Guest Post: Summer Reflections (By Peter DeWit)

This is my husband, Peter DeWit.

He wrote a note on fb and I wanted to re-post it here. He had asked me to write about our summer, but I didn’t get around to it. He is a great writer and I loved reading about our summer from his perspective.

Peter Writes…

I am usually very reluctant to go back to my home country. It means hours of tedious travel, public speaking, raising funds, and often poor mattresses for my bad back. And I could say that all was pretty well true for much of my time in Canada. Nonetheless something happened in me to strengthen my heart and to return my lost love for Canada.

If you love surprises, so do we, and the surprises began and kept coming…

The beauty of early summer.  I have always had a love for ancient cultures and inspiring landscapes. While visiting England I have experienced the silent awe of walking the ground that was trod by kings and queens of antiquity. The very soil exhales history. While in France the narrow roads winding through fields of green and quaint villages whispered and tickled my soul. The centuries of cow paths now turned  into roads and soldiers’ foot battles must have happened mere inches from our presence. How I want to also boast of my native Holland and it’s windmills and brick roads reminding me of a heritage of hard-working people who knew how to tame nature’s fury; not to metion the ancient cheeze and the salted licorice! Seriously, everywhere one would glance one would be greeted with a monument of man or nature that said, “We have been here way before you, yes, for countless generations.”

But my ‘Oh Canada’, so young, never gave me the sense of majesty and history like my birth continent. As I drove the back roads I saw uneven highway being gobbled up by unhappy growth and the wildness surrounded by sad-sack fences that needed human mending. The major highways were tedious with weeds and uninspiring landscapes. And yet this summer the boredom was replaced by a pulling-in of the beauty of the Maples and Spruce and the wild untamed. I found the green of the grass thick with splendor. The hours on rivers warmed by summer’s heat invigorated my body with nature’s wild and dark-watery embrace. The cool evenings blessed me consistently, giving relief to hot days. The evening fireflies showing off their incandescent wonder delighting our eyes and inspiring a kiss or two by the Sacred Pond.

Then there was the joy of reconnecting with my church life.  This was one place I wanted to ignore, the church stage of pressure of performance , it seemed to kill the natural bent of the land and my heart. How could I avoid putting on a good show in these big buildings built explicitly for the show? Standing in front of hungry-for-validation-ears I wanted to validate myself, to justify my presence and their support of my ministry, or my mission. I asked the Lord to bless me with  Jabez-like provision. I also told the Lord to free me from the worry, the need to ask for money, even if the iron was hot and the shirt needing pressing. I had booked every possible weekend but one. It too got booked in the city of Ottawa on the very day we celebrate our country. It was like Jabez’s prayer was stretching the centuries over and upon us as we gawked with the tens of thousands for a sight of English royalty and being rewarded with a fleeting glimpse. My adopted daughter, who had spent all of 17 months of her 14 year-old life on Canadian soil, squealed with delight on the shoulders of her mother, “I am so glad I am Canadian!”

And there were the unlikely friendships that were conceived unnaturally in Thailand by unknown Canadians who had come to experience first-hand our lives. Instead of fading like the dandelion they took on a new shoot like the bamboo. Barbecues, boat rides, Wonderland, and horseback riding filled and thrilled our days. My family was blessed to live in the heart of Toronto the good for almost a month because of an unlikely friendship. And financial pressures were relieved when a Pastor asked his church near the beginning of our time to bless us so we could have fun without continually thinking about expenses.

Surprised by the response to our message. This could be really the better part of it all. After twenty years of spiritual and physical and mental labour in Thailand we had nothing really to boast about, save the grace of God. We spoke of our trials and failures and the dangers of entitlement. We shared of our changing perspective of what defines the good life. And then we closed the thirty minute presentation raising our Ebenezer to the sufficiency of God’s grace.  Our scars speak not of shame, but of faith’s survival and renewal. So many words of encouragement afterwards left us thinking that the time spent in trials and testings may have had a deeper purpose than we thought possible.

I told my family that I was sad that we could not stay longer and see the snow fall and the air explode from our lungs on a frosty day. I was falling in love not only with the rugged beauty but with the Canadian way. It was all so wonderful and the stories and memories of the summer of 2011 will keep us riding the wave for a while still. Thank you Canada for your land nd freedom. And thank you to the Pentecostal Assemblies, you have blessed me so much and remained my spiritual family for a long time.

Wrestling With the Box of Proof

In less than 2 months I will be fifty years old! It doesn’t bother me at all. Back in January I wrote a post about my love of fight and how I need to wrestle a few demons before June 9^th arrives. One of those fights involves my mother. Not her, but her death.

I often wonder what Mom was experiencing when she turned fifty in 1987.  She had no idea there were only nine years left in her life. How could she know? No one knows that sort of thing. 

Mom loved hunting for partridge.

The reason I face this demon right now is because it was 13 years ago this weekend that my mother lay in her bed at home, and though I was unaware of how soon she would meet the last day of her life, I believe she knew full well that there  were only a couple of weeks left.

A month earlier my mom and dad called to tell us that Mom had pelvic cancer. Right away I went online to do my research. I found the treatments I was sure her doctor was already prescribing, hoping always for a good outcome of more years, hopeful that chemo and radiation would buy time and allow her to live longer than just 59 years. Surely Mom would live till her 60^th birthday on July 23^rd of that same year. Surely.

We talked on the phone even beyond what our budget would allow. I kept asking her about the treatment. It hadn’t started yet. I understood the medical system in Canada and how frustratingly slow it could be. She reassured me her doctor was doing all he could. 

My sister, Mary, went to visit Mom regularly. She started being a little bit more open with me about the seriousness of Mom’s cancer, how she really wasn’t doing well. I wanted to go back to Canada to be with her. Yet every time I talked to Dad and Mom they gave no clue that it was quite so serious. I wrote an email to one of  Mom’s closest friends, a pastor we’d known for a few years, and asked her if Mom’s cancer was aggressive, if I should come home. But she answered that she wasn’t aware that it was that serious. She’d visited Mom a few times at home, and she ‘seemed to be okay’. Surely I could believe her. Surely. 

It didn’t matter what they all said. I really wanted to go be with mom. My gut told me I should be there. I knew she needed me. Whenever we were in Canada Mom would come and stay with us for a few days or weeks. It would get a bit stressful because even though Mom loved Peter dearly, she always took my side of any issue no matter what, and poor Peter had to go toe-to-toe with both of us. Each time she came she knew that I would help her get into a healthy diet and exercise routine, that I would take her to meet my friends, that we would do a few new things and see a few of my favorite places, and she could always count on me to take her to my hairdressers. Now that Mom was sick, I wanted to take care of her again, to do all the things I knew she loved. I wanted to shampoo her hair and set it in rollers and give her a bit of a modern hair-style, and not old-lady curls. I wanted to be the one to give her sponge baths when she couldn’t make it to the tub. I would have massaged her feet and tickled her back, brought her breakfast in bed and spent long afternoons doing nothing but talking about all her childhood memories. 

But I couldn’t go. We had no extra money for the flight. We wondered if I were to go back to visit her, then what if she held on for a long time? Would I be able to stay away from home and baby Amanda and young Joel’s homeschooling for that long? And what if I did visit, only to return back to Thailand and have Mom pass away shortly thereafter? How could I ever afford to fly back to attend her funeral?

It was a horrible dilemma and I never wish it on anyone. 

So I prayed.

I think it was more like I conjured holy optimism… fasting, praying, trying my hardest not to sin during those days so that God would have to hear me, so that I could somehow earn his favor to be spared this pain, so that I could convince him to let Mom survive the cancer. 

I kept sending links to Dad about treatments and options and hoped that mom would be starting any or all of them soon. Time was ticking. I could envision that horrible pelvic cancer spreading irreversibly by the minute.

Then on May 16^th a call came. At midnight. We always knew that a call at midnight was a worrisome thing, unless it was just a case of forgotten time zones. I recognized the voice of my oldest sister, Judy, trying to stifle her sobs saying, “Patti, honey, I think you need to come back home now if you want to see Mom one last time.” 

Peter was out in a small village near Buri Ram for the week and I had no idea how to contact him. We didn’t have cell phones. Desperation became a taste in my mouth. I was in an angry panic. I had to get on the soonest plane and get back to Mom right away! How could ministry go on as normal when I was losing my mom? I screamed silently and angrily at Peter from the depths of my guts, “Where the hell are you? How can anything in Buri Ram be more important than me getting back to Mom right now?” 

Convinced that God decided against healing Mom ( an idea I have also wrestled with and learned much about prayer and control and outcomes and faith) and I believed that anything I said wasn’t going to move Him one way or the other, I got mad at him too and screamed, “I loathe the day I came to this country! I left everything and everyone for You and you won’t even show up for this!”

After many phone calls, I flew out of Khon Kaen the next day, and went to Bangkok, where I would stay overnight at the home of friends and take a Cathay Pacific flight to Toronto the following morning. It was May 18^th in Thailand, but still the 17^th in Peterborough, Ontario. I woke up early, got dressed and came downstairs with my suitcase. My friends were ready to drive me to the airport and we were heading out the door. 

Then the phone rang. 

It was Peter.

He was calling to tell me that he’d talked to Dad on the phone.

Mom had just passed away.

That was one difficult flight. 

And so this is what I have fought with mom about since that day:

 

Mom, why didn’t you tell me?

 

During the weeks after her death I wanted to know why she never told us how serious it was. I would have been there earlier if I’d known. I could have been there. 

One quiet morning when it was just me and Dad I asked him, “Dad, why didn’t Mom tell anyone how serious it was?” 

He sat there in the timeless pose of my father, legs crossed, shoulders relaxed, a mug of coffee in one hand and a cigarette dangling in the other. He took a long puff on his cigarette, then purposefully tapped the ashes into the ashtray as he did when he was pensive. With a frown in his eyes his words came out all covered in smoke, “She didn’t want people to suddenly treat her differently just because she was dying. She didn’t want people who normally would not have given her the time of day coming over and pretend to care.”

I couldn’t fault her for that. To me it felt like one last passive aggressive guilt-tripping Mom thing. But it’s true, isn’t it? When people know you are dying, they treat you differently. They take the time, they make time, and they are generous with loving gestures. If you knew your loved one was dying would you have to scramble to make up for lost time, working hard to let them know how much you loved them? Or would there be a solid trail of evidence left over the years that proves you had loved them?

In my wrestling I have to believe Mom knew I loved her. I wasn’t one of those ‘no-time-of-day-ers’ Dad was talking about. My four sisters – Judy, Mary, Robin and Sam- were all there around her in the end. My sisters said that it seemed like Mom was holding on, painfully, waiting for me to get there. They told me she asked for me, softly, “Where’s my Patti?” There is a strong family resemblance among us Livingstone girls, and my dear sweet sister, Robin, even tried to impersonate me at Mom’s bedside so that Mom would finally let go. 

I always felt like I failed her in the end but today, with you as my witness, I am letting go. I was always angry about the lousy financial restrictions of our work that caused Mom having to die without me by her side. And I was always just a little bit angry with Mom for not having trusted me with the truth about her cancer. I’m letting it go. Finally.

A few days after the funeral, my sisters and I gathered in Mom’s room. We sorted through all her things, dividing up all the keepsakes we wanted to have, crying and laughing and remembering. I have a box full of treasures from that day. And do you want to know the interesting thing about the things I chose to keep for myself? The things I chose to keep were pretty much all gifts I had given her over the years. There are unorganized piles of photos of great moments together, and it was proof that I had been in her life all along. Mom’s things were a trail of evidence that I had loved her not just because she was dying, but that I had always given her the time of day.

 And as I think of her, I will go through my box of her things, things that I had given her, the Box of Proof full of evidence that I had loved her well in life. And surely there will be peace. Surely.

Tweaking Destiny

I don’t think every surprise in life has been strategically pre-planned and pre-timed. I used to think they were, but I’ve lived a lot and seen a lot and it’s just too hard to believe that anymore. I’ve seen people who actually tweaked their own destiny, made adjustments to it, and because of it changed the course of the world or at least changed the course of the lives of others.

They are radicals who speak up even before it’s trendy to talk about ‘such things’. They are researchers who won’t sleep until they break through from hypotheses to fact. They are thinkers who keep asking the strangest questions until they get the answers or at least come up with better questions. They are artists who won’t quit mixing  it up because they just know there is another expression or colour out there. Sometimes they are world leaders obsessed with power.

What got me thinking about such things? Well…

It’s coming up the the 14th anniversary of the day when a premature baby girl from the Lahu tribe in Northern Thailand came to live with us as our daughter, Amanda Jasmine Siriporn DeWit. I’ve had a lot of questions concerning the events leading up to that April 14th in 1997. Did God ordain for her biological mother to get malaria and die giving birth on a dirt floor in a meager hut, just so that Peter and Pat would be able to adopt her as some sort of comfort after having lost a little son? Did God ordain for her father to run away in fear of the ghost of his dead wife so that an elderly grandmother would then be left to be the soul caregiver of this baby? Was the elderly grandma following a pre-determined plan when she threw the baby girl into the jungle and left her there to cry for three whole days, naked and alone and vulnerable to all the creatures of a tropical countryside?

Some would say yes, but I say no.

Where we actually do see God’s hand in such tragic events is when we step back, in hindsight, and consider all that could have been if anyone of those elements of Amanda’s story had been different. That’s where people who live by the Divine Rhythms can intervene, where they can do something to alter the course of someone’s destiny as well as their own, and they are able to recognize Beauty and Goodness even in situations that are universally considered ‘bad’ or ‘evil’.

It’s an evil result of greed that people in some parts of the world still have to die from malaria, that they live in such dire poverty that a grandmother can’t even find powdered milk to nourish a newborn. It’s evil that there are societies that allow their men to run away and leave their children fatherless. It’s evil that not everyone has access to quinine or mosquito nets, nor clean water, pre maternal health-care  or midwives. These are evils that exist. No doubt about it.

In the middle of all the evil The Glimpse of Beauty we get is that a little girl escaped that cycle of poverty, escaped the fate of her mother, and who, because of having survived what was meant for evil, will be able to live a life of purpose and insight, Beauty and Goodness that she brings to our family and everyone she meets. Both of our girls were a ‘surprise’ to some extent, and yet it makes total sense that they were born. Human biology makes sense.

The girls keep surprising us, and we enjoy the options of each day and the choices we have to respond knowing that somehow, somewhere down the road, all things can work out to be Good.

Here’s a video of Amanda’s story that our middle son, Joel, made. You can hear Alycia in the background too. Make sure you watch till the end and catch the great bloopers!

A Letter to a 30-Year-Old Me

 

Twenty years ago we moved to Thailand. Here is my hindsight letter to a 30-year-old me. I am almost 50 now.

Dear Me at 30,

One day, believe it or not, you will love the city of Bangkok. Right now all you do is tolerate it one stinking, sweating, 35*-Celsius day at a time. No. Days are too large a measure at this time. You survive it one hesitant lonely breath at a time. There will come a day when you genuinely love that city. Instead of looking for ways to leave, your enthusiasm will be instrumental in convincing others to stay.

I want you to know that there is life after Quebec, but only after you learn (the hard way) that you must redefine your idea of real life. You see, you will witness first-hand that not everyone has the choice of where to live. You will keep living like a sad victim of the imperfect system, the imperfect marriage, the Thunderous Perfect God, until you meet a desperate Chinese refugee mom, standing on the other side of a cage-like cell, separated from her husband and son, waiting to get somewhere beyond Bangkok’s immigration detention center. She doesn’t have choices, and as you witness her heartbreaking reality it will change yours.

Oh 30-year-old Me, right now you want to fall asleep and wake up on the other side of this city, but one day you will stare the city down and defy it to just try to send you away. You will feel protective and maternal, even patriotic. You’ll learn that you don’t have to become Thai in order to belong, you just have to have purpose. With that new-found sense of purpose you will be shocked that nothing -not your accent, not your white freckled skin, not your hazely-green eyes- can tell you that you don’t belong.

That's me in the back row, center

As lonely as you are – no, as alone as you are- hold on! I promise you there will be friends. And just when you start to flat-line there will be people who will resuscitate you back to life. They will pound your chest or reach in and massage your heart if they have to. Word by gentle word they will community you back to life and reassure you that you would be missed if, for some reason, you were not there anymore.

That Bible you angrily threw into the very, very back of your bottom drawer? It will talk to you again and it will have good news. You will see how you have  misunderstood the Heart of those words. Your eyes will get baptized, and gradually you will see things clearer, where people around you will no longer look like walking trees, but they will become living, breathing, interesting individuals who are on your path for a reason.

At thirty your husband travels to remote parts of Asia, having the adventure of a lifetime, and you are alone with your three sons on the border town of Nong Khai. Right now your greatest comfort on those alone nights, your sense of escaping away from Thailand and back to Quebec, comes from your cassettes of Celine Dion. You put your earphones in, lie flat on your back and memorize all the lyrics in French. Tears pour down your face and into your ears but you don’t care. You love those songs. You love Celine Dion. And while you will always love Celine Dion for being such a good friend all those nights, I can promise you that you will find a NewSong and you will love it with all your heart and it will be an even better friend for the rest of your days.

And lastly, dear 30-year-old Me, you will be loved passionately by a man and you will fall in love again. No, there won’t be a divorce and remarriage. There will be a restoring of your first love. You got married to him when you were 20, but the day is coming when you will finally be his bride. Your differences -which are, and always will be, many- will make both of you laugh instead of scream. Your five children will thank you for staying together. You will lie down at the end of each day and be glad to see him there with you.

And for the record, even though in Thai shops you have to buy XL, you are NOT  and never will be a ‘farang somboon bep’! (tranlates: a fat foreigner.)

A Bangkok Walk

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At Newsong Bangkok we have some pretty amazing friends. Two of them, Lexie Keller and Michelle Kao, of Servant Partners, took us for a walk in their neighborhood. Here are a few things that caught my eye. You’ll see Peter, Amanda and Alycia, as well as a few of Lexie and Michelle’s neighbors.