Category: Alicia Writes

Tiny Human Things

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Alicia Writes6 Comments

There are so many things I don’t know.  On my mind this weekend was all the not knowing I’m mired in regarding the killings in Charleston.

I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ll ever know, how a person can take the life of another.

I don’t know words that would even begin to offer a grain of comfort or solace to the surviving family members. “I’m sorry for your loss,” sounds trite, like their family members died in a car accident and not at the hands of fellow citizen. When killings like these happen in places like Rwanda, we use words like “genocide”, but when they happen here we use euphemistic words like “tragedy”.

I don’t know how to answer the questions that are coming across the ocean to me.  I don’t know how to explain to my Ugandan kids that racism is alive and shooting in the U.S.

I don’t know how to answer my kids, my sons, when they ask, “Mum, what are you going to do about it?”

That’s the one that sucks every last breath of air out of me, leaves me fallen and deflated.

What am I going to do about it?

This is when the not knowing hollows me out.

This weekend, in the middle of all this not knowing, I’ve been doing little things, tiny human things, like breathing in and out and praying.

I’ve talked about my prayer life before, how it’s not eloquent or remarkable in any sense. Years ago, I had a student who collected rocks.  She loved rocks and loved tumbling them in her rock tumbler.  Her family moved in the middle of the school year and on her last day of school, she brought her rock tumbler to show the class and for one long day, the clattering sound of her rock tumbler filled our classroom. At the end of the day as we said our final goodbye, she took a shiny, smooth, black rock out of her rock tumbler and placed it in my hand.  I still have that rock.

image courtesy of sodahead.com
image courtesy of sodahead.com

I thought of my rock tumbling girl this weekend, thought of that smooth rock when I prayed a prayer I’ve never prayed before; one lone word, clattering over and over again between my teeth.

Emmanuel.  Emmanuel. Emmanuel.

God is with us.  God is with us. God is with us.

I prayed it like a promise, prayed it because sometimes the name of God is the only word I can think of, both strong and gentle enough to collapse the darkness I feel in times like these.

On Friday morning with Emmanuel tumbling in my mouth, I headed out to the garage where two discarded pieces of furniture are in the process of being repurposed for my classroom. One is a tattered, brown microwave cart that’s now bright aqua and lime.  The other is an old school desk I also painted bright aqua.

A friend came over to teach me how to chalk paint and then how to buff a wax finish.  Her instructions to me were simple, “Just keep going.  You’ll know when to stop when it has a sheen to it and it’s smooth to the touch. You’ll feel the difference.” Refinishing old things and making them new again felt like another kind of prayer and I added her words to my mouth. “Just keep going. You’ll feel the difference.”

Her daughter, a student at my school, came over, too.  The little girl and I finished up a grant application for children who want to do good for their community. If we’re chosen we’ll use our grant to install a Little Free Library at our school.  The name the little girl has chosen for her little library makes me smile.  She wants to call it The Little Library That Could.  It’s the perfect name and I added the words, “I think I can, I think I can,” to the growing jumble in my mouth.

That same day, a glass repairman was scheduled to fix some cracking chips in my windshield.  When he arrived, I wanted to wag my finger and scold him for missing his “between 8 and 12” appointment. I was covered in sweat from praying and painting and buffing that old school desk.  He was sweaty, too, no doubt having had fixed several cracked and broken windshields already that morning. I kept my nagging finger to myself and instead offered him a glass of cold water.

Despite the praying and buffing and dreaming of little blue engines and books for children, I was still angry.  I wanted to be by myself stewing in my garage, mad at the world, chewing on stony prayers and rubbing that old desk until it felt different, until I felt different.

Instead, I was joined by the repairman and I listened as he talked about applying precise pounds of suction and pressure to the glass before applying the glue to heal the cracks. I listened when he told me about his daughter who is having surgery in a few days, about how he hopes this time, the surgery will work and her arm won’t be paralyzed anymore. I added his daughter’s name next to Emmanuel in my mouth.

I still haven’t finished buffing that old school desk yet.  I still feel angry about the killings in Charleston.  I still don’t know what to do, how to change the hearts of people set against their fellow man.

But there are things I do know.

I know there are fathers full of hope of restoration for their children.

I know there are people adept in repairing cracked, broken things.

I know there are book-loving children who want to share that love with other children.

I know there are friends who see beauty in old, discarded things, friends who say holy words like, “Just keep going.”

Above all, I know that when I can only do the tiniest of human things, when I can only utter jagged prayers, when genocide and darkness and hatred seem pervasive, there is still Emmanuel.

Love at the Door

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Alicia Writes, Teacher Tales, Unconventional Motherhood1 Comment

It was one of those days. The broken air conditioner had blown hot air at us all day. The stuffy classroom put all twenty-five first graders and me in a cranky mood.

Everybody was peeved.

Everybody was in everyone else’s space.

It felt like every syllable of every word was a tattle. “He looked at me funny.” “Her shoe is touching my space on the carpet.” “He’s breathing too loud.”

I wish I were making those up, but, fellow teachers, you know I’m not.

We made it through the day. By the skin of our sweaty teeth. But we made it.

After school an unexpected cart of new computers was delivered, a delightful surprise, except for the fact that the charging cart they’re required to be stored in is roughly the size of China. Since I was going to be out the following day, I knew I had to rearrange my room, lest the natural disaster called Leaving My Class With A Sub should strike and sweep the new computers up in its funnel.

So in the sweltering heat of my classroom, I lifted and grunted three dinosaur computers out of my room. The dust bunnies that had gathered behind the computers scampered away. I heaved the now empty table out and rolled the new computer cart into place, plugging it securely into the outlet, which is when the breaker box decided it, too, had simply had enough of this day. Every machine in my room went silent.

I stood in the silence and the heat, shaking my head. The clock was minutes away from 6pm. I was hot and tired and hungry. I wondered what else could go wrong.

You’d think I’d know by now not to ask that question.

After I’d located a custodian, who unlocked the breaker box and flicked the switch, I readied my room for the substitute. As I took a final look around my classroom, I heard what can only be described as a sizzling sound emanating from the outlet near the Books on CD station.

Sizzling sounds in the classroom are never, ever good.

The sizzling sound came from batteries recharging in the charger. I pulled the sizzling charger out of the outlet, threw the culprit batteries in the battery recycling container, and wiped away the battery acid magma that had oozed onto the table.

I slung my purse over my shoulder and glanced at the clock.  5:57pm.  I’d been at work 11 hours. Lunch felt like it was decades ago.

As I closed the door on the day, I had a fleeting wish that I was back in my Ugandan classroom. I had pangs of longing for the simplicity of teaching in an open air classroom under a thatch roof, where the only tools were a blackboard, me, and my students.

I stepped into the shared space outside of my classroom and nodded in solidarity at the handful of daycare kids who, like me, had been at school for 11 hours. Poor kids. Poor daycare teachers.

One little boy sat coloring at the round table just outside my door. I hadn’t seen him before.  I know I would’ve remembered him because his skin was the rich coffee bean color of my Ugandan sons. I paused to look at his picture.  His nametag sat like a tent on the table and the sight of his name stopped me in my tracks.

Amari.

His nametag read Amari.

Amari is the Lwo word for, “I love you.” It’s the phrase my Ugandan sons use when signing messages to me. It’s what we say to each other with our hearts in our throats when I leave Uganda and return home every summer.

i-love-you-Amari

At 5:58pm, here it was, waiting for me at my classroom door.

Amari.

Love.

I tend to forget the remarkable measures God takes to make me know that He sees me.  On days when I’m cooked and in the dark and hungry and any semblance of energy I once had has long ago left the building, He sees me.

I wish I were one of those people who picks up on God’s more subtle messages. I’m not. I probably never will be and that’s okay because the better news is that on days like that when I am, at best, a worn out thread of myself, God takes extraordinary measures to make sure I know that I’m loved.

Dear One, maybe you needed that gentle reminder today, too.  On days when it’s all you can to do to put one foot in front of the other to wade through the wreckage, God sees and loves you.

Amari indeed.

Chickens, Of Course

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Chicken Farm Project, Current Vigilante Kindness Projects, Unconventional Motherhood, Vigilante Kindness Stories, Who Are The Vigilantes?Leave a comment

My phone had been pinging all day long.  As I walked to my car that afternoon, I checked my messages and laughed at the group conversation my boys had been having while I was at work.  Normally I loathe group texts, group conversations and the straight EVIL that is the Reply All button.

But the conversation between my boys tickled me.  I struggled to translate their conversation from Acoli into English, but when I did, I saw that there were 28–yes, 28–messages about land prospects for the chicken farm, feed providers, which farmer they’ll buy the initial chicks from, etc.

There were also teasing barbs, typical brotherly ribbing.  Can I just tell you how much my heart loves the teasing they do?  My formerly orphaned boys tease each other like brothers do and it’s music to my ears.

I read along as their messages progressed into the evening in Uganda and when they settled down for the night and messaged a chorus of I love yous to each other, it was all I could do to scoop my puddled heart up off the floor.

Because of you, Vigilantes, my boys were starting to see that their Chicken Farm Project wasn’t just a dream.

Me?  I wish I had their faith.  I’d spent the previous night looking at the Chicken Farm Project donation thermometer, incredibly grateful for the $51 that had been donated, but also trying to come up with ways to make that thermometer fill up to the tippy top.

Fundraising Thermometer Widget ~ Fundraising Thermometer Graphic-2

Little did I know, on that very night, as I sat trying to think of ways to make this project happen, and the following morning as my boys chattered away about all things chicken, a Vigilante woman was praying about my boys and their future chicken farm.

This woman has asked to remain anonymous, so let me tell you just a little about her.  She’s a cancer survivor.  She volunteers at her local hospital.  She takes in foster kids.  She loves with her heart wide open.

After I finished translating the 28 messages from my boys, I received this message from this Vigilante woman.

After thinking and praying about this last night and today, I have decided to send you a check for $950 to fund the chicken project.  I’m impressed with the guys and their determination in coming up with an idea, a business plan, and a way to help others.”

Insert record scratch here.

Wait, what???

I read her message again.  She’d decided to fund the remainder of the ENTIRE CHICKEN FARM PROJECT.

I called her immediately and before the first ring, I was crying, snot dripping, mascara running, ugly crying.  I left her a blubbering voicemail and then called my mom, who cried right along with me.

I still laugh at the whole idea of this chicken farm.  Really, God?  You want me, the girl who is terrified of birds, to help my boys start a chicken farm in Uganda?  Chickens?  Really?  Of course. God’s sense of humor is obviously fully in tact.

God’s sense of compassion is also fully in tact.  I know this to be true because three formerly orphaned boys have not only taken up residence in my heart, but in your hearts, too.

My boys still struggle with the residual pain of being orphaned. Of being left by parents who died too young. Of being unloved. Of being treated like dogs. Of being children left to fend for themselves on the streets. Of being unclaimed.

I sit here fighting back tears again because you, sweet Vigilantes, whether you donated a single penny or a lot of pennies, have claimed me, claimed my boys, and claimed a whole lot of chickens, too.

Thank you.  Thank you so much.

Want to see something wonderful before you go?

Fundraising Thermometer Widget ~ Fundraising Thermometer Graphic

 

Dropping Rocks

On By Alicia McCauleyIn God & me2 Comments

Maybe it’s because it’s the start of a new year, but lately I’ve been thinking about new things.  Well,  actually I’ve been thinking about how God makes old, and sometimes wrecked things, into beautiful, new things.

Yesterday afternoon I was thinking in particular of the woman in John 8.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here’s the speed dating version.

One morning Jesus went to the temple.  Swarms of people followed Him because, you know, He’s the Son of God and they were smart enough to recognize that they should listen up.  (Hang on, I’m making a mental note to myself to be as smart as they were.) So Jesus sits down with the swarms and starts teaching them.

Then these religious scholars and Pharisees drag a woman into the temple.  They’d caught her in the middle of sleeping with someone who wasn’t her husband and by many accounts was in fact someone else’s husband.  So they stand her up in front of the crowd and tell Jesus that this woman should be stoned to death because she’d broken the law as given to Moses.

I love Jesus’ response.

He doesn’t say anything.

Not a peep to the religious scholars.

Not a word to the crowd of people.

Not a single syllable to the woman.

He bends down and with His finger starts writing in the dirt.  Who knows what.  Maybe He’s writing out their names and sins.  Maybe He’s writing out the names of the prostitutes the religious scholars had been visiting as of late. Maybe He’s writing out all the good things He sees in this woman.  There are lots of speculations, but nobody seems to know for sure what He scribbled in the dirt that day.

The Pharisees pester Jesus and He tells them, go ahead, whoever is sinless can pelt the woman with the first rock.

Then He goes back to writing in the dirt.

Now, you and I might believe different things and that’s fine with me, but one of the things I believe is that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all part of the same being.

That means the same God who made Eve, the same God who made the very first woman out of dust and bones way back in the beginning of it all, is the same God who was writing in the dirt on the day this other woman was dragged into the temple.

I wonder if while Jesus was writing in the dirt if He remembered that other time His hands were dirty.  I wonder if He reminisced about sculpting Eve’s heart and the mud under His fingernails as He crafted her shoulder blades and made tiny mud pie toes.

I don’t know if Jesus was thinking of Eve while He was writing in the temple dirt.  I like to think He might have been thinking of how when He created womankind in the form of Eve, He created her and she was flawless and new, bursting with possibility.

I think Jesus sees that Eve in all of us.  The Eve before the apple, the Eve whose first breath came straight from the mouth of God.

Even when we lie.  Or let bad words fly.  Or glut frosting out of the jar for breakfast.  Or cut each other to the quick.  I think God still sees brand spanking new, bursting with possibility Eve in us. Even when we’re standing naked in the temple, clothed only in the absolute worst version of ourselves.

Jesus sees something different, someone flawless and new, someone He made out of dust and bones.

After Jesus tells the scholars and Pharisees that the sinless person can pitch the first stone, the Pharisees and the religious scholars walk away.  I wonder if they had the rocks in their hands.

image courtesy of pastorblog
image courtesy of pastorblog

Imagine the thud, thud, thud of all those rocks dropping to the ground as they walked away.  It’s the sound of a second chance.

With all the Pharisees and religious scholars gone, this woman was left in the presence of Jesus.  And maybe the swarm of people He was teaching.  I’m not entirely clear on that.

So there she is with Jesus.  Can you even imagine being near Jesus when you were just ripped from bed with someone who is not your husband?  I don’t know about you, but I’d have been simultaneously sweating bullets, peeing my pants and crying, ugly crying.

But Jesus in all of His goodness and grace simply asks the woman if she sees anyone left accusing her.  She somehow summons her voice from the pit of her stomach and tells Jesus that there’s nobody left to accuse her.  And Jesus tells her He’s not accusing her either.  He tells her to go on her way and stop sinning.

Did she stop sinning?  Nobody knows.  If she’s anything like me, she probably tried her best and blew it a lot along the way.

Here’s where God’s grace leaves me undone.

Even when we are at our worst, God doesn’t want to point His finger at us, to poke His finger in all of our tender, shameful places.  He doesn’t want to stone us to death with our mistakes. He wants to sit down, get His hands dirty and stay there with us until there’s nobody left with rocks aimed for our heads.  Then he wants us to walk a new path, one bursting with possibility.

Sometimes I’m the woman in this story, but more often than not, I’m the one pointing my finger and picking up rocks, as if judging your flaws somehow lessen mine.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see people all fresh and new the way God perpetually does.  But this I know for sure, when I see someone wrecked and tangled in the sheets of sin, I’m going to do my best to be quiet, drop my rocks and wait it out in the dirt with them.

What a world it would be if we all just dropped our rocks.

Chickens: A New Year’s Resolution

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Unconventional Motherhood, Vigilante Kindness Stories2 Comments

It’s no secret that I hate birds.  I’m talking the fire of a thousand suns kind of hatred.  Just in case you’re thinking my bird loathing isn’t justified, let me send you on a little trip down memory lane to the day a wild turkey chased me to school.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

See?  I hate birds and they hate me. Fair is fair.

Last summer, with just a few days remaining in Uganda, my three boys set an official meeting with me.  They’d been having “brothers only, no mother” meetings without me for a few days, so when they set this meeting with me my interest was piqued, to say the least.

I’m new to this parenting thing and I was a little nervous.  They’re not biological brothers.  Being brothers is as unfamiliar to them as motherhood is to me.  We’re all still working out the kinks of our unlikely family.

Lanyero and Sons: Otim Geoffrey, Alicia, Oryem William and Opiyo Martin
Lanyero and Sons: Otim Geoffrey, Alicia, Oryem William and Opiyo Martin

The day came for our meeting and we sat outside at a table, drinking pineapple Merinda.  My boys began to speak.  They told me how grateful they are that Terry and I support their schooling and how grateful they are that we do so much for them.  They also told me how difficult it is for them to ask for our help, especially because they know we’re supporting all three of them.

I didn’t have much of a response except to say that I understand how difficult it is to ask for help.  Most days, I’d rather die than admit I need help.

I also told my boys that as their mom, part of my job is to say no when they ask me for things that aren’t in their best interests.  (Right moms?  That’s part of the job, right?  Oh, I’m so new to this.)

They continued, telling me that they’d developed a business plan so that they could begin to pay their own school fees and pay for other necessary items like books, food and clothing.

I took a deep breath.  Young boys with a business plan sounded like bad news to me.  I had “No” ready on my lips.

Then they pulled out photocopies of their business plan and I knew they were serious.  Typing up the plan on a computer and then making copies isn’t that easy when you don’t have access to things like a computer, a copier or regular electricity.

Martin, my middle kid who named me Lanyero, went over their plan in detail and I couldn’t help but giggle.

My boys had created a beautiful business plan to start a chicken farm.

A chicken farm, proof positive that God has a wicked sense of humor.

They even named it: Lanyero and Sons Broilers.

Lanyero means “joyful”.  The literal translation means “laughter”.  And, Lord have mercy, did I cackle at the thought of starting a chicken farm in Northern Uganda.

What brings me joy about their plan is that they want to tithe a portion of their chickens and eggs to local organizations that take care of people with disabilities, widows, and orphaned babies and children.

My formerly orphaned boys want to help care for orphans.

And just like that my heart melted.

So as people around me are making New Year’s resolutions to get healthy, get organized, get out of debt, I-the girl who is petrified of all things feathered-am making plans to get chickens.

Wanna help make the chicken farm come to fruition?  Here's your chance.