On Being Spoiled

On Being Spoiled

I am basically a spoiled person. I have a husband who faithfully tells people I am nineteen years old with such great conviction that when I mention that we have two boys, five and two years old, you can see the math wheels turning and suddenly! Bam! they look at him in astonishment and ask, "But what state did you get married in?"
I have the aforementioned boys, both of whom are exceptionally healthy and wonderful. I could bore you with zillions of anectotes about their intelligence, cuteness, and general fabulosity (made that word up just now, and it works well for what I'm trying to say). When I tell my friends that my eldest son pitched a huge, loud, screaming and kicking fit in the Children's Museum at Navy Pier, and had to be carried, cajoled, and dragged to a bus stop several blocks away as the entire population of downtown Chicago looked on in horror, my friends laugh, shrug their shoulders, and clearly don't believe me. "Not Chase!" they say.
My parents are still together, and still like each other's company after all these years. Respect their Do Not Disturb sign! They also like me, my husband and my kids, and even though we live in the same building, they aren't suffocatingly close.
My sister and I get along, and our husbands get along well. The nice thing is that our husbands have each other to discuss computer stuff with. I am lucky to be able to read e-mail without crashing the computer. When our husbands turn to their secret language of dot-this and that, or those long strings of acronyms, we talk sewing.
I periodically watch the BBC late at night to keep up on more than mommy info, mommy info being the next day's weather, dinner, and child safety tips. It seems like every time I watch it, I come away depressed. Sometimes I just hear the word, "Africa" and I have to turn the T.V. off. I am ashamed to admit that, but it's true. I feel so helpless and so embarrassed to be in America when people have such huge needs. I do try to pray for the situations I hear about, but it feels like too little. My husband works full-time at a homeless shelter, so it's not that we don't try to help people. But essentially, his is a nine-to-five job, we have a seemingly secure life, and I am basically a spoiled person, especially in the face of starvation, AIDS, orphans, genocide, torture, poor or nonexistant medical care, high child mortality rates, etc., etc. I heard recently that America has four percent of the world's population. How did I get to be in that four percent? How did I get to have such a wonderful life? I have friends whose children have various genetic differences which mean they may never have a real conversation, ever. Last year, I watched my next-door neighbor die slowly and painfully of cancer, leaving a young daughter. It's not that there is no pain or trouble in America, or my own building, it's just that all trouble seems so huge and hopeless. Africa has the added difficulty of being far away.
I have a friend with three sons. Two sons have bleeding disorders, and one has autism. Once you say it like that, it sounds hopeless. I have a theory about moms who go through things like that. It's kind of like those wagon trains in the Old West. When there was trouble or an attack, they would pull all of the wagons into a circle, put the women and children in the middle, and try to fight off the attackers. I think a mom, when given news like the news my friend got, circles her wagons, pulls in her kids, and sits down to grieve. How could you not grieve? But what makes or breaks the situation is if the mom decides to sit in the circle forever. Some moms seem to get in the protective circle, and decide that this or that wagon have to go. That wagon is making the circle too big, so out go friends. Another wagon has to go now, and out go outside interests. You get the picture. The circle gets smaller and smaller until the mom is completely alone with her grief, with no one to help her and no desire to do anything else but grieve. Bitterness sets in and things get worse. But the women like my friend, with enough courage sit down for a while, and eventually, through God's grace, they slowly and painfully get their wagons back in a line and set off again. They may move in a slightly different direction, may make more frequent stops, but they have the courage and determination to continue. And you know what? Somehow the problems are not the center of their lives anymore. Yep, they are still there, they still hurt like crazy sometimes, but they really do receive enough grace to continue. That is what I have come to learn. If you're not in the thick of the situation, next to the person having the hard time, you miss the miracles that happen. If you're not close, you miss the grace. I tend to run away from people with big problems. I feel helpless and like I have nothing to say, no hope to hold out. But, thankfully, hope is not my job. My job is to listen and to wait. As I listen and wait, I will secretly be praying with great reverence, "So God, how are you going to work this one out?" Because if I am dragged into the middle of real life from my spoiled life, I am sure to see some miracles. Maybe God put me in my spoiled life in this specific four percent for some reason of His own that I will never understand. People in hard situations don't seem to have any better idea than I do about why things happen to the people they do. We are sort of plunked down and expected to keep our eyes open to the good, not just the bad. Do what is put before us to do, and keep our eyes straining for the miracles.
That's the problem with the BBC. They miss the miracles.