Lenten Project: Seventh Fearless Friday (Good Friday)

One thing that missionary kids excell at is in reveling in their natural habitat. From swings to elaborate treehouses from which to launch on zip lines, we certainly created plenty of opportunities for thrills. 

Even when my family was on deputation, raising monetary support to go to Grenada, we had a nice wooden swing in the backyard of our house in Sharon, PA. There were some nice playgrounds in that area, too, and I have vague but fond memories of playing when I was a little girl. 

But it wasn't till we got to Grenada that our outdoor habitats got more awesome. At one house, an old plantation manor house with two and a half acres of land filled with tropical fruit trees, Dad built us girls a double decker treehouse.

This is one of the breathtaking views we had from that house.

We also had a little platform over some roots that was our hammock space. When Dad was putting up an even longer rope swing, he asked for a volunteer to test it with him. My sister Lizzy stepped forward, unafraid that Dad's knot tying might not hold. Sure enough, the rest of us girls had our doubts vindicated! On the backswing, the rope broke, and Dad and Lizzy fell to the ground, landing on some big above-ground roots. Dad landed on Lizzy, and Mom was certain he'd killed her or broken bones or caused internal bleeding. At first, Lizzy assured everybody she was fine, but when Mom continued to fuss and Dad kept acting so contrite, she began to ham it up, whimpering and letting her arms hang limply while she got carried with great fanfare into the house. She got to spend the rest of the day on a pile of cushions, eating the entire sent-from-America Tootsie Roll stash. With rewards like that, the rest of us girls felt sorry we hadn't volunteered after all!

At the next house we lived at in Grenada, we took it to the next level and had a four  storey treehouse, complete with super long rope swing. 

Come to think of it, we Schaefer girls haven't had much luck with rope swings, because Mary was swinging on this one once and ended up flipping over the nearby retaining wall to land on her back on some coconuts. Dad was so scared she'd broken her back that he drove the little red car down the hill to get her and drive her back up to the house so she wouldn't walk. But Mary was too good and honest to let our parents feed her all the American candy when she wasn't really injured.

Aside from rope swings and hammocks, the favourite contraption at MKs' houses was the zip line. A couple of our friends had great tree lines in their yards that were perfect for their zip line setups. We'd spend hours taking turns hurling our bodies from tops of makeshift ladders (slats nailed into coconut trees) while hanging on tightly to small metal pipes suspended from the zip line. Only be careful you don't slam into the tree into the other end!!

One missionary family lived right on the edge of the rainforest, so we'd go exploring and hiking whenever we visited them. There was a small quicksand pool that Darrell always told us we'd get sucked down into our deaths if we even stepped a toe in. Scared me spitless everytime he ominously warned us. If it was really that dangerous, I wonder at our parents for letting us go play around it! More likely he was just being his annoying self and teasing me (probably made all the sweeter for him since I swallowed it every single time!).

I grew up climbing mango trees and spending all day up there, reading. If I got hungry, I could always reach out a hand and pick a snack!

Growing up so close to nature is something I really appreciate about my childhood. While it's a miracle none of us ever got seriously injured, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-five

We used to have lots of kids' clubs for spiritual instruction in Grenada.  Not only did our mom teach all the boys and girls, but we kids, especially me and my sister Mary, were teachers.  We'd walk through a village and invite all the kids we saw on the street playing cricket to come on out to our kids' club under the mango tree up the road every week. Dozens of kids would come regularly, and we eventually started having these in our church, or in the other IFB churches on the island.

We used Kings Kids curriculum in Grenada because it was cheaper than Awana, plus it was KJV-only (even though we weren't--yeah, I never quite understood it either).  We had flannel graph, of course, and lots of stories of missionaries or kids who almost died, but got miraculously saved at the last minute.

Because I had to be a teacher, I was supposed to always have all the spiritual answers. But I didn't.  I could lead the songs (Stop! And let me tell you... and My God is so Big and Who's the King of the Jungle?) with lots of enthusiasm. Tell the stories using all the voices so that the kids were hanging off the edges of their seats, anxious to hear what would happen next.  I could lead kids to the Lord using the Wordless Book faster than Dad could shimmy up a coconut tree.  But in my heart I had so many questions and doubts that I felt like nothing but a faker.

There was little room in our ministry for a daughter who wanted to ask tough questions or be free to reject what she didn't believe.  I knew better than to rock the boat too much, because when I did, the whole island erupted.  And my questions never did get answered. So I learned to just keep on teaching, keep on leading songs, keep on acting out missionary stories during storytelling, and turn off my brain.

In Singapore, I was a Sunday School teacher.  Just a teenager, teaching other kids.  Nowadays I get uncomfortable with the very idea of untrained Sunday School teachers, and I prefer that my kids' church class leaders all have background checks and lots of training.

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-four

I had a few pen pals when I was a kid.  Most of them were picked up while we were on our furloughs in 1994 and 1998, from churches and Sunday schools across the States.  I'm an oddball who keeps everything, and I still have a lot of those letters and cards I received. I'm no longer friends with anyone who wrote me, but I still remember the thrill of getting mail from my pen pals.

One girl in particular was a friend from a supporting church, and she was going to go to BJU the same year as I.  So we wrote and made big plans about how we'd be the best of friends and inseparable.  My dad, when we'd visited her church, had made a joke about she and I competing for the affections of the pastor's son who was also going to go to BJU with us that year.  We kept the joke alive and would banter about it in our letters sometimes. It was a humourous postscript in our correspondence.

When I showed up to the Bob Jones University campus in the fall of 2001, I was confident and sure of myself.  I knew I would not be starting off in the new place all alone--I had friends in the incoming freshman class!  I sought out my friend and was completely puzzled at her cold and standoffish behaviour.  The pastor's son, too, wasn't very welcoming, though he knew I'd only been in the States a short while.  There were a couple others from that church who snubbed me in the first few days before classes actually started, and I was totally confused and hurt.  I didn't know what was going on.

After days of this, one of the kids from that church found me in the campus bookstore and mentioned, almost under his breath like he was revealing a secret, that the whole group had been told about the joke of my dad's that had been made a running joke in our letters.  Only, they didn't think I'd been joking.  They thought I was serious.  So they were all avoiding me and didn't want to be around me at all.

I'm not sure what they thought would happen if we all were friends like I'd envisioned.  I was flabbergasted and shocked.  And really hurt.  A friend who I had been exchanging letters with for years believed the worst of me and hadn't even bothered to try to talk to me about it.  What's more, she'd told everyone else about her concerns and they'd all agreed to push me away.

I told the guy who'd enlightened me that I did not actually believe I would be competing for anyone's affections, that I knew my friend liked the pastor's son, and I'd been hoping they'd get together.  (They did eventually get married.) He shrugged and said that people believe what they wanna believe and it's hard changing their minds.

How I ended up with a picture of his family, I can't recall.
Maybe my friend sent it to me as part of the banter.

The pastor's son eventually tracked me down and apologised for the "misunderstanding," inviting me off campus to a barbecue with the kids from his church and their parents who had brought them to the start of the school year.  I declined.  I had no desire to be made a fool of.  I don't think we ever spoke to one another again.

It seems so petty now that I'm all grown up, but I so clearly remember the cutting blow of suddenly discovering that people I thought were my friends actually didn't even like me.  It made me question every other relationship and friendship I had, and I became a lot more tentative about making new friends.  If people say you'll be friends, they were probably lying--that's the lesson I took to heart and kept close during my years at college.

But another thing this episode revealed to me was that my world was a lot smaller than that of these American kids.  They had lots of friends--friends from school, friends from church, friends from their neighbourhoods--and had many different interactions with different people every day, while I might have had one or two a week, not counting my family.  So every letter I received was precious and a big deal.  When my pen pals wrote, "Friends forever," in their cards and letters, I thought they meant it.  The focal point of my days were narrowed down to those letters from the States or interactions with MKs.  So I elevated my pen pal acquaintances to idealised friendships, believing my pen pals were viewing me in the same way.  But they weren't.

Lenten Project: Sixth Fearless Friday

My sister Mary has always been my best friend out of everybody in the world, probably because she's the person who I've been closest to the longest (by virtue of the fact that we're only 15 months apart in age).  She's been my foil, my sidekick, my confidant, my confessor, and my challenger.

From the very beginning, Mary has made me a better person, a better sister.  Even though I'm the oldest, she was always the designated "girl in charge" when our parents went out and left us kids at home.  It's because she's the most responsible kid.  And she has the gift of peacemaking, which is a good for being in charge of the rest of us rabble-rousers.  She's taught me through example how to love my sisters and respect my parents, even when I don't agree with them.  She perfectly bridges the gap between being her own person and being loyal to others.

As kids, we shared a room (along with all the the other sisters, of course), and got along the best. I frequently fought with my other younger sisters, but Mare and I rarely squabbled.  Even though I was the bad kid and she the good kid, we evened each other out.  I've been daring and liked to push the limits with our parents, and she's been safe and liked to quietly conform.  We meet in the middle to compromise and it works really well in our sisterly partnership.

One time, though, we both agreed to be bad together, and it was glorious!  Here's the whole marvelous story, in her own words:

One night Hannah and I were aching for pickles. We were only allowed ½ a pickle on grilled-cheese-sandwich nights. We longed for more. After the house was quiet and we heard dad march up to his room, we sneaked down to the kitchen. Hannah was the first to take the glass pickle jar from its gleaming pedestal in the refrigerator door.

“Quick! You’re letting the light out!” I said.

She sat down on the floor with the jar between her feet and tried to turn the lid. It was too hard for her. I had always been known as the jar opener. Even Mom sometimes came to me for help with jars of jelly that were to tight for her. I was proud of my reputation. I took the jar from Hannah and tried to open it, but it still wouldn’t open. Finally I gave in to the old knife trick. Hannah handed me a butter-knife from the silverware drawer and I banged its butt against the lid. After two or three taps the lid gave and I pulled it off.

The next minute we were indulging in the wonders of pickled cucumbers. By the time we were satisfied, the jar was empty. Hannah said that no one would suspect us if we just put the jar back into the fridge leaving the pickle water in it. So that is what we did. And she was right. No one asked us if it was us . . . specifically. Dad did ask a few days later, “Okay! Who put the pickle jar back into the fridge EMPTY!?” He hates it when we do that.

When she joined me at Bob Jones University as a freshman in 2002, she became my roommate (along with two others in that tiny room).  We went to meals together, attended Artist Series programs together, reminded one another to brush our teeth and write to Mom.  Since, after Christmas break, classes often started on or around my birthday, she'd be the person who celebrated with me, who never forgot I was a older by another year.

She was a bridesmaid in my first wedding, and I've always been the tiniest bit offended that she didn't ask me to be in hers. I did have weird hair that year, though, so maybe that's why.  She's the only sister who RSVPed 'yes' to my sacramental marriage ceremony last year, the only sister who chose to come and celebrate my new marriage and new family.  Her van broke down on the way, but, dangit, she was actually trying hard to be there, and that counts so much in my eyes, since none of my other sisters even bothered to try (I don't count my youngest sister, who was there with my parents, because she's still a part of my parents' household, and when they changed their minds and decided to come to my wedding, she, by extension, was brought along).

Even though I'm the eldest Schaefer girl, she's the one we sisters all look to for leadership, the one who makes the wise decisions we can trust.  When Dad was busy and Mom was distracted by whichever new baby we had at the time, Mary stepped up and took the reins.  She's like a mini matriarch to us.  She's always been like that.  She's our mother hen.  Mother Mary.

Of course, now, she's all grown up, and she's a real mother.  Her husband and two sons are weeks away from flying away to Togo, West Africa, to minister on the mission field.  Second generation missionaries (both of them, since her husband, Andrew, is the son of missionaries, too), serving God and loving others.

Mary is the only sister who has intentionally set out to get to know my husband right from the start, to actively be a part of my life.  She's the one who has visited my family in DC, who has called, emailed, messaged, and texted when too long has passed between communication.  She's the only one out of my whole family who has met all my kids, who rejoices with me when new milestones are achieved, who drives for hours to come to birthday parties, who listens without judging when I whine about the tough parts of parenting.  She's the one who is willing to discuss theology with me, even though we don't agree on everything anymore.  

Mary is an encourager, a vibrant model of Christ.  She is compassion personified, a reconciler.  I'm going to miss her when she's gone, far away to Togo.  But I'm confident that doesn't mean she'll be out of my life, because she's the kind of friend who will never forsake, never abandon.  Mary is the one I want to be like when I grow up.

Join the conversation

Yesterday was National Siblings Day.  (I found that out after this post was planned, coincidentally.)  Tell me about your favourite sibling and why you look up to him or her.
If you're an only child, is there any one in your life who you wish was your sibling?

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-one

Confession time: when I was 15, I had this amazing mix tape with country music on it.  I thought it was heavy metal because I'd been taught all music with a beat was "rock," and therefore evil, and the designation, "heavy metal" just meant really, really bad.  I'd never listened to any real heavy metal, so I honestly had no idea that calling country music (Shania Twain!) that was ludicrous.

I got this bad music mix tape from my best friend, who, when I begged him to make me a copy of his Lion King soundtrack (also banned in my house, due to the wicked African beat), went a step farther and mixed me a tape full of jamming tunes, the better to corrupt me. He also taught me how to lie with a straight face when my parents suspiciously asked what I was listening to on my walkman.  ("Patch the Pirate, of course!"  Only, you don't say, "of course," because then it's obvious you're lying.  Just look distracted, make brief but not sustained eye contact, and try not to appear guilty.)

Ahh, Michael taught me many things, but how to say I'm listening to Patch
when I'm really listening to Shania is probably my favourite.

One time, I was home alone with my youngest sister while everyone else went on the grocery shopping trip.  I'd gotten to stay home and take care of the baby, and I knew I had at least an hour and a half before they all got back.  So I started recording a duplicate of my precious bad music tape.  I'd already been caught with it more than once, and had managed to save it from destruction, but I knew next time I'd better have a backup copy so my life wouldn't be over if it got ritualistically unwound and burned before my eyes.

That's my walkman, but it really IS playing Patch the Pirate here.

I was playing the tape while it copied on the stereo, enjoying being able to listen to it through regular speakers out loud in the sunshine instead of through my crappy earphones in the middle of the night.  The sliding glass door was open, but the gate in front of it was closed and locked.  The front door was also locked.

I kept going outside to check the driveway and squint over the hill to see if the van was coming home, so I could rush back inside to turn off the music and hide my tapes.  I held the door open each time, since it could swing closed and automatically lock, but on the last time, it slipped out of my fingers and slammed shut.  I was locked outside!  The baby was trapped inside, alone, the evil rock music was blaring, and any moment my family would come home and I'd be so much in trouble!

I slid to the ground in front of the door, crying and begging God to help me.  I ran around the house, trying to figure out another way in.  There was none.  All the windows had bars on them, which even I, skinny as I was, could not squeeze through.  I swore to God that if He saved me, I'd give up my evil rock music lovin' ways.  Finally, on the porch, I stopped and peered in at the baby, happily gurgling at me.  She couldn't open the door, or even give me the keys.

The keys!  I remembered that we'd kept spare keys hanging on the end of the curtain rod over the sliding glass door.  If I could pull the curtains down, the rod would fall, and I could pull the keys out and let myself back in!

It worked.  I was saved, and just in time, too.  Shortly after I got up from kissing the baby, kissing the ground, kissing the keys, kissing the stop button on the stereo, and kissing the bad music tapes, the family van roared up the hill and into the driveway.  The Fam spilled out and conscripted me to help put groceries away, never suspecting my bad music tapes were safely tucked away in my hiding place.

This is the gate and the curtains that saved me,
and this is my bad music lovin' self.

I didn't make good on my vow to God until I'd listened to my tapes a few times more.  Then I put them in the burn bin out back.  I even ripped out their guts and tied knots in the tape so I wouldn't change my mind and go dig them back out again later.  I wish I'd kept them.

Do you have anything in you got rid of in your past, but wish you'd kept?

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-nine

In the hot winter of 1999, I went with a church group to Youth Camp.  It wasn't really camping, and the people who went weren't really youth.  What's more, my family didn't even attend that church.  But my parents said this would be a great way to meet people closer to my age (we didn't have any youth in our church at the time), and this could be exactly what I needed to cure my loneliness.

The "camp" was held in a resort hotel across the water in Batam, Indonesia, though the church group was from Singapore.  We took the ferry over, and that was really fun.  Most of the "youth" were college students, but two or three were still secondary students like me.  They seemed really young, so I mostly spent time with the college-aged campers. Mentally, or socially anyway, I was younger than the youngest kid there (13? 14?), but I admired the college kids and wanted to be like them, so I was thrilled when they seemed to include me in their group.

The daily preaching sessions weren't spectacular, but in between those were enjoyable events like billiards, swimming, visits to the local markets, eating out, and hanging around and chatting.  During one of these hang out times, I, still very new to Singapore, and trying hard to make friends, opened up and started talking in depth about some of my struggles with a handful of other campers.  One guy in particular nodded and smiled as I talked, making me feel like I'd possibly found a person who was interested in my life, interested in my struggles, would admire me and want to be my friend.  Every time he smiled like that, seeming to be understanding and encouraging me to speak, I opened up a bit more and kept sharing.

I told him how I struggled with my parents.  How I didn't understand a lot of Fundy rules. How hard it was to leave Grenada.  How my mind seemed to live wired all the time, and I was always thinking of five things at once.  What I liked to read.  How nervous I was about going away to college the next year.

After about 45 minutes of talking, he interrupted me and said, "Can I tell you something?"

I thought he was going to speak a word of encouragement, or make a comment on how things would get better and, yeah, being a teenager was really tough, but I had good things to look forward to.  Or something like that.

What he actually said destroyed me.  He said, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, "Your problem is that you are egotistical.  You think everything is about you, and you're really nothing."  He quoted some Scripture about making ourselves less to that Christ could be magnified, and then looked at me expectantly.

I was flabbergasted.  I'd been sharing some of my most personal struggles and he dismissed me as being egotistical.  I knew, in that moment, that I'd never be close friends with anyone from that church.  I felt shamed, humiliated, worthless.

I stammered something and left, ran to my room, and sobbed for the next couple hours. The two girls who were my roommates wanted to know what was wrong, but I couldn't get a word out, and didn't want to tell them anything for fear they'd have the same estimation of me.

When it came time for the evening preaching, I cleaned up my face as best I could, but I imagined it was obvious I'd been bawling like a baby.  The guy I'd been talking to came over to me and was acting like everything was normal, as though he hadn't crushed me with his words a few hours previous.

I couldn't understand why he was even talking to me at all.  Why in the world was he asking me my opinion on the preaching sessions so far?  He'd said my opinions were self-centered!  He thought I was a disgusting, egotistical jerk!  So why did he act like my words mattered now, when they'd been worthless earlier?

I tried my best to avoid ever visiting that church again, though my dad worked closely with their American (BJU grad) pastor, and even served as an interim when that pastor went on furlough at one point.  I closed up and kept to myself, smiling on the outside, but counting down the days till I would leave for the States, for BJU. I made certain not to bare myself to any Singaporeans again.  From then on, I only pursued close friendships with other MKs, even though my mom said they were really bad influences and limited my time with them.

The look on Joanna's face is what is hidden behind my smile.

A couple months after camp, I discovered that this guy later asked my parents if I'd always been this way, so disrespectful of my parents.  I suppose one of the reasons why he was so cruel was because Asian culture elevates respect for and honour of parents, and there I was, not doing it, so he couldn't have respect for me.  But it still hurts, even today.  While I may understand in my head why it happened, in my heart, it still stings that I was so dismissed and misjudged. I have never brought up the incident with the person who hurt me, though I see him interact with my parents through Facebook occasionally. I wonder if he even remembers or if, for him, it was not something even worth remembering. I wish I could forget!  But because it was my first meaningful conversation with what I'd imagined would be my first Singaporean friend, I find I can't erase it from my memory.

Join the conversation

• Have you ever felt misunderstood in such a way that you withdrew or it affected you in a significant way?
• Have you ever experienced a significant culture difference in your conversations and relationships?
• How did you navigate repairing those misunderstandings/hurt feelings when pursuing reconciliation?

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-eight

I've mentioned that Fundamentalists have some strange views on music.  Reading through my diaries a few days ago reminded me of an incident at Bob Jones University my sophomore year.  I'd brought with me some music recorded and produced by Pensacola Christian College, in addition to a lovely recording of a Bible Conference at a Fundy church in Singapore (pastored by a BJU grad, it received many visits from the Joneses).

Well, one day, I was playing these CDs in my dorm room, when my room's spiritual leader turned to me suddenly and accused me of failing to get them checked.  I told her I'd gotten them checked the year before, and they'd been approved.  Not good enough, she said.  I needed to get them rechecked each semester, according to what the dorm sup had recently told her.  (I did find out later that she and my dorm sup this particular semester were actively seeking ways to reprimand me--I got that straight from from the dorm sup herself at the end of the year when she advised me that I'd have to be under spiritual counseling the next year.  She said they were trying to remove my stubborn will and "break my spirit" of pride.)

Since the deadline for getting music checked had passed, I was in trouble for "failing to follow instructions."  My perfectly acceptable CDs were confiscated and I was slapped with a penalty of 20 demerits.  The dorm sup said she was being merciful by not giving me 50.  I wished she'd stuff it with the mercifulness.  I never did get those CDs back.

My parents' rules about music were very similar (though they'd allowed the PCC music without question).  While home on a visit after I was married, my mom caught me listening to Phillips, Craig, and Dean worship music.  It's CCM, and she gave back my earbuds with a look of disgust on her face.  "How could that possibly glorify the Lord, Hannah?"  I'm still surprised she didn't fuss over me letting my youngest sister have a listen, and that shock is probably why I remember the incident so vividly.

To a person who has been weaned on Patch the Pirate and classical music, anything "other" is not only different, but evil.  Majesty Music, the production arm of Patch the Pirate's musical ministry, actually teaches that music has morals, and any music not in keeping with their standards is wicked and from satan.

For me, as a missionary kid, receiving that message was confusing up against my experiences.  In Grenada, we'd clap along to hymns, sometimes even getting really into it and keeping rhythm, which is bad, according to Frank Garlock of Majesty Music. In his view, that sort of thing is the reason for the high divorce rate among Christians, among other evils.  In Singapore, the music could be ethnic and beautiful, but we saw it as strange and odd and only allowed hymns accompanied by piano in our church.  Those churches that went wild with drums, Asian instruments, and songs in other languages--not in hymn format--were worldly. I don't think I would have survived India, with its gorgeous music--I'd have been too busy judging everything as sin, based on the principles I'd been taught.

It's a sad way to view the world, let me tell you.  The disdain and disgust at beauty isn't very Christian, I've come to realise, and I still struggle to be more accepting and appreciative of the things I never knew growing up.  Ironically, I don't much care for CCM anymore, preferring old hymns in my church worship and liturgy.  But that doesn't mean I think churches who use modern Christian music are damned by God just for worshiping with that style of music. Letting go of such tight control of "what is pleasing to The Lord" lets me appreciate and even admire a lot of beautiful music I used to think was satanic. And guess what? A lot of it IS glorifying to God, after all! Even Nirvana, in a strange way. It's true.

Lenten Project: Fifth Fearless Friday

The Schaefer family likes to travel and hike.  That's what we've done for years, together as a family, enjoying time together outdoors.

From the very beginning, in Grenada, we often went hiking together.  Grenada has some amazing mountains and trails, and even a few forts leftover from the colonial period.  We'd drive up to the old volcano-turned-crater-lake, Grand Etang, which the locals claimed was bottomless (it's only 20 feet deep).  If we were lucky, we'd see the remains of an animal sacrifice made by the Spiritual Baptists.  Some of our friends liked to tease us that a sea monster dwelled in the bottomless depths, but I never saw anything but fish, which we liked to catch in little nets we made.

Sometimes, Dad would organize country-wide church events, where all the other IFB churchgoers would be invited to go adventuring with us.  We went hiking up Mount Qua Qua and visited the Seven Sisters waterfalls, went mossy rock-hopping across rivers and streams (Mom always fell in), swung on the rope swing into the waterfall pools, ate off banana leaves, waved our arms to keep the monkeys from pulling our hair, and admired the beautiful, brightly coloured birds and flowers.

It was always so cold up the mountains--at least 70 degrees!
So we'd bundle up in sweatshirts every time.

Our love of hiking didn't end when we left the West Indies.  While on furlough in '98, we hiked all over the States' East coast, enjoying the Appalachians and Smokies.  We'd goof off and have fun together.  My sister Elizabeth liked to do "tour guide" voices and make things up as we trekked along, and she always had us in stitches, laughing as we hiked.

Hannah and Mary attempt to murder the tour guide

Singapore has a hill in the middle of it.  I say hill because, after Grenada's volcanic mountains, Singapore's little Bukit Timah is like a backyard stroll.  We still had fun hiking it, though.  We laughed at all the rules and restrictions--that's Singapore for you!

And even more recently, with so many of us girls grown and married, my parents would come back to the States every year and occasionally rent a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina or Georgia.  We'd go hiking in the Appalachians.  

Dad's antics have only gotten crazier over the years, and they've rubbed off on the rest of us. One time, in Grenada, Dad grabbed a snake from the bushes along the trail, and instead of slithering away in fright, like usual, the snake wrapped around his arm and wouldn't let go.  One of the church girls had to pry it off of his arm where it was constricting him.  That incident hasn't stopped him from snatching at snakes and critters on the trail, though.  He still does it!

Like that time he wore a dry cleaners bag as a poncho

Dad likes to be as embarrassing as possible when we pass other hikers on the trail, and it used to make us girls want to dive off a cliff.  Now we all join in and try to embarrass our spouses, or better yet, Mom.  Lizzy is still the master at "tour guide voice," though, and her husband is the perfect foil.  Since we grew up in Grenada before it was as heavily tourist-ised like it is now, we're used to trails with no signs and no rules.  Our only guidelines were: make it up as you go along, bring a compass so you don't get lost, and always respect the map reader in the group.  Also, stick close to the designated snack-carrier.

  

These more recent family get togethers provided time for catching up, family pictures, and relaxing.  We haven't been all together since a year or two before my divorce, though. Most of my family hasn't even met my husband, much less my stepson and new daughter. And now that my beloved sister Mary is moving to Togo with her family to serve on the mission field, a complete Schaefer family gathering will probably be put off till many years in the future.  Hopefully the next time we're all together won't be a funeral or something, but that's the reality we face, since our family is now scattered all over the world. Missionary problems!

   

 

My fanciful dream is that we can all forgive one another and leave behind past hurts in order to forge a new future of unconditional love and acceptance for those in our family, setting aside personal interpretations of the Bible and theological beliefs to really live out the Gospel to one another.  It would take a lot of humility, which is not a staple in Fundamentalism.  But someday, someday not too far away, I hope we can all go hiking together again, joking with one another again, listening to Lizzy's "tour guide voice" again. There is a whole generation of grandkids who haven't yet been embarrassed by their grandad on the trail, or heard their grandma freak out that they'd die if they climb that tall tree/eat that fruit/jump over that stream/touch that unidentified animal.  And before the chance is gone, I'd like my kids to experience that, along with their cousins they've never met.

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-four

I was eight before it dawned on me that my skin was not going to turn black if I just stayed out in the sun more.  It was a pretty devastating realisation, since I'd been looking forward to the day when I'd look just like everybody else, and especially for my hair to look good in cornrows like my friends.  I'd imagined that I only needed a few more hours of sunlight baking time to get my skin to darken to a lovely mahogany, my hair to kink up into perfect puffiness, my eyes magically change to cocoa brown.

When it didn't happen, I was disappointed, to say the least.  I resigned myself to being white, but that didn't mean I really liked it.  We kids used to mock the American tourists who showed up on the cruise ships every week, laughing at their clothes, their mannerisms, and, yes, their skin colour.  It was just such an odd sight to us.  I really thought I was Grenadian, and people from my own country were "other" and alien to me. Visiting the States, which was very rare, was always a massive culture shock, partly because of all the white people.  It was strange for us to see more than two or three whites at a time.

We were American kids, yet not, because the culture we lived in and loved was Grenadian (and later Singaporean, and then Indian for my sisters).  But we weren't Grenadian either. We were Third Culture Kids.

I became more aware of the differences between me and my friends after that realisation. Despite being racist against white people, I also started to develop a prejudice against Islanders.  My parents never explicitly told us were were better than the people they were ministering to, but there was still this atmosphere of superiority, an air of, "we're better than you," that infected me.  I think it was because many Grenadians didn't have solid educations, and those that did weren't very respected by my parents.

I found a pamphlet of my dad's that he'd gotten while he was in seminary at Bob Jones University. It talked about the necessity of keeping the races separate in order to forestall the coming one world government, which would herald the End Times.  During this time period (the 90's), BJU was still staunchly against the races mingling, strictly enforcing their interracial dating ban.  The school's founder had preached vehemently against desegregation in the South, and that just spilled over into a lot of very evil teachings that the school and its constituents (like my parents) didn't give up till as late as 2001.

I didn't understand why, if black people were good enough to save (through witnessing and open air crusades), they weren't good enough to marry.  But, even though I didn't understand it, I didn't question it.  My superiority to my friends was an attitude I picked up from my parents, and they were right about everything in my eyes (till they weren't).  We were there to save those people, but they'd never be our equals.  My mom, the largest role model I had, didn't have any Grenadian women as close friends or confidants, so I should keep Grenadian girls at arm's length, too, and focus on deepening my friendships with other (white) missionary kids.

Other missionary kids fell in and out of puppy love with native friends, but I never did. There were a couple boys that developed crushes on me and would call me, though.  I remember one, Che was his name, I met at a King's Kids Club we held in a village.  He'd call and promise that if I married him, he'd be the one to get a job and I'd be the one to stay home to watch tv and have babies. I just laughed at him because I didn't know what to say.

I knew, though, that I wouldn't be marrying any Grenadian boys.  I was destined to go to Bob Jones University and meet the man God intended for me, get married right after graduation, and we'd serve God together, maybe even as missionaries.  Because that's what my parents planned and prayed for me.

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-three

In the summer of 1994, I was 11 years old and traveling all over the States with my family on a short furlough. We lived in a trailer which we pulled around with a borrowed truck.  At one point, I was riding alone in the truck with Dad.  I don't remember where the other kids were--maybe riding in another vehicle with Mom.  At any rate, it was just and my daddy, and I was thrilled to get some alone time with him, since usually we all had to share him.  (Large family problems, y'know.)

The inside of the small trailer. The youngest child got her own bed...in the bathtub. So lucky!

I remember watching the white lines on the highway disappear under us, and vividly recall gazing at the glove compartment, absentmindedly staring at the plastic latch button. Nothing much was going through my mind, other than a stray thought that I wished I could think of something witty to say to impress my dad.

Hannah, 11, with two of her sisters

Then, out of the blue, he said, "Tell me your spiritual experiences, Hannah."

And I had no idea what he meant.  I asked him.  He just repeated what he'd said.  "Share with me your spiritual experiences with our Lord."

I got scared, because I didn't have any. And I didn't know what he wanted me to say.

Now, in the Fundamentalist world, the hatred for charismatics is strong.  The only context I had for "spiritual experience" was from sermons raging about those mushy minded Bible twisters and stiff-necked heretics called charismatics.  I didn't have any of those experiences, and if I did, I wouldn't be a true Christian.

So I thought it was a test.  Was my dad was trying to trap me into admitting that I was a heretic, or an unbeliever?  My mind scrambled with something convincing to say, and I may have babbled something mostly unintelligible, but it of course didn't pass inspection.

He repeated himself several times while I dissolved into a sobbing mess, my lack of "spiritual experiences" to share making me believe I was unsaved and on my way to hell.  I could imagine the heat of the flames, ready to swallow me up for not being a true believer. Maybe I failed the test by crying for ten miles.  But if I had had any spiritual experiences to share, it would have proven I was a heretic.  So it was a lose/lose, and I was the biggest loser of them all, having fallen from God's Grace.

Two of these girls don't belong. One isn't even a Schaefer girl (and none of us remember
who she was), and the other (Hannah, second from the left) was a doubter of her salvation.

This encounter formed a foundation to my childhood suspicion that I was not very tightly held in God's hand, that not only were my parents ashamed of me, but God also wouldn't mind if I didn't turn out to be one of the Elect after all. Sure, the Fundamentalist teaching is "once saved, always saved," but there are plenty of things a person can do to prove that he or she was never actually saved in the first place, like coming out as gay, getting divorced, or becoming a charismatic.

Apparently, there was some sort of "spiritual experience" that was acceptable for a Fundamentalist, and necessary for proving one's status as a believer.  But, at eleven years old, I couldn't figure out what it was.  Later on, in college, I'd be asked something similar: "How do you know for certain that if you die tonight, you'll go to heaven, Hannah?"  And my answers then would still not be satisfactory ("Because I asked Jesus into my heart when I was three.").  It wasn't until I discovered Sacramental theology that I realised my assurance in salvation comes from nothing I can or have done.  It all rests squarely on Christ, and His work in me through the waters of Baptism.

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-two

"When I grow up, I want to be a marine mammal biologist!"

I said this many times as a kid and teenager, because I had my heart set on it.  I don't know where this desire originated--maybe one of our family trips to Sea World--but I latched on to the idea that I could be someone who studied and discovered more about God's creatures.  And I was consistent in it, never changing my mind or seriously considering other possibilities.

I adored the World Wildlife Fund, even though my parents told me it was worldly (those tree-huggers didn't understand that the world would end in fire, so their conservation efforts were futile and misdirected, amen?). I got books about marine mammals and created quizzes to test my knowledge.  I collected anything I could get that had a dolphin or whale on it.  I used old calendars as posters on my bedroom walls.

But my family, with my parents as the ringleaders, and my younger sisters following their example, mocked me.

"Why do you want to be a marine mammal biologist, Hannah?!  How does that serve the Lord?"

For a Fundamentalist female, there are few choices in what kind of life a girl can have, or even desire.  For a missionary kid or pastor's kid, the options are even more limited, because the belief that "people are dying and going to hell today," was kept ever forefront in our minds by our family's vocation.  How could we choose anything other than a life of service to save the world?  And by world, I mean people, because animals are just creatures, far below humanity in God's esteem.

The choices I felt I had, when I was privately honest with myself about the futility of pursing anything to do with environmentalism, or conservationism, or even just plain old science, were to be a nurse, a school teacher, pastor's wife, missionary, and, of course, the highest calling for a girl: a wife and mother.

I had no role models besides other missionary women.  My own mother had an unaccredited degree in elementary education from a Fundamentalist college, and now she was a wife, mother, missionary, and church piano player.  So this notion of mine that I could do something different with my life puzzled my parents, I'm sure.

And they did all they could to discourage it.  "You can't glorify God if you're pursuing your own interests....Sometimes God asks that we sacrifice our lives to his service....Don't you want to serve God, Hannah?...You'll never be a marine mammal biologist, so just give up that crazy idea now....If you pursue this, you'll only ever end up a traffic director in the parking lot at Sea World."

Not pictured: the parking lot is bigger than the park!

Yes, more than once I was told to just give up.  I remember the pain and anger I felt at being told that what I loved and desired was worthless, that my dream wasn't good enough to please God. And I honestly couldn't understand why studying a part of God's creation was so bad, anyway.  I could see that saving souls and saving dolphins weren't exactly the same in value, but why did that mean I couldn't still choose to do the latter and remain pleasing in God's sight?

This is me, petting a dolphin.  I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

I went to college in 2001 and majored in biology.  When I registered and declared my major, I did so with a bit of obstinate glee: "I'll show you all!"  My whole family openly took bets about how many weeks it would take for me to quit and change my major to a more "respectable" vocation.  I enjoyed my classes, though, and stuck with it. I even took zoology my second semester, way before I should have, since it was an advanced class and I wasn't prepared for real science that wasn't just out of a textbook (which is all I'd had, being homeschooled). I loved it.

My family still mocked, saying, "When are you going to change your major, Hannah?  Just admit it already! Be a teacher; you'd be good at that."

Between my freshman and sophomore years, the years of pressure and mocking from my family combined with the similar cultural expectations of women at BJU to finally bring me to the breaking point.  And I quietly, shamefully changed my major to English.  Not English Education, because I didn't want to teach.  No, just English.  Because I liked to read.  A lot. I figured, if I couldn't have one thing I loved, I'd go for another thing I loved, and maybe they'd stop making fun of me.  Sure enough, the sarcastic comments stopped once I was in an acceptable degree program.

Looking back, I know I probably never would have worked directly with marine mammals. For one thing, I'm scared of deep water (too many Jaws marathons late at night will do that).  I have an irrational fear of putting my face underwater, too, probably developed when I nearly drowned in the rough Atlantic during a beach trip on the seaward side of Grenada in the mid-90s.  I'll never forget the overwhelming helplessness when I felt the pressure of the deep water on my body, realised I had no more air in my lungs, and couldn't figure out in which direction was the surface.  I now associate the feeling of being underwater with a resignation that death is imminent.

I'll keep my feet firmly planted on dry ground, thankyouverymuch. Let the fishies come to me.

Yet, I can't help but wonder if there really is no way to honour God in a vocation like that. Could I not have ended up as some sort of researcher?  A scientist seeking to promote the care of God's creation?  Why is that so disreputable and shameful?  And even if I'd ended up working at Sea World the rest of my life, why would that have made me a failure in my family's eyes?  Can't a Christian serve God anywhere, even in the Sea World parking lot?  More questions that Fundamentalism can't satisfactorily answer.

My youngest sister is about to go away to BJU, and she wants to be an archaeologist.  Yet no one in the family makes fun of her, even though her dream is way more unreachable than mine ever was.  Not only is it a vocation not on the list of acceptable ones for Fundamentalist women, but it's a career that is almost impossible to achieve without a handful of terminal degrees (from reputable, accredited colleges, which BJU is not).  My jealous little heart beats violently with indignation that she gets a "free pass" to pursue the improbable, with full encouragement from everyone in our family, while I was mocked and shot down till I caved and gave up.  I'm trying to be happy for her and encouraging, but it's difficult to forget the past, especially when every girl (but one, the lucky dog!) in my family has followed the same path to BJU, and ended up married to a Fundamentalist within a week of graduation.  Our journeys into BJU all look the same, except I was the only one mocked and belittled for my choice of major.

Join the conversation

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Did you family approve, or steer you in another direction?
Do you think certain vocations are more pleasing to God than others?

Lenten Project: Day Eighteen

We're halfway through Lent.  Far from running out of stories to tell and things to post on this blog, I keep uncovering more, remembering more. I'm facing myself in the mirror and coming to terms with a lifetime of abuse, and it has not been as easy as I imagined.

Today I dug out all my diaries and journals, from 1998 to 2003.  They're horrifying.  Not just my recounting what happened each day (usually not positive things), but also myself, who I was.  I was not an admirable person.  True, I was a product of my upbringing, but I was also a jerk.  A selfish creature with an ego the size of an airplane.

My husband likes to look at my old pictures and say he would have liked me and had the biggest crush on me if we'd known each other in my childhood.  But I was not lovely.  I was not nice.

In spite of my enormous character flaws, a few of which I've outgrown by virtue of the simple fact that I've grown up, and a few others which have been shed since I left Fundamentalism and then Evangelicalism, the truth remains that what was done to me was not merited at all.  It was not right, it was not good, it was not of Christ.

Two months after my 18th birthday, I wrote in my diary that all I wanted was to explore this faith of my parents, to be able to express doubts without fear of punishment.  I admitted I didn't believe God existed.  I confessed it, with much shame, in a prayer I wrote in my journal. (My father, in a strange attempt to save me from my rebellion, required me to write a prayer of at least 100 words each day. He also required me to correspond with him through another journal.  I still, to this day, don't know why he didn't just talk to me face to face.  We lived in the same house, after all.)  After trying and proving some of the teachings of Fundamentalism to be false, I jumped to the conclusion that all of Fundamentalism must be false, and that God was nothing, not true, not real. (Because I was taught that Christianity is Fundamentalism, and Fundamentalism is Christianity.  Everything else was pagan.  So to reject Fundamentalism was to reject God.)

Then, a few days later, I fearfully backtracked and apologised to God.  Later I wrote that I had to conform so I could survive.  And that's really sad.  I was never encouraged to believe because God is true and real and good.  I was compelled to pretend to believe "for the sake of the ministry," and because that's what was expected of me.  Doubts were not allowed. Exploring life, trying new things, deciding for myself were not allowed.  Challenging the teachings of Fundamentalism, examining our rules and practices, and trying to understand why, were all strongly discouraged.

Since I had to do all of those in secret, my attitude was nasty.  I didn't like hiding who I was or what I was discovering.

When I read my diaries, I agree with what my sweet mother-in-law said again this weekend: That is not true Christianity.

Lenten Project: Day Seventeen

Bob Jones University violates federal law by interfering and tampering with students' mail coming through the US Postal System. It happened to my mail in the spring of 2003.

I'd subscribed to TIME magazine at the beginning of the calendar year, and several had been delivered with no problems. Then one day in February I received a call slip in my post office box. It said to see my dorm supervisor within 24 hours of the slip being put in my mailbox. (Funny how students could easily get in trouble for not responding to a call slip, even if the student didn't know about said slip if he or she had failed to check the mail that day--a demerit accruing offense.)

When I went to see her that evening after dinner, she held up the latest copy of my TIME magazine and informed me that it needed to be edited. She handed me a pair of scissors and watched while I cut out the pages she indicated. An ad for cigarettes on the back cover, another similar ad inside, an artistic rendition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the cover art all were snipped out, crumpled into little balls, and tossed into the wastebin at her feet.

Maybe she really didn't approve of this interracial couple singlehandedly
bringing about a one-world government and the subsequent Apocalypse?

Notice she didn't cut the pictures out herself, but forced me to mutilate my own mail (refusing would have resulted in a punishment of 50 demerits for "failure to follow instructions").  It was humiliating and frustrating, especially since there was nothing inherently wrong with the pictures she made me destroy.

Taking my mail and holding it hostage till I censored it for her is something I have a hard time forgetting.  But this particular woman was always on a massive power trip, and I frequently ended up in her crosshairs.

This dorm supervisor (a single woman who was a recent graduate of BJU) displayed her love of power over me again when I was invited to a BJU staff family's home along with a few Bob Jones Academy students who I had befriended over the summer in our mutual workplace, the BJU Dining Common. This staff couple, parents of an Academy student and two in the elementary school, had us over for pizza and a movie.  Before extending the invitation to me, a University student (I was only a year or two older than the rest of the young people there, though socially much younger), the host checked to be sure showing the Lord of the Rings (NOT rated G) would be okay.  She received special permission, and told me I could also wear jeans, since she had some yard work she had in mind for us to do for her while there.

Well, I went and had a lovely time.  I was back on campus and checked in by 10:25pm, as per the regulations.  When I walked into my room, one of my roommates, our room's University-designated "Assistant Prayer Captain," said in horror, "You didn't wear that, did you?!"

Turns out, that semester the rules had changed.  It was no longer appropriate nor permissible for female students to wear jeans on or off campus, for any activity.  This belied the handbook, which stated jeans, which had been checked by the dorm staff, could be worn to specific off-campus event, such as horseback riding and outdoors/hard labour activities (like yard work).  The rule change was announced during a 10:30pm hall meeting a month or two prior to this.

During hall meetings, all the girls in the dorm sat in the hallways and listened to
announcements and rants from the dorm supervisor over the speaker system.

Well, I hadn't remembered the rule change, because I didn't memorise what was said at every hall meeting.  We weren't given extra pages of the new rules to glue into our already-huge rulebooks, so how was anybody supposed to keep track of that sort of thing?  I'd followed directions by wearing jeans, as I'd been told, and hadn't questioned the staff member's instructions.  I suppose I was too trusting.

My roommate turned me in, that is, ratted me out to the authorities.  (Turning people in is very much encouraged at BJU--if you don't, you are an accessory to whatever broken rule you witness, and may receive the same punishment as the offender.)  I got called in to the dorm sup's office again.  She asked me what I did while wearing the offending garment.

"I watched a movie and ate pizza in a mixed-gender party off campus.  Yes, I had a Dean of Women-approved pass.  No, I didn't think to double-check my outfit.  No, I didn't remember that jeans have been banned this semester; I wore these same jeans off campus just a couple months ago at a University-approved community event, and it was okay then."

Her disapproval and displeasure were highly evident.  She said she'd check with the staff lady to see if my story proved correct, but that staff members aren't required to memorise the rules, so she could not have been able to tell me to wear jeans.  A day or two later, she called me back in.  No, the staff lady was not authorised to override the rules to let me wear jeans.  I was also in trouble for watching Lord of the Rings, even though special permission had been given.  But, since special permission had been erroneously given (meaning the mix up was the Deans' fault), my punishment would be lessened.

She said, "I really ought to give you 50 demerits for failure to follow instructions in watching an inappropriate movie, and 50 more for the jeans (immodest dress), but I'm going to be merciful to you and only give you 50 total."

She repeated herself and emphasised her mercy.  She was having mercy on me.  How I despised her for equating that disdainful and condescending attitude with God's mercy!

I escaped without further accrual of demerits and stayed clear of her for a while, till it was time for "spiritual evaluations."  Every student at Bob Jones University is required to fill out a form rating themselves on their spirituality, and I could never get mine right.  My freshman year, I'd rated myself too high, according to the roommate who "graded" me.  The first semester of my sophomore year, I'd not been honest about my failings, according to the roommate who graded me that time.  This time, I rated myself below what I really thought, and still it wasn't acceptable.  My room's spiritual leader accused me of not taking it seriously enough, and turned me in to the dorm sup again.

My dorm supervisor told me in a matter-of-fact tone that I was not above reproach and would need to receive spiritual counseling the next semester.  She would not give me details or explain, saying, "You know why, Hannah."

So, sure enough, the next year, my junior year, when it was expected that upperclassmen students be serving or the very least recommended for service as dorm spiritual leaders, I was made to undergo "spiritual counseling."  I was never told the reason why.  But it was a horror-fest.  Maybe I'll be able to talk about it soon.  But not today.