The Stripping Away

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On May 11, 2020

In Other

It might have been a mistake to keep using the same day planner.

I like to plan ahead, you see, which means that these days, when I turn the page in my planner, I see depressing things like “Sports Day” and “Boot Sale” and “Remember to announce April’s House winner.” Little reminders, all over the place, of what I’ve lost. So I cross those things out and write in “Video call, 8:00” because what else is there to write in my planner these days?

Remember that scene in Back to the Future Part II when Biff goes back in time to give the Almanac to his younger self and it skews the future so that when Marty returns to 1985 he finds himself in an alternate universe? That’s what this feels like, right? An alternate universe. And one day I’ll wake up from this bad dream and look at my planner and it really will be Sports Day. Where is Doc with his time machine when you need him?

There simply is not enough space here to express how much I hate this alternate universe. Not because my conditions are miserable (because they are not; we are enjoying time with extended family), but because I am being stripped of the parts of me that I have valued the most.

You might recall that recently I wrote an entire post on how much I love crossing things off of lists. Finishing a task gives me a thrill. You want to know how many tasks I can’t finish right now? About a bazillion. Like, that whole three-year commitment to being principal at a school that I have invested in for almost 20 years? Yeah, that little thing. Don’t get to cross it off my list. Sure, I’m still frantically working, but I feel like I’m in a hamster wheel.

I’m a perfectionist. I like to do things well. I like to do things on time. I despise procrastination. I never once pulled all-nighter in college. Yet now? I feel like I’m always 10 hours behind. That would be because I am 10 hours behind. I wake up in the morning in California and it’s already evening in Tanzania. A few times in my childhood, I experienced that sinking feeling that everyone had already turned in their homework assignment except me. Those experiences still give me nightmares. Now, I wake up every single morning, open my computer, and get that same feeling.

My sense of isolation and disconnection is exacerbated by the fact that I have teachers living in four locations spanning ten time zones and students in even more. I walk around these California neighborhoods and see the signs posted on lawns, “We love Mrs.______!” for Teacher Appreciation Week, but I can’t do that for my teachers. My teachers are working their tails off, logging in dozens more hours a week than usual, with a fraction of the rewards that come from teaching physical children in a physical classroom. They are teaching during odd hours so that they can help groups of kids on opposite sides of the world. And I can’t even give them a stupid sign on their lawns. I hate being mediocre. Yet these days, that’s all I’ve got to offer.

Of course, alongside running in my own hamster wheel, I’m also helping my children with Distance Learning, which means that I too am bordering on the edge of my sanity. If anyone was enviously thinking that Mrs. Medina must be doing such a fabulous job with Distance Learning since she’s the principal and Perfectly Patient All of the Time, well, I guess it’s a good thing you can’t visit me so that I don’t completely decimate my reputation. Last week Johnny started crying during one particularly tense exchange over spelling words and he wailed, “Everything was better in Tanzania!” So then I started crying too. Me too, Buddy. I want out of this alternate universe. (I may or may not have offered to pay a million dollars to Johnny’s second grade teacher to come to California and teach him.)

It’s like we’re all working twice as hard but with half of the productivity, which is probably why I feel frustrated 92% of the time. Did I mention I really like productivity? Efficiency, productivity, perfectionism, planning. All of those things have been thrown out of the window, and since they were my most-cherished values, I feel like jumping out along with them.

I know better, of course. I know that what I’m supposed to think is that all of my values–as good as they are–still must submit themselves to God’s will. That God doesn’t really care about my efficiency and productivity as much as I do, and that as those “values” are being stripped away from my heart, the revealed flesh that is underneath sits raw and exposed before God. I am nothing without Him. I do no good other than the good He does through me. I accomplish nothing of value other than what He deems is important. I know I’m supposed to think that, but my flesh wrangles and wrestles and beats up against it.

I know that He wins in my weakness. I need to give up this fight.

At the start of the school year, I planned out all of the elementary school Bible verses for whole year. Providentially, the verse that was scheduled for the week of March 23 (when everything fell apart) was Proverbs 19:21: Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. 


So there you have it. What I wrote in my planner was just that–My Plan and nothing more. It was just ink on paper, a fantasy that was never meant to exist. This isn’t an alternate universe, it is The Plan, the one that was meant to be from the beginning of time. Any control I thought I had was just an illusion.

It’s ironic that I started this job as principal flat on my face, feeling like a complete failure, and now here I am again, ending the job in a similar way. At the beginning, I fell apart with anxiety, not knowing if had what it takes to do well. Now I know I can, but instead of running past the finish line, I have to limp there, my feet chained together with a world crisis. I look back now and know that starting in weakness was incredibly good for me–that it set the stage for the humility and God-dependence I would need for this season. So why can’t I trust Him with the ending as well?

We Can’t Be Sure Everything Is Going to Be Okay

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On May 6, 2020

In A Life Overseas, Leaving Tanzania


Since being unexpectedly wrenched from our Tanzanian home a month ago due to COVID-19, my family has been living as vagabonds in California, moving in with various relatives every couple of weeks. (It’s hard to shelter-in-place when you have no home.) This week we’re with some in-laws, and I’ve been walking the neighborhood daily.

Whenever I visit California, the perfectly manicured HOA lawns are always a shock to my system after living in a chaotic East African city. These days, the spring roses are bursting into bloom around me, as if in defiance of the pain the world is facing. And like spring flowers, popping up in neighbors’ yards are identical red cardboard signs that read: Everything is going to be okay. There are dozens of them, and they mock me as I pass by. How do you know everything is going to be okay? I silently yell at those signs. I just had to leave my home three months early, and we had four days’ notice. We lived in Tanzania for sixteen years, and since we were planning on relocating in July, this meant we got no closure, no good-byes, no tying up loose ends. Just grief and trauma. We don’t have jobs or a home. So please don’t tell me everything is going to be okay. I’m not in the mood. 

I walk, and I restlessly pound out my lament to God: How long, O Lord? How long before we can start a normal life again? How long before I know with confidence that the school, the friends, the community I left behind in Tanzania will be okay? How long before this knot of anxiety goes away, the weight of grief lifts off my chest?

I love the stories of God’s deliverance in Scripture. The walls falling down, the giant conquered, the blind man healed. But I have this tendency to speed read through the Bible, focusing on the happy endings and ignoring the miserable parts in between. Yes, God’s people were dramatically rescued from slavery in Egypt. (After 400 years of back-breaking suffering.) Yes, they made it to the Promised Land. (After 40 years of death in the desert.) Sure, God promised them a “hope and a future”….but it would come after 70 years in exile. (That part doesn’t make it onto the coffee mugs.) The Messiah arrived! (After 400 years of silence from God.)

Ever wonder what it must have felt like to live in the “in between” years before God’s miraculous deliverance? Probably felt pretty defeated, and isolated, and alone. Many, many, many of God’s faithful never saw his deliverance in their lifetimes. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised (Heb 11). You could say that for them, everything did not turn out to be okay. That’s probably why amongst the miraculous stories was a whole lot of waiting and groaning and begging for redemption.


My soul is in deep anguish.  How long, Lord, how long? (Ps. 6)


How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts  and day after day have sorrow in my heart? (Ps. 13)


We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be. (Ps. 74)


How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? (Jer. 12)


How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? (Hab. 1)


How long, O Lord? How long? What if life doesn’t return to normal in months, or years, or even ever in our lifetime? What if things get worse? What if everything will not be okay? The truth is that if “okay” means safety, prosperity, and comfort, I might not get that. There is no guarantee. And judging from Christian history and the lives of my Christian brothers and sisters around the world, there is no precedent that God promises me those things.


Perhaps one of the most important things I learned during my life overseas was in watching the lives of those who have lived and died asking, “How long, O Lord?”  She follows Jesus and her husband keeps cheating on her and he got her pregnant with a fourth child and she has only an elementary education and there is no government support and she works incredibly hard but nothing ever gets better. Oh, and even before COVID-19, there already were a dozen diseases around that could kill her or her children on any given day. Yet still, she perseveres in faith.


I must remember that I am not promised that everything is going to be okay. In my lifetime, it might not be.


Unless, that is, we’re talking about the very, very end. I am not promised heaven on earth. I am, however, promised heaven. That’s why Hebrews 11 ends with this: These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better.


How long, O Lord, until everything will be okay? Maybe not ever. But I can be okay, because I am a foreigner on this earth. This is not where I belong. I can see Your redemption in the distance, and in the meantime, I long for a better country–a heavenly one. 

This article was first published at A Life Overseas.

Not Just Any Rock

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On April 21, 2020

In Leaving Tanzania, Liberian Childhood, Third Culture Kids

The day before we left Tanzania last month, I found my rock from Liberia in a bathroom drawer. I had forgotten it was there; I had forgotten to look for it, and I came across it by chance. A shock went through me when I saw it, because it was with some things I was going to throw away, and I shuddered to think that I could have accidentally thrown it out in my hasty packing. I quickly put it in a small bag with other important things that went into my carry-on luggage.

This was not just any rock.

I found this rock on the shores of the ELWA beach in Liberia where I grew up. It was smooth, its rough edges worn off by the sand and waves. I kept it on my windowsill with other childhood treasures. One day, it fell off and split into two pieces.

When I was twelve, my family left Liberia for a year. The plan was that I would do 8th grade in the States, and then we would return to Liberia for the rest of high school. I loved Liberia. It was home to me, and I was not looking forward to being away for a year.

I took the broken-off piece of that rock and hid it in a corner of our house. I took the larger piece with me to California. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this, and looking back, I’m actually pretty shocked that as a twelve-year-old, I thought of something so symbolic. I was leaving part of myself in Liberia. When I returned, I would be complete again.

Half way through that year, my family listened in despair as we heard reports of rebel soldiers closing in on the capital city in Liberia, of a government coup, of panic and evacuation of almost all the missionaries. Then–a civil war, a descent into chaos and devastation.

We never went back. We lost all of our possessions. We never said goodbye. People we knew were killed. Suddenly loss and grief were a part of my story in a way they never had been before. So it was fitting that the two halves of my rock never found their way together again.

Just a few short months later, we were re-stationed on the other side of the continent, this time in Ethiopia. I was in 9th grade, and chose to go to boarding school in Kenya. I had a new school and a new direction. But that year, rebels descended into the capital city in Ethiopia. During school announcements, all of us missionary kids from Ethiopia kept getting pulled aside for grave conversations. Things were bad, they said. Some of our parents were getting evacuated, they said. My mom and my brother were among them. They were on the last flight out, and later my mom told me how they watched the tanks roll into the airport as the plane left the runway.

My dad stayed behind with some other men, and they slept in a windowless hallway at night. I was still at school. For six weeks, my family was on three different countries. When I arrived back in Ethiopia, the city still had curfews and lockdowns. My dad crammed what he could into several suitcases, and he and I left. Once again, I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I look back on the timeline of my childhood, and Liberia and Ethiopia lay there like the jagged end of my broken rock. No opportunity to finish well. No closure. Just loss.

The night that we were told we had to leave Tanzania, that wound re-opened. I can’t believe this is happening to me again, I wailed to Gil. I can’t believe now it’s happening to my own kids. As foreigners living in a land that’s not our own, we like to believe that we belong there. That we can pretend it’s part of us. Then we are unceremoniously yanked away, and given the stark reminder that like it or not, we don’t belong. Yes, that blue passport is a privilege, but sometimes it takes me places I don’t want to go.

The grief sits on my chest every day. It’s hard to separate out its various forms. Which is the grief in leaving Tanzania early? Which is the grief in knowing that it won’t be my home again? Which is the grief for the sorrows my children are facing, or my friends back in Tanzania, or my beloved school? They all just swirl into one complicated mixture of sadness.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” I find myself not particularly eager to move beyond this grief. It is sacred and beautiful. Being wrenched from Tanzania is worth grieving over, because it was worth loving.

Perhaps the fault in my youthful naivete was assuming that something, once broken, could ever be put back together in the same way again. Jesus’ body, when gloriously resurrected, still bore the scars of his suffering. If I could choose, would I want my scars erased? Probably not. They are part of my story, of who I became, of God’s work in my life. That is the mysterious glory of redemption. And redemption is how we see through the tiny keyhole that shows us the beauty on the other side of that giant door of suffering.

Leaving: In Pictures

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On April 14, 2020

In Leaving Tanzania

Early March: I posted a picture on Facebook announcing that Africa could send America toilet paper. We had plenty.
March 13: All School assembly for Service Emphasis Week–No social distancing happening here!
From Friday afternoon to the following Monday: No kids on campus. Everything changed in one weekend.
Gearing up for Distance Learning
My last day in my office. We had bought tickets the night before. “Take a picture,” I told Gil. “Just in case I don’t make it back.” Why do we smile for pictures even when we are miserable? 
Friends stopped by to say good-bye. My kids with the celebrity-quadruplets. Their presence brings sunshine into any room. 
Baby shoes from my kids’ early days. Sentimental things I had saved, but decided we had no room to bring with us. So I took pictures instead. 
To post on Facebook: “Looking for a home for our sweet dog.”
More friends stopping by to say goodbye. It was rushed, but I am so thankful for every last one of these. A quick goodbye is better than none at all.
Sorting everything to sell. I sold kitchen containers with the flour still in them.
Stopped by school one last time. I took pictures of everything, wanting to grab hold of every memory. This is the administration building where my office is, where I spent the last three years. 
The famous baobab tree at HOPAC. It was there before we were.
Visiting a very, very special family one last time. Their seven and my four fit together perfectly. 
We sold the dishes….so our last dinner was at the nearby Ramada Hotel. We were shocked by how empty it was. Though life in the city seemed to be going on as normal, big changes were starting.
Saying goodbye to our gardener, Paul. He has lived on our property and been a part of our lives for ten years.
With the luggage, saying one last goodbye to Snoopy. Again, why do we smile for pictures even when we are miserable?
On the way to the airport, taking a picture of a guy in a gorilla mask who is selling gorilla masks to people stopped at intersections. Because even when you’re miserable, you find ways to smile.
 I found this on one of the kids’ phones: Shoppers Plaza, one of the places they’ve known their whole lives. 
Eating lunch at the empty Dar es Salaam airport. Hey, did you know there’s KFC at the Dar airport now? This is very exciting.
Coming in for a landing in San Francisco

Living in Saturday

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On April 11, 2020

In Other

We don’t talk much about Saturday. Friday, yes, because now, looking back two thousand years, we know that Friday was Good. But on that original Friday, they didn’t yet know that. All they knew was the horror, the trauma, the beatings, the blood. And Saturday, all they knew was hopelessness and despair. All their dreams nailed down in a torturous crucifixion. Their closest friend, their mentor, their Lord–the one who had calmed the seas and winked at small children–condemned, humiliated, despised.

And they figured they were next. So they spent Saturday in hiding. Hunkered down, the windows closed, in shock. This was not how it was supposed to be. The end was supposed to be a kingdom–power, praise, honor! And they would be right by his side, the conquering hero, leading the people, soaking in the praise by association. But in one horrifying Friday, all of that was decimated. What went wrong? Is God angry with us? How could we have been so misled? This is not how it was supposed to be. 


We know better now. We know what’s coming on Sunday, so we don’t think much about Saturday. Yet, in a very real sense, we live in that Saturday. 

Perhaps this year more than ever, the world is faced with the reality of that Saturday. There’s always been suffering, poverty, war, disease. But in my generation of relatively prosperous Americans, there’s never been a time in our lives when we corporately have felt more powerless, more isolated, more out of control. Here we are, on a planet that’s an infinitesimal speck in a universe of mind-blowing proportions. Yet seemingly immovable cultures and institutions are cut off at the knees by an even more infinitesimal speck that lurks unseen by all of us. We are very, very small, aren’t we? The breath that keeps us alive for another few seconds is not something to be trifled with. We are not as strong as we think we are.

Resurrection, restoration, redemption came on that Sunday. Life was restored. Death was conquered. The world was never the same again. Yet as miraculous as the Resurrection was, it was just the deposit. The down payment for That Day–not yet come–when all things will be made new.

Until then, we still live in Saturday. The earth groans under the weight of war and hatred and injustice. Our frail bodies collapse from a microscopic enemy. We are driven to our knees with the tangible reminder that this is not heaven.

Yet one thing makes us different from those who hid away on that dark, hopeless Saturday. Yes, like them, we grieve, we anguish, we fear. But we have hope. That’s the difference. We grieve, but with confident expectation of what’s coming. We are on our knees, but we look up. If God could take the worst day in history and use it for our salvation, can He not redeem all the other hard things? The tomb was empty on Sunday. One day, ours will be too.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Gil Medina)

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