One of Life's Unanswerable Questions

Of all the negative emotions that a missionary typically faces like homesickness, loneliness, frustration, sadness, or doubt, the one that plagues me more than any other is guilt.  I understand that it is not logical to feel guilty about something that God ordained--I didn’t choose to be born in the United States with all the benefits and privileges that that entails—but knowing that my feelings are illogical doesn’t help me much. 

When I go to the river, it's for fun.  I don't have to bathe or wash my clothes there.  My bed is not a board with flea-infested blankets.  If the price of chicken goes up by 25 cents a pound, I don’t have to worry about it. I have a private toilet inside my house, and it flushes and everything! So why do I get to live this life of relative luxury when others struggle just to survive? I have posed that question to various people lately, and I usually get an answer that’s something like this:  “Well, God knew that you’d use what you have to help others.” While that may be true, you have to admit that being the helper is WAY better than being the helpee. The helper has the money, the power, the options…the helpee is voiceless.  It’s not fair, and it bugs me. It’s also an unsolvable issue.  There will always be the haves and the have-nots.  Jesus himself said that.

The other day I got stuck on the mountain.  (Nanny, if you’re reading this, skip this paragraph.)  I had reached a point in the road where I really didn’t think I could go any farther, but I couldn’t back up either. The road was so narrow—mountain on one side, cliff on the other—and when you’re short you have a lot of blind spots.  One tiny false move, and I’d be meeting Jesus face to face.  So I parked the truck and got out, trying to figure out what to do.  A nice man came out to meet me and said, “What are you doing here?  Don’t you know this road is impassable?” “Well, I do now.”   It was so bad that I seriously considered abandoning my truck and walking home.  In this middle of this mess, a young girl came up to talk to me, giving this horrific trip some purpose.

She asked if I remembered her father, Marcos.  He was in Loving InDeed that first year when I was taking poor families, not just widows.  And yes, I most definitely remembered him.  I met him a month and a half after his wife had died leaving him to raise 10 kids alone.   Marcos’s daughter went on to tell me that her father had gotten remarried, but her new stepmother didn’t want anything to do with all those children, so they abandoned them.  They moved out and left 8 children (2 have since gotten married and moved out) to fend for themselves.  The 18 year old brother has taken on the role of father, and the 17 year old sister acts as the mother. The other 6 kids range in age from 3 to 16.  They are all malnourished.  Needless to say, they are the newest members of Loving InDeed. When I visited them, half of them were running around barefoot with giant holes in their clothes.  When they found out I’d brought them some food, they were ecstatic. As I loaded up each item, I asked the oldest sister, Veronica, if she knew what it was and how to cook it.  Half the time, the answer was no.  Her mother had died when she was only 14.  She really wasn’t ready to take on the role of mom to 6 younger siblings. This whole encounter made me livid on so many levels.   And takes me back to my big, unanswerable question:  why not me?  Why is my life so much easier than the majority here? 

There’s one particular part of the movie Schindler’s List that haunts me.  It’s the scene where Oscar Schindler looks at the ring on his finger and is outraged with himself because he’d kept it.  It could have been used to save one more person, after all.  There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think of that scene…when I buy something in the grocery store instead of the open air market…when I get back home from making visits all sweaty and dirty and get to take a shower…when I buy myself a new pair of shoes…when we go out to eat…guilt, guilt, guilt. 

I think this issue is one that bothers a lot of missionaries, honestly.  It’s a whole different ball of wax when you’re faced with deep poverty every time you set foot out your front door.  What’s even more aggravating is that if this disparity in lifestyle doesn’t wrack me with guilt, I swing the other direction and become totally immune to it.  People become faceless—just one more sob story in a sea of hopelessness. 

It seems to me that most times when someone writes about a problem in a blog, they give the answer that they’ve discovered at the end.  Unfortunately, I can’t do that as I don’t have the answer. The only thing I can figure is to remember that the world already has one Savior, and I'm not Him.  Other than that, I guess this is just one of life’s unanswerable questions…something that only God knows.