When I started exploring the world of refugees with my friend, Jamie, I was as green as they come. I’d never been on a mission trip, only heard stories from friends who’ve been; I’d never done any work that exposed me to the lives of the urban poor, only made the customary donations to various charitable organizations and churches, helped with some meals for the homeless, and once made a delivery with my church small group at Christmas to a single mother with several children who lived in a Memphis housing project. That was about the extent of my exposure, despite the fact that I had done charitable work for years with an organization that serves another struggling population of families who primarily reside in our suburbs. That may have been my saving grace. Suffering is suffering. If you’ve seen it once, you can pretty well recognize it, no matter how different the circumstances may be. There are actually many similarities, but that’s a subject for another blog, I suppose.

So I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to grasp the full scope of what I encountered when I went down to watch Jamie help our refugee friends, and finding my place in all of it. It has been an incredible experience from the beginning.

There was the initial shock of seeing their living conditions, the initial fear associated with going anywhere in “the projects”, the initial fear of walking among primarily Muslim people- all the things that anyone who has worked among the urban poor for an extended period, or in the mission field abroad, would probably snicker at, but I had to work through it all, nonetheless. My faith was called into question because it IS like stepping foot onto a mission field. Since I’d never been on even a short-term mission trip I was unprepared for that. In the end, for me, it became a question of whether I wanted to live or to LIVE.

A large part of my reluctance to fully embrace the work I saw Jamie doing was due to the fact that I was still unable to envision how what I would be doing would look full-circle. Early in December last year I encountered a memoir, written by a refugee girl from Afghanistan, which would change that for me.

“The Other Side of the Sky” is the one book I now recommend to anyone who wants to understand what we do and why we do it. It gives the reader a comprehensive, first person account of the life of just one refugee girl from the time she can remember to present day, having successfully resettled here in America. First, the reader is taken through all of the traumatic events leading up to her resettlement in the city of Chicago with the one surviving member of her large family, her mother. Farah (the author) lost a leg to a landmine at a very young age and walks on an a prosthetic. Her mother suffers with severe asthma. World Relief is the resettlement agency in Chicago who helped her and her mother initially resettle.

But it was the kind, consistent, care from one American woman from the Chicago area, Alyce, who fully embraced them, helped them, and acted on their behalf for several years that, as Farah puts it, saved their lives.

All of the new clothes, pots, pans, kitchenware, phone, television, and other goods changed our life,, but not nearly as much as Alyce herself. She said she would come once a week, but she started coming much more often. In fact, before long she was coming to see me every day.

Once we started spending time together, my English improved rapidly. We talked about every subject, so I learned the words I needed for all those different subjects. My vocabulary grew like weeds in a garden. Alyce let me ask questions of any kind and follow my curiosity wherever it led. She taught me how to become an American by telling me about the culture and customs here–what the holidays are, for example, and how you celebrate each one. She told me how to behave in a restaurant.

My English improved more in a couple of weeks of chatting with Alyce than it had in three months of taking that (English) course. But I don’t want to make it seem as if Alyce just helped me with English. As soon as she saw how much we needed she took it upon herself to save our lives, and I do not use the word “save” lightly.

She saw what difficulty we had just getting food, so she began bringing groceries over to our house, or she took me to the store to buy a whole bunch of groceries at once and got them back to our apartment in a car.

When she saw that my mother needed medical care, she took it upon herself to set up her appointments and get her to the doctors on time. Alyce set us free from those seedy, chain-smoking, hard-drinking taxi drivers. She also went to our appointments with us. She asked the doctors the questions we didn’t know how to ask. In fact she asked the questions we didn’t even know we should ask. Alyce got us better medical care because without her, the doctors could not get much information from us. They had to rely purely on what they could learn from their instruments.

In those days my mother was still having frequent asthma attacks. I had to rush her to the hospital at all odd hours. Alyce never failed us in those moments. I could call her at midnight, at two o’clock a.m., or at any time of the night, and she would come.

Farah goes on to describe all the many situations that she and her mother find themselves in and how Alyce helps them navigate those. Alyce is unafraid to confront what she has to, standing in the gap for them because they are so unable to do so for themselves.

Now, if you will bear with me for a moment longer, I promise this next part is worth it to those of you who are seriously interested in how this work relates to how we are called to be as followers of Christ and instruments of peace. Please examine this next excerpt:

When we came to America, my mother was thinking, “What if my daughter loses her religion and becomes a Christian here?” When I discarded my head scarf she panicked. In those early days, when I went out with Alyce, she stayed awake watching for me. She worried that this woman would take me to church and force me to convert, or that she would take me to unsuitable movies, to dances and parties–that she would corrupt me.

But Alyce was simply nourishing my spirit. She was the one person who took an interest in any progress I made, the one person to whom I could recount my day’s adventures. Everyone needs an audience of one.

Alyce does ask about my religion, and she listens to what I say and tries to understand. I am no scholar, but I tell her what I know about Islam. I tell her we believe that God-dear is unique and one-of-a-kind, a light that one sees with one’s heart, not one’s eyes.

Then she tells me what she believes, and I listen. I see nothing wrong with listening to each other’s beliefs. I want to know about her religion, just as she wants to know about mine. We can talk about our beliefs without pushing each other to feel wrong. This is one reason why I love her so much.

But there are many other reasons that I love her too. She’s funny. She makes me laugh. When I’m with her, I forget my problems. I don’t think of her as an American or a foreigner or this or that nationality. It never crosses my mind that she’s an adult woman, so much older than me. Different ages, different religions, different nationalities–none of that matters. She’s my friend. It’s as simple as that.

When I consider what I am doing in terms of sharing my faith, I see that when I choose to reach out to, and befriend one refugee, to love them in a Christ-like manner, my actions have an impact that moves throughout their lives into the lives of others through their testimony, and spreads into the world like ripples on a pond. Is it bold? Yes. Is it risky? Of course. Is it challenging? Very. Is it worth it? There are no words. I believe that LOVE wins in the end.

“The Other Side of the Sky” gave me a more thorough understanding of the work Jamie, Alyce, and others were already doing, helped me begin to understand my role, and most importantly, gave me the courage I needed to embrace my role. Please read the book! And thanks for bearing with me to the end of this lengthy post!