letting go.

We’re going on five months now. 

Slowly but surely, we settle into this space.  We begin to find our routines, our familiar places and rhythms.  We marvel at the ability of human beings to adapt to a whole new world.  We marvel that life really does go on, and, when all is said and done, our South Asia rhythms of grocery-shopping and reading books to our children and bed-times don’t look all that different from those at home.

David and Amelie and I have had stomach troubles on and off for a month now, since our early-March trip to the north of our country.  So I send an email to one of the families working in the north and they write back, advising that we get Amie to a pediatrician right away, and telling David and I what medication to take for parasites.

And in a moment my new-normal is shaken.  

There is a searing crack in the paper-thin edges of control in my world.

A cobra sighting a couple blocks away.  The smell of sewage in our tap water.   Judah stumbling and catching himself on a trash-covered sidewalk, then popping a thumb in his mouth before I can stop him.  Watching, alarmed, as Anju uses the broom to clean off the dining room table because she doesn’t know better.

More cracks.

I live just a moment away from choking terror.

I whip around from buying eggs at the corner shop in time to see Amie dart off the curb into the busy street.  I dash forward and grab her and time stops as I feel the rush of traffic sweep past us.  My heart pounds and I gasp for air, unimaginable pictures swirling through my head.

“Lord, what is this place you have brought us to?  How can we survive it?”

He has given us these two souls to love and cherish and protect, so precious that my heart aches.  Are we being irresponsible, knowingly choosing to raise them in a land of careening traffic and rabid dogs and Japanese encephalitis?

In South Asia I am in control of nothing.  Not of my children’s health.  Not of how many loads of laundry I get done today.  Not of whether or not dinner will get cooked through before the electricity goes out.  Not of where the auto driver will drop me off or whether he’ll take a roundabout route to charge me more money.  Not of whether my children will sit still or have a crying fit in the middle of the two-hour church service.  Not of my husband, who boards a bus to a remote village that may be hostile.

Every day there is a jolting reminder of this lack of control.  In the blink of an eye, our whole world could fall apart.

Sometimes this makes me angry.

Sometimes it makes me terrified.

But sometimes, God steals into this moment and whispers in my ear, clear as the day, I am showing you what’s been true your whole life: you are not in control.  You can let go.  I’ve got you.  I’ve got David and Judah and Amie.

Here, with me, you are very, very safe.

I am making you free.

I stand by the bustling roadside, holding tight to my baby girl’s hand, and gratitude washes all over me.  I have never been so astounded by life and health as I am here in South Asia.  We are all of us a moment away from certain death.  And we go on living and breathing, not because we are strong, but because our Maker is strong. 

I bow my head and thank the One who holds all things together for keeping my daughter alive another day.  The fear loosens its death grip.

I thank him for the load of whites, clean and folded on my bed.  For the steaming batch of muffins I just pulled out of the oven.  For the auto driver who let me off with armfuls of groceries right at the basement elevator.  For the courage to repent to my boisterous, wiggly, full-of-life children whom I dare to think distract me from worship.  For my travel-worn husband home safe, and the light in his eyes that tells me he is living his dream.

Each day is brimming with gifts.

The fear is almost gone.