525,600 minutes

One year ago, I made Kenya my home.  It was a day I'd dreamed of and prayed for for years.  I wanted to mark the day with a blog post, but was having trouble finding the words.  As the song from the musical "Rent" asks, how do you measure a year?

Here is how I'm measuring my year:

In airports

In sunsets

In hands held

In trees planted

In broken faucets

In mud

In washings

In blessings

In weddings

In holidays

In lost teeth

In hugs

In flags flown

In baby nephews

In flowers for my hair

In power outages

In smiles

In achievements

In heartbreaks

In kittens

In rainbows

In laundry

In dreams realized

In chickens

In new skills

In family

In puppies

In remembering

In exams

In flat tires

In laughter

In recorders

In silliness

In new friends

In rainstorms

In clovers

In wildlife

In awesome import foods

In new growth

In kisses

In birthdays

In books read and coffee drunk

In love notes

Measure your life in love.

Love until it hurts

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, then there can be no more hurt, only love."  --Saint Teresa of Calcutta

The first time I read that quote, I thought it sounded beautiful.  Like, if I invested enough of myself into someone else and loved them deeply enough, I could transcend to this mystical state of being where nothing could hurt me anymore.  Or maybe God would somehow reward me with a life free of pain, at least when it comes to the people I love that fiercely.

But, the more I love people, the more I'm finding that that's simply not true.  Things still hurt.  I am investing my life into the kids and staff here at the Tania Centre, but times are still hard.  The food storage room still goes empty from time to time.  We still stress about where we'll get the money to pay the electric bill.  Our teaching staff is still in constant flux, so our students still don't get as much consistency as they should from term to term.  The children still have hurts in their lives, people we know and love still get sick and die.  I still have personal hurts--I miss the people I love back home, I miss the food, I miss the illusion of control over my life.  I come down with malaria, I deal with cars that don't work, I deal with students who don't do work.

I have loved and it hurts.  But the hurt doesn't magically go away.  God doesn't look at me and say "Wow, Beth is doing a great job loving those kids!  Time to make sure she's good and comfortable for the rest of her time in Kenya!"  The hurts are still there.  They don't go away.

But, the more I pour out myself, the more I see that those hurts aren't just hurts--they become something more.  I could go live somewhere away from my family and friends, and it would hurt to miss them, but when I go to live away from my family and friends out of love, the hurt that I feel becomes an act of love.  I could stop eating my favorite foods, or move somewhere that doesn't have my favorite foods, but when I move somewhere that doesn't have my favorite foods out of love, the discomfort of eating unfamiliar foods for months and months becomes an act of love.  I could get sick anywhere, but when I get sick because I moved to a malaria-endemic country out of love, the pain of the illness becomes an act of love.

Pain without a purpose is just pain.  But pain that comes as a result of love, while it remains painful, becomes something more.  It becomes a thing of beauty.  And it is no longer hurt, it is love.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."  --John 15:13

Lessons

School has been closed here at Tania, and throughout much of Kenya, for the month of August.  Many children go home with parents, guardians, or foster parents for the break, but others who have nowhere to go stay here.  Because of these children, we're never truly on a break here at Tania.  Someone has to make sure these children are clothed, fed, and safe.  And, even though I'm not teaching in a classroom for this month, there's always something to be taught.

By setting and enforcing "office hours" when students can visit me in my house, I teach boundaries and time management.

By having kids help me to catalog and organize the library, I teach a love of reading.

By involving students in the care of my pets, I teach compassion.

By exploring the property with students, I teach an appreciation for God's creation.

By setting aside my plans to spend time with a child having a hard day, I teach that people are more important than projects.

While I enjoy spending time carefully crafting lesson plans and making sure we cover all of the material for class each term, I think these impromptu life lessons during school breaks may be my favorite lessons.  These children may not remember how to correctly conjugate irregular verbs, they may not always keep their fingers on the home keys when they're typing, but I suspect they'll remember the time they spent helping in the library when Teacher Beth got so excited over finding some of her favorite books, and the time we hunted for four-leaf clovers together.  They'll remember how I let them come visit every day, and they always knew what time to come.  They'll remember the one afternoon when silly Teacher Beth had four dogs, two cats, and a hedgehog in her room at once.

We're gearing up for the third and final term of the school year to begin tomorrow.  As a teacher, I know the value of a classroom education, but I have really treasured the lessons that happened outside the classroom over the break.

The cost of love

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."  --C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

When people ask why I'm here at the Tania Centre, I tell them I'm teaching.  And that's true, but it's not the main reason I'm here.  I'm here to love.  Teaching is hard, but loving is harder.

Shortly after moving here, one of the centre's dogs started following me around and sleeping outside my room.  Her name was Sabina Lady.  I became attached to this sweet girl like she was attached to me.  But, a few months after she started following me around, she became sick and had to be put down.

A month later, one of the other dogs had her puppies prematurely.  Two were stillborn, but one was still fighting when I found them.  The mother wasn't taking care of him, so I took him home and did as much research as I could on caring for premature puppies.  I spent the better part of eight hours doing nothing but caring for him, and had mentally prepared myself for little sleep for the next few weeks as he would require feedings every two hours.  But he didn't make it, and I lost another dog.

A month later, Flash, the 3-month-old puppy of another dog started following me around.  I let her in my room and gave her food and let her follow me to class.  My students loved her as much as I did.  She slept on my school bag while I taught, woke up when class was over, followed me to my next class, and went back to sleep on my bag.  But some students who didn't know chicken bones are bad for dogs gave some to Flash, and I stayed up with her all night as she slowly passed away, and there was nothing I could do.  This time, my students cried with me.

The student population in our school is very transient compared to many schools in the US, and with less warning than in the US.  I woke up one morning to hear that one of my favorite students was being taken back to her guardian's house that day because she was changing schools.  I came to school last week to hear that another student I'm very close to had unexpectedly gone home, and no one was sure if or when he'd be back.  When we start a new term, I'm always praying that the students return so I can continue building relationships with them, but not all of them do.

Many of the children here have come from difficult pasts, and their young minds are not always able to process what they've been through.  It manifests in a wide range of behaviors--sometimes students steal pens and pencils from me, sometimes they bite me, sometimes they manipulate other students.  And it's hard.

But not loving would be harder.  I may have my heart broken time and again when students leave, when students break my trust, when students disappoint me.  It may be wrung over and over as I lose more pets.  But this is the cost of love.  And I can remember that it hurts so deeply because I have loved and been loved so deeply.

And I will continue to love.  I will continue spending free time getting to know these children, encouraging these children, and pouring myself into these children.  As I type this, I have a cat sleeping on my lap and a new puppy, who I named Hope, sleeping in her crate by the foot of my bed. And I know that none of these children or pets are truly mine to keep.  The children will grow and move onto secondary school, and I won't see them again, or I won't see them more than a few times per year.  Some of the students will move to other schools in other parts of the country.  I'll move back to the US, and I won't be able to take my pets or my students with me.  I know already that my heart will break a thousand more times in the next three years.

But how blessed I am to have so much to love.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."  --1 John 4:7