In that moment, I truly did not
know what to make of his question.
Whether helping with the weekly computer literacy classes at Lutheran
Services or trying out this whole medical interpretation thing, I sometimes find myself
confronted with the feeling that I am too privileged, too naïve, too young and
inexperienced to truly be of much help.[1] As I sit walking men decades my senior
through the process of opening and saving a Word document, using an email account,
or Google-searching on the Internet, I am consistently humbled and challenged
by the bits and pieces of their stories that they share with me so freely. Again and again I am struck with wonderment
by their patience with me. Here they are—
some of whom have experienced years of persecution for their faith,
who speak up anywhere up to seven different languages, and who have seen corners
of the world I have glimpsed only through the glossy pages of National Geographic— having to rely on young,
white, sheltered me. Were I in their
shoes, how maddeningly frustrating that might feel; yet week in and week out I
am met with nothing but overwhelming graciousness and good humor. Just this past session, for instance, one of
our French-speaking clients made me laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes:
while I thought I’d been telling him to tap the computer mouse, turns out due to
poor verb choice I’d been unwittingly instructing him to strike/ whack my laptop—
which he proceeded to dramatically pantomime to the amusement of the whole
group!
But anyways, the point that I was
trying to convey (before getting distracted, that is), is that as much as I
have been loving this work, I sometimes feel constrained by the differences
separating me and the refugees I work with, and I worry that I am somehow
shortchanging them in the sense that I cannot offer the sort of support I might
be able to if I could draw from more similar life experiences. And so, to have this young refugee man look
me in the eye and ask me if I, too, were a refugee, was a dizzying and disorienting,
or maybe better, reorienting,
experience. In the span of mere seconds,
he bridged the gap between us, showing me, that, at least from where he was
sitting, I didn’t appear to be other than a refugee myself. Wow is truly all I could think!
The next few hours in the hospital
proved to be pretty memorable—turns out my new friend had not been informed
that the appointment I was accompanying him to was a pre-op for a surgery he is
scheduled to have tomorrow. As such, you
can imagine his surprise when I started to translate some of the legal consent
forms! Not to mention his relief when, a
good hour and several nurses later, I was finally able to find someone to
clarify that the surgery is to be exploratory in nature, a quick procedure to
see if anything is wrong. Soon as I
finished translating, his face lit up significantly: “And here I was thinking
scissors, cutting, and pulling things out,” he exclaimed! Can you imagine? What a crazy world this would seem to be upon
finding yourself in a foreign hospital environment unable to ascertain just
what sort of operation awaits you!
Needless to say, we were both very, very happy to finally get out of
there and make our way back to my car.
As I punched our destination into my GPS once more, my thoughts scurried
back to his earlier, riveting words.
Am I a refugee in the official
sense of the word? No, definitely
not. For no reason other than the chance
of my birth, I have been spared the pain and suffering of being uprooted from home,
forced to leave behind all that is familiar in the face of persecution. And yet, if tried on for size, you might find
yourself surprised by the various ways “refugee” can unexpectedly fit (or at
least I continue to be!). For, on one level,
I can certainly identify experiences of dislocation in my life, looking back on
times marked by feelings of not belonging, of being an outsider, and of being
far too far from places I longed to be.
On another level, in terms of faith I locate myself within a tradition brimming
with narratives of refugees and migrants.
In figures such as Abraham, Joseph, David, the Israelite exiles, and
Jesus himself, I see God’s people constantly on the move. And I am reminded that, in the process of
being adopted into God’s family, I have been plucked from a state of
un-belonging and displacement into a place of welcome and home through
overabundant grace. So, yes— maybe, kind
of, sort of, at least— I, too, am a refugee.
[1] In case I forgot to mention it
earlier, Lutheran Services is one of the half dozen voluntary agencies in
Georgia that contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees in the
state.
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