We send out ripples

Found here

I never knew that I could irritate and offend someone just because of the color of my skin. But his whole family was turned off with me because I am White. Because I am a native-born American. "You've got to break off with that woman" they told him, emphasizing their disdain as they enunciated, that woman.


I thought I was a good woman since I had worked hard to behave as a respectable person, get an education and live a good life. Besides, he had the exact same skin color as I did. Bewildered and hurt, I asked him what I had done to deserve this. I never received an answer.


The story began in another country. His parents were poverty-stricken, eking out an existence in whatever way they could. They were good people, just very poor. He was the illegitimate son of the man for whom the region was named, and as such, had to pay for the poor judgment of his parents by bearing the scorn of the entire population. He married a very sweet girl who decided that his unusual princely bearing and happy personality would more than make up for the ignominy of his parentage. She worked hard to make a life for the two of them. Often there wasn't enough to eat and she was hungry. Sad to say, she had several miscarriages because she simply wasn't nourished well enough to carry a pregnancy.





Then the American Christians came to their town. They were nice people who taught everyone how to live better lives, and in the process, taught them a new way to think about the God of heaven. They helped her have enough food so she could carry her baby to term. Over the next few years she had a daughter, followed soon thereafter by a son. The missionaries oohed and ahhhed about the babies--cuddling and carrying them about.





After a time the American woman got pregnant and had a baby herself: a little girl that was like an angel, with blond curly hair and the fairest skin the people had ever seen. The village mother went to offer her help for the missionary woman but was turned away by her husband. Maybe he is helping her, she thought. It must be the American way. I'll wait until she needs me.


When the missionary woman was out and about again the village mother again went to offer to care for her baby girl. She was told she could not hold the baby. She could only look at her, dressed in a pristine blue and white pinafore that had been freshly ironed by the maid. "You'll get her dress dirty" she was told. So she washed her hands with soap and water and returned to the missionary's house. There were no reasons given but the woman declined her offer. Wanting to somehow repay this woman for helping her with her own babies, she swallowed her pride. Holding out her hands to show how clean they were, she hoped she would be allowed to give something back. But the American held her baby a little bit closer to her breast and shook her head, no.





This was a loud message about the value of the villagers and about the double standard that operated for the missionaries. They could enter her home, hold her baby, eat her food, but this was not a reciprocal process. She would never be good enough, look fair enough, be clean enough, or do the right things. She simply couldn't enter that world.


This woman and her husband left that village and each worked two jobs in order to support their three children through college. They were poor, but determined to give their children the gift of being important--to be good enough for other people.





When their children were small the father drove the children over to the hospital parking lot. In the visitor's lot were all sorts of beaten up jalopies--rusted fenders, cracked windshields, patchy paint. "Do you want to drive a car like this when you grow up?" the father would ask.


"No Daddy!" was the rejoinder. "Take us to the good cars!" And he would drive them over to the physician parking lot where the clean, new, big cars stood in orderly rows. "Do you want to have a car like this someday?"


"Yes, Daddy!" they'd squeal and laugh.


It should not surprise anyone to learn that all of the children in this family became physicians. Two of them worked in a hospital unit where the missionary's daughter had to take orders from them. One married into wealth and lived in an exclusive area of New York City. But the most ironic pity was that one son married a woman who would not allow his mother to tend to her own grandchild. For some reason, she was just not right, somehow. And once again she was wounded by not being enough for someone else's baby. She died from cancer a short time later, but I am convinced that she died from a broken heart.


As I've reflected on this sad story over the years, I've wished that this family's rejection of me could have somehow paid for the actions of the American missionaries. When I see what has happened in this family because of the attitudes careated by oppression, I am willing to have been rejected several times over if it could have brought healing to them. But neither my rejection, nor all of the positive, good missionaries of the world can reverse the harm that was done. Their story lives on and comes alive every time I see pictures like the one I've posted today.


Our actions send out ripples in all directions.


Some of those ripples can drown people.