a missionary's guilt

She made my dad cry. Twice. 

I have only seen my dad cry a handful of times in my life, and only when someone close to him has passed away. At least those are the only times I remember. 

When Christian, Patricia and I were on the airplane from Amsterdam to Seattle, I told Christian, “I would bet money that my mom cries when she meets Patricia.” That’s a normal thing for grandmas to do. I wouldn’t exactly call my mom a normal grandma, but when it comes to emotions she is usually pretty predictable. 

After ten hours, our plane landed in Seattle. I tied seven-week-old Patricia to my chest, we grabbed our five bags and accessories (I’m not kidding) from the overhead bins, glided through customs, managed not to fall over on the airport tram, and stepped onto a very long escalator. Halfway up, we saw my parents leaning over the railing and waving vigorously. It was their first glance at their newest granddaughter, after all. 

When we got to the baggage claim I untied Patricia and handed her to my dad while Christian started pulling our bags off the belt. My mom and I were talking about the flight and how it was traveling with an infant when we heard a sniffle. We all looked over just in time to see my dad wipe a tear from his cheek, his eyes red and a bashful smile on his face. “She’s pretty much perfect, isn’t she?” he said. 

Two weeks in Morton was not enough. Technically, it was enough to see almost all the people we wanted to see and for the family to meet Patricia, but emotionally it was not enough time to feel like we were ready to say goodbye at the end. Annie and I baked cookies while blasting the Ice Princess and Ella Enchanted soundtracks only once. My mom and I drank margaritas at the Mexican restaurant only once. We went to Cody’s breakfast with my dad only once. We didn’t even binge watch any Alias. 

But Patricia was a great draw for a lot of people to come visit, and that is what they did. Family, high school friends, college friends, friends-of-the-family-who-might-as-well-be-family, supporters—she was a big hit among all. My grandma Pat (after whom Patricia is named) flew out from Iowa to meet her newest great-granddaughter and namesake. From the time we decided on Patricia as our girl name, I had been excited to tell my grandma about it, but seeing the Patricias together was something else. She spent several days rocking Patricia in the chair that she remembers sitting in with her mother. 

And then there was the day all three of my sisters were home at the same time. Considering for the past ten years the four of us have collectively lived in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Uganda, getting all four of us in the same state at the same time is quite a feat. This has been a big year for us, as we also had one day together in July during the family reunion, but there is something special about reuniting in the home where we all grew up. 

That evening we casually hung out in the living room and caught up with one another. We took turns holding and admiring Patricia, who loved being with anyone as long as she was comfortable. My dad came in and stood in the doorway, and it was a couple of minutes before anyone noticed the tears streaming down his face. This was not one bashful tear—he was downright blubbery. 

“Oh, Steve,” my mom said with a hint of incredulity in her voice. 

My dad sniffed. “I just never imagined… with all my girls here in one place, and a new little girl in the mix, all the people I love gathered together here… I never imagined it could be this good.” 

And it was. It was so, so good. 

And yet, two weeks later, we were packing our suitcases (again) and saying goodbyes. I cried while I packed. I cried while my parents gave Patricia one last bath in front of the wood stove before we left for the airport. I cried when I gave them one last hug before we entered the line for security. In my whole life, it had never been harder to board that plane. 

The whole time I kept thinking to myself, Who am I to take Patricia away from them? They loved her so much, and I loved seeing them with her—more than I expected I would. Patricia made them so supremely happy, and I felt like I was taunting them, Hey look! You have an adorable granddaughter! You can play with her for two weeks but not more than that because now I’m taking her away for a long, long time and I don’t know when you get to see her again. Never as a baby, that’s for sure. 

Who am I to take away something that makes them so happy? Who am I to cause them pain? Who am I to decide to raise my family so far away from my… family? Who am I to decide that Patricia doesn’t need to see her grandparents all that often? Who am I to make it entirely too difficult for them to have a close relationship? I was overcome by the guilt of the pain I had caused, and would cause. As we sat on the airplane, I wondered if I would be scared to visit again because the goodbye just got so much harder for everyone. I thought I was excited to return to Uganda, but was it worth it? Was that really home? 

Well, we came back to Uganda and started getting settled ,which began with unpacking 400 pounds of luggage into our two-bedroom house. The first week was settle-in week, and after that we would figure out how to start working again and how we would divide our time with Patricia. I know the first week was necessary to make our house feel a bit more like a home again, but I struggled. I struggled with being at Noah’s Ark without working, since that used to consume almost all of my time. I struggled with not knowing everything that was going on at school and in the libraries, since I had left someone else in charge. I struggled with the idea that I would have less time at school when I always felt like I was not there enough to start with. But most of all, I struggled with the desire to be with Patricia all day long and at the same time to be with the children all day long, knowing I cannot have both. 

I love the children here. I love them so much. When we were in the Netherlands, I missed having a house full of kids and block towers. When we were in America, I imagined Thomas and Isaac running around in the woods behind my parents’ house—the same woods Annie and I used to explore. I love the questions the children ask and the notes they write to me. I love to go jogging with them and teach them how to cook. I love when our doorway fills with little faces when school gets out. 

And this is where the guilt kicks in again, because no matter how much I love those kids, I’m pretty sure I love Patricia more. 

You might be thinking, Of course you love her more! She’s your daughter! You’re supposed to love her more. But then let me ask you this: Who is supposed to love these children more? If not me, then whom? Don’t they deserve that? 

When I was teenager, I began contemplating the reality of the body of Christ. More specifically, I began wondering how to reconcile being a well-off American with the poverty I read about all over the world. In the body of Christ, they are as much my family as the sisters with whom I grew up. 

I asked someone once, “If your child had crooked teeth and was starving, would you use the money you had to get him braces or buy him food?” 

“I would buy him food, of course,” the person replied. 

“Then why, when people’s teeth are crooked in America and people are starving in Africa, do we spend our money to get braces for our children with crooked teeth and not to buy food for our children who are hungry?”

Now that I have my own child, that question and that concept plague me. Is it fair to spend half my day with my daughter and the other half divided among dozens of children? Not at all. Is it fair to deny my daughter things because the children that surround us don’t have them? Perhaps, but the mother in me doesn’t want to do that. 

One missionary told me that the new group of toddlers hardly talks. I think of how much of my day is spent making eye contact with Patricia and listening as she squeals and giggles and coos and I act like it is the best story I have ever heard. It seems she will have no problem talking. She gets to practice with someone who is willing to listen. What about all the other babies? Who is listening to them? 

This guilt is not new. When Christian and I first started talking about having children, I had to ask, “Why, when we live with two hundred children who don’t have parents—at least not parents who can care for them—would be bring one more child here? Why can’t we be their parents instead?” I will never regret having Patricia, yet at the same time I don’t know if I will ever feel fully at peace with having brought another child into the world when I know there are already so many without families. 

This is not strictly a missionary problem, or an American problem, or anything like that. I would imagine at one point or another most of us feel that guilt to some extent and we all deal with it either in a way that seems most morally right to us, or in a way that allows us to maintain our comfort while keeping the guilt at bay. And some of us, myself included, are still sitting in the guilt and trying to figure out what to do with it.