What are you breathing?

While standing outside the dilapidated structure waiting for the translators to arrive, I wasn’t really ready or expecting to have one of the most profound conversations of my time in Chongwe, Zambia–let alone with a seven year old.  It started when her toddler sister saw me and rushed over.  The young one didn’t speak any English but she was fascinated with my skin.  I sat on the crumbling cement stair and smiled at her while she touched my hands, hair, and glasses and giggled hysterically at all the differences she was discovering.  The older sister saw us and rushed over with a smile–she had English to practice, and for the first time of so many, I heard the universal greeting of Zambian children to white people: “How are you?!”

“Fine,” I said, with the most welcoming grin I could muster, “How are you?”
“Fine!”
Me, “You speak English very well.”
Her, “What language are you speaking?”
“English, just like you.  What other languages do you speak?”
“French…”
“Really?  Bonjour, mademoiselle.”
Then, with the most adorable curtsy and an amazing accent, she says, “Bonjour, monsieur.”

And so the conversation goes on.  She asks many questions, but something is clearly distracting her.  After several minutes–all the while her sister touching my clothes, my shoes, tugging on my arms, and climbing up my back–the girl builds courage to ask the question that I had seen burning in her eyes since she first saw me.  Using both hands to point at her upper lip, and with a curious, quizzical quirk in her brow, she says, “What … are you breathing?”

It took me several moments to realize that of all the things that differentiate us from each other, she was most curious about my beard.  The only way she could wrap her mind around this strange substance on my face, was to think it must be something I am breathing in through my nose.  I tried explaining to her that I have hair that grows on my face, and was met with that most feared of all childlike questions, “Why?”  After several failed attempts to explain beards, my colleagues arrived and we all had a good laugh.  I said goodbye.  The girls ran back to their games in the dirt, and I entered the acting Soli translation office.

Even as the inherent cuteness of her question faded, I had a difficult time getting her words out of my head.  A white person in her backyard is a rare occasion, but seeing a beard was truly remarkable.  Here was something incredibly different–even scary.  From the moment she saw me, she wanted to know about this foreign oddity.  Her mind had no words to give meaning to the thing she was seeing, and as she searched for ideas she decided with elegant finality that my beard must simply be something I needed.  When faced with a person who was so very different and even intimidating to herself, her first response was to acknowledge our differences as something created from my needs.  In such an effortless way, this girl had so perfectly grasped and defined the humility required to embrace empathy and treat others with love.  The encounter was over, but her question became my internal monologue’s response to the litany of cultural blunders I would make as I started to figure out how this awkward, American introvert can make meaningful relationships with people who are literally raised a world away.

Weeks later, I found myself in Tanzania.  My wife and I had spent time in Rwanda and South Africa–working in four different countries in a month’s time.  While all the projects we engaged in were going very well, the constancy of people, lack of privacy, and continuous travel had worn away some of the romance of being world traveling, international workers.  I was having difficulties making relationships in Tanzania.  I work with an organization whose vision includes educating, hiring, and empowering indigenous workers and I was having a tough time marrying my ideas of the help I would bring with the desires of the people with whom I was working.  There was a pretty significant language barrier and there is so much need.  I was struggling with the feeling that everywhere I went, I was simply seen as a walking wallet.  Between the lack of requisite alone time, the constant cultural flux, and my internal wrestling with my work and identity, I was getting to be more than a little emotionally strained.  In this state, I blindly charged into one of my worst cultural blunders.

While attending a service at a rural church outside Moro Goro, we were greeted by pastors’ families as we approached the building.  After the customary Swahili greetings, the first man reached out for the Bible and notebook in my hands and I declined.  The next man, the same.  Then, I  reached a woman who didn’t really ask, but just took a hold of the books in my hand.  I can’t really explain why or what, but in an instant, in front of a line of people there, I’m clearly wrestling this woman for control of the Bible.  Instantly, I find myself in a tug-of-war and my first response is not to simply let go; and, in a magnificently successful and embarrassingly obvious jerk of the hand, I conquered my opponent–wresting the Bible into my control.  I look up to see my wife staring at me–the “What the hell was that?!” question clear in her eyes.

The woman, being clearly the more mature and gracious one, simply moves on and then I’m led to my seat.  Throughout the service, I’m left with my thoughts, and unfortunately, my first response is justification.  People should respect my space.  I’m allowed my culture and practice.  Can’t I just have one day to fade into the background?  I shouldn’t be expected to simply follow along with every cultural ritual and simply do what everyone else is doing.  Right?

If I’m going to be expected to do work that is good, and actually help pull others up and out of bad situations, then I should be given the time to contemplate and carefully execute my actions.  Right?

I sat there stewing but despite my best rationales and anger, I felt more and more guilty.  Yeah, that blunder wasn’t that bad, and it’s already forgotten by others, but I realized I need to do some soul-searching.  I need to figure out what is really wearing me down–my first response should be gracious, generous, and loving; not protective, cold, and self-righteous.  Why do I feel the need to evaluate if everyone else’s actions and motivations are justified?  Why am I so worried that my every little action is going to be right or wrong?  Why am I so embarrassed over such a small thing?

Then, I hear a clear, small voice in my head, saying, “What are you breathing?”

Ah, there it is.  That is the reason I’m feeling guilty.  Despite all my best intentions, and even in the face of successful, and selfless seeming work, I realized I had been holding onto something deep within myself–little seeds of pride and selfishness that had grown into love-strangling weeds in my heart.  It is hard to put the revelation into words, and as much as I would love to have a linguistically elegant, and deeply poetic one-liner to express the idea, I don’t.

If I did, it would say something about the fact that love necessitates putting other people’s needs above your own–and not just above your wants, but over your actual needs.  It would mention that love requires empathy and not sympathy, because how can you do anything at all for someone else’s needs if you don’t understand what they are in the first place?  My saying would say that love isn’t fair or deserved, but that it must be given and not compelled.  It would cleverly assert that love goes beyond a feeling, and includes intention and action together–that despite my effort at doing what’s right, to do something loving requires a sacrifice.  My saying would admit my own short-sighted shortcomings, while clearly resolving to be ever more patient, kind, generous, humble, and forgiving.

In those moments I had alone in my head, I realized that while I’m often doing good things, I’m also often withholding love.  Instead of doing to others what I’d have them do to me, I was doing for others what I thought was best regardless of their need.  Additionally, my fear of doing wrong was causing me to hesitate in generosity, compassion, and forgiveness.  Unfortunately for me, this is not really love–it’s something slightly different.  That little girl in Zambia, in her childlike innocence, had grasped the essence of a kind of empathy that leads to love.  When confronted with something about me she didn’t understand, she simply accepted our difference as being something I needed, and because it was something I apparently needed, she had no need to fear it.

John the Apostle wrote in a letter saying, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. […] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Well, that hurts…in those times when I’m blinded by my own fears and judgement, I am not knowing God.  When guarding against punishment and acting in fear, I feel acutely that I’m not perfect in love.  If I cannot love the ones in front of me, how can I claim to be loving God in my actions.  God has not asked me to do what is right in my own eyes, but to love.

So, in my soul-searching I discovered this thing that I had been trying to hide–the fact that, I am not love.  But God is.  Maybe this is why Jesus said that the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like children, because love is so seemingly effortless for them.  I wonder how my interpersonal interactions would be shaped if my highest priority was to understand another’s needs rather than to have my own be understood?  If I quickly accepted differences as necessary instead of dangerous?  If I first sought ways to show love, instead of justifications to prove my fear?  If I gave others just enough benefit of the doubt to provide a chance to share the need which necessitated an apparent fault?  While these questions were birthed from my failure, they did not deepen my guilt, but rather they provided a framework for pursuing love in every relationship.

As I said, this question–“What are you breathing?”–has become my mental reflex to those I meet.  When presented with something different, inexplicable, uncomfortable, or even scary, I try to perceive with the eyes of a child.  I can try to understand the need on display before making up my mind as to what is right.  So, though I still do not have a simple way to say everything I’ve been thinking, I do have a question I can use to disarm the accusing voice in my head.  When that voice troubles me with judgement, doubt, and fear, I can simply be reminded of the effortless empathy of a childlike faith.  Amazingly, God loves us even when we falter, and He finds ways to bring us back to Himself.  For me, in this case, He spoke through the unassuming words of a child; and despite the necessary rebuke, I walk with a renewed spirit and a heart at peace.  I can feel that some weeds of pride and selfishness have been plucked from my heart, and I am thankful that He is faithful to work on the garden of my heart, and that He never gives up on me.

If you’re still reading, I say thank you.  I hope that in sharing how God reveals himself in my own weaknesses, you’re able to find Him as well.