Celebration

This afternoon...

the sakura have enticed us to attend a celebration of living. We are strangers, not acknowledging one another at all on this still slightly nippy spring afternoon, but today we are gathered under a common canopy of pale pink blossoms against a clear blue sky.

A baby boy reaches for a pretty handful of petals as his daddy tosses him in the air and mommy tries to capture this first hanami on film. Young sisters take turns giggling and gyrating with a hula hoop, happy that spring has freed the hoop from its hook on the garage wall. Grandma plays tag with her grandson as the real contest seems to be for who can laugh the hardest while in pursuit.

A circle of high school boys spends this spring break afternoon in a marathon game of charades, the sakura snow making each scene surreal. A young couple pauses to watch a round, exchanges an adoring glance and strolls on hand in hand.

Strollers with babies, strollers with puppies, wheelchairs pushed by badge-wearing nurses who have brought the elderly and infirm to the celebration of living. 

Balls, frisbees, bicycles, skateboards, and badminton birdies aid in our afternoon fun. Cameras capture petals windsurfing in the breeze. Birds add their cheerful announcements to the yipping of dogs, the sleepy cry of a baby, and the increasing boisterousness of the beer drinking office workers.

A young teen finds a fallen cluster of blossoms to adorn her hair while a kaleidoscope of bubbles is birthed by a nearby toddler's breath. 

A graceful but aged woman dances to a silent soundtrack, transfigured by the falling petals into the maiden of sakura seasons long past. She is alone, but for an instant I see her companions, gone but in her remembered steps. 

We are strangers, beckoned to gather in this pink fantasy park for this one day celebration of life. Strangers, but today we share this place, this breeze, this subtle symphony of spring.  

Milestones

I experienced childbirth 5 times, and each time was memorable. One of the strangest scenes, though, occurred while laboring to bring baby #3, Amy Hope, into the world. The doctor decided it was time before Amy did, so he medically induced labor. With that powerful drug dripping into my veins, the contractions were coming hard and fast. And then the strangest thing happened: the IV bag emptied, and the pains completely stopped. I mean, I was lying on the delivery table, fully dilated and ready for the final push, when I suddenly felt absolutely no pain at all. My kind Japanese doctor actually allowed me a few minutes of blissful pain-free rest, chatting with me about this and that. Then, he looked at the clock and said, "Are you ready? It's time!" I thought, "Are you kidding?!" Really? -- WHO in their right mind would CHOOSE to resume the pain? It was inevitable, though, and sure enough, as soon as that evil liquid began dripping again, I was wracked with excruciating pain. A few minutes later, it was over and my beautiful baby girl was in my arms!

This week, I was recalling that surreal memory as I walked through Amy's graduation from Christian Academy in Japan. On Friday, she walked across the stage, moved her tassle, tossed her cap, and received numerous awards. On Monday, we will be packing up her room in preparation for her heading to another continent to begin college and whatever life holds for her beyond. A couple of days before commencement, I heard that OB-Gyn's voice in my head: "Are you ready? It's time!" And, just like on that afternoon 18 years ago, 1 month, and 24 days ago, I wanted to scream "No!"

A wise pastor once told me something that I have relied upon as I've watched 3 of my children leave the nest. A baby is in a mother's womb for 9 months, give or take. For that set period of time, it is the safest, most efficient place for growth and development. However, if baby stays much longer than 9 months, its growth is stunted and things start to go wrong. Mother and baby both grow increasingly uncomfortable and... well, it's just TIME! Similarly, a child grows safely and efficiently in our home for 18 years, give or take. But, if the time stretches much longer than that, growth is stunted, and the child ceases to thrive. She's grown as much as she can in this environment, and it's time to let her go.

I can't believe the ways she's grown! This baby was the one with the worst case of separation anxiety! She would NOT stay in a church nursery without me! She has now traveled to 3 continents and volunteered for every adventure and ministry opportunity afforded her. This was my sickliest child, hospitalized repeatedly for asthma, psneumonia, and other respiratory conditions. She is now 5'8", a beautiful picture of glowing health and youth, loves voleyball and runs a fairly fast mile. This child was so stricken with shyness that she once ended up running to the church restroom and BAWLING through an entire worship hour because she choked on a solo. This Spring, I watched as she organized and produced a charity concert for tsunami survivors, marveling at her poise as she sang not one but several original songs for her audience. (She received an award for that one at graduation, by the way!)

Her daddy and I were delighted to see her give her heart to Jesus as a child. He baptized her in a Tokyo church on Easter Sunday when she was 8. We've rejoiced to watch as her faith has blossomed into an authentic relationship with Jesus. We've answered as many questions as we could, and been stumped and stunned by the honesty and increasing difficulty of her mind's musings. On graduation night, we shed a few thankful tears as the Bible department blessed her with a scholarship for her "understanding and application of Scripture to daily life."

"I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord." All of the sickness, separation anxiety, and shyness have been used to shape Amy into a compassionate and caring friend. God seems to have gifted her with both empathy and the ability to encourage others. She's had more opportunities to use that gift than many her age. High school has brought the death of our next-door neighbor and 2 classmates (car accident, brain aneuryism, and motorcycle wreck). Amy was the little girl who hyperventilated, vomited, and almost passed out at her grandma's funeral. But last year, she was able to help her friend who was eye-witness to a suicide. She has worked near-magic in calming down her little sister many times when I have run out of ideas. She has been a camp counselor, a middle school mentor, and an accountability partner to younger students. Oh, and then there was that earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. She's made 3 trips to the disaster area, playing with kindergarteners, doing "mud-outs" at damaged homes, restoring damaged photographs, passing out water...

My curly-headed little Shirley Temple look-alike has grown into a lovely young woman. To try to hold on to her at this point would be both detrimental and ridiculous. It is time for my Amy Hope to step into the next phase of her life. It hurts my heart, I won't lie. I will miss her like crazy. But I am confident that God has plans to prosper her and to give her a future and a hope! I take a deep breath, and I am ready. It's time!

The Ugly Truth

            I truly hate to see pictures of myself. They say the camera adds 10 pounds, but I’m pretty sure they meant to say 50, right? On the third day of our trip up to northern Japan to do relief work, I saw a particularly ugly picture of myself. And I saw it while sorting through pictures of tsunami victims.

            After our morning exercises and breakfast (no grits today, we had bought donuts when we drove into the nearest town last night!), we got our day’s assignments. The men would be going to a local daycare center to clean up the yard and parking lot. The girls would be working on trying to preserve and salvage photographs that had been retrieved by the relief workers and clean-up crews. I was really excited about this day’s task! It was inside, for one thing, and something I felt I could handle.

            After a brief training session, we walked into the strangest laundry room I’ve ever seen. In the center of the area stood laundry baskets filled with muddy photos and albums in various stages of disintegration. Strung across the room in all directions were laundry lines with hundreds of clothespins holding photographs. All had been damaged by seawater when the tsunami had snatched them up and deposited them in piles of debris. Some were beyond salvaging, but volunteers carefully handled each one and saved the ones they could by bathing them in fresh water and hanging them up to dry. Those found in the same album were then kept together and labeled in hopes they could be reunited with their owners.

            Groups of 3-4 volunteers had chosen a basket of photos to work with. As I looked around, I saw a poignant display of photos including school pictures, pages of yearbooks, baby pictures, and wedding pictures. Where were these smiling people now? Obviously, their homes had been washed away or their pictures wouldn’t be here in this bizarre laundromat. Were they safe? Staying at an evacuation center or temporary housing? Or were they among the 28,000 who perished on March 11? Would these pictures ever be claimed, and, if so, who would be left to do the claiming?

            We joined a Japanese volunteer in progress as she worked through her basket’s contents. As I started to peel the plastic album pages off the snapshots to bathe them in clean water, I looked at each image with curiosity. It didn’t take me long to realize that this particular batch of albums had come from a center for mentally challenged adults. We dove in and spent the entire morning at our exacting work. It was in this process of washing and hanging up hundreds of photographs that I discovered the ugly picture of me.

            Though I had begun the day with enthusiasm, I found the work to be tedious and boring after a while. The photos I was working on were not particularly interesting, and the subjects were, quite honestly, not very attractive. Several years’ worth of this facility’s albums had been retrieved. Its staff members had documented each activity that the center had sponsored over the years.

            At the lunchtime break, I wandered around the room looking at other groups’ projects. I saw a beautiful Japanese bride and her smiling groom, an adorable baby smiling up at his mommy, and a group of high school students doing a silly pose for the camera. To the volunteer next to me, I said, “Oh my goodness! I sure hope these people are all alive and safe!”

            At that exact moment, the hideous picture of myself came into clear focus. I was shocked and sickened to realize that I had not had this same reaction to any of the photos I had been so carefully working to preserve this morning. I had honestly thought that I was here volunteering because I loved people. But in that moment, I saw just how messed-up my love is. Much to my shame, my “love” was about as far from the standard of God’s love as it could possibly get.

            Of all of the things I experienced during this trip -- all of the sights, sounds, emotions, and lessons, this is the one I want to take with me for life. God loves people. All of them. Old and young, whole and broken, healthy and disabled, pretty and ugly. With all of my heart, I’m thankful that He does. If he didn’t love the unlovely, I would definitely be doomed.

            After lunch, I went back to the photographs from the Hanamasu Center for Disabled Adults. As I washed and hung up each photograph, I used this time to repent and to pray for these beautiful people God loves.

            

The Wheels on the Bus

            You haven’t really lived until you’ve ridden in the Hokkaido Team’s bus! It’s old and rickety, with virtually no shocks, seats that are coming unbolted from the walls, and wheels they say are dry rotting. I’m not really sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound good! Nonetheless, we spent several hours Wednesday evening touring the coastline on the bus.

            My friend and colleague Nathan Snow delights in shocking visitors from the U.S. by driving said bus along narrow Japanese roads. Today, he also had another objective: to visit some of the folks that he has befriended during the months since the earthquake and tsunami.

            One of his new friends owns a small grocery store in the town of Otsuchi. Her neighborhood isn't on the ocean, so its residents weren’t particularly concerned about the tsunami warnings on March 11. However, when the tsunami caused the river that runs through Otsuchi to reverse its currents and run inland, it flooded out all of the homes and businesses on its banks in just an instant. The first floor of the store was completely destroyed, but its owner happened to be upstairs in her apartment at the time checking on her invalid husband.

            She was very fortunate to survive. But she lives with the memory of her friends and neighbors calling out to her as they were washed away before her very eyes. There was nothing she could do.

            Nathan, Pastor Kimura, and the Christian group called Hokumin have visited with her a number of times in the past few months, helping her to clean up the store, serving hot curry rice to as many neighbors as they can, and seeking to be the feet and hands of Jesus.

            Today, her store is open for business again and we were able to buy soft drinks and ice cream. We also reaped a blessing we did not deserve when she decided to give each and every one of us a T-shirt. Well, Nathan and Pastor Kimura deserved it, but the rest of us rookie volunteers certainly didn’t. The T-shirts were donated to the people of the town by a charity organization and, roughly translated, say “Stay strong, Otsuchi!”

            The bus drove us to another small community where we met another one of Hokumin’s new friends. This handsome young man was thrilled to see Nathan and Pastor Kimura and had, in fact, visited a Christian church the Sunday before.  His house was a few meters above sea level and several kilometers from the ocean, but it still got some damage on the first floor. The real tragedy, though, was that his sister had left his house that afternoon after the mega-earthquake saying, “I’ve got to go get my kids!” She and her 2 kids have not been seen since, nor has anyone found their car.

            The bus carried us miles and miles along the coastline, and everywhere we went, we saw scenes of sudden destruction. Driving along the coastline of one small peninsula, the low tide revealed a mini-van submerged just below the surface. In one town, patrol cars lined the streets as a line of 10-12 police officers worked in a drainage ditch that had not yet been cleaned out. As we traveled a little further on the two-lane road, we passed the police vehicle that is used for removing corpses. Another victim had switched columns from the “missing” list to the “dead”.

            As difficult as it was to see the sorrow around us, with each kilometer the dilapidated old bus traveled, my respect for the body of Christ grew. As I watched Pastor Kimura interact with survivors, I thought of the Biblical description of Jesus, “He went about doing good” This pastor was modeling His Savior. In the volunteer center, at the temporary housing unit, speaking with every survivor at every stop, Pastor Kimura was both gentle and bold.

            We stopped by a newly rented facility where OMF (the mission descended from Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission) has set up a base to reach this devastated and hurting region of Japan. There we met some more missionaries and pastors who will be concentrating their efforts and prayers for the next 2 years on loving those who hurt. They will be feeding the hungry, healing the broken, encouraging the hopeless.

            The people on the bus, including myself, were definitely going “up and down” on those bumpy roads all evening. The highs and lows we had seen this day were dramatic, but as I lay down to sleep in the gym again that night, my heart was filled with praise. The Spirit of Christ is alive and well.

            “Be still and know that I am God. I WILL BE EXALTED among the nations.” 

            

Empty-Handed

            When the sun came up, I finally got a look at the place where we had spent the night. (After groping around for my glasses, of course.)  We were in a small gymnasium usually used for the Japanese martial art of kendou. The ninja-like helmets and equipment were stored in nearby cubbyholes. A sizable Shinto godshelf hung on the gym wall near the ceiling.

            The city’s volunteer center housed somewhere around 60 last night, I would guess. There were also volunteers staying at a campsite slightly up the hill. Almost all were Japanese who had taken off work, etc. to spend anywhere from a day to a week helping out. Everyone was cheerful and friendly, making it a really pleasant group to be a part of.

            We were expected to wake up at 6:00 and do morning exercises outside at 6:30. Each group introduced itself and gave aisatsu (official introductions) to the others. Afterwards, we all ate whatever we had brought with us for breakfast. Our group actually set up a Coleman stove outside and feasted on eggs, bacon, and cheese grits, thanks to Georgia missionary Nathan Snow! My daughter said, “what’s grits?” My deepest apologies to my Southern friends for failing to pass on that aspect of our home culture!

            At 8:00 a.m. we got our assignment for the day. We would go to what was left of a house and shovel out sand and debris, down to the foundation. The top layer of big debris had already been cleaned up, but we were to take another 12 inches or so and bag it for removal.

            Driving to the site, I was stunned to see the area around the volunteer center in the daylight. Not more than 100 feet down the hill from where we had slept, we entered the devastation zone.

Our nearest neighboring building was the bombed-out shell of a nursing home. It still stood three stories high, but all of its contents had been taken out by the tsunami and strewn around the area. On the top floor, a filthy curtain was left blowing in the ocean breeze through the shattered windows. Mangled wheelchairs lay in random locations around the curb and parking lot. And, most surreal of all, there were two cars on the top of the roof – one of them a white Porsche.

I learned that, of the nursing homes’ 96 residents and staff members, 74 had perished in the tsunami.

We passed literally thousands of burned-out cars, flattened and piled on top of one another. The town’s concrete seawall, its only defense against the tsunami, lay toppled and scattered around like Legos.

The site we were working on was in a small inlet, behind a seawall of no less than 30 feet. There had been 30+ houses there before the wave came crashing down. A lot of cleanup had already been accomplished there, so little remained but foundations. As the men shoveled, we girls held the sandbags, tied them up and moved them to the curb. I had been worried that the work would be too physically demanding for me, but there was both heavy and light work that had to happen in order for the job to get done. We made a kind of assembly line and got the work accomplished during the morning hours.

Though all of the large debris had already been cleaned up, along with the bodies of those who died there, we found various objects buried in the heavy sand. A little girls’ shoe, a teddy bear, pieces of dishes, a flip-flop, a broken Nintendo game.

After a sandwich for lunch, we cleaned up and left the volunteer center. It had been pre-arranged for us to join a Japanese pastor in passing out food and supplies to the survivors in temporary housing. His church in Miyako is serving as a center to collect donations and distribute them to nearby survivors.

The “community” we visited consisted of 174 units. The prefab boxes resemble mobile homes, and each one contains 6 units of 320 square feet apiece.

As some of our group spread out a blue tarp and arranged the donations on it, those of us who can speak Japanese went door to door informing the residents that we were setting up. “We are from Miyako Christian Church and we’ve brought some things for you,” we said. Most of the residents hurried to put on their shoes and head straight to our little “tarp-mart”.

For today’s distribution, the church had received fruits, vegetables, diapers, sanitary pads, and insect repellent. They had also brought around 20 pairs of shoes in various sizes, a few stuffed bears, some hacky-sacks, a box of suckers, and a case of Christian CD’s.

Within 10-15 minutes, everything was gone. People were so eager and appreciative to receive anything, and we ran out far too quickly. Even though we had placed a limit on the items, there were quite a few residents who arrived too late to get anything at all.

One elderly lady tottered her way to the tarp, feet shuffling in the hot, dry dust and empty plastic grocery bag waving in the breeze. But by the time she arrived, there was nothing left. She had only wanted insect repellent, she said, but it was all gone. As I watched her graciously turn around and inch painstakingly back to her little box/home, my eyes burned with tears. Her walk was so familiar to me, because it is the way my own father walks these days. I know all too well how difficult it would be for him to make his way across that dusty field in the heat. I doubt I will ever forget the sight of that precious lady and her still-empty plastic bag.

The Volunteer Chorus

            I almost backed out. Would the work be too physically demanding? Did my children really need to be exposed to this? Would we just get in the way? What in the world would we be getting ourselves into? Thinking about it now, though, I am SO GLAD I decided to go!

            Almost 4 months after the disastrous Tohoku-Kanto Earthquake and tsunami, our family of 4 headed up to the devastation area to volunteer. My husband had already been on two trips, but this was a first for my two girls and myself.

            Our destination for this mission was 300 miles north on the Tohoku Expressway, in the small town of Yamada in Iwate Prefecture. There we would meet up with our group, which included several American missionaries, a Japanese pastor, a British MK (missionary kid), and a 6-member group from The Hanna Project.

            Our route took us through some of Japan’s most beautiful mountain scenery in the now infamous area of Fukushima. As we marveled at the brilliant blue sky, forested mountains ranges, and terraced rice fields, we understood why no one who lived there would ever want to leave. Unfortunately, 27,800 households in Fukushima’s “no-go zone” weren’t given any choice.

            Also in Fukushima, we began to see evidence of the March 11 earthquake. Houses under repair, roads recently repaved, cracks and gashes in the ground. I found myself tensing up, bracing myself for what I knew was ahead.

            My first sight of the tsunami aftermath was shocking. In the little fishing village of Kirikiri, cars were strewn alongside the road. They looked worse than the most dramatic traffic school slideshow. Some were upside down, flattened as if for the scrap heap. Some were burned out. Some were in the oddest of places, atop buildings or protruding from beneath a house like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz.

            I’ve never been in a war-torn area, but I imagined that the scene before me looked like a bombed-out city. I later heard that, according to U.S. military troops who helped in the days immediately after the disaster, the scenes they saw in Japan were worse. Even 4 months after the tsunami, the ghostly shells of buildings stood amidst a view that I could only describe as “post-apocalyptic”.

            For me, the most jolting sight of all was the valley of red flags amidst the colorless debris. Each flag indicated that a body had been found and retrieved from that spot.

            We met up with our group at the public bath. We were joining them a day late, so they had already put in a day’s work cleaning up debris. Grimy and sweaty, they had driven over an hour to the closest place where they could take a bath.

            After supper, we followed their bus to our sleeping accommodations. We would be joining other volunteers on the gymnasium floor of the makeshift “Yamada Volunteer Center.” It was dark by now, but as we traveled, I could tell that our headlights were revealing miles and miles of devastation.

We arrived at the center after lights out, so we made our way by flashlight to the tatami mat that missionary Sandra Bishop had laid out for us. We had brought pillows and sleeping bags, so we got those situated as quietly as possible and lay down to sleep. The gym had been separated into men’s and women’s sections, so I stretched out between my two daughters. Ten-year-old Caroline whispered, “this isn’t so bad,” and I agreed. Before long, I heard the gentle sounds of both girls sleeping peacefully.

Although I couldn’t really see my surroundings in the dark, I listened to an interesting blend of snoring from various sections of the gym. Occasionally, someone would sneeze or cough, zip a sleeping bag, walk past me to the bathroom. It was a little too warm in the gym, so I decided to lay on top of my bag instead of in it. Before long, Sandra turned on a nearby fan, and that helped a lot with both the temperature and the snoring.

I lay there in the dark for a while imagining myself a tsunami survivor. With my mat and my sleeping bag, I was actually pretty comfortable. But I knew that in those first weeks after the tsunami, the evacuees had no mat, no sleeping bag, and no pillow. It was still snowing outside, and they also had no heat, blankets, or electricity.  They literally had nothing but their lives.

Still feeling apprehensive about whether I would be able to contribute anything of value to this mission, I prayed that the Lord would give me strength and use me for His glory. Before long, I was sleeping soundly. At least for now I could contribute my snores to the chorus!

            

Are We Having Fun Yet?

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced survivor’s guilt before.

For at least a week after evacuating Japan, I could not allow myself to enjoy anything. I mean, really… how could I enjoy free drink refills at Taco Bell when people in Japan didn’t even have water? How could I spend any money at Kohl’s when they were desperate for a change of underwear? What kind of a monster am I to even consider getting a manicure when thousands of people don’t even have a toothbrush?

And then, I went to the Flea market to help my sister who had set up a booth there. I really love flea markets, yard sales, and the like. As I browsed the different booths, something unintended happened. I didn’t mean to do it, but all of a sudden I was having fun!

I talked to my good friend Eddie Payne about it on Sunday after church. He spent a career in West Africa and has seen some things. As a matter of fact, his kids just evacuated last week because of the war and violence there. Because I really love and respect “Uncle Eddie”, I was so relieved when he told me it was okay for me to have fun! We can, he said, use both sides of our brain at the same time: we can empathize with those who are suffering and still acknowledge the beauty in the world around us. Pain and joy, death and new birth, unspeakable tragedy and incomprehensible beauty. They all co-exist in this fallen world, and we have the capacity to experience them all simultaneously. Or, as Eddie said in his recent book Naados and His Kin, “Life is beautiful, even with the sting.”

The human tragedy continues in Japan. And yet, there are redemptive stories trickling out. Japanese Christians and missionaries are distributing food, water, hygiene kits, clothing and diapers. They are listening to survivors tell their stories, giving hugs to grieving families, and playing with children who have lost everything. We are hearing of salvation decisions in the area of devastation, and of people eagerly receiving Bibles. There are 7 members of the Fukushima Bible Church working at the nuclear power plant – and sharing Jesus with the other brave men who are facing certain danger. The love of God is shining through the darkness and despair.

And the body of Christ is ministering to the needs of my family as well. Our home church sent a welcoming party to the airport when we arrived, even though it was almost midnight! We’ve been provided with a car, a professional counselor who waived his fees, more places to stay than we could take advantage of, and even some Walmart gift certificates for anything we need to buy.

At first, I felt REALLY guilty. We did NOT experience this tragedy like the Japanese in the areas of devastation. But then I realized that JESUS Himself is loving on us through His church. We will not forget how He has sent His kids to hug us in His name. And, when we return to Japan, we will join His family there in expressing His love to those who are in desperate need of His embrace.