There’s something I’ve been needing to get off my chest for a while now. I was also encouraged to engage in a little more self-care, and since writing is therapeutic to me (and I hope of some benefit to you as well), it seemed like the right time to revive the blog. Oh, and it’s a new year! 2020! The stars have aligned and here is the result:
There’s a word that I come across pretty often when I talk to others about my life and what we do. In case you don’t know, “what we do” is live in Haiti with our 2-year old biological son, our 10-year-old nephew, and 3 beautiful foster boys with special needs whom we claim as our own and intend to care for forever. Meanwhile, we do whatever we can to share God’s love with our community, including a kids Bible club, employment through our small businesses, a drinking water spigot, and a charging station for phones and other devices.
The word that I have used countless times and that others often use in reference to us is calling. When people ask how we ended up here, some form of the word calling is crafted into a sentence that people are sort of already expecting to hear. “We felt called to…” “God called us…” “We have this calling…” you get the point. But here’s the rub, and the thing I feel like I need to get off my chest. The notion that we’ve been called to this exact life? I’m just not sure it’s true. There, I said it!
You might have some questions running through your mind right now:
What do you mean you weren’t called? Well then how did you end up there?
Why do you say you’ve been called if you haven’t? Have you been lying to us?
Maybe there are others. And if you still have them at the end of this little musing, feel free to leave a comment and I will try to answer them.
So let me explain.
The easiest question to answer is regarding why I myself use the word calling or called. The first reason is this. Explaining our life and our story as a calling is the simplest and quickest way to convince curious questioners, as well as myself, that I’m not just totally bat sh*t crazy. Being called is satisfactory rationale for our life choices and then everybody just moves on with a smile and a nod. If we weren’t called, it’s hard to explain why a sane person would choose the life we have chosen. Haiti is a HARD place to live. It knocks you down wherever you turn and then keeps kicking you while you’re down there figuring out how to get back up again. Having kids with special needs is no joke. Now put three of them together, two requiring total care for the rest of their lives, one with sensory/behavioral/developmental issues that could have made my saint of a grandmother lose her patience, and throw in some medical complexity just for kicks. Wait, do it all in a culture that’s not your own, with no financial security, miles and miles away from your family and support system. If God didn’t call me specifically to this, why in the world would I do this? It makes me feel sane and rational if I can just chalk it all up to a calling.
There’s another reason I’ve used this word as often as I have. Because whether they recognize it or not, that’s what people want me to say. I’m going to generalize here, so forgive me, but have you ever noticed that the word calling is reserved for a small, carefully selected number of life choices? Full-time ministry, cross-cultural ministry (“missionaries”), adoption; I’m sure there are a few more but those are the ones I’m most familiar with. And we sort of fit all those categories so surely, certainly, definitely, unquestionably we have been called to this, right? But why is it that the word calling is used for those life choices? Or why isn’t it commonly used for other life choices? I have presumably been called to live in Galman, Haiti, but when I bought my condo in Huntington Beach, California, nobody supposed I had been called to live there. I have presumably been called to mother children I didn’t birth, to provide their medical care, therapy, and schooling, but when I worked my 12-hour night shifts as a nurse in Long Beach, California, nobody supposed I had specifically been called to work there. So what does this have to do with other people’s preference on whether I do or do not use the word calling? Again, I’m generalizing, so hold your fire, but if we assign this big, meaningful word to the life choices that we as a society think are the most difficult, the most crazy, and the most extraordinary, then if you haven’t heard or felt called, you don’t have to do those things.
I’ll just let you think about that for a minute.
While you do, this brings me to that other important question of how we got here, living this life in this place, if we weren’t called to it. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, actually. Too much, probably. And the best answer I can come up with is this:
Because we chose to.
We saw three precious boys in need of a family, and we were available. We saw families in need of the steady income a job could bring, and we were available. We saw neighbors who needed some clean water to drink and always had dead phones, and we were available. We saw kids on our street, hungry for a bite to eat and eager to hear more about God’s word in a safe and loving place, and we were available.
We saw people in need, we were available, and we chose to do something about it.
It’s as simple as that.
So do we meet every need that we encounter? No! Sometimes we see needs, and we may or may not be available, and we choose not to intervene. It’s true everywhere, but especially here, that there will always be more needs than we can possibly meet.
Of course, our faith in Christ and the commands we are given in Scripture guide our choices. I am not trying to take God out of the equation or somehow take “credit” for what we are doing. On the contrary, were it not for the presence of God in our lives, we’d have given up or outright failed long ago. The truly insane choice would be to attempt to live this life without Him. But the point is this, we were not called to this life any more than you were called to live in this house instead of that house, to take a job at this company instead of that one, to have three kids instead of two or six or none, to spend your time on this activity or join that club or play this sport or or or or…
If we treat these “special” vocations just like all the others, if we do away with this idea that you need to be called to do what some people might think is a little crazy, I wonder what choices people would make. I wonder what needs they would see and choose to respond to? I wonder how many kids would still be waiting for families to adopt them? I wonder how many neighbors or communities or villages would still be “unreached”? I wonder if this crazy life of mine might actually seem a little more “normal”?
You may still hear me use the word called in reference to myself and that’s because, quite frankly, sometimes I need a quicker exit from a conversation than “well, actually we just chose to live this way” and all the inevitable follow-up questions from some well-intentioned yet now thoroughly confused people.
But let me set the record straight. This crazy life of ours? I chose it. Period.
What have you chosen to do? And what will you choose to do next?
if.this.life.i.lose 
What a wonderful reflection–so true. I think Good calls us to all kinds of things, moving away, living in the place we were born, renting in a less than ideal neighborhood, buying in an affluent one, and we choose to respond. We have free will–and we choose our life in response to God. You have chosen this with Wilson, and thank you for caring for a larger community. But when you chose Huntington beach and we hour shifts, you were also caring for people. Thank you for owning the choices you’ve made and the role God plays in those choices.
yes! everything we do, and wherever we do it, is a “calling” in that sense, that we choose to live our life in response to God…very well put 🙂
Sheila, thank you for sharing this! That makes so much sense. And while I do greatly admire you for what you’re doing, you’re right – it wouldn’t seem quite so crazy if more of us did the same thing you’re doing: choosing to be available and meet needs where you can even when it’s hard. I’ll admit, sometimes I wonder if I have failed to notice (or pay enough attention to) some of those hard choices in my life. Sometimes I feel like I could have or should have done more or chosen differently. But what I am consciously choosing to do right now in my family life is to work hard in my marriage and to love well and parent well even when it’s harder than it “should” be. And I’ve also chosen to take the opportunity to provide services that can help other families who deal with the daily struggles of neurodevelopmental challenges even though starting a new business like this has been much more time-consuming and at times more overwhelming than I anticipated. But it is a need that I am available to meet (though I could certainly come up with plenty of excuses/reasons why I’m ‘not’ available!) and so I choose to do it. And I am encouraged when I remember all the hard and challenging things YOU are choosing to do! It makes my hard choices seem not quite so hard anymore. 😉 🙂 Love you Sheila!
Thanks for sharing what you’ve been choosing in life recently. I know that you do those things to bring glory and honor to God, which is exactly what he desires. Loving your family well, as a spouse and as a mother, is no easy task and I pray that you feel God’s strength during the good and the difficult times. Looking forward to seeing all that you do for children and families with neurodevelopmental challenges. we need to chat more about that 🙂
Yes! We do 😊
Sheila, you go right ahead and get anything you want to off your chest, with as many exclamation points and swearing as you want. I think about the Chery Family often and hope you are doing ok – words that come to mind are “coping” and “resilience” and “purpose”. And even if “this life I lose” is more of a choice than a calling, why would you choose that? Because you’ve been sent, ie. called (that might seem strange coming from me). Keep up that self-care (I am partial to writing myself :).
Haha, that does seem a little strange coming from you! I appreciate your friendship and encouragement. Goodness knows I need both! 🙂 I’m going to take some time to reflect on those words – coping, resilience, and purpose – thanks for sharing them.