Calling

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March 22, 2010

The Places of Identity

My early teenage years, from about twelve to fifteen, were characterized by a growing dissatisfaction that cut deep into my being. Who was I? What was my place in this world? The caterpillar's ontological question to Alice, "Whooo are you?" just resonated to the edge of my skin. Walking down hallways, going to classes, even being with the people closest to me, did not answer these palpitating questions. I knew I was feeling tugged somewhere, but what does that tug look like for a fifteen-year-old female? How does one convince their parents of such a tugging? How does one even articulate such a tugging?

When I was 15, I was on a college tour road trip with my mom from Florida to Kentucky and back down. My godmother Kay, one of my mom's closest childhood friends, lives in Lexington and so, naturally, we stayed with her. Sitting on her couch that evening, I asked some questions that changed my life. The conversation between my godmother and I went something like this:

Lacey: “So, what are your plans for the summer?”
Kay(my godmother): “I'm going back to the orphanage in Nigeria.”
Lacey: I was silent and wide-eyed. Then, in an almost pleading voice, the words escaped from my mouth: “Can I please come with you?”
Kay: (without any hesitation) “Absolutely.”

And, while my parents were nervous, they almost immediately said yes to my request to move to a foreign, war trodden, waste land—to leave the comforts of my small town, affluent culture and move to third world destitution. My parents knew of my dissatisfaction, which had turned into fierce rebellion, and they were present in this decision enough to know that I needed to go and answer these questions.

So, three months, two-dozen shots, and a work visa later, I boarded a plane by myself to a foreign land.

Chi, the woman who owned the orphanage, and my godmother met me at the Lagos airport in Nigeria and together we sojourned by bus to a village called Aba.

Nigeria is a perfect representation of the paradox of beauty:
It all at once leaves you both compelled to name the things around you,
Yet renders you without any speak-able or descriptive language.
Its land is arid but rich with jungle vegetation;
Fertile waters stir and flow along the banks of bridges,
And women stand: dusty and tired, along the sides of roads selling bananas and snails.

Two days later, I was already feeling doubtful that this had been a good idea. Why did I move four thousand miles from my home and everyone I knew just to address who I was? I was lonely and homesick. Surely these questions could have waited…or could they?

I went to bed that night restless for answers; and I woke early the next morning to loud voices in the hallway, which wasn't customary even in a house with forty children. Groggily, I stumbled into the hallway.

I was met by Chi, my godmother, and an infant swaddled in blankets with a note attached from his father. He had been left on the doorstep only hours before; the writing on the note said he had been delivered that night but his sixteen-year-old mother had died giving birth, and the father could not care for him properly. Chi was pensive as she surveyed the cost of adding a forty-first child to the home. She was already under financial burden; could she handle another child? But finally, she said, we will take him; I will not turn away a child.

Then, Chi looked me, and said, "Lacey, I need you to take this child and care for him." And my fifteen-year-old arms just extended to bring him close to me, and there I held him, at heart level, in a sense, two children alone in foreign places, orphan-to-orphan, hearts beating together, ebbing and flowing in the call to life. For the remainder of the summer, I mothered this child. I cut his umbilical cord, fed him through the nights, and carried him sheathed to my chest wherever I went.

Learning to care for an orphaned infant is about as close as I had ever come to understanding God's love for this world. This child had no one: a teenage mother that had died and a father who left him on a doorstep wrapped in his birthing clothes. He did not know how to suckle, could barely open his eyes…but somehow fell into the hands of a 15-year-old, affluent, American white girl. Together, we learned a little about survival and a lot about love.

My Godmother was present at my own infant baptism, and she took vows to nurture and care for me as I was raised in the church, and these are vows that my family takes seriously. She responded to my question of joining her with a resounding yes, but implied in that yes, are those baptismal vows. She knew that she would be in charge of caring not just for my physical body during that time but also nurturing me in lieu of those "self" questions that I faced.

Did I discover who I was during that summer? No. But, in caring for this child, I was free to claim my baptismal identity as a child of God. That summer held several moments of awakening to the fact that, in baptismal callings, we are named children of God and children of the church. It is here in the solidarity of feeling God's call on our lives that we are given eyes to see the world as it truly is: broken, shattered even, at times; but also redeemable because of the hope Christ instills in us. Even when we are abandoned, orphaned, utterly helpless, God provides. And he provides for our hunger need, not with stones (and endless perplexity) but with a sustenance that is filling and brings wholeness and health to our broken, questioned and questioning humanity.

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Lacey Hudspeth came to Idlewild Presbyterian Church at the beginning of her junior year of college. She was attracted to Idlewild because of its homeless ministry. Through that ministry and through pottery classes, art and liturgy, and delving into a Presbyterian polity that is alive and present, she has found a church that exists in communal solidarity, one where she has been encouraged, challenged and embraced.