Must We Suffer? - Cindy DeBoer

The pit in my stomach grew with each pound of the hammer as my husband drove the “For Sale” sign into the ground of our front yard. I wasn’t handling this well – yet he seemed to be strong. But when he stood up and wiped a tear away from his eyes, I became unhinged.

What in the world were we thinking? Why, oh why, are we doing this again? Nobody knows the voice of God for sure anyway, do they? Afterall, it’s not like we HAVE to move to the inner-city – we can afford this beautiful house on this perfect cul-de-sac, in this highly-desirable neighborhood, in this exemplary school district. So why should we move? Nobody does this. Are we just crazy?

Hoping to outsmart my tears, I ran inside and sat down to write through the pain. Writing’s my jam. My catharsis. But there were no words. I was hollow, empty, hurting, and mad at God.

For no particular reason, I opened up an unfamiliar file on my computer. I didn’t recall writing this piece entitled, “Must we suffer?” – but there it was. I had completely forgotten that about 4 or 5 months ago I had a dream that shook me to the core. I totally believe God sometimes speaks to us in dreams. It’s only happened to me a couple of times before. Only this time it took 5 months for me to receive the application.

My Lice Dream
In my dream, we had already made to move to Grand Rapids, the city our family has been preparing to relocate to for the last year. There was some kind of huge community event taking place in our new neighborhood. It was like a rock concert-meets-carnival-meets-church-picnic event. Everyone was happy, roaming around, eating and socializing. There was a young Hispanic girl – maybe 3 or 4 years old – who had taken to me after I smiled at her and offered her a sucker. She didn’t speak any English. And since I only know 10 words of Spanish, we bonded through smiles. Hand-in-hand, we took in music, kiddie rides, and wonderful ethnic food. After a while, she grew weary and I picked her up and carried her. She nestled her head into my shoulder.

A white woman came up to me and whispered in my ear, “You might want to keep a little more distance from that girl. Their family has a chronic problem with head-lice and with your long-hair on your shoulders, you’re just asking for it!”

I looked down at the little girl. She didn’t understand what had just been said about her. She just looked up into my eyes, smiled, and pointed towards a cotton-candy machine. She was so happy. And she was happiest when I was enjoying her happiness.

HOWEVER, I inwardly cringed. In our six years of life overseas both of our daughters had had several bouts with head lice. I had spent countless nights painstakingly removing those repulsive insects and their nits from the girls’ long hair. It is disgusting and a total pain in the ass. I really did NOT want to get head lice. But even more – I didn’t want to let go of this sweet little girl or disappoint her in any way.

I continued to let her cling to me.

The next scene in my dream I am standing in front of a mirror and I pull back some of my hair to see the scalp and hopefully discover the source of my itching. And there they were – four or five little bugs, about the size of a sesame seed, scurrying off to find another hiding place on my scalp. I almost gagged.

I went to find the head-lice treatment kit. Since we had just moved into our new-to-us very old home in Grand Rapids, there were boxes everywhere, piles of crap in every corner, and mounds of clothing that would never find a home with these diminutive ancient closets. I went to the hall cupboard hoping to find some lice shampoo and the door fell off the hinges when I opened it. I tried to open the drawers below but one did not have runners and was jammed in a cock-eyed position; the other was painted shut. I felt the bugs running around on my scalp.

I went downstairs to the kitchen because I read somewhere that covering your head in mayonnaise can drown the lice. I had to skip over steps 4 and 9 because they were missing. In the kitchen, I was horrified to discover we hadn’t purchased a refrigerator yet. Apparently, in my dream, we had run out of money before we could finish the renovations. I looked into the family room where strips of 100 yr-old- wall-paper were still hanging from the walls and the ceiling (yes, the idiot owners before us had wall-papered THE CEILING!) I saw several windows that were still broken, huge cracks in the plastered walls, and the front door that didn’t shut properly had let rain seep in all night long. A large pile of rain-worms were soaking in a puddle two feet in front of me.

“This is squalor!” I ranted to myself. “I didn’t agree to live in squalor! I told Jesus we would follow Him to the inner-city and we would just love on people who are different from us. We just wanted diversity in a challenged neighborhood. That’s all! I told Jesus we were willing to leave Hudsonville and family and friends and just do our best to try to live like him in the city. So why does our house have to be nearly condemned and why do I have to have HEAD LICE???”

THEN I KIND OF WOKE UP, AND KIND OF KEPT DREAMING…. I WISH I KNEW FOR SURE IF I WAS AWAKE OR ASLEEP – BECAUSE I HEARD A MESSAGE FROM GOD AND KNEW FOR CERTAIN IT WAS HE WHO SPOKE TO ME. HE SAID:

“CINDY. DID YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU COULD FOLLOW ME AND NOT SUFFER? DID YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU COULD PRAY TO ME AND ASK TO LIVE LIKE ME AND BE LIKE ME, THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB, YET NEVER HAVE TO SACRIFICE ANYTHING YOURSELF? IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT, CINDY. WHEN YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME AND JOIN ME IN MY WORK, YOU COME TO THE PLACE OF SUFFERING. I NEVER PROMISED ANYTHING DIFFERENT. YET, THE BEAUTY OF FOLLOWING ME IS THAT I WILL CARRY THE BURDEN.”