This American High

When I was a girl, my most prized possession was my sticker collection. Around age 10, Mom took me to a craft boutique, and I clearly remember the moment I laid my eyes on the most perfect sticker book ever: A photo album with a pink hand-sewn cover, hearts embroidered on top. 

My Gram snuck stickers into birthday cards. I peeled every sticker off A+ quizzes. “Trading stickers” was my favorite friend activity, and I relished carefully placing each sticker in that perfect album, gazing upon their colorful, sublime wonder over and over again.

I lay in bed, worrying about fires and thieves and tidal waves, and knew confidently what item I would save first: that sticker book.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents dug out my boxes of childhood treasures from the depths of their garage and brought them to my house. Lo and behold, there was my sticker book.

I look disdainfully at the object of my childhood adoration and see it for what it really is: a book of sticky paper, now browning around the edges. Thirty-five years offer a great deal of perspective.

Last week journalist Mindy Belz tweeted, “Pentecostal leader in Moldova writes of daughter and her family vacating their apartment and moving in with him so Ukrainian refugees can live in her place.”

Would I be willing to do that?

I thought of this when I scolded my youngest for getting mustard on the floor. When I attentively wiped the marks off my white cabinets. When my pretty things on the walls make me happy and I am careful not to chip my colorful dishes.   

I’m not into stickers anymore, but I sure do love my house. I’m not sure I would be willing to move in with my parents and let strangers live here, even in a war. 

It’s not just my house that has enraptured me, it’s this pleasant American life. The hot water never runs out; a button on the wall controls my body temperature. Actually, buttons control everything – cleaning my dishes, opening the garage door, ordering any item that ever existed and having it magically appear on my doorstep.  

Carjacking has never once crossed my mind in this neighborhood. I sleep peacefully without bars on my windows. When I talk about politics, I don’t have to use a secured line or look over my shoulder to see who is listening.

Until it diffused here, I didn’t realize that my stress level was elevated all the years I lived in Tanzania. But I’m not sure that was a negative thing. I’ve never done drugs, but the comforts of America feel like a high that seeps through my veins and slowly strangle my desire for self-denial. 

A missionary colleague and I were talking about the lure of materialism. She lived many years in Eastern Europe, and she had a friend who told her, “Living as a Christian was easier under communism rather than capitalism. Capitalism presents too many distractions.”

A greater irony has never been spoken.

Well, unless you count Jesus, right? If you want to find your life, you must lose it first.

At the end of Schindler’s List, Oskar is surrounded by over one thousand Jews whose lives he bribed away from the Nazis. Yet he is obsessed with how many more he could have saved. “I could’ve got more. I threw away so much money,” he laments.”I didn’t do enough. This car could have bought ten more people. This pin could have got one. I could have got one more person, and I didn’t.” He breaks down weeping.

Thirty-five years ago, I loved foolish bits of sticky paper. Thirty-five years from now, what will be my lament? Today I cling to my home, my security, my liberty – the very things I view as blessings from God – but will I have used them to serve and save eternal souls? Or will these “blessings” have distracted me from what is most important?

Will I fall on the ground and weep for what I wasted? Will I agonize over how much more I could have sacrificed for God’s kingdom? Will I wonder why I allowed myself to be lulled to complacency by the buttons that wait at my beck and call, ready to fulfill my every wish?

And yet, I can’t seem to make myself wake up. I argue, I can have both. I can be comfortable and still deny myself. But can I? 

There’s anxiety over losing it all; it makes me check the locks and the smoke detectors. But under the anxiety is a steely resolve. My drowsy, drugged eyes peer beyond the curtain. Abundant life waits beyond – I know because I’ve caught glimpses of it in times of danger and discomfort. I’ve seen it in my suffering friends. I read it in a tweet about a woman giving up her home to refugee strangers. 

God, if you need to stage an intervention in my life, in my church, in my country – to break me, to break us, out of this comfort-filled stupor, then give us courage. Unclench our grasping fists. Compel us to run to the hard places. Give us the resolve to love sacrificially. 

Your will be done. 

Related: The Scariest Prayer