Housewifing

“We are such housewives.” How many times can Emilianne and I say this to each other in one day? At least ten. Cleaning ladies? Check! Chore coordinators? Also check! Cooks? Triple check! Chief disciplinarians, worship leaders, craft suppliers, hug givers, and school tutors? Also got it covered! Call us Mom.

Live, Laugh, Love*

Emilianne and I looked at each other and hmmm-ed. We were just informed that we wouldn’t be teaching school again this semester because they need more long-term teachers for the school year starting in February and we’re leaving in May. Now we’re living with our world literally revolving around Las Lilas, 24/7. At first I was so disappointed, but we quickly came up with a plan to have tutoring and extracurricular activities everyday after school, as we’re bursting with ideas and supplies.

To live as a house parent means doing some not-so-fun things, like actually having to be the parent and not the fun aunt like I feel I transitioned from. I’d like to pause the regularly-scheduled-story-programming to give a shout-out to every parent of a picky eater; and I’d like to extend my greatest sympathies. I have a new nine-year-old who literally came to us malnourished enough that she seems like a walking skeleton with poorly-colored skin and symptoms of heart and kidney issues. And now she’s skinny solely because she chooses not to eat. Let me paint the picture: we’re sitting at the table long after dark, two hours after supper, long after worship. It’s me next to Nora, me holding a spoon with a bite of bread with butter in front of her tightly pursed lips on a tear-streaked face. I cajole. I joke. I plead. I say how scared I am that she’s not eating. I threaten. I threaten with something else. I restrain my free hand from slapping the daylights out of her. I pray for patience. I shove the food in her mouth when it opens a crack. We avoid the delicious quinoa and veggies that still fill her bowl, as I really prefer not to sit here for five more literal hours. And we finally finish the roll. The small roll buttered with precious, rationed butter. Two. Hours. Later. I don’t bother telling her to save the plate for tomorrow, as the battle will continue over whatever food we give her, so we might as well stop filling the fridge with her leftovers. Bless her heart. Bless my heart.

The next morning that little girl wakes up writhing in extreme arthritis pain. All the prayers to give me patience with her are answered as suddenly I am helpless to do anything to stop the crying and moans of agony. Squatting by her bed and praying, I’ve never felt more helpless. The other girls one by one each come find me to tell me, “Nora is crying, Teacher!” I know she’s crying! But there’s nothing more I can do! She promised to go back to her anti-inflammatory diet and eat a lot, but that doesn’t help right now. The pain meds aren’t kicking in. “Teacher, I can’t get comfortable. I don’t know what to do.” Oh my heart. One day I’m afraid she’ll die from not eating; the next day she thinks she’ll die from the pain.

Now I’ll paint another scene with another girl and another vibe: Miriam sat at the same table as I finished putting out all twelve plates of food. She leaned forward, after complementing the food, and said, “Teacher, I want to do big things…like you and the other volunteers. I want to be a missionary.” “You should be a missionary here at Familia Feliz!! You’ve lived here as a student after all!” “But teacher, being a missionary isn’t comfortable.” “I know.” “Being a missionary is hard.” “I know.” “I really want to, but I don’t know.” “Sometimes the hardest things make you the happiest if you do them with God.” “Hmm.”

Elizabeth (Eli) is the cutest new little six-year-old who also happens to be Esmeralda’s niece. She’s a great source of the laughing and loving in this house already. But her third night here was her hardest, as she had a painful bug bite and was homesick — the first time I’ve dealt with someone actually missing home and loving parents. She sat on my lap, wrapped in her towel, and cried. When I got her dressed, she and Nicol (immediate best friends) came outside and played with my wet hair for over half an hour. Eli doled out the sweetest compliments and pretended to be a hairdresser, and I ended up with about six miniature ponytails of varying sizes and very thoroughly combed-through curls. As I sat there, it was pretty late at night and I was tired, and I closed my eyes just to relish the little hands and little voices and “mmm-hmm”-ed when they talked to me. I felt like I understood how my mom and grandma did when I was a kid doing their hair and grinned.

Women Belong in the Kitchen

Watching the guys working on construction, digging literal six-foot holes by hand, hammering nails, sawing wood they carried on their backs, mixing cement, and weed-wacking the entire campus, Emilianne and I pulled fresh rolls from the oven. “Watching manual labor in this heat sucks every ounce of feminism from my body,” I declared. “This woman belongs in the kitchen!”

And honestly, this kitchen produces some pretty stellar food for what we have! “¡La comida es rica aquí!” (“The food is good here!”) “Comemos muy bien en esta casa.” (“We eat really well in this house.”) “¡Usted es una cocinera!” (“You are a chef!”)

Bread, biscuits, cookies, and cinnamon rolls have all been pulled from the oven that’s also made meatloaf and baked potatoes this week alone. Most of our day seems to revolve around cooking, which is honestly great by me!

Also, I might as well tell The Meatloaf Tale, my grandma’s new favorite as of Saturday. It’s Friday and Emilianne finishes preparing the loveliest meatloaf you’ll ever see, ready to be stuck in the oven right after church. Fast forward to right after church. We’re walking home and Esmeralda informs us that her brother with his family of five will be joining us for lunch. Ok. Seventeen people now. We’ll just cube some potatoes and stick those in the oven to roast. We serve the plates all full of steaming potatoes, deliciously American meatloaf, and a salad and begin to place them on the table. “¡A comer, chicas!” we yell. “Where’s the rice?” an adult asks. “Um there is none.” “Don’t we need rice?” “Well, we fixed this meal, the plates are full, and everything’s hot and everyone’s here.” “We should make rice,” says the lady who I don’t know the name of in the moment . “Okkkkkkk you can while we eat,” Emilianne saved the day (and my hangry stomach). “But it’s hot and we’re going to pray now.” And miss lady then commences to put a pot of rice on. (How stupid we are to try to feed Bolivian adults without rice!) Seated around the table, as my precious girls devour the food and thank us, the adults look at it, probe it with a fork, comment on the slight “spice” of the sauce, and ask for mayonnaise. Oh sweetheart! They then silently wait as their food gets cold and their rice gets hot. I, meanwhile, see the humor, ignore them entirely except not really, then go nap in my hammock as they serve their rice. High compliments to the chef.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Esmeralda believes in Sabbath preparation. (Just maybe not meatloaf?) Preparation as in the-house-and-yard-must-be-spotless-and-the-food-must-be-ready-for-the-meals-ahead-of-time kind of prep. And honestly I respect that. So we got up Friday morning and didn’t sit down again till vespers.

I am a clean and tidy person. But honestly I didn’t know how much cleaner this house could get till Esmeralda moved in. Even the dirt in our backyard is raked free of leaves and looks pretty. She tore out our brick landscaping and put in the cutest little fence in front of our house. The girls aren’t required to just sweep everyday; they have to finish by mopping. Bathrooms are scrubbed everyday, not just every other two days.You get the picture. To be honest, the girls have yet to tell me they’re bored…

Mama’s Little Helpers

We never have a shortage of girls who want to help with food prep. And usually it’s a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation. When six-year-old Nicol asked me to help make biscuits, I was in my early-morning zone, listening to worship music softly, and honestly didn’t want her help. But she pulled up a chair to stand on and I asked for the milk from the fridge. The bag of powdered milk quickly arrived, and she then mixed it with water for me, dumping it in as I mixed. It was adorable. Then she wanted to give the kittens milk and she was off!

Nora’s little hands are so swollen and stiff that when we hung the alphabet letters on the fridge front, she was as slow as molasses putting glue dots on the backs of them. “I could have had this done by now,” I thought as we put up the letter H. But then I asked myself why I would want to be done sooner and skip making her feel good. She now looks at those blue letters with great pride.

We SMs talked about the kids helping in our Friday night worship. The little boys at Los Leones are so cute trying to help with construction, and Carlo described how they wanted to help with the wheelbarrow but he had to push it for them and pretend it was them. It took him twice as long and twice the effort, “But they ate it up.” Then he said something about when we ourselves were kids trying to help our dads in the garage that made me stop and think: “You’re just the flashlight holder but you can’t even hold the flashlight.”

That’s me with God. He could do such a better job of things if He did them Himself, but He asked me to help, to hold the flashlight. And even then I can’t hold it right, keep it steady, or shine it where it really needs to be. But He still wants my help, even though He has to help me to help Him.

If Only They Knew

“Momma, if only these girls could only see my kitchen at home!” I said on a day of making two separate batches of hand-kneaded breads. “If they could see the appliances we have! If they only knew what I left for them! Wouldn’t they appreciate what I do for them so much more?”

Emilianne immediately added, “That’s literally what Jesus said.” My goodness. I imagine Him praying, “Dad, if only they knew what home was like! If only they could see what I left for them! They have no clue!”

Wash Up

“Jesus came to be dirty with me,” Treson concluded in a very similar lesson from this week. For someone who values personal space, Familia Feliz provides a lot of challenges. And for anyone who likes to be clean, it’s over. One sweaty little kid and that shower you just took is voided.

At Friday night vespers, freshly showered me sat down on the bench we carried to La Cancha. Milenca plopped down on one side, Sarita on the other. My number one snuggler, Milenca, suddenly moved half an inch away from me, giving a bit of refreshing air between us. Without me saying anything, she said, “Teacher, it’s hot.” “Yep.” “And that means you want a little espacio.” Space. She knows I don’t like to be touched when I’m clean and it’s hot. And so she gave me space. My body was grateful, but my heart was a little sad. Did I teach her a boundary? Sure. Was it necessary? No. Will she remember unconditional love? Oh please be yes! How long will it take to learn to just get re-sweaty and re-dirty to be with the kids?

Jesus came to be dirty with me.

Like Little Children

“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew‬ ‭18‬:‭3‬)

Lisiane pointed to this verse and said, “After being with the little Harding kids all week, I realized how close they always want to be!” Little kids are always clamoring for attention, climbing all over you, and have extreme separation anxiety to leave their parents’ arms, she pointed out. “When Jesus said we have to be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, we should be close to Him like that.”

Housewives

We’re practically ready to over-decorate Las Lilas with little wooden plaques with sayings and cute cliches! The first one will say, “Bless this mess.”

But actually, please pray for God to bless this home, goodness, messes, and all.

“Less Like Me” by Zach Williams has lyrics that I want to embody as a person and especially as a mom:

Oh, I have days I lose the fight,

Try my best but just don't get it right,
Where I talk a talk that I don't walk
And miss the moments right before my eyes.

Somebody with a hurt that I could have helped,
Somebody with a hand that I could have held;
When I just can't see past myself,
Lord, help me be
A little more like mercy, a little more like grace,
A little more like kindness, goodness, love, and faith.
A little more like patience, a little more like peace,
A little more like Jesus, a little less like me.

Yeah, there's no denying I have changed
'Cause I've been saved from who I used to be.
But even at my best, I must confess

I still need help to see the way You see.

Somebody with a hurt that I could have helped,
Somebody with a hand that I could have held.
When I just can't see past myself,
Lord, help me be
A little more like mercy, a little more like grace,
A little more like kindness, goodness, love, and faith.
A little more like patience, a little more like peace,
A little more like Jesus, a little less like me.

Oh, I wanna feed the beggar on the street,
Learn to be Your hands and feet,
Freely give what I receive.
Lord, help me be.
I want put You first above all else,
Love my neighbor as myself
In the moments no one sees.

Lord, help me be
A little more like mercy, a little more like grace,
A little more like kindness, goodness, love, and faith.
A little more like patience, a little more like peace,
A little more like Jesus, oh,

a little less like me.
A little more of living everything I preach,
A little more like Jesus,

a little less like me.

Love from your not-so-middle-aged mom,

Katie-Jane

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