Cindy DeBoer

Life Overseas

The Bigger Sinner

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I didn’t want to hire a maid when we lived in Morocco even though everyone else did. I thought my actions would show my Moroccan friends and neighbors how Americans can sometimes be hardworking and resourceful and that, as a Christian, it was wrong to demean Moroccans by exploiting their cheap labor (the going rate for a maid in 2007 was $10 – $12/day). I thought my friends and neighbors would be so impressed at how selfless, kind and generous I was.

I was so wrong.

Morocco offered no welfare programs, food assistance, or low-cost housing back then (it’s changed a bit in recent years). Without government assistance, per se, the country operated under the unspoken, nation-wide understanding that the “haves” must help the “have-nots.” One of the five pillars of Islam is to give alms to the poor, so culturally, this practice of assisting the poor came quite naturally for Moroccans (over 99% Muslim). One of the primary ways the “haves” helped the poor was to employ as many house staff as possible. It was very common for average families (equivalent to middle-class here in America) to have at a minimum, a maid, a chauffeur, a gardener, and a house guardian. After a dear friend explained these cultural dynamics to me, she said, “I know what you’re trying to do by not hiring a maid, Cindy. You don’t want to take advantage of the cheap labor. I’m sure you’re trying to display how selfless you are. But in reality, your friends and neighbors here will view you as selfish for not offering employment to as many of your impoverished neighbors as possible. Moroccans already view Americans as too wealthy and self-serving. You’d just be cementing those views and showing them that Christians are no different.”

I was mortified. My actions conveyed the exact opposite of my intentions. Embarrassed, we hired a maid the next day.

Our first maid lasted only a few months. Amal was a gregarious twenty-something with master-chef cooking abilities and an indefatigable work ethic. She’d sing while she cooked, danced while she cleaned, and giggled contagiously while helping our kids learn Arabic. She adored our family, and we adored her. But then we suspected she was stealing from us. Eventually, she took a wad of cash we had stashed in the back of our dresser drawer—money we didn’t need, but had hidden there “just in case…”  

Because Amal and I had only ever communicated in spotty French—a second language to both of us—I enlisted my tri-lingual Canadian neighbor to serve as Arabic translator (Amal’s first language) for our little conversation about the sin of stealing. Amal immediately melted into tears but refused to admit guilt. In a shame/honor culture (unlike our right/wrong western culture), it is more important to save face than to be honest. I told her she could keep her job if she’d just admit she had done it. She refused to confess but continued crying uncontrollably. I felt so sorry for her because I could see she was in misery. She loved our family and didn’t want to lose her job. (Americans often paid their maids more than Moroccans did).

However, before leaving, Amal gathered herself and she and my neighbor/translator had a long conversation at the door in Arabic. I understood none of it. My neighbor later explained that Amal was still not admitting guilt, but had posited that IF she had, in fact, taken the money, it would have been because, in a sense, the money belonged with her and her community, anyway, due to the fact they had great need, and we had great abundance. She said we were “too blind” to see the poverty around us and should have been convicted of our excess. She said it was sinful for us to keep so much wealth for ourselves, but she recognized we were good people who just didn’t know the right thing to do. She said people like us (every American is considered wealthy in Morocco) should be doing more for those in need and we should have at the very least, hired more house staff. She said families in her neighborhood were struggling to feed their children while we kept money tucked away for no reason.

Amal ended by saying, “If the wealthy won’t do what Allah has asked of them, the poor need to show them how to do it.”

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Our home and lifestyle in the little fishing/surfing village where we lived, Dar Bouazza, felt very middle-class to me. However, in a country without a middle-class, per se, we were lumped-in with the tiny sliver of society considered “wealthy” by most Moroccan standards. Dar Bouazza was surrounded by shanty towns in every direction. These neighborhoods were often a huddled mass of shoddily built cinderblock homes with corrugated metal roofs. Most “homes” lacked proper kitchens, running water, or bedrooms. Many shared a community toilet, and the families slept on froshes, the same cushions that served as their couches during the day. Sickness ran rampant. Unemployment commonplace.

This means that every day, when Amal entered our four-bedroom, three-bathroom home with running water, a stove, a refrigerator full of food (so much so, that sometimes things go bad and are tossed), two cars, computers, books and toys, and an overflowing coat and shoe rack, she struggled with the injustice of it all. She’d wash our clothes (more than truly “necessary” for a family of six) in our very own washing machine and as she hung them out on the line (we weren’t that well off… we didn’t own a dryer!) each morning, she’d watch us drive off with our kids— carrying their big lunches and big backpacks—taking them to their private school up the street to the left and think to herself, “They’re nice people, but how can they justify living like this while just up the street to the right lives my family who can’t even afford to have dinner tonight. Why won’t they help the poor more?”

(L) – Our house – the narrow white town house in the middle, adjacent to an empty lot full of garbage, mice and cockroaches who paid us regular visits. (R) Photo from Amal’s neighborhood – a five minute walk from our house.

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I’ve never forgotten Amal’s challenging words from the day I fired her. As the years have gone on and I’ve let them simmer and settle into my Christian worldview, I think she may have been right. I now often wonder if our sin of withholding our wealth (socking away money we weren’t “using,” purely for security’s sake) while surrounded by abject poverty there in Morocco was, perhaps, the bigger sin than her stealing from us.

The thing is, Amal’s actions broke a UNIVERSAL law no one questions regardless of what religion you ascribe to (thou shalt not steal). But the hoarding of money is perfectly “legal” worldwide. If we had reported her, she would have gone to jail, not us. It’s the thing that we, the “haves,” love to get all worked up about, isn’t it?  We love to point our fingers at the thieves (the desperate “have nots”) and essentially say, “Her! Go get her! She stole from me what is rightfully mine!”

Yet, no one ever questions if perhaps we were thieves, too.

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Despite what lies our current leaders are peddling, most migrants are NOT criminals (see references below) and are either asylum seekers, or people seeking work for a brighter future for their families (desiring employment enabling them to send remittances back to their home country). This is a difficult reality for us Americans to understand because we’ve never experienced that degree of desperation. But the rights of asylum seekers are protected by international law. The human right to seek refuge when fleeing danger and persecution is recognized world-wide.

Study upon study on immigration proves immigrants (both the documented and the undocumented) are far less likely to commit crimes than nationals. In fact, in cities where violent crime has been on the decline, a larger number of immigrants directly correlates to a lower crime rate! The last thing an undocumented person would want to do is draw attention to themselves. And yet, as they’ve risked everything to come to America in seeking safety and/or a chance at a better life, we, the richest nation in the world, are essentially telling them “No! Get out!” largely because “It’s the LAW, damnit!”

It’s almost as if we, America, have these “wads of cash stashed in the backs of our dresser drawers” (i.e. surplus of employment, land, space, opportunity, resources) but we get all upset when immigrants come and take any of it. Yes, of course, many have come without proper documentation (which is NOT a crime, by the way, only a civil offense)—which means they have, indeed, broken a law. So they are the ones who get in trouble and are detained and deported and we get to point our bony little condescending fingers at them and yell, “Them! Go get them! They are taking what is rightlfully mine!”

But if it’s true, that our American “dresser drawer” has “cash” stashed in the back for “just in case…”, perhaps we need to ask ourselves this:

Could it be that we are thieves, too?

Which begs the question, who’s the bigger sinner?

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Glossary of terms (These are words I realized I was using incorrectly until my kids educated me):

  • Migrant: person moving from one country to another
  • Refugee: a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster and have COMPLETED a thorough screening process (which can often take years to process while they wait in refugee camps), and have been CLEARED to resettle in the US. They are 100% legal.
  • Asylum seekers: people looking to apply for asylum because of documentable dangerous conditions in their home country. Asylum seekers sometimes reside within the US borders while waiting for their case to be heard by an asylum officer of the U.S. government, and they sometimes wait outside the US border. If granted asylum, they are 100% legal residents.
  • Illegals – a derogatory term that dehumanizes immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The moment someone submits an asylum claim, they enter into the “system” and are “documented” with legal rights. Coming to America without proper documentation is NOT A CRIME, but an administrative infraction punishable by deportation, not incarceration.
  • Undocumented Immigrant: someone who has traveled to another country without proper documentation

References:

Same Kind of Wounds as Me

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I noticed her and those tell-tale marks on her face from far across the room. At the first break of our writer’s conference, I ran over to her, breathless with anticipation.

“Hey, I don’t mean to be weird or anything, but I notice that you have nasal cannula indentations on your cheeks, and I know that means you wear oxygen at night. I usually have those marks on my cheeks, too, but I didn’t have a portable tank to take with me, so I’m sleeping without it here at the conference.”

She didn’t even hesitate. She reached out and lovingly – knowingly – hugged me. We had an instant bond. We chatted non-stop for 20 minutes. We both have debilitating lung diseases for which there is no cure. We were both feeling a bit discouraged at this conference because it was set in the mountains at a high elevation and the campus was very hilly – two things that make people with sucky lungs cringe.

It has been a hard two years for both of us. We were both told by our physicians that COVID would not be kind to us, and we needed to avoid it if at all possible. We both felt isolated, lonely, bored, and angry after two years of this COVID nightmare. We shared sadness about strained relationships. We admitted feeling unloved, devalued, and discarded when people we loved diminished the devastation of COVID and refused to take precautions on our behalf.

The tears flowed uncontrollably and I think I made a blubbering scene for onlookers.

As two people with lung diseases amidst the worst pandemic in the modern world, we both also suffered from PTSD and I know, for me, I desperately NEEDED her. But here’s the thing: I didn’t know how much I needed her. I had open, oozing, un-attended wounds and didn’t realize  it until she walked in the room. Seeing her just made me acknowledge I am hurt. I am suffering and I need someone who gets me.

I didn’t know how deep my wounds were until we started talking and shared all kinds of bottled-up emotions.

Later that day, I mused how my view on those nasal cannula indentations had changed. I’m no longer embarrassed by them. I’m glad I have them so that others who are oxygen-dependent can recognize me as someone who shares their wounds. I also mused that it would be kind of nice if people wore baseball caps emblazoned with a logo of the wounds they carry to help us all identify one another. I’d like the people with the following wounds to wear identifying ball caps so I could find them more easily:

  • Not loved all that well by my daddy.
  • Spent our kids’ college funds and our retirement funds on living overseas because we refused to raise support just to live like Jesus, for Jesus’ sake.
  • Gains weight even if I swallow my own spit.

It is through the sharing of our pain and truly being known and understood in that pain, that we can begin to find healing.

And what about you, my friends? What wounds are you carrying that no one can see? Who is it that you need to meet just to feel that you are not so alone in your woundedness? Therefore, what kind of logos would you want to see on someone’s ball cap that would make you want to run to them, hug them, and say, “YES! Me, too! Me, too!”

Ball caps that said:

  • Abused as a child. No one knows.
  • My spouse is cheating on me.
  • I drink my troubles away. Every day.
  • We want a child, but can’t get pregnant.
  • My business partner takes advantage of my hard work ethic.
  • I don’t think I love my husband anymore.
  • I don’t have any friends.
  • I’m six months pregnant and just found out our baby has Down’s Syndrome.
  • I secretly dream about running away from it all.
  • I’m depressed and have fleeting thoughts of suicide.
  • I have a prodigal child.
  • Had an abortion in high school that no one knows about.
  • I have cancer and I don’t feel like fighting it anymore.

Finding someone with the same kind of wounds is good, life-giving, and necessary. It’s also biblical:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”  Galations 6:2

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” John 13:34

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4: 2,3

“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” Proverbs 3:27

So here’s the deal, fellow sufferers – unless we get real with one another and share our woundedness, NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW and the healing that is available to us, through Christ and his people, won’t be known in its fullest form.

Unless we have nasal cannula marks on our faces or choose to wear a baseball cap with a bold logo, NO ONE KNOWS OUR WOUNDS.

So, may you, by the grace of God, find the strength to share your wounds with a few trusted souls. May you find that the sharing of your wounds exposes those hurts and pains to the light where the light can chase away the darkness. May you find some inner peace as you let out that which has always been bottled in. May you know that the God of all creation created other individuals WITH YOUR SAME WOUNDS to be there for you when you are feeling alone – you need only to reach out to them.

Don’t be ashamed of your nasal cannula indentations. They may be the very thing somebody needs to see today to bring about their healing.

How to Launch Into Winter with COVID All Around Us

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My stupid COVID dog (not that she has it, but we bought her because of it) woke me up way too early one morning. I wouldn’t mind if our Governor mandated all humans shall not stir before 8:00 a.m.

Vie (my COVID dog’s name – which is French for “life”) needs a walk immediately upon waking or she’ll poop in the house. So at the crack of dawn I headed outdoors in my pajamas for a dog walk.

With sleepy-eyes and morning breath I bumped into my neighbor just two doors down. She was loading her last piece of luggage into her car before heading to the airport. She was meeting up with her parents so they could tearfully send her off to live in the Middle East. She’s young (25?), very blonde, very attractive, and traveling solo to teach at a high school in Afghanistan. Yes, you heard that right:

Af-freakin’-ghanistan.

God knew this one last impromptu meeting was needed by both of us. We had a precious exchange there on the sidewalk and I was able to send her off with a blessing. With mutual  tears, she departed. I wondered how in the world her parents were handling this. Afghanistan. Who even does that? (Okay…. So maybe I did that. But WE went as a family. I had a brave husband at my side along with two strapping, tall teenaged sons and two very confident daughters. I was not ALONE. And Morocco is no Afghanistan. Not even close. People actually take vacations to Morocco.)

Before I had much of a chance to process the bravery of this young woman, I turned the corner and ran into a homeless man. He was picking at garbage in the park across from our home and so I greeted him warmly, “Hello!”

He launched into a rambling apology, “I’m sorry. So sorry. We didn’t mean it. We’re leaving.” It was then I noticed his tent that was erected just beyond the children’s play area. A second man was exiting their “home” as we spoke.

“Sorry for what?” I asked.

Without making further eye contact, he shuffled away saying, “We slept too long. We’ll be gone soon. So sorry.”

Homelessness in Grand Rapids is a thing – as I imagine it is in every city. But I’ve heard we are known as a destination for the homeless because we have plenty of shelters and food distribution centers, clean parks, friendly police and a plethora of Christian organizations that will do anything to help. But COVID has definitely made the homeless issue worse here in GR.

One thing I know for sure: Homelessness is not of the kingdom of God. This is not the way things are supposed to be.

I quickly realized the reason my stupid COVID dog woke me up so early is because God knew I needed to run into my Afghanistan-bound neighbor and my neighbors with no home because I needed the reminder that life is rarely what we thought it’d be or even what it’s supposed to be.

Watching my neighbor leave for Afghanistan I thought, “I bet when she was born and her parents first saw her rosy little cheeks, blonde tufts of hair and blue eyes they never once thought: “I hope that someday this one will move to Afghanistan all alone – a place where young beautiful blondes really stand out and American’s are not particularly welcome.”

I bet her parents never once imagined this for her future. But…

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and establishes them.” Proverbs 16:9

I bet when my two homeless neighbors were in high school, they never once thought to themselves, “I hope someday I will be without a home. I just know that I’ll end up jobless, with no prospects, and unable to secure safe shelter.”

 But…. “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and establishes them.”

We were invited to 3 weddings this fall where the bride and groom watched many lifelong dreams shatter as they moved up their wedding date, changed the venue, and shrunk the guest list due to COVID.

But… “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and establishes them.”

Our college graduate daughter was supposed to be living abroad in France or Spain or Honduras right now developing her language skills but instead she is home here with us working as a barista.

Because a man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and establishes them.

Referencing changed plans and directions is not meant in any way to minimize those who have lost loved ones from COVID. Those losses are incalculable and we can’t even begin to make sense of that. But I think that, without exception, we ALL had plans, dreams, and hopes for 2020 that look nothing like the 2020 we’re living. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

THESE WERE NOT OUR PLANS, GOD!!! DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING???

Never before have we all been so at the mercy of the Lord’s plans. We can barely plan next week, let alone next month or next year.

But one beautiful takeaway of this COVID reality is to realize I am not in charge of me and you are not in charge of you. We can plan all we want and hope and dream and whine when these things may have to be changed, cancelled, or never come to fruition – but the truth is that The Lord Our God alone is sovereign and we can never take his place on that throne no matter how much we think we belong there.

We can only surrender our plans and trust Him.

That’s it.

That’s all.

Whether in Afghanistan, a COVID-unit at the hospital, the Champs-Elysees in Paris, in a tent in the park, or stuck under the same roof between the same 4 walls for an entire year, the Lord has indeed directed those steps and he alone establishes those steps that lead us into our futures.

Is it possible that snow in April, stupid lung diseases, and other atrocities could be good for us?

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We lived in the most glorious, sunny, mountainous and palm-treed locations both times that we lived abroad. Aix-en-Provence, France and Casablanca, Morocco are two dreamy places to have once been called “home”.

While living abroad, we met people from all over the states, as well as from around the world. Then we all moved on and returned to our “homeland” which means we now have friends scattered around the globe.

Visiting some of our friends in Southern California for the first time changed everything for me and my “Best Places In the World to Live” list. To be honest, my first thought when I encountered the beauty of southern California was not that I wished to live there, but one of feeling sorry for my Californian friends.

Let me explain:
To me, the south of France and Morocco were these magical, breathtakingly beautiful holy sites where God revealed Himself to me. I cried the first time I saw the French Alps, the Mediterranean Sea, the palm-tree lined streets of Casablanca, and the Sahara Desert (to be fair, I do cry a lot…) Every time I encountered new beauty my Michigan-eyes had never known, I was left speechless, breathless, and entered a holy state of worship for a God who could (and would) create such beauty. My Michigan-eyes had beheld a LOT of glorious things in our mitten state, but just nothing like mountains, ocean, desert, palm trees, oh – and that elusive SUNSHINE!!! (Today, on April 11, it snowed in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Need I say more???)

So when on my inaugural trip to California I discovered identical beauty – mountains, ocean, desert, palm trees, sunshine (which can all be seen AT THE SAME TIME, for heavens sake!) – I realized that there was NO WAY my Californian friends could have felt the same depth, love, and appreciation that I did while we all lived in France and Morocco. There is no way that they woke up every day and said, “Lord have mercy! Another sunny day!” (as I did). There is no way they took endless pictures of palm trees (as I did). There is no way they walked the beaches every day and said, “God in heaven, help me to carry this moment with me forever – even into the polar vortex that is bound to hit in the middle of my future Michigan winters” (as I did).

I was CAPTIVATED by the weather and the landscape of those two countries – but only because I come from a backdrop of cold, snowy, and relatively flat Michigan. My California friends who also lived in France and Morocco with us must have greeted each new day with “Just another day in paradise.”

And that difference in our two experiences is such a CRUCIAL thing for us to remember when life gets hard, ugly, disappointing or blizzard-y.

A light shines brighter against a backdrop of darkness.
Comfort is only as comfortable to the degree of discomfort it relieves.
Joy is only as joyful as the sorrow from which it rescues.
Pain relief is only helpful to the degree of suffering it relieves.
God is only as good as to the depth of which we recognize our sin and need of a Savior.

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When we meet people who (seem) to come from a very “charmed” life – who basically seem to escape all suffering in this life (they are smart, rich, thin, never struggled with teenage acne, their kids all make good choices, no cancer, disease, or disorders, no bad hair days, and their dog never poops on the living room rug… Kind of like the sun is always shining in their lives. You know the type…) well, it is tempting for us to wish we were them. It seems like THAT would be the life we all want and should strive (pray) for.

But I wonder…. I wonder if we’d be missing out on some very important things God wants to show us if our lives were void of the pain, the messy, the heartache (the snow?) I wonder if there are actually parts of GOD we would not know if we never knew pain, suffering, hurt and loss.

Why are we given so many different names for God if we’d never need them? If we all pursued and achieved the “charmed” life without any pain and suffering, certainly there are attributes of God we would never know.
 
How can we know God as our DELIVERER if we’re never in a horrible place from which we need delivering?
How can we know God as our COMFORTER if we’ve never been uncomfortable?
How can we know God as our HEALER and GREAT PHYSICIAN if we’ve never known illness or disease or suffered emotional/spiritual brokenness?
How can we know God as our PROVIDER if we’ve never ached for provision?
How can we know our God, the PRINCE OF PEACE if we’ve spent our whole lives avoiding conflict, running from adversity, never challenged?
How can we know our God, the SANCTUARY, if we’ve never been in a place of needing protection?
How can we know God as a REFUGE FROM THE STORM if our lives are always “sunny”?
How can we know God as the BREATH OF LIFE if we never recognize our desperate need for Him in ALL things?
How can we know God as our SHEPHERD if we never see ourselves as lowly sheep?
 
I’m not in any way suggesting we shouldn’t live in California! Nor am I saying God gives suffering – I believe HE IS PERFECT and would never author pain, loss, and suffering. But I do believe, with all my heart, that through the suffering we discover a God we hadn’t previously known – and we come to experience Him and love Him more fully, deeper and truer.

And, after all, isn’t that what He wants most from us???

The Best and Worst Christmases Ever

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People love to reminisce of Christmases past. But for me, reflecting on past Christmases will always present a horror: It was Christmas morning, 2016, when we received the call that my youngest sister Heidi was in the hospital. It’s serious, they said. Come right away.

That may always be our worst Christmas – discovering Heidi had glioblastoma brain cancer and was given a year or two to live. The following Christmas, Heidi made it to the party, but barely. She joined Jesus just two weeks later.

There is simply no JOY in that story. None. How do we as a family keep that memory from stealing our JOY this Christmas and every year to follow? I wasn’t so sure it was possible…

But, in spite of myself, I did some Christmas reflection – searching for Christmases past that would hopefully stir some joy-filled memories. This is what I remembered:
Our first Christmas living in France was life-altering and left a permanent imprint. Since it was our first time living abroad, I was clueless on what to bring from the states and never even considered Christmas decorations. It seemed so frivolous. But as that first Christmas rolled around, we soon realized our house looked sad. We had zero decorations and basically no budget to buy any.

We told the kids to lower their expectations for Christmas that year – things would be VERY different on the east side of the Atlantic. There wouldn’t be multiple family gatherings. There’d be no snow or skiing outings. There’d be no trips to the mall or shopping sprees. And there’d be no drives through wealthy suburbs to look at Christmas lights. In fact, because we used our life’s savings to live in France (which bottomed out quickly from the rapidly declining dollar value), we explained that funds just weren’t available for presents. We prepared them for a simpler Christmas where we’d just focus on Jesus’ birth.

The kids had become so used to things being different from “back home in Michigan” that the news didn’t create much of a stir.

But one day, it was crafty Grace who could take it no more and started making paper-chains. With zero colored paper, she just made one extremely long chain with white computer paper. On her insistence, but to my chagrin, I hung that chain across the long expanse of our family room/dining room. It looked pathetic – like a 4-year-old had made it – because one had.

Christmas was two weeks away and so far we had one lonely white paper-chain draped across the family room like a sagging clothesline. But I swallowed my Christmas pride and told Grace we needed several more paper chains to complete the look. She made eight more and once they were strung up, the whole family room/dining room had a white paper-chain canopy overhead and it looked kind of, well, wintery. It may also have looked like a third-grade classroom in a poor inner-city school district, but hey, it was something.

We couldn’t find a Christmas tree farm to save our provincial butts. So we tracked down a 4-foot potted Scotch pine at a local nursery and plopped it on a table in the corner. It would have given even Charlie Brown grief. However, I sat little Gracie down with more white computer paper strips and she made more paper-chains for the tree. We then strung popped popcorn to make more garland. The following day a family who was moving back to the states stopped over with a box of junk they couldn’t fit in their luggage. At the bottom of the box were two strings of white lights. Jesus loves me, this I know.

Next, I showed the kids how to make paper snowflakes. They plastered them all over our windows and French doors. If there had been Instagram back then my pics would have received many likes. The kids’ excitement was mounting.

Miraculously, we received two unexpected deliveries. First, a huge package in the mail containing gifts from my family in Michigan – one for each of our kids. There would be gifts on Christmas morning after all! Second, a whole suitcase of surprises arrived (carried over by a random Michigan acquaintance). It was sent with love from the Outreach Team at our church. Inside we found all sorts of Christmas wonder: gifts for each of us, Christmas cookie cutters, sprinkles and icing, Christmas movies, wrapping paper and gift bags, wooden ornaments, a rustic-looking table runner, and a wooden angel tree-topper. Adding those decorations to our white winter-wonderland made everything chic and modern-farmhouse-like. I am the OG Joanna Gaines…

On Christmas Day, we started the day with pancakes (because as long as you have flour, eggs, milk and baking soda, they taste the same on every continent), followed by a reading of the Christmas story – slowly this year – to fill the gap left from all the things that usually fill Christmas Day. Next, we opened those precious few gifts – again, much slower than Christmases past – savoring the meaning and thought behind each one.

That afternoon, we met up with another family and filled over 100 small bags with Christmas candy and a little piece of scripture that shared the good news that Jesus was born and still lives today! Our combined tribe of ten spent the whole afternoon passing out the candy bags to passers-by in the city of Aix. We laughed and sang and danced in the streets. We successfully made most of those serious French people smile! This– this act of love that we never would have had time for on a typical Michigan Christmas Day – this was truly the spreading of Christmas cheer.

Without fail, whenever asked about their favorite Christmas while growing up, all four of our kids will say their Christmas in France. It was the simplest Christmas ever – barely any gifts and no real parties – but the kids unanimously pick it as their favorite. Isn’t that telling?

My revelation has been this: from the worst of Christmases to the best of Christmases, it isn’t about where we are, who we are with, what things look like or taste like, or whether we receive the Fit-bit we asked for. And furthermore, it’s definitely NOT about what crisis we may be in the middle of. Christmas is ALL about Christ stepping IN TO those situations and circumstances and bringing us the same reminder and promise year after year after year – He is with us.

It’s really not the circumstances around us that define whether a Christmas is defined as a “good one” or a “bad one”. Even as I continue to grieve Heidi’s passing and I reminisce over special Christmases spent abroad, all I really need to know (all any of us really need to know!) to have the most JOYous of holidays is so simple (yet so easily missed) – it is the recognition of the power of the name: Immanuel.

Immanuel – God with us. When we know that, believe that, and live in that truth, Christmas is beautiful. No matter who you are, where you are, or what you’re going through, Jesus is our Immanuel. Rejoice!!!

I Took A Bath With 10 Naked Ladies and I Loved It.

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IMG_4306I just returned from a visit to my second homeland, Casablanca, Morocco. I lived in that beautiful country for four years and never went to the hammam – the Moroccan version of a communal Turkish bathhouse where women and men (in separate quarters) go for weekly bathing rituals in a somewhat spa-like setting.

The experience always sounded terrifying to me because I was only aware of two facts: women walk around naked and an attendant scrubs you down from head to toe. No part of that sounded “fun” in the least. I don’t walk around my husband naked, let alone strange Muslim women.

On this particular visit, however, my friend Khadija tried to convince me into going to the hammam together. “It’ll be fun!” she said.

While still skeptical, I acquiesced to Khadija’s cajoling – mostly because she threw out the word “brave” when referring to westerners who try the hammam – and I SO want that word to define me…

Bring it!

After paying around eight dollars each, we entered the locker area and stripped down – leaving only our underwear on. Khadija explained that this was necessary because Islam forbids total nudity. I didn’t exactly feel “less nude” just because I had my little black bikini Target underwear on.

Khadija told me to just relax and “enjoy” the experience.

“Uh-huh. Okay, Khadija”

The bathing area consists of four connected rooms – each one large, bright, and cavernous with white and marble-y grey tile walls and ceiling, and white and grey swirled marble sinks, fountains and slab tables. Loud echoes bounced around the rooms from rushing water, splashing children, laughing women. This was most definitely a place to let your guard down and engage. I tried to let my guard down but couldn’t quite get past all the boobs. Every size, color and shape. Boobs for days.

One thing I know for certain about our God: He IS a creative.

We walked through a large room that had at least a dozen marble sinks around the perimeter, each with hot and cold faucets – many of them running freely without anyone nearby. They do not worry about wasting water at the hammam. There were several naked women sitting on little stools at some of these sinks. They each held a small, brightly colored children’s sand bucket in their hands and were either soaping up their bodies or dumping water over their heads with their buckets. Water was overflowing the marble sinks and flowing loudly into a drain in the center of the room.

A couple of little girls were splashing around in the water streams. No one seemed to really notice us. Everyone was just so matter-of-fact going about their cleansing business. Still – I couldn’t help but feel like a white sheep who had just walked into the black-sheep pen.

Khadija and I walked through the sink room and entered the sauna room. Its purpose was to sweat-open our pores so the scrubbing we were about to receive would be the most effective.

In the sauna, we also personally scrubbed down our bodies with this soft, pasty brown soap that every Moroccan uses every time they visit the hammam. I don’t know why they do it, they just do. Sometimes it’s best not to ask too many questions. As I was soon to discover…

After the sauna, my “attendant”, Souad, came to greet me. She was thrilled to have an American as a client! She said, “Me. I speak English!” I said, “Wonderful! I’m so relieved! I don’t speak Arabic!” And she said, “Nice you speak Arabic.” I said, “No, I said I DON’T. I only speak French. We used to live here and I was able to get by using only French.” And she said, “Nice you live here someday.”

I held back, but so wanted to say, “You. You no speak English.”

But, as it turned out, it entirely didn’t matter and it in no way affected my experience.
Souad brought me to yet another room where there were six or so marble slab tables. At the head of each table was a hand bar. I never read the book or saw the movie of the same name, “50 Shades of Grey” – but it was, honest to goodness, my first thought of use for that bar…   I looked at the other women being scrubbed down on their marble slabs – and sure enough, their arms were up over their heads holding onto that bar for dear life just to keep from slip-sliding off the wet tables as they were vigorously scrubbed down.

I had to dig deep to find my bravery at this point.

Souad had to clean the marble table first from the previous bather. So she hosed it down and took her arm and swept away any excess water on the table. Third world living had definitely taught me how to do “mind-over-matter”, so I quickly deleted from my mental hard drive all that I had learned in nursing school about sanitizing equipment and everything I knew about proliferating germs from working two years in Infection Control at Spectrum Health. I did not want to be hindered from “enjoying” this experience due to unnecessary knowledge…

There. Gone from memory. Brave again! Let’s proceed!

Souad wore a harsh, gritty scrubbing glove on her powerful right hand. It was only slightly less abrasive then the SANDPAPER I had used on the plastered walls of our Fixer-Upper! Souad squirted some warm oily soap over one small area at a time and with hands more muscular than most men, she scrubbed me down. At first, I felt the scrubbing to be a wee bit painful and I was searching my vocabulary for some Arabic words to tell her to “chill out a little, would ya?” – but after a few minutes of more mind-over-matter and mentally replaying Khadija’s words of advice, “Just enjoy yourself”, I began to relax. Soon, I forgot I was naked and that a stranger was scrubbing every nook, cranny and crevice of my body. She yanked my underwear up and down to be sure to reach every hidden part – (except, of course, the unmentionables because of that part of Islam….). She yanked so hard on my underwear that the elastic burst and I had to hold them up the rest of the time.

She scrubbed my front side. She held my legs high in the air, she steadied them one at a time in her armpit to wash the interior side, she held them off to the side, jerking me into positions I didn’t know I could do – all to access every square inch of my body. She rolled me over and scrubbed my backside. She went back over my legs and arms several times – even seeming, I think, a bit frustrated as she increased force.

It wasn’t until I sat up that I realized what exactly had transformed for the past half hour. I was surrounded by a pool of grimy, dirty piles of skin. MY grimy skin! What the @#%*!? Have I never washed myself??? Do I not shower every day??? What the heck AM I doing in the shower if I actually have this much grimy residue left behind?

I wanted to gag. I also wanted to run away from embarrassment. I didn’t even want to make eye-contact with Souad for fear that she was gagging, too. I tried to think of a quick lie that might explain why I was so dirty, like, “Well, you know, I just returned from a month-long camel trek in the desert with no water available for bathing…” But I realized Ms. Souad the “English speaker” wouldn’t understand me anyway.

It wasn’t until at least an hour later when I finally found a mirror that I realized what had happened. I was at least two-shades lighter. Whiter. Souad had simply scrubbed off the tan that I had spent all summer trying to acquire. I said a quick prayer hoping the body scrub also removed the negative carcinogenic effects of the sun…

After the scrub down, Souad took me to yet another room, where, instead of marble slabs, there were padded massage beds. Again, she “cleaned” the bed by hosing it down and wiping off the water with her arm. I clenched my saggy underwear with one hand and climbed on the bed. With one strong shove, Souad rolled me to my stomach and stretched my arms above my head. She then proceeded to apply some kind of grey mud that smelled like lavender to my entire body. And she massaged me – from freaking tip of my head to freaking tip of my toes. And here, here is where I nearly fell asleep and entered some kind of nirvana. I forgot where I was and I didn’t care that I was naked with nothing but stretched out underwear on. I didn’t care that Souad and I couldn’t communicate or that she had probably seen more terrain of my body than my husband. I didn’t care about anything anymore.

This was bliss.

From the massage table we went to the sink room and washed our hair and dumped water all over ourselves with those colorful little plastic buckets. It was kind of tricky as I had to hold up my underwear with one hand, but it was like a bunch of grown women playing in a splash pad/water park. I loved it. I stopped noticing boobs.

After the splash pad, we showered in traditional showers. To my memory, this made the fifth full-body washing of the day. We ended the experience by wrapping up in towels, grabbing a cold drink from the desk attendant and sitting in lounge chairs while watching Arabic MTV for about half an hour. My body a calm, contented, noodle – I could have easily fallen asleep. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so relaxed.  We sipped our drinks and laughed about our aging bodies, confessed how we sometimes screen phone calls and ignore texts, and talked seriously about Middle Eastern politics for a while.

I ended up tipping Souad about the equivalent of her day’s wage. Again, I didn’t care.

Souad is some kind of soul-sister to me now.

Lastly, Khadija reassured me that everyone leaves behind piles of grimy skin – even when they are visiting the hammam weekly and that’s how you know the attendant did her job well! She also hypothesized that Moroccan women have less issue with body shame and striving for unattainable goals of body perfection because they grow up in the hammam observing the real female form. They develop a solid sense of self from seeing “normal” female bodies far more than observing those airbrushed models on the lying covers of magazines. I had to agree. She also told me to feel my skin and said, “Feels like a baby’s bottom, doesn’t it?” She also said we should go to the hammam together more often.

I couldn’t agree more, Khadija. I couldn’t agree more.

And here’s the thing: I think Moroccans are on to something with this whole hammam-gig. In addition to the “reality-check” it serves women with body image, I think the whole experience is also far more about bonding with girlfriends, getting real with one another and eliminating relationship inhibition than it is about bathing.

And we see this in other cultures, too:

Our oldest daughter is in her first year at university. She lives in the dorms and they have community bathrooms. She says the best bonding moments come in the bathroom – sometimes with tunes blaring, dancing in their bath towels and singing into toothbrush microphones; other times it is serious conversation with shared tears and prayers – but somehow, beautifully, these college girls develop intimate lifelong friendships in those bathrooms.

There’s something about being naked literally that makes one dare, but also want, to bare their souls as well. And it seems to me that sharing of our souls with a couple of our safe, bestie girlfriends is essential to becoming whole.

Hammam anyone???