Month: August 2015

Looking in a mirror

This past week has been packed full of summer stuff. Reuniting with friends who are returning to the island after a summer away, youth group game day and a trip to the water park for my teens, meeting up with a Marine friend whose ship is in port, and on top of it all, every morning I’m dragging my butt to CrossFit and after that hour of pain, everything I do for the rest of the day feels like a physical challenge. 
School starts in one week. Boo. I love summer and relaxed schedules and no homework. Camille would probably also prefer this summer to go on forever because she starts kindergarten in 10 days (she begins a few days after the boys) and the fear is rising. 
She started with, “I’m excited and a little nervous.” then it was, “I’m a lot nervous, but a little excited.” And now it’s, “I’m a lot scared and a little nervous.” Poor thing. I’ve been there a million times. 
This past week at Friday School at church, it was all fine until the teacher said the kids could draw pictures of their friends or family or people around the world — the point being that God’s love was for everyone. My little perfectionist sat for about 10 minutes, rolling the marker between her palms and looking around the room. 

My girlie loves to draw and color, but today she felt like anything she did wouldn’t be good enough. Where do those mental messages originate?!? There must be a place in the brain that creates them, because she’s not hearing it from anywhere else. She kept saying, “it’s too hard!” I made the mistake of replying, “Baby, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you try. Just like in kindergarten.”

Then I could see the waterfall of fear begin — the pressure, the unknown. This drawing suddenly represented all the failures she was sure to experience in school. She didn’t say any of this, but I remember those days. I remember my little red sweater and new shoes and how I worried for weeks before I started school. My girlie, she’s so much like me. Sucks to be her. 

When I made the first markings on her paper for her (she needed “help”), she started to fill in a few details, but covered her work so no one could see. 

This is where my mental illness began. I pray I can help her learn to deal with her anxiety so she doesn’t end up the way I did. 

And then the pressure builds and up well the tears. 

Laughing and crying at the same time. Laughing because she knows she’s being crazy and crying because she can’t help it. Yep. That’s my mini-me. 
All this over a fun coloring project at church. She’s a mess. 

Her emotions were totally raw and it was at this point that I finally realized that it was related to fear about starting school.

And then the sobbing started and she ended up in my arms like a baby. The next 10 days are going to be tough. For her sake I wish we could hurry up and get to the first day. Waiting for something to begin is the worst part of being us. We torture ourselves more terribly mentally than anything we’d ever face in real life. 
I’m sure she’ll love it, but I told her if she can’t hack it, then we can always wait a year. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a kindergartener in school, so it’s a first for both of us. 

Auschwitz

I told a friend this morning, “Just sit down for 10 minutes to write — something is always better than nothing,” so I should probably take my own advice and get to writing, huh?

Auschwitz day. After the previous day spent in the Jewish Ghetto and at Schindler’s factory, I was really not looking forward to going. But how could I be so close to such an important piece of history and not see it for myself? So off we went, leaving the youngest two behind for a fun day with Nana and Poppa. In hindsight, they both could have gone and Caleb would have been fine and most of it would have gone over Camille’s head, but I was glad for the time to focus on it with the older two boys and I know the youngers had more fun with the grandparents. Win.Win.

At the bus station. Public transportation in Poland is modern, easy, timed to the minute and the long haul busses all had faster wifi than what we have at home in Bahrain. While we were waiting for our bus, the boys would log in to whichever wifi was available and then as that bus left the station, pick up a new signal from a different vehicle. 

We arrived and joined up with an English language tour group. It was nice that we all had headsets and could hear our guide, Peter, no matter where we were standing. It’s great for someone like me who likes to be on my own program and not be standing right up front. 
Walking under the famous, “Work Makes You Free” sign. In one of the books we read, the girl, upon arrival here, mused that maybe her mother was right, and they would be able to work a certain amount before being freed. Nope. It’s an ugly lie. 

This place was originally a camp for political prisoners and was only later turned into a concentration camp. It reminded us of the military base at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma with its neat brick buildings and scattered trees lining the walkways. The exterior looks much nicer and more civilized than you’d imagine. 

Our tour took us inside several of the buildings. Some contained personal items that had been collected from incoming prisoners, pots (a roomful), clothing, eyeglasses and shoes, to name a few categories. I tried to imagine the people who arrived in particular shoes: The woman with the red heels, where did they tell her she was going? I felt an affinity for the woman who arrived in slippers, comfort first, right? Platform wedges — whoever she was, she was determined to look good, wherever she went. 

One of the photographs depicting arrival at Auschwitz II/Birkenau camp: Men on one side, women on the other, before they go through selection. The strong ones were picked to work, but the rest were told they were going to get a shower and be able to change, but were gassed instead. 
Our guide was very calm, respectful and somber. I appreciated that none of it was sensationalized or dramatized. Not much of the information was new to any of us, but connecting the stories with the actual places was invaluable. 

I didn’t take many photos. I wanted to observe and absorb and let the important parts sink in without feeling like a voyeur with a camera. One of the most emotional parts for me was one of the hallways where they had small mugshot style photos of prisoners with shaved heads that were taken as part of inprocessing. The photos covered the walls on both sides of the long hallways with the prisoner’s name, age, occupation and date of death beneath their picture. Every single one had the same wide-eyed and scared look in their eyes. These young, strong men who didn’t know what was going to happen next. Almost all of this particular group were brought to Auschwitz in 1941 and most of them didn’t last a year. 
They stopped taking photos of prisoners because the purpose was to use them for identification but they found that after several months, all of the prisoners became unrecognizable, so the photos were useless. 

Leaving the inside of Auschwitz I 
After this portion of the tour, we got on a bus and headed about 5 minutes down the road to Auschwitz II/Birkenau. This is the huge extermination camp that makes Auschwitz “famous.” (and what you see if you watch Schindler’s List.) 

The train would pull right in through the archway and prisoners would be unloaded right next to the tracks. 

These are the kinds of rail cars they would arrive in. Typically they would hold 70 people, but the book we read described a time when they were desperate to fit more on and the solders were demanding 100 per car and then up to 130 per car. They couldn’t move to even wipe sweat out of their eyes because they were so tightly packed. 

This place was huge. Expansive. And there were plans in the works to expand it even further beyond that line of trees. 

As the allied troops moved in, the Germans attempted to destroy the crematoriums. This is what remains. 

Each chimney is from one of the buildings that used to house prisoners. When the displaced German farmers returned to the area, they needed the wooden planks to rebuild their homes. A few of the buildings have been restored, but the brick chimneys mark the rest. 

Inside the buildings where prisoners were housed. Hundreds of people were expected to sleep in each building. Our guide said that the floor was the worst for rats and if it was wet, but sometimes it saved lives when the temperatures dropped and those on the top levels froze.
Thoroughly unbelievable that people had to live like this and that anyone survived. 

On a cool June day we were all wearing jackets. Imagining that those who were brought here had nothing but thin cotton clothes and had to endure exposure to all 4 seasons. 

Auschwitz II/Birkenau was peaceful, meditative and quiet. Our guide told us a few things, but mostly we walked and observed. 

Views from the guard tower. Men were on one side of the tracks, women on the other. Crematoriums are hidden in the tree line. How did the guards live with themselves? What lies did they believe about why these people were here?

As we were leaving, we met this woman, a survivor of Auschwitz. She is a feisty, funny, and sharp 81 year old woman who has written a book about her time in the concentration camp. She and her twin sister survived because they were one of the sets of twins that Dr. Mengele experimented on. Her parents and two older sisters were sent to the gas chambers.

We bought her book and she signed it for us. Carter read the entire 90 minute bus ride home. A perfect end to a once in a lifetime experience. 

Outreach and body parts

I have a blog post about Auschwitz waiting in the wings. Truthfully I don’t have a post, just some photos, but I don’t have the words to do them justice. So it sits there, waiting for me to come up with something brilliant. In turn, I look at the page, don’t know where to start, and start another episode of Community (the Community as Law and Order episode has my utmost admiration).

I was thinking about outreach this morning after someone asked me about outreach opportunities here in Bahrain and I was feeling a bit “self-condemning” because I don’t really do any outreach, especially with local people. I’m not really a people person and I’m terrible with accents because of my hearing issues. It doesn’t particularly affect my normal life, but is magnified in groups or when there is background noise or when I’m trying to watch TV shows where they have British accents (I’m only getting about 80% of Call the Midwife and it’s killing me that it’s not subtitled). I greet my pool guy and car washer with a cold drink, a snack, and a smile every day, but that’s about as far as I’m reaching. 

Recently our pastor at church preached on 1 Corinthians 12 all about spiritual gifts and how all the parts of the body are necessary for it to thrive so maybe I’m that part of the body that knits and marathons TV shows so everyone else can do the important stuff. Is that a thing? Can I make it a thing? Just kidding. But along those lines, I think the way I’m serving now is to create space for other people to serve. This summer Josh has been leading worship at church and Calvin has been playing with the worship team. That takes several hours each week with planning/practicing and execution that I give up with them. And I didn’t complain when I had to get up at the crack of 8 am on Friday since our 2nd car is broken and we all had to go to church early because that’s when the worship team gets there. And Josh has been leading worship at our Bible Study group on Wednesday nights. And he’s been facilitating the Bible Study. So yeah, Josh is doing a bunch and I’m just getting out of his way.

Then I started thinking about his service in terms of outreach. He doesn’t have a ministry to non-Christians in a missionary sense like you would think of living in a foreign country. He’s not out there speaking about Jesus in Arabic to people in our neighborhood. Our circle of friends is very western, mostly because he spends the majority of his time at work with military people and the rest at church with non-American “westerners,” Brits, Aussies, South Africans, Scots, etc. But what he is doing is providing a way for these people to recharge and renew as they worship God each Friday morning, preparing them to go out to their workplaces where they are reaching people from other cultures. All parts of the same body, with the same ultimate goal, working together to make it happen.

I don’t need anyone telling me that I’m doing plenty (thanks Mom!) because I feel good about how I’m serving, especially when it’s quantified using the ripple effect. When I coordinate Kid’s Church, it creates an opportunity for people to serve God using their gifts of leading and teaching, it provides an undistracted environment for the pastor and congregation to hear God’s word, and hopefully as people grow in knowledge and experience of God, they are able to reach those around them. All the credit goes to one account.

I don’t spend a lot of time second guessing what I do, but it seems like every summer as our world shrinks while we hide from the heat, I wonder if I should be out there more, doing more, stretching myself more. In a few weeks school will start back up and I’ll be busier than ever before (cause kids in school are more work than kids out of school) and I’ll have too many things on my list to ever wonder if I’m doing “enough.” But right now it’s a good reminder that I am an integral part of the body, even if I do have time to binge-watch Extreme Cheapskates.