Amy Medina - Part 13

My Body, My Choice: The Argument of Autonomy

On July 6, 2022

My mom always told me that my first full sentence was (with all the attitude a two-year-old can muster), “I can do it myself!”

You could say that the rest of my life has been one big lesson in precisely the opposite: I cannot, actually, do it myself.

Sometimes I can’t even keep a grip on reality. There are times in extreme anxiety when I’ve told Gil or a friend, “When I feel this way, you need to tell me this truth.” Without other people, I wonder if I would even be sane.

Children raised with minimal human interaction are underdeveloped mentally, socially, emotionally. Our very existence is dependent on others.

So isn’t it ironic that in America, we idolize autonomy? Americans love choices. Whether it’s frozen yogurt toppings, owning a gun, getting a vaccine, wearing a mask, or determining your gender, we champion individual decisions. Follow your heart. You be you. Your body, your choice.

Independence is such a part of the air we breathe that we might not realize that it’s not a universal value.

Did you know that when compared with other countries, the “Individualism” score for the United States ranks the highest in the entire world? Autonomy is not a universal value. With few exceptions, every country in the world values connection to family and society more than we do.

I asked a friend from Europe what he found unexpected about American culture. He said, “Going into a sandwich shop and choosing your own toppings.” In Europe, they choose the toppings for you. But here, you can have it your way.

In America, we hand babies a spoon at six months old. We praise the three-year-old who puts on his shoes. “You’re such a big girl!” is the ultimate toddler compliment. But I’ve met Tanzanian mamas who still breastfeed at three and Indian mamas who are still spoon-feeding their four-year-olds. They are in no hurry for their children to gain independence.

Autonomy is not a universal value. So should we step back and evaluate it?

When the Story Doesn’t Have a Happy Ending

By Amy Medina

On June 9, 2022

In Life in Tanzania, Thoughts on Missions

We’d been on the mission field only six months, and we were already experiencing every missionary’s dream story: a Muslim convert. We participated in his baptism, guided his discipleship, and supported him through persecution. We had so much to write home about.

It all started when Gil and I—both just 24 years old—moved to a large city in Tanzania in 2001. We lived in the heart of the Indian section of the city, serving a subgroup from Southeast Asia who had flourished there for generations. We lived in a tiny, 600-square-foot, concrete block house, and all day long we could hear ripe fruit from our giant mango tree slam onto our tin roof.

Right outside the gate of our compound, a dusty road hosted small fruit stands, a butcher shop, and taxis that bumped through the potholes. Just down the street, a Muslim school educated hundreds of young Indian boys. Soon after we arrived, the school asked Gil to coach volleyball, and that’s how we first met the young man I’ll call Abbas.

Abbas was 19—only a few years younger than we were. We joined an Indian church plant, and when Gil started inviting the boys on his volleyball team to the youth group, Abbas jumped right in. Gil and Abbas quickly became fast friends. It wasn’t long until Abbas spent nearly every afternoon at our little house—playing chess or volleyball and arguing with Gil over soccer teams.

Abbas got used to my American cooking and developed a special affinity for cheese. I can still remember him imploring me daily, “Hey, Amy, do you have any cheeeeese?” He’d also scold me for throwing away the chicken neck because “that was the best part.”

He had eyes that danced and an infectious smile. During the regular greeting time at church, he’d make us all laugh by personally greeting every person in the room. He was smart, he was a jokester, and he was hungry to know about Jesus.

Abbas began meeting with Gil twice a week to study the Bible. We didn’t want to pressure him, so we let him set the time and determine the length of study. “How many weeks do you want to meet?” Gil asked. “Until I understand,” was Abbas’s reply.

Read the rest here in the Christianity Today Globe Issue.

We’d absorbed the unwritten rule in missions: Failure is unacceptable. I’d grown up immersed in missions culture, yet I couldn’t remember a single time that a missionary story, presentation, or newsletter ever included failure.

Send Their Letters Back

By Amy Medina

On May 24, 2022

In Liberia, Re-Entry to America, Third Culture Kids

How does a 13-year-old girl process the destruction of the home she loves? In 8th grade, I watched helplessly from a distance as I heard reports of civil war destroying Liberia, the country that defined my childhood.

My expectation of returning to Liberia for my high school years slowly evaporated over the spring of 1990. As our mission organization scrambled to find a new assignment for us, my life skewed off in a direction that felt darker, unsteady, unsure.

I worked through that grief over many years, but recently an unexpected gift from Beth, a long-ago friend, helped me more clearly process it. This missionary-kid friend from my years in Liberia wrote to tell me that she had found the letters I had written her during our 8th grade year. Would I like them back?

Not long after, the packet arrived in the mail, and my girls studied my letters with fascination. What are these? they wondered, as if looking at ancient relics. There was a time before the internet, I told them with exasperation. People used paper.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to find much value in my letters. So I was surprised by how meaningful it was to read them again.

Interspersed in the drivel about vacations and teachers were windows into my inner life. I see the “between two worlds” struggle I was experiencing, common for third-culture kids, but not something I could keenly express until I was much older.

We also get to go to Great America, a huge roller coaster park. Another good thing about this school is we get electives. I am taking handbells and drama. They are really fun. But I would give all this up for the beach, you, Carolyn, Feme, and the rest of our class.

And then there are the parts about the upheaval descending on our lives.

Tell me what happened in the coo! (or however you spell it). I hope it’s over by the time you get this letter. Has it rained a lot this year? How is ELWA? How was your Christmas vacation? We went to Disneyland!

Coups aren’t supposed to be in the experience of 13-year-olds, which explains why I couldn’t spell it, and why it’s in the same paragraph about the weather and Disneyland.

The coup turned into a civil war. It wasn’t over by the time Beth got this letter. In fact, it wasn’t over for another 15 years.

Everywhere to Everywhere: One story of how God is reshaping the global mission field

By Amy Medina

On May 17, 2022

In Thoughts on Missions

In my job as a global missions coach, I get to meet all kinds of fascinating people. But David and Karla’s story stands out as one of the most extraordinary I’ve come across.

When I was interviewing Karla for this piece, she told me, “I love how God crashed our stories.” Indeed. This story links together several of our friends from college (Kathy Keller, Joshua and Naomi Smith, and Gil and I). It’s a story of death and redemption, supernatural connections, and the beauty of surrendered lives.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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“Today, the Majority World Church sends out as many cross-cultural missionaries as does the Western Church. Mission activity is no longer predominantly a West-to-East activity. We must now see mission not as one place to the rest of the world, but as everywhere to everywhere.” (Jason Mandryk, Missions Analyst)

David and Karla Sarmiento become emotional when they talk about the deaths of their baby girls. In 2014, Sarah died at three months old in a tragic accident. A year later, Jemimah died from a heart defect the week after she was born.

Yet with tears in their eyes, David and Karla are quick to say, “From our pain to His glory.” Though excruciating, they recognize that their pain brought them deeper into Christ, made them fall in love with His Church and is now taking them from their home in Mexico City to build God’s kingdom in Paris.

The Sarmientos married in 2013 in their native Mexico, ideal complements for each other: David is gentle, soft-spoken and contemplative; Karla is vivacious, outgoing and artistic. In their early years together, David worked as an architect and Karla as a jazz musician. A year after they married, Karla was pregnant with Sarah. They opened a tea house in the Roma neighborhood – an area of Mexico City known for its European architecture, used bookstores and young professionals.

ReachGlobal missionary Sam Loesch discovered the Sarmiento’s tea shop, Casa Tassel, not long after it opened. Delighted, she wrote on her blog, “I found the place; my place. A cozy tea house just a couple blocks away. They have a shimmery, gold menu with 54 types of tea, tall shelves filled with mismatched teapots and cups, treats displayed across the counter, and a few inviting seats resting atop worn wood floors.”[T]hey realized that their tea shop wasn’t just a business – it was ministry.

Right around this time, baby Sarah languished in a coma. In a hospital waiting room, David stumbled upon Sam’s blog post and reached out to Sam. She introduced them to her ReachGlobal co-workers, Joshua and Naomi Smith, just a few weeks after Sarah’s death, when the bottom had fallen out of David and Karla’s world.

Go here to read the rest at the EFCA blog.

Two Stones In My Pocket

By Amy Medina

On May 6, 2022

In Fear, Parenting

It’s practically a miracle that I got married.

As a young person, I was colder than Elsa to guys my age. I avoided talking to them at all costs, and when I was forced to, I used sarcasm. In high school, one guy told me that I made him cry and another rebuked me for being mean. These interactions have been embedded in my memory for 30 years because I remember how stunned I was to hear them. In my head, I was a nice person. I never set out to be a jerk.

My harshness was not for lack of attraction; I had as many crushes as the boy-crazy flirt. I was simply terrified of people. I was not timid; I loved being on stage and performing when I had a script telling me exactly what to say at exactly the right moment. Real life gave me no such script.

I gained confidence in college, though even Gil remembers that my first interaction with him was intentionally distant. So it is pretty miraculous that I figured out how to be friendly enough for him to fall in love with me.

I now recognize that my reticence was very much connected to insecurity. Around people my age, I was easily intimidated, and I felt young and insignificant. I was too proud to be nervous and groveling, so it was easier to be cold and sarcastic.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “It is always the secure who are humble.” My insecurity made me unkind, anxious, unfriendly. As I’ve aged, I see in myself the link between growing more secure and how well I love others.