Amy Medina | Amy Medina

I pull out the weeds in my lawn and think about how absurd it is that I am pulling weeds while under the same sky, a young man tries to escape his country by hanging onto the wing of a plane.

I put Cheerios into my shopping cart, and jingling monotonously over the loudspeakers is Dance until the morning light/Forget about the worries on your mind/We can leave them all behind. Half a world away, a mother tries to thrust her baby to strangers and safety on the other side of barbed wire.

My daughter and her friend chatter in the backseat about a missed pass in volleyball and how Honors English is so much work. The same moment in time, a 15-year-old daughter of a pastor is pulled from her bed and forced into a marriage of terror, her father watching broken and helpless.

I read about the mountainous landfill in Ghana, filled with cast-off American clothing. Even the poor of Africa are overwhelmed by the influx of our discarded shirts and dresses. I contemplate the statement: “We’re buying 60 percent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago. But we’re keeping them for half as long.” Meanwhile, a few countries over, a doctor dashes around her city, foraging for any bit of cash she can coax from empty ATM machines.

My house now has two refrigerators in it. Two. Because heaven forbid I go to the grocery store (which is five minutes away) more than once a week. But I justified this because practically everyone in America has more than one fridge and I bought the cheaper one and I buy used clothes and I pull my own weeds instead of paying someone. There’s a whine in my voice and a defensiveness on my face because I don’t want to admit how spoiled I am, despite what meager sacrifices I am making.

Four Walls Replace Patched Tents: Is There Hope for the Homeless?

By Amy Medina

On August 3, 2021

In Poverty

Tents multiply
like mushrooms
after a spring rain.

The poor
addicted
broken
tucked into dark corners
under bridges
stayed away from us.

And we forgot they were there.

But today
their destitution
creeps into our cul de sac
cannot escape our vision.

Tens of thousands image-bearers
fall asleep in filth
captive to fear
imprisoned in despondency.

Every night.

And we forget their tents
until their proximity invades our denial.

Could their nearness be their
Maker’s plea from His heart
to His hands and His feet
to run
to touch
to restore?

Sunday at 10am,
the hands and feet gaze through stained-glass windows
at vacant land
resting idle.

Consider Jesus
who left behind glory
to sit in the dirt
to touch the leper
to be sleepless
friendless
possessionless
homeless
to feel our sorrow.

That we may transform
desolate fields
into villages of relief
restoration
redemption.

Nestled next to the house of God,
those shooed off sidewalks
shoved off benches
snubbed from parks
find home.

Four walls replace patched tents
gardens reclaim garbage
jobs redeem shame
communities relieve contention.

The formerly hopeless
flourishing next door
to the place
where they found
eternal hope.

Because God so loved the world . . .

That His churches would choose
to race to the rescue
to fight for the chance
to be hands of mercy
feet of love
to be first in line
to welcome the least of these.

*Inspired by Goodness Village, Compassi on Village, and other churches building mini-villages for the homeless and vulnerable on their property. Thank you to Luke Grover for telling me about this innovative idea.

*Also, thank you to Alyssa Dunker. This topic materialized in my head in verse form, but when I started writing it, I realized I’m really not a good poet. Alyssa pushed and prodded it out of me and did a lot of editing. If you like it, she gets the credit too.

*Photos from Pixabay

My Authentic Self Does Not Like Ticks

By Amy Medina

On July 14, 2021

In How Americans Think, Life in Tanzania

Last week I told my cousin about our year in Tanzania infamously called the War of the Ticks. It was so nightmarish that every day I pulled 25 of them off my tiny dog and I stopped even trying with our big dog and they had infested my kitchen and we rarely let the dogs in the house anymore but the ticks kept crawling in under the door anyway.

We paid the children money for the number of ticks they killed and so there were always cups of water sitting around with dead ticks drowned in them by my children. Drowning did not always work though, because ticks would go through the washing machine cycle and come out alive. I became an expert at beheading them with a fingernail. Sometimes the engorged ones would fall off the dogs and burst open which meant the live ticks would crawl through the dog blood and leave their tiny tracks on the floor.

When I found ticks in my daughter’s bed, we contemplated putting the dogs down. We had tried every tick prevention we could find, and until a friend of a friend sent us magical tick pills which killed them all in 24 hours, that year felt like some sort of creepy tick hell.

Rewriting the Ending

By Amy Medina

On June 25, 2021

In Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America

There’s an old-fashioned bell on the wall in Haven of Peace Academy’s office building. We would ring it on special occasions, like when we recruited a new teacher or got a batch of approved work permits, or when Zawadi was finally adopted.

The moment I walked into that building on Monday afternoon, June 7th, after fourteen months of being away, my friend Trudie saw me and ran over and rang that bell. The faces of old friends appeared out of office doors and some clapped and some cheered and all of them surrounded me at once. They engulfed me with love and I held onto them for dear life, and I broke down with joy and sorrow and relief and a whole lot of jetlag. For fourteen months I had longed for this moment and not known if it would ever come. But it did.

What was it like to go back? It felt like Lucy going through the wardrobe, like Harry passing through Platform 9 ¾. I got off the plane and was in a different universe, one that instantly felt very familiar, like no time at all had passed.

June in Dar es Salaam is technically winter, but my face was abruptly shiny again from the humidity. My ankles were perpetually itchy from mosquito bites. Monkeys danced on the roof in the mornings, I ate rice and beans for lunch, I haggled over taxi prices, and I hollered for the house guard when the water pump stopped working. My duffle bag arrived with a large rip, and I fretted over finding a needle and thread until it dawned on me, Duh, I’m in Dar. I can walk out the gate and find a tailor who will fix it up good as new, licketly split. And so I did.

I have spent the last fourteen months trying to force my soul into ill-fitting clothes, so being back felt ordinary and effortless and right.

How Are We Adjusting? A Year Later

By Amy Medina

On June 4, 2021

In Re-Entry to America

This is always a complicated question. Let’s see if I can answer it in categories:

Kids:

They are the main reason we returned, so I’ll start here. Our kids are doing remarkably well, considering everything they’ve been through this past year. They all like their new school; they all have lots of friends. I can’t express what a huge relief this is.

Grace and Josiah started the year online, but working from school (Grace in the library, Josiah in the gym). We jumped on this option because it gave them a chance to make friends–and it worked. Since Grace was at school every day (as a staff kid), and the other students rotated days, for a while she had her Monday friends, her Tuesday friends….you get the idea. So when everyone came back on campus, her friend group was huge! She has been in friend heaven.

I was most concerned about Josiah, starting a new school and a new life as a seventh grade boy. But in God’s kindness, I think that starting the year off with just a few other kids in the gym was exactly what he needed. In fact, once all the kids were back in school full-time, Josiah told me, “Mom, I miss the gym. This was one of my best school years ever because of the months in the gym.” Well, what do you know? Thanks, COVID (and God’s providence), for that silver lining.

Author: Amy Medina Page 18 of 230

Pulling Weeds While People Are Dying: How Do I Respond to the World’s Suffering?

Four Walls Replace Patched Tents: Is There Hope for the Homeless?

My Authentic Self Does Not Like Ticks

Rewriting the Ending

How Are We Adjusting? A Year Later