the wrestling.

The kids and I walked the half-mile to our neighborhood park this morning.  It was a perfect day: not a cloud in the sky.  Warm in the sun, chilly in the shade.

Judah and Amie love to roam in the park.  They usually by-pass the paint-chipped playground in favor of the walking path, where they can explore gnarled banyan trees and trash heaps and point out squirrels, birds and rats of all sizes.  They pick up sticks and ruffle through the leaves and make themselves busy.

And I like to find a bench in a patch of sun and just sit and be.  Today I breathe deep and look around and pronounce the morning “good.”

At the wall just over Judah’s shoulder, a face appears.  A man, gaunt and shabbily dressed, “ppsst’s” me to get my attention, then rubs his thumb and fingers together to indicate he wants money.  I wordlessly shake my head and turn the other way.  I feel my blood-pressure rise though, as he lingers at the wall, openly staring at the kids and me.

I’m not sure whether I feel worse about being hassled and stared at, or about the knowledge that if this homeless man climbed the wall and entered the park, he’d immediately be chased out by the stick-bearing guard.

We walk leisurely home, stopping at roadside carts to pick out bananas and a kilo of bold, red Roma tomatoes.  I give thanks that we now live in part of town that has mostly-intact sidewalks the half-mile home, so that Judah and Ams can skip and walk to their heart’s content.

When we reach the main thoroughfare that we live off, I keep a close eye on the kids running ahead.  And a little girl of about six runs up to me holding out her hand and rubbing her fingers together.  “Please, Aunty.  Hungry.”  She has a runny-nosed baby on her hip, and I smile at the two and reach into my purse to pull out a couple of bananas for them.

Out of nowhere, I am mobbed by street children.  Pressing against me, tugging my clothes, reaching, grabbing, into my purse.  I’m separated from my kids at the edge of a crowded street, traffic careening by.

“No!  Go!”  I shout at the kids sternly.  They instantly stop, sheepish.  They know better.

I grab Judah and Amie’s hands and march away, while the crowd of them stand back and watch.  Tears sting my eyes.

I have just yelled at a group of children.

And I only gave bananas to three of them.  Will they get anything else to eat today?

Later on, at home, I am cooking dinner when the doorbell rings.  David and I get there at the same time, and find our ironing-man’s wife.

Here you don’t iron your own clothes.  You pay someone else to do it.  It provides a job for people who need it, so we have always handed over our ironing to the “dhobi” who stops by once a week (usually one dhobi will service a whole apartment complex or a whole street).

Today the dhobi’s wife didn’t want to collect our ironing; she wanted to ask us for a loan of 300 rupees (about 6 dollars).  My heart sinks.  We hired this dhobi just two weeks ago, and this is the third time he and/or his wife have come to us asking for money.  A hundred dollars.  Twenty dollars.  Six dollars.  We finally give in.

The first month we lived in this apartment, our house-helper asked me for money every single day she came to work.  She told me (and any of my friends who happened to be visiting) over and over and over about her destitution, her seven children and their needs, her exorbitant debts from her husband’s illness, until I got a stomach-ache every time she came to work and couldn’t sleep at night for worrying about her.

And David told her, “Please stop this.  You may not talk to my wife about money any more.  If you need money, come talk to me.”  Lilly is a fighter, so they had a heated argument for awhile.  But finally she agreed.  And since that conversation, she has not spoken to me about money.

That is a relief.  But even then, there is not one single day in this country that someone—often many someones—don’t ask us for money.  Not one.  Even our home isn’t a retreat from the barrage.

And here is the worst part:  these people all need money.  Some of them very badly.

I know the right answers.

I know not to give money to street children because they usually work for handlers who force them to beg.  I know giving money to beggars can “enable a lifestyle,” while others are working hard for their wages.  I know all of these people just ask of us because we are foreign and they know we’ll give them money, and that our South Asian friends continually tell us, “Don’t do it.”

I know the best plan is to pay employees fair wages, to find specific people to help, specific kids to send to school or to help friends with medical bills, give out bags of rice to beggars instead of cash.

I know that to most of the world I am incredibly, unimaginably rich, and that I have plenty to share.

And I known that as a follower of Jesus, I am to be generous with what I have and to help the poor.

And all this knowledge swirling in my head makes me feel confused and sad and helpless.

For two reasons:

1.  There are impoverished people all around me every single day.  They have legitimate needs.  Many of them are doing their best with an honest job and just cannot make ends meet.  When you look into their eyes and hear their stories, it is just devastating.

2.  I am so, so tired of being asked for money.  I hate it.  I hate that my skin color makes me an instant target.  As if that’s all I am to them.  A source of cash.

I think it is easy for people back home in the States to glorify our family because we work with the poor.  I know I thought that about others living in the developing world when I lived in the suburbs of America.  And it is easy for me to say certain things and leave out certain facts to boost this perception.

So, because of that, this is a post in which I am brutally honest:

Having the poor all around me does not make me a better person.  It can touch my heart with compassion and generosity.  It also brings my sin to the surface.  Strange how those things can sometimes be intermingled in one encounter, in one day.

Sometimes I am harsh with beggars.  When they refuse to take “no” for an answer and keep pressing me and tugging my clothes, I yell at them to go away.  Sometimes, I get so angry when people ask me for money.  I hate when, last Christmas, the maintenance workers at our apartment complex came to our door multiple times, demanding a Christmas bonus (which they did not do to South Asians; just to the foreigners).  I hate when I’m treated like I owe them something.  I hate the times we are generous with people, and we barely get a ‘thank-you;’ just a request for more money later on.

I hate that we will never, ever be on equal terms with people of a desperate economic bracket here–whether in our job or in our personal life.  We can be friendly with each other and spend time together, but in the end, we are the wealthy, the source of money.  And they are in need.

I hate that this is an issue David and I have to wrestle through every day.  I hate having to think about it while I’m cooking dinner for my family.

I hate that I sound like a self-righteous brat right now, with my full belly and my three-bedroom flat.

There.

Now you see my heart, as it really is.

I want to be generous.  And I want the credit for it.  I want people to be grateful and to give us privacy and “be well” without constantly bugging me.  Mostly, I am tired of the wrestling and the guilt and the horrible things I see–not in a National Geographic special, but in my real life–and the wondering if I should have given to that person who asked.

I don’t have any answers.  Other than please pray for me.  The last thing I want is to get cynical, to expect the worst from people.  To stop treating people as real human beings whom God made and loves.

We live in a city of 8 million people, and with the rampant poverty in our country, the fact that hundreds more people don’t ask for money every day is remarkable.  There are so many needs everywhere around us.

So I guess I’m just writing to try to give you a picture of our reality.  And I’m asking for you to pray that I’ll keep wrestling.