DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed

Jason Carter is one of my best friends from seminary. He is married to Lisa, also a friend from seminary. They have an adorable little boy named Kenyon. They serve as missionaries with WEC in Equatorial Guinea. Yesterday Jason sent an email with the good news that they would be taking their first furlough in the next couple months. The bad news is that they are leaving EG (for a time) because of some mysterious health problems Lisa is experiencing. Jason has a terrific sense of humor about it all, but it must feel overwhelming and frightening. The Carters love serving in EG, but their road has not been easy. They’ve been lonely, burglarized, and probably overworked. Kenyon has had malaria multiple times and now Lisa is sick.

Lisa writes:

Our hope and our plan were to go on our first furlough when in my sixth month of pregnancy. According to this plan we would go home healthy: six months pregnant and celebrating, have our baby, spend six months with him/her there and come back here with a six month old baby!! Well, I am not pregnant and we find ourselves having to come home not for festive reasons but due to a medical issue and a need to find rest and restoration. Some days I have so much fatigue and pain that I don’t know how I am going to make it another day especially in a place like Africa where life and the people around me demand so much of me and with a high energy 3 year old to raise but the Lord always gives me what I need physically and much more spiritually.

I found Jason’s reflections on 1 Peter 4 :12-13 ("Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering….But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ...") especially convicting, moving, and challenging.

In the States, when suffering occurs, many times we are surprised by it. My attitude usually is: “There are solutions; this isn’t supposed to happen. Everything will turn out okay.” In Africa, people would be surprised if suffering didn’t occur. “Nobody in the hospital?....What’s going on here?” I can remember some days when our church of almost 1800 members in Bloomington, Illinois didn’t have a single person in the hospital! That would never happen in Equatorial Guinea.

But, yet, here I am, still getting surprised by suffering – both ours and our friends’ suffering – showing me how American I really am. I get surprised that Mateo Ndong (20 years old) can come back from a youth retreat feeling fine and then proceed to spend the next 3 weeks in bed -- sitting in a hospital bed for the last week where 4 people die in 7 days from the same thing he has. And it’s purely a tropical illness – nobody knows WHY this happens! (How can this be?!!) His calf and foot are enlarged and the doctors have no answer to why this sort of thing happens – there is no explanation (it’s simply called an abscess). And the treatment seems, to my (admittedly) untrained medical mind, like something out of the medieval ages: they will slice open his leg to draw out the puss and hope that takes care of it.

So when 1 Peter says we shouldn’t be surprised at the painful trials of suffering, I must confess it’s actually hard not to be surprised at so much suffering. Peter is actually counter-intuitive for me!! Does the fact that suffering sneaks up on me, surprises me, and catches me off guard tell me how American I really am? Tell me how insulated to suffering my life has been? Oh, there are definitely Americans who have seen more than “their share” of suffering – folks with whom I wouldn’t want to change places with in the States – but it just seems that the African “share” in the balance of suffering is tipped decidedly and continually in their “favor”.

Here in EG, when somebody dies, you can smell it at the funeral. There is no make-up, nobody says “oh, look how beautiful Mrs. Obiang is” at the funeral – No. The deceased person actually looks…well, dead. There is no covering up the fact by make-up or an expensive coffin. The family usually has to dig the grave. It’s the family who probably nailed some boards together to make the coffin. At the funeral you see the finality (and sound) of dirt being piled upon the wooden box. Africans aren’t surprised by suffering. It doesn’t sneak up on them. It’s their traveling companion in the journey of life.

This should actually teach me a great deal. If it’s a lesson I am willing to learn.

But, it’s a lot easier to visit the hospital as a pastor-missionary than live with uncertainty over your own roof and in your own life. As Lisa and I ponder our return to the States and wait to be able to identity what is really going on health-wise with Lisa, it’s a difficult time. Not knowing is tough. To live in the information age without adequate information is exasperating. And yet, “do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering…but rejoice”. That is, for lack of a better term, just plain “weird”. The Bible sometimes speaks Fang to me – as in, I can barely make out what is going on and pretty soon I find myself not really trying (or wanting) to understand.

Suffering is never part of the plan. Or rather, never part of our plan. And yet: “Moses approached the thick darkness where God was” (Ex. 20:21). I don’t like the fact that, at times, God resides there – in thick darkness. Just as a passenger would rather have a storm-tested sailor leading a voyage on the rough seas, I’m trusting that God is using the difficulties and testings of Africa to deepen my own spiritual anchors. I want to lean into these experiences (easier said than done) to have a life that is more “storm-tested”, to be able to navigate from the stern of the ship with more perspective and depth. That’s the destination and my prayer….one day, I hope to get there.