the same thing. He calls us all to trust Him. To rely on Him. To give whatever is in our hands over to Him, letting go so that we can embrace what is better: Himself. Maybe one day I (and they) will marry- who knows, but I want to walk down that aisle knowing that He is still my everything and I am getting more of Him through this union. If not, I'll still have a Wedding some day... and for sure I will get more of Him there, because He'll be the One waiting for me with His hand outstretched for mine!

Making Them Known

There's a strange thing felt as one walks into a refugee camp. Gazing across the hundreds of tents, the vast expanse of mint green and white canvas crowding the horizon. Plastic potties dotting the edges of the area in a parade of despised necessity. Fences topped with razor wire, perhaps intended to keep some out or some in. It is a lot to visually and emotionally drink in! But the real challenge is walking up and down the endless rows of makeshift lives and making eye contact. Hollow, empty, forgotten, helpless and hopeless, void of all emotion, just trying to survive... These are the eyes that greet you.

These people have become my friends, nay, the family of my heart. They are beautiful. They are important. They are valuable. And they deserve to be heard, known, and given attention! That has been my goal these past months. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, I want them to know that they aren't completely forgotten and abandoned, or locked away as a dirty secret the world is trying to hide. That they are loved! Though it's hard, I want to listen to the details of their stories. Nearly all still drip with the blood of unstanched grief. It is heavy and it is hard, but they need it, and I've found that so do I.

So, without further ado, pieces of stories I now carry in my heart as a cry to my Abba:

Her baby was starving inside her due to the poor conditions of the camp, so the doctors took her two months early. For over a month she was unable to see her baby, as she had to return to the camp and her little one stayed in an incubator. Now they are together, but living as a refugee is hard enough for an adult, much less a teeny baby who's still forming things that should've grown in the womb. Now her sister, still living in her war-torn country, is facing the exact same situation, but without access to any medical care, nutrition, or help.

He, like everyone else, has been sleeping on a concrete floor for months now. Years spent as a fighter in his country have rendered his body scarred and ragged. Disc and nerve pain nearly have disabled this man, who is only in his late 20's, to the point where it's difficult to take care of his family.

Her family had to flee the war, leaving her unable to even begin high school. Years spent working in another country just to survive meant not being able to go to school. Now here she is, stuck ambiguously at the age of 17 years old, with a dream of being surgeon, with four years of school left before she can even think of going to university.


His father passed away senselessly, because no one in the camp cared to help. Suddenly he found himself thrust into the role of leading the family at a very young age. What seemed like the best idea led to entering hell on earth as they sit endlessly in another camp, praying their mother, with her deteriorating health, survives this ordeal.

They got married, and one year later had to flee to another country. For four years they sat in a camp there, waiting for the bombs to end and life to return back as it had been. It didn't, and now they find themselves in another country, in a camp where the conditions are ten times worse than previously. Six years of marriage are marked by five years in various camps and an inability to have a baby. The doctors say nothing is wrong, but the trauma and stress of the war and camps have rendered her unable to conceive.

She is three years old, but still doesn't speak any proper words. One of her ears and nostrils doesn't work, and she is plagued with chronic asthma. There is so much anger inside her that she often erupts in violent outbursts. Trauma from the war and life in the camps is all they know, but chances are high that there are ulterior problems at work in their little girl. Perhaps help could be acquired, but not here and maybe it will be too late when they are finally allowed to leave.

Once employed by the top salons in a beauty capital of the world, she now possesses nothing as she lives in squalor. Her husband, once an incredible fashion designer, has been reduced to sitting idly day after day. More than anything, they just want to be able to work again. Life is slipping away as they sit powerless to do anything.

In the tent directly behind hers, a group of single guys live, daily drinking and doing drugs. One night their tent caught fire, while she slept unknowingly with her small baby and husband only yards away. The police watched idly, and continue to do so as this group (and others) abuse the weak and lonely. Each night her husband stays awake so she can sleep with their baby in their unprotected tent that has no lock. Consequently, he then must sleep all day as she tries to entertain their child with no toys and no proper food.


For night months he hasn't seen his wife, as she's been living far away with their young son. Trapped in a camp with their four daughters, he feels powerless to be able to help her or unite his family.

I could go on and on with stories about women being raped following watching their husband being murdered- never to know if the child she bore was his or not, or those who've watched family members be blown to pieces in front of their eyes, or countless other unspeakable horrors. Their stories are raw and gory, filled with the stains of gross sins committed against them. And instead of healing and comfort, they've been given the gift of more pain, more fighting, more survival, more hate, and being forgotten.

I plead with you: don't shut your eyes, don't turn away, don't forget! Be a part of ripping the disgusting bandage off that the world has used to try to silence and cover up these stories. May your heart be the one that these vacant eyes come to behold.

Thoughts on Death

Death: the subject no one wants to speak of. That is, except for the one who has tasted its touch in their life. Then there is a perpetual, silent plea for someone to willingly enter that dark arena with you. To sit in the silence it brings forth. To delve the depths of loss together. As much as we hate it, death is one of the few things that unites all humanity onto an even playing field.

So, today I went and spent my afternoon sitting in a cemetery. Perhaps an extremely odd decision for someone who's reached their capacity for entering into suffering and death each day. But I needed to be reminded of truth! I grew up being fed such lies in my culture... Comfort is the number one thing you should pursue. Death is preventable, or at least postponable  Or that one can medicate suffering. But when I travel the world, these things aren't the universal things I find. Mostly cemeteries are, which instantly debunks those lies. Little babies and children lie there. Beautiful women and men in their prime of life accompany them. The suffering can almost be felt as you walk through them. Unfinished stories and life stripped away, filling those left behind with deep heartache. Yes, suffering and death are indeed a part of our journey around the sun.

These last weeks have been filled with unprecedented numbers of killings and the death toll world wide climbs higher daily. The news has been filled (though not all stories are mentioned there) with suicide bombings, shootings, and horrific acts of hatred. My mind can't wrap around the sheer number of people that are now deceased from these actions of deranged people. But it sure is forced to try as I go from tent to tent and my friends update me with pictures of various family members and friends that are no longer with us. Death has become as common place to them as breathing. Being on the other side of things, my heart still is screaming: "NO!" What they have come to accept, I still want to fight against. Partly because I can from my comfortable world, but mostly because this is not right or just! People shouldn't lock other people away in a forgotten camp. People shouldn't massacre their fellow countrymen. People shouldn't use other people as pawns in their own agendas. People shouldn't... But they do and are doing this. And the incense of death rises heavenward in innumerable calculations. 

I have no answers these days. Just tears and prayers. However, it was good to be reminded of truth in the cemetery as my heart falters. These poignant words of Jesus bring the much needed salve for my heart: "I have told you all this so that you may have peace in Me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." (Jn 16:33)