Amy Medina - Part 4

Worth Your Time (March 2024)

On March 27, 2024

In Book Recommendations, Worth Your Time

Hey readers,

Here’s my recent round-up of books and articles to read. If you do, let me know what you think!

Keep Complaining to God. Just Don’t Ignore Him by Drew Dyck

“What explains why some leave while others stay? Sometimes the only difference I could see is what they did with their trials. The first group ran away from God while the second ran toward him. Instead of letting doubt and disappointment fester in darkness, they dragged it into the light. They joined the great biblical tradition of prophets who expressed their grievances to God, often in harsh and accusatory language.”

Make Your Life Count: 12 Rules for Teens by John Piper

7 Parenting Errors That Can Influence Adult Children to Leave the Faith by Q. O. Helet

“I can easily identify many things we did—or did not do—that may have contributed to our sons’ departure from the faith. I hope to see others avoid such an outcome. In that light, here are seven parenting errors that can influence adult children to turn their back on Christ.”

The State of the Culture, 2024: Or a glimpse into post-entertainment society (it’s not pretty) by Ted Gioia

Whoa, this is fascinating and scary and super important: “The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity. The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.

It’s a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok—an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock.”

Who Would I Be If I Was Happy? By Trevin Wax

“We live in a time of self-creation. The traditional markers of identity that once came from outside ourselves—from our family or friends or community or past—are viewed as subpar, even repressive. We’re supposed to chart our own course, to look deep inside to discover our desires and define ourselves as we determine.

This way of life sounds exhilarating at first, but the result is fragility. What happens when we adopt the therapeutic assumptions of our age, when we look into our hearts and find only failures and frailty? Many of us begin to define ourselves by our maladies, to base our identities in suffering.”

Books:

What White Adoptive Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption by Melissa Guida-Richards

This was such a helpful, insightful book–it really is a must-read for anyone who has adopted transracially (or is thinking about it).

Being Elisabeth Elliot: Elisabeth’s Later Years by Ellen Vaughn

I wrote about Part 1 of this biography a couple of years ago here at A Life Overseas. Part 2 did not disappoint. What a fascinating look into what was going on in Elisabeth’s life during the time she wrote the books that influenced me so much.

My garden has started blooming. Happy Spring to you all!

Lockdown Story

By Amy Medina

On March 13, 2024

In Re-Entry to America

Where were you in the spring of 2020?

The Medina family arrived at San Francisco airport on March 26, 2020. It was evening, and as we got to the baggage area and met my parents, I burst into tears as I hugged my mom. I’ve written in detail about the previous week’s events that got us to the States, but I haven’t yet told much of the story of what happened next. I didn’t want to think about those months. It’s not a time I want to go back to.

Because we had been traveling internationally, we weren’t supposed to leave the house for two weeks. At that moment, quarantine was one of the biggest blessings to me. My soul was so overwhelmed with tension and confusion and loss that I hadn’t even begun to process – I was just surviving. Seeing only my husband, children, and parents was all I could handle.

We moved into my parents’ house – Gil and me in my old bedroom, the boys in the office, the girls in the living room. Vevette brought us over homemade pizza the next night. Gracey brought us homemade masks. I waved from the doorway, put on a pretend smile, and yelled out my thank-yous. I was grateful, of course. Just too bottled up with sorrow to really smile.

The kids got stir crazy quickly so my ever-creative husband got to work. He ordered a used XBox and Kinect (like a Wii) on eBay, and the kids, especially Johnny, spent many hours jumping and running in place through imaginary obstacle courses. We printed out a note: We’re wanting to buy a basketball hoop. It looks like you have one that hasn’t been used in a while. Interested in selling it? And left it on several neighborhood front porches. The very next day, a woman down the block called us. You can have mine for free, she said. And we wheeled it down the street.

Wakanda is Real, but It’s a Nightmare

By Amy Medina

On February 27, 2024

In How Americans Think

We’re Black Panther fans in this house, it being the only superhero movie set in Africa and all.

Then I read Cobalt Red, and I told my kids that Wakanda is a real place – it’s called Congo. This is why: the fictional Wakanda held the mythical metal vibranium, which made it the most technologically advanced country on the planet. The nonfiction Congo holds more cobalt than the rest of the world combined, which is the metal required for lithium batteries. Given the worldwide demand for rechargeable batteries, one would assume that Congo should be the most technologically advanced country on the planet. Or at least the richest. Just like Wakanda.

But Marvel doesn’t mirror real life. Despite the fact that over 70% of cobalt comes out of Congo (111,750 tons in 2021), the country languishes as the fourth poorest in the world. In this twisted fairytale, the wealth of Wakanda is raped, exploited, ravaged. In the greatest irony of ironies, only 9% of Congolese even have electricity.

And then there’s the surprise ending: I benefit from this exploitation.

Lament For What is Unremembered

By Amy Medina

On February 5, 2024

In Re-Entry to America, Third Culture Kids

There they sat on the shelf of my local international food store: Nutro wafer cookies. My lungs stopped working for a moment, and it felt like one of those movie montages where the actor is suddenly flooded with a million memories.

Lest you think these cookies are something amazing, they’re not. Imported from the United Arab Emirates and dirt cheap, they taste right around the decent level. But since most store-bought cookies in Tanzania were absurdly expensive or styrofoam-tasting, Nutros were often the best option. They showed up at every birthday party, every school Christmas feast, and in many a school lunch.

I brought home the package of cookies, set it on the table, and watched my kids’ responses. The sharp inhale, the sudden memories of a long-ago life – they felt it too.

Leaving Tanzania brought us many losses, and we have not missed these cookies. But what is missing are the reminders of their childhoods. Like Nutro wafers.

I recently chanced upon a digital photo album that instantly made me homesick. The pictures were nothing fancy, everything ordinary: Grace, Josiah, and Lily in Tanzania, playing soccer in our yard with Gil – a weekly, sometimes daily occurrence. The kids would pull on shin guards and cleats and run outside to our mostly un-landscaped, gigantic yard. Gil would set up goals under the eucalyptus tree, and the four of them would hoot and holler (and let’s be real, sometimes scream and cry) while the sky turned their profiles golden. A kingfisher, stray chicken, or a hedgehog might interrupt and necessitate investigation. They would play until I called them in for dinner or until the mosquitoes started biting, a little dirtier, a lot sweatier.

Perhaps everyone is nostalgic for childhood – their own or their children’s. But what makes me most sad is that my children now have no reminders of it.

The World Was Not Worthy of Them

By Amy Medina

On January 20, 2024

In Living Like a Missionary, What I'm Learning

When I published my article yesterday (Luxury Cars and Walking Dusty Roads), I shared it with my friend Emmanuel, on whom that post was based (and the others on his ministry team).

This was his response (with minor grammatical edits):

Thank you for sharing this with me, sister. It’s really encouraging to hear this. When I was thinking about what you wrote, I realized that it’s easy to forget the purpose of the Gospel when we’re trying to live an amazing life in the fallen world (which it seems impossible to live an amazing life in this broken world).

One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:12. The Apostle Paul says, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

Too much stuff and all kinds of luxuries in life oftentimes leads to more discontent rather than contentment and when this happens is when we forget the purpose of the Gospel.”

I read this and sat speechless for several moments, tears in my eyes. How do I, as a privileged American, comprehend such humble faith, such focused vision? Gil may have been his teacher at the Bible school for a few years, but now, Emmanuel is truly our teacher.

I was so moved by his response that I asked Emmanuel’s permission to share both his name and what he wrote, and he agreed.

Join me in praying for Emmanuel’s ministry (called Stawi Ministries), and if you would like to make a financial gift towards his team’s ministry to Tanzanian public schools and prisons, please write to me at contactamy@amy-medina.com, and I’ll let you know donor options. The team could use funds for transportation, but also the gospel literature that they distribute.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them….the world was not worthy of them.” (Hebrews 11)

photos from Reach Tanzania Bible School, circa 2018