October 21, 2012
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Band-aid Help
Band-aid help is something I don’t like to talk or think about.“Band-aid help” is my word for when you have a huge gaping wound (symbolizing poverty here) that needs constant cleaning and physically therapy (time, energy, and resources) to heal and instead you just stick a band-aid on it (drop off something) and leave.
A group came into the trash dump and give the kids a party—it is a nice thought. Lovely people giving money to provide for it. People coming and passing out presents. But it is just band-aid help. They don’t know the names of the children. They don’t know which house they live in or what school they do or don’t go to. But they come, give hugs, take pictures, and post them on Facebook. They have done their part.
I like to give band-aid help. Americans like to give band-aid help. It makes us feel better. We want an instant fix. Band-aid help is much easier than consistent dedication of time and money. It means I can go home at night and relax and snuggle into a bed that isn’t so different from yours. Band-aid help means I can snap those pictures and give those hugs and hear those people say “Oh, isn’t she a good girl? Look at her giving her life for those children.”
And basically—everyone in ministry does band-aid help. At least at first, at least at times. Because it takes a lot of training, a lot of time, and a lot of relationship building before anything deeper can be given. And band-aids do help. They can help us survive until the next day. They can help the wound stay a little cleaner. It can guard from infection. But it will never solve the issues. It will never be a solution. Because “A mind can reach a mind, a heart and touch a heart, but only a life can change a life.”
In ministry at the youth center, the first year I was giving my mind: knowledge that I had about God, life, helping, having my first real job. Slowly I began open up and understand more. Slowly I began friendships. Slowly I opened my heart to the kids, and a little slower, they opened back to me. By the second year, I had finally formed real relationships with the kids—investing my heart. And then I noticed a change after 3 years: I was beginning to learn how to invest my life. To know that I was called to give everything. And that is when I really began to see fruit.
In Brazil, it took the first year to wrap my head around a new culture and learn a new language. It took another year before I really could begin to help in a ministry, and one more for me to learn how to do that ministry in the culture I was in, instead of my own culture. It was only after the third year that I was able to begin leading/training in this ministry. True ministry takes time.
By the end of 2012 I will have been in Brazil for four and a half years, beginning in 2004. This has been a huge chunk of my life, but I am still only doing band-aid help in so many areas. This past year, I’ve felt the calling to do more. I am investing my mind and my heart here, but it is hard to take the step to invest your life. It is also hard to know what that looks like: there is no manual—it is simply living life with God.
The practical step in front of me is to live in community with some of the children I work with. Eat like them, dress like them, live like them, have what they have. This is easier said than done. First, I had to have a family that I knew well enough invite me to come. Second, I had to have time for it. After a family invited me the end of May, I was so excited—but finding the time was harder. It has turned out easier to go to China than to live in poverty.
But here it is. Monday I am beginning my journey, living with this family in Cajueiro Claro. I am excited. I am scared stiff. Maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe all ministry is band-aid help unless God is changing their hearts. I like to think that teaching the children to read and basic skills to support themselves is a deeper level, or giving them a home. It depends on what your view of success is. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong and I need to quit thinking about things and just follow Jesus today. Whatever that looks like.
The people who threw the party for the kids left in their big truck. As they did, they hit and got tangled in one of the wires that was strung up from the electrical post to one of the homes built from trash. CRACK! It fell, and no more electricity in that house. The band-aid fell off.
I worry that if I really “get” poverty, really understand, there will never be any return. Not really. And I like my comforts. I like my clean house and refrigerator and internet and when I really want something in the store—I like buying it. I like feeling at home when I am with my family and friends, most of whom do not understand poverty at all. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to always feel the stranger—just a little bit off. It is lonely.
It isn’t the day to day hardships. I am pretty tough, as long as there is a time limit (and there is—I don’t want to overstay my welcome in this home). It is the incredible responsibility that goes along with knowledge that is turned into experience. I know what it is to only eat rice and beans for a month. But I shudder at the idea of having to do that for the rest of my life, because I’ve tasted it.
I stared at Maria Jose, who will soon have a home that is beyond her dreams, yet still smaller than my living room. I shudder at the idea of living there, next to the dump. Of my children growing up there, in the dirt and flies that breed deadly diseases. Of never knowing anything other than that reality. But the question slams into my face once again: how are you different from Maria Jose? How are you any more special? Does God love me more than her? What did I do to deserve the life I have? What did she do to deserve the life she has?
It would be easier if I believed in reincarnation: that somehow, I was good in a past life and so got blessed with the amazing family that I have. With the incredible education I was given. But I don’t believe that. So I don’t have that answer. I have no answers. And it hurts like my heart will burst apart if I just keep going, keep living life like I am.
I am compelled. And I wish I wasn’t. I am not a saint, marching on in bright colors: I am girl with her head down in shame, feeling overwhelmed by guilt in having so much when so many have so little. And soon this feeling will let me go, where I can forget and sit down and watch TV like most everyone else. I don’t know what all the next steps will be—I just know this one. Please pray with me and for me this next month as I live with this family in Cajueiro Claro. I want more than band-aids.
