Asking the "Why?" of disability

Dear Readers,

I get the privilege of loving on some tiny little ones each week. One girl has particularly stolen my heart. She’s learning the fine art of communicating with your hands, and so when we met and discovered we each knew what the other was saying, we sort of became best friends. Sometimes I forget she’s only three.

She holds such lovely thoughts in her head—a love for singing and jumping and hugs—and sometimes she just can’t figure out how to communicate those thoughts to the rest of the world. Sometimes it makes her cry in frustration. Sometimes I want to cry with her because it just seems really unfair.

A couple weeks ago my cute little friend made me think back to a week at camp that I still hadn’t really processed. This week was one of my perfect cabins—sweet sweet campers who made me want to cry every morning there was just so much beauty in our cabin. The beauty was so obvious to me. It wasn’t that obvious to some of our volunteers, though. One of our volunteers really struggled, and one night in our devotional raised the question, “Why would God make someone like this?”

I was pretty mad at her, to be honest, because I adore her camper and just wanted to say “Umm, excuse me, she’s freaking PERFECT and makes the world a brighter, more joy-filled place, that’s why!” But I let my brothers’ words fill in for me instead, since I knew she truly was struggling through the “why” of disability and couldn’t help her inability to see beyond that.

So I read them John 9: 1-3, which is highlighted and underlined in my Bible: As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The works of God were definitely displayed through every single one of my campers. His creativity and joy and gentleness were oh so obvious to see in their sweet spirits. But it was my co-cabin leader’s words that made the most impact. She did what I couldn’t, and acknowledged that this “why?” question is a valid one. But she went on to say that that’s a question that we’ll never get an answer to this side of Heaven, so we shouldn’t waste time on it—instead, she said, we need to just accept that this is the way it is. Disability is in this world. And guess what? “Now, we just have to love them.” Those were her words. It doesn’t really even matter why this happens—what matters is how we respond, how we love.  

If you can’t tell by the verses I highlighted AND underlined, sometimes I wrestle with the hard “why?” too. It’s hard to find purpose within disability sometimes—especially in the middle of the really hard stuff, like surgeries and painful recoveries and too-early deaths. And there’s just something within all of us that wants to demand that God give us an answer—we want to ask, if He’s so good, why would He let something so hard happen to these people who we love? We want to sit there and cry with a three-year-old who deserves to have her words heard.

But that wasn’t what she needed. In that moment, I was paralyzed by my own sadness, much like my volunteer this summer was—and that didn’t help anyone. What did help my little friend was her teacher, who saw her crying and marched over to her. She said, “Why are you crying? You don’t need to cry. Come on, use your words--we all understand you here.”

We all understand you here. We’ll all take the time to understand you. This isn’t worth crying over, little one, not today—right here, right now, we’ve got you. And you’re so capable. That’s what she said to her. That was all she needed. Just the reminder that we’ll understand her. It was as simple as overlooking the “why?” that no one can actually answer and simply loving her in the way she needed to be loved in that moment.

How cool that we get to do that? It’s kind of amazing to me. So no, I don’t have an answer to the “why?” of disability. And even though I’d like to think I could just ignore it and find peace with the fact that I don’t even need to know like my co, I don’t know that I ever will. I think I’ll always have moments where I wonder and cry about the injustice of it all, because it’s definitely unjust.

But there’s also so much beauty. So many works of God are displayed in people with disabilities, and they are the boldest and most beautiful testament to Him. How thankful I am that we get the opportunity to love them.

Your Blogger,

Claire 

Here's hoping

Dear Readers,

As of this week, I’ve been accepted into CAPA’s study abroad program at La Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires, Argentina. That’s right—after years of watching me write yet another blog post about Argentina, changing my profile picture one more time to an old picture from Buenos Aires, and about a million Instagram photos of me eating alfajores—you’ll get to see EVEN MORE posts about Argentina except in real time. Contrary to what I’m sure must be popular belief, I’m not going because I love the food so much (although I do).

When I left Argentina in 2013, I vividly remember the youth pastor there telling us goodbye on the bus. He didn’t even tell me goodbye: “You’ll be back,” he said. I knew he was right. Yet even still, it feels strange to go back. I was a sophomore in high school last time I was there—now I’m halfway into my junior year of college. The Claire who left Argentina isn’t the same Claire who’s going back, though sometimes I feel like I haven’t changed at all. I’m sure it will look like it, too, when my plane touches down in February and I’m feverishly studying Spanish grammar until the last second just as I did four years ago.

 Every time anyone has ever asked that classic ice breaker question, “If you could go anywhere in the world right this minute, where would you go?” Argentina has been my standby answer. It's been the place I've been hoping, waiting, to go back to for years. Suddenly, it is the place I’m going. I’m going there. And I feel kind of panicky.

On Wednesday, I picked up the cute little curly-headed five-year-old I always pick up on Wednesdays, and we got out her giant foam world map puzzle. We started piecing it together, and as we did, I told her about my plans for next semester. Once we had placed the United States in its proper place above South America, I pointed to Mississippi, and then to Argentina. “Look, it isn’t that far, there isn’t even any water separating us—it’s all land! You could walk to me if you wanted!” Looking at the map like that, I was pretty comforted—if it goes just really badly, surely I could just take a bus back to Mississippi, right?

But Nora saw right through me. She rolled her eyes, “Claire, that is really far! You know where I want you to live?” She threw herself into my arms. “Right in this neighborhood! There are some houses for sale!”

I don’t think it’s the going, per say, that made me have to bite back tears as we sat there with that foam map (fun fact: we never even put the rest of the world together, just the Americas haha), but the leaving. Wow, it turns out that going and doing cool things like studying abroad involves leaving a lot of things, places, people that you really love. And that’s just plain hard.

I’ve been struggling with that hard all semester. A friend of mine just got back from spending last semester in London, and I’m pretty sure is the reason I haven’t just backed out of all of it. Every time I start to panic, she reminds me that everyone hates leaving, but that it’s so so worth it. I believe it a lot of the time, because I really am so excited to be back. Wow. It's amazing to me that I get to go back. 

Whenever I talk to my host family from high school, they tell me, “Estamos esperandote!” which translates to “We are waiting for you!” The verb “esperar” can also mean “to hope,” though, and that little phrase makes me feel hopeful for this next semester.

It feels like this place is where I’m grounded—this is the place where I have people and places and responsibilities and a reason for being here. Sometimes I worry that I won’t have purpose in Argentina and I’m just going, alone… But as long as someone is “esperando” hoping for me, I think I might just be okay.

Your blogger,

 Claire

The Value of Camp

Dearest Readers,

In May, I entered a room full of strangers, eyes searching for the three people I knew. It seems so strange to think back on that. Staff training was almost two weeks long, and we learned so many beautiful things, and I got to know the people around me more and more. But sometimes I felt kind of panicked when I looked around and realized how little I knew about the people around me--two weeks is so short to know anyone, much less over 90 people. Was I even allowed to call them friends yet?

We played a "name game" so that all of us could shed our everyday name for a camp nickname. As we played, we stopped calling someone their real name and began only using their camp name, trying to get it down before campers came. Every game we played my stomach flipped over a little wondering if it was my turn. I think I pegged too many of my mixed emotions--fear, excitement, overwhelmed, amazement--to my name. I wanted to feel connected to this group of people, and was doubting if I was even known at all.

So when I sat onstage with my dear friend Hailey, and heard names like "Milo!" and "Abuelita!" and "Taco!" shouted, I held back tears. I was honored that anyone would take time to consider a name for me at all, but it just reminded me how very new I was to all of these people, and how new they were to me.

But then I heard the all too familiar shout one last time--"I have a name!"

Silver Sunrise. That was the name presented by two of my dear friends. My friend who shares mate with me chose silver because it's the beginnings of the word Argentina (argentum). Sunrise came from the word sonrisa for smile, from the friend I raked and shoveled and made a horse trail out of dirt with.

I was known. People knew me there, even after just a couple of weeks. I could call them friends, and more than that even--soon they became family.

It was really hard to leave that community. My mom, who has known the value of camp since her college days working at Camp Garaywa, and I were talking about what a unique place camp is the other day. In a different way than anywhere else, you can be silly together and you work hard toward a common goal together and you live in community together. There's so much value in camp. It's the most beautiful mix of what it means to live.

                             
We threw water balloons and carried campers to the water slide as many times as their hearts wanted (and our arms could) and later jumped down the slide into the lake.

We danced and dyed our hair pink and painted sparkles on our faces that ran down after a couple minutes of dancing with our diva campers. 

We washed heads and held hands when it was scary to be away from home and ran together calling for the nurse in the middle of seizures. 

We made safe places to share our hearts and talked about "what made you belly laugh this week" and let awkward silences be beautiful. 

We dressed like princesses and rockstars? and acted ridiculous just to hear laughter bubble out of lips that never speak words. 

Sometimes we all gathered to tell our favorite campers goodbye, sometimes we cried and prayed and held onto each other when we had to send them home to a place lacking in love. 

We were brave and we asked our campers to face their fears while boldly facing our own. 

We were fightalongsiders this summer. The theme for camp was "Alive!" and it couldn't have been more perfect. Camp Blessing this summer showed me a more authentic way of living--you can tell people how much you love them and you can dance your heart out and let mud stay between your toes for a while and even if you haven't showered in a couple days and look like you haven't slept, you'll still be loved. There was no judgment, just love. Like a family. And though I keep using the past tense, I know these dear ones are fightalongsiders for life. 

There's nowhere I would have rather been this summer. Here's to taking my favorite parts of camp and trying to make the "real world" look more like Camp Blessing--a place where everyone is seen as capable, even if you can't communicate with words or you learn differently or you've never worked at camp before. A place of authentic love.

Your Blogger,

Claire aka Sonrisa

Crossing the divide

Dear Readers,

Over spring break my siblings, mom, and I piled into our van and drove the 935 miles to Allende, Nuevo León, Mexico. I never wrote about it on here because there just weren't any words to describe it--amazing and incredible and inolvidable just aren't strong enough adjectives. There are no adjectives capable of describing how beautiful it was. 

But I was flipping through my journal entries this morning and decided one of our stories needed to be shared. 

One night, we were enjoying tacos at this cool little restaurant off the highway. As we were all getting back into the van after our meal, a little girl came up to me. She hesitated for a moment, but bravery shone in her eyes as she asked, "Excuse me, are you of the United States?" 

I saw myself in those shining eyes and the carefully rehearsed line. I, so often, appear that way to hispanohablantes, all trembling anticipation and nervous excitement. I told her I was, and that her english was very good. 

Her dad, as mine would have done, rushed her away and nodded a quick "gracias" at me. Her mom, though, caught my arm: "Qué le preguntó?" 

She wanted to know what her daughter had just asked me. There was a momentary divide between mom and daughter. 

We are in Disney World right now, and there are masses of hispanohablantes. I've loved getting to speak Spanish here and there, but I haven't always loved the divides I've seen between english-speakers and these hispanohablantes. One afternoon my family and I waited in the wheelchair entrance (aka the exit for everyone else) and a woman frantically shoved past us to the cast member directing us. "Dónde está la cola? Dónde?" Honestly, everyone working at Disney World should be familiar with this phrase. And even if not, you would think it isn't too difficult to surmise given the circumstances. This cast member, though, backed away, shaking his head and saying "I don't know, I don't know." His response to the divide was flustered confusion.  I was honored to be able to explain the situation to her, but as she walked away I realized that I was only one person in a mass of people who didn't understand her, and one person was not enough. 

Later on in the trip, we sat in the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor--an interactive comedy show. Each time the monster on stage called on a guest who only spoke Spanish, and their faces got redder and redder as they were put on the spot and didn't understand the questions. 

So often, in these scenarios, the gut reaction of many to the divide is annoyance and laughter. And when it is, I so wish I could flip the tables for every single English-speaking American, and place them in Mexico, and let them feel the way it feels to be confused and isolated by the language they speak. Actually, not once did I ever feel like we were bothering anyone with the English we spoke so loudly in Mexico. We were met with only love. 

That moment with the mom and daughter was so profound for me. I didn't take for granted the privilege that I was able to understand and communicate with both. I also noticed the grace with which the mom asked me her question. All the time I hear people, in reference to the musical sounds of Spanish being spoken around them, say: "I just hope they aren't talking about me." There's this anger, almost, that they would be so audacious as to speak a language that you don't understand, that doesn't belong here. Yet there was no anger in that mom's voice, no anger at the fact that we were taking up a large portion of the restaurant, speaking a language she didn't understand so loudly that her daughter took notice. There was just grace, and curiosity, and a desire to be included. 

Especially in this season of our nation's history, the divides are growing between our borders and the countries around us. This doesn't just happen, though. It is a conscious choice. That mom in Mexico made a choice in how she responded to us. 

I want to challenge you to respond in love, too, wherever and whenever you can. Love with the way you respond and the words you use. And while you're at it, learn a couple phrases in Spanish--not just because 37 million people in the US speak it, but because it is truly beautiful. 

Con todo mi amor, 

Your Blogger