Living in Limbo

I’m not unemployed or underemployed like some of the people protesting at various Occupy gatherings across the US, but I am in limbo. When we were deported from Bolivia, I thought our time at home would be a vacation while we visited family and waited to hear from MCC and figure out what to do next. We have visited family and friends all over Texas from Waco to San Antonio, Kingsland and Fredericksburg to San Angelo. It’s been good to see everyone again, especially my new niece which I couldn’t visit for a while because of a case of shingles.

Shingles comes from the chicken pox virus that lies dormant in your spine. It can be triggered by stress and comes out in your nerves which is often very painful. My case was pretty mild, but it definitely got me thinking about stress and how I was really feeling about our situation. Since we’ve had a lot of down time, I’ve also been following the Occupy Wall Street movement pretty closely. Democracy Now! in their coverage of the movement interviewed Dr. Gabor Maté who was at the Wall Street encampment. Maté makes some interesting connections between the protests, economic crisis, stress and our health:

“50 percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness, and much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature on what causes stress, it’s uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control and lack of expression of self. And the uncertainty that has been forced upon the American population by the recent economic crisis, the loss of control as power has flown into the hands of very, very few people, and the absolute powerlessness of the many in the face of all that, and the lack of expression through the ordinary political process, people are totally disempowered and deprived of their voice. This protest addresses all those issues. So I can only say that this is an extraordinarily healthy thing to happen. People who participate here will be healthier for it as a result, and maybe society, in general, as well.”

Uncertainty, lack of information and lack of control describes our lives over the last few months pretty well. It’s hard to thrive in these circumstances. There’s nobody to blame except the Bolivian government for our situation, but it is clear from this experience that we are not meant to live in an extended state of limbo without job, purpose, productive work or direction. In this period we have also lacked the kind of community we enjoy as a part of Hope Fellowship in Waco.

I’ve written before about this tension we feel in our culture between jobs and community defining and ordering our lives (Looking for a Job in the Kingdom). The thing is that while my life is in limbo, community can provide more certainty, stability, purpose and maybe most importantly a place to express myself. We have not been living in that community and that has made life extra stressful. We’ve visited a couple times and it has helped us remember what life in community provides in circumstances like ours.

I have also missed the time that I had in Bolivia to read and write a lot. Last week marked the end of what I wrote while we were in Bolivia. It also marked the end of our time away from our community. We are now back in Waco. I hope that this will be a time of renewed life with our beloved community and also a renewed energy for the writing and reading I have left off in the last few months. If posts are more sporadic and infrequent bear with me as we make yet another transition to some sort of new norm.

My prayer is that you and I find ourselves in a place and with people that will allow us to freely express ourselves in the midst of a sick society. Raise your voice. According to at least one doctor, it’s the healthiest thing you can do. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to make a better world.