Lisa McKay

The shadows and light of 2008

Lisa McKay — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:04:44 -0800

Woweee, 2008. What a year. I met Mike for the first time in January. I said yes when he asked me to marry him in May. I appeared on the cover of a magazine in (Christian Singles, ironically). I traveled to Australia, Kenya, Tanzania, Washington DC, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Colorado. I pondered on what hope means. I tried hard to work on writing. I mostly felt like I was failing on that front.

Deep breath.

And now it’s the last day of the year and CNN is filled with distressing news, as it usually is. Only it’s seemed grimmer and more distressing than usual these last few months – economic downturn, nightclub fires, wars in far away places that really aren’t so far away… It all stands in rather stark contrast to my own happiness at present as I prepare to get married on the 24th of January, and I’m not blind to the shadows.

I often think it might be easier to be blind to the shadows. But I know I wouldn’t choose that, even if I could.

So as I look forward to 2009 I’m anticipating the promise of great happiness, and working to embrace the great uncertainties that are coming with this life change. We do not know if Mike – a water and sanitation engineer – will be able to find a job in LA, much less one he likes, and so we don’t know if we’ll still be here this time next year. Long term we really have no idea where in the world we may end up.

But we are happy. And hopeful that these changes, like many of the changes that will come upon the world in the next year, will lead to good and to growth. So I’ll close the year with one of the passages we’ve chosen to read at our wedding.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

May you see the love of Christ this year – in places you expect, and in those you don’t.

Thanks for stopping by,
Lisa

Churches built over dungeons

Lisa McKay — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:24:13 -0700

Dear fellow CL readers,

Yes, I have been a bit out of touch. I just got back from several weeks in Kenya and Tanzania (where I got to spend several delightful days with fellow ConversantLife blogger Lisa Borden and her family). Now I'm back in California and catching my breath before heading to the east coast in ten days to host a conference in Virginia. Life during the fall is never boring, that's for sure.

Months ago now I was asked to submit several devotions for a book being published by Moody, Daily Seeds From Women Who Walk in Faith (Melinda Schmidt, Anita Lustrea, & Lori Neff). That book came out this month, and here is one of the devotions I contributed. Enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by, Lisa

Philippians 1:9 – “And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best, and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.”

A few months ago visited Elmina castle, in Ghana. A whitewashed fortress perched on the West African coast, Elmina was the Portuguese and Dutch trading post that brokered slaves until the late 1800’s. As I stood on what used to be the Governor’s balcony I looked down upon the barred stone cells that used to hold hundreds of female slaves awaiting the transport ships. At the Governor’s pleasure the women used to be driven from these holding pens into the courtyard below to mill around until he had made his daily choice.

When I looked up I saw a church in the middle of the castle, built directly over the dungeons that used to house the male slaves. Inside that church, words from Psalm 132:14 are inscribed above the door; “This is my resting place forever; Here I will dwell, for I have desired it.”

I stared, and imagined those times, and wanted to cry with rage and pain and shame. And fear. What modern blind spots or willful, apathetic, ignorance will goad future generations into similar paroxysms?

It is impossible to fully grasp, or care about, every single wrong that is happening in our world today. Yet this is my prayer, that we will not blithely be attending churches built over dungeons. And that each of us, in our own ways, will somehow be working to meet a need and right a wrong in a world that often feels too full of both.

Today, think about whether and how your love for God and others is abounding more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. What global or local wrongs – human trafficking, homelessness, a friend and neighbor enslaved by addiction or loneliness – is God bringing to your attention? Why?

Psychological Security: The Issue of NGO Staff Wellness

Lisa McKay — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:51:32 -0700

Below is an article I wrote earlier this year for InterAction's Monday Development's magazine. It was published by them in April, and I'm posting it here for you ConversantLifer's who are interested in aid work and the price tags that can come with that calling (the case study on conditions in Sudan and Chad looks at an assessment conducted by the Headington Institute late last year).

Thanks for stopping by,

lisa

Psychological Security: The Issue of NGO Staff Wellness

By Lisa McKay, Director of Training & Education Services, Headington Institute

Images of desperation and need in refugee camps are familiar to many: row upon row of tents covered with blue tarpaulins, people lining up to receive the food being measured out to them, children whose menacing bravado far outstrips their physical size casually handling AK-47s. They are scenes from Sudan, Chad and many other places. And in and behind these scenes are humanitarian workers trying to help meet those needs.

Meeting those needs as a humanitarian worker, however, means entertaining risk. In the last twenty years, the number of attacks on aid workers around the world has risen sharply, with the rise in acts of violence growing steeper in recent years. Nearly 80 percent of aid worker victims are nationals of the country in question, but international humanitarian workers are far from safe. International aid work has the fifth highest job-related death rate among U.S. civilian occupations, and it is the only one where the leading cause of death is intentional violence.

The last two decades have seen an increased acknowledgement of the risks. The issue of staff security has become a fairly standard operational consideration, and agencies have responded to security risks in a variety of ways – many by devoting increased time and resources to help ensure the safety of their staff though contingency planning, monitoring and training. In the wake of this culture shift around security has grown another level of awareness: aid workers not only face significant threats to their physical security, but also to their psychological security.

Those who choose a career in aid and development tend to be naturally resourceful, passionate and committed. Over time, however, humanitarian workers are cumulatively impacted by experiencing and risking traumatic events, living and working in fluid and insecure environments, witnessing suffering and need on a daily basis, and working with limited resources within an ever-quickening cycle of disaster response, recovery, and reconstruction. All of these and a host of other unusual stressors associated with aid work inevitably take a personal toll.

Ironically, it is perhaps partly because of the inherent resilience of many aid workers that an organizational culture of strength, independence and ‘machismo’ is not uncommon in humanitarian agencies. Historically the managerial message, often unspoken, has tended to be, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Until recently, little credence was given to the notion that humanitarian workers (and the work they are doing) would benefit in significant and lasting ways from psychological support services such as counseling or stress management training.

In the last several years, however, issues of staff well-being and psychological support have attracted an increasing amount of attention. Some research about the experiences of humanitarian workers has been published, and more studies are underway. Several conferences have explored related issues (e.g., The Headington Institute, People in Aid, and Antares sponsored conferences). Some guidelines on staff care have been proposed (the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, the Antares Guidelines of Good Practice, and the People in Aid Code of Good Practice). Most recently, InterAction has undertaken a comprehensive process designed to support humanitarian workers in Darfur and Eastern Chad and the organization will also likely spearhead a collaborative process to outline minimum standards for staff care.

It does seem that a shift around issues of staff wellness is underway – one driven by both practical and moral imperatives.

Practically, many humanitarian organizations are concerned about high levels of burnout and staff turnover, and the impact on the design, implementation, effectiveness and longevity of relief and development programs. Both common sense and research suggest that staff who feel well-prepared and supported will stay longer with their organizations, and in the broader humanitarian field. At its core, this means that the specialized knowledge and invaluable practical experience they have gained at some personal cost will continue to benefit the organization and, ultimately, program beneficiaries.

Organizations in the business of helping others should set a high standard in how they care for and support their own staff – even in the midst of crises. At this moment humanitarian workers from all over the world are working in crises in Darfur, Chad and elsewhere. For most of them, however, this is not a one-act play. Humanitarian workers confront disaster on a regular basis as they move from crisis to crisis. It seems a worthwhile investment to help make sure that they are able – not just physically but psychologically by strengthening policy and practice around staff support and well-being and helping humanitarian workers understand stress and trauma and improve their coping skills. Then, the next time a crisis like Darfur unfolds experienced staff will still be there to help others.

Case Study: NGO staff well-being in the Darfur region of Sudan and Eastern Chad*

In the spring of 2007 the Director of the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance – OFDA, Ky Luu, travelled to Sudan. During his visit he was approached by several aid workers who expressed a desire for better support and assistance in managing stress. Following this trip, he approached InterAction and voiced his concern about staff care and wellness in the region.

There are at least 12,000 humanitarian workers in Darfur. It is probably the largest and most challenging complex emergency situation in the world at present. Humanitarian workers in Darfur run a significant risk of being attacked or assaulted, vehicle hijacked, or kidnapped. At least seven were killed in October 2007 alone.

In October and November 2007 InterAction commissioned the Headington Institute to assess the adequacy of policies and programs to support humanitarian workers and mitigate stress for staff in Darfur and Eastern Chad. Institute staff surveyed and interviewed 80 staff from 10 organizations. Key findings included:

· More than half of the staff surveyed reported feeling under more physical and emotional stress than was normal for them.

· The three most frequently cited sources of stress were: witnessing or hearing stories of personal tragedy, suffering and devastation; being separated from family and friends; and heavy workload.

· While there is a growing awareness of the need for policies and programs to support humanitarian staff in high stress situations, policies and programs vary widely across organizations. Relatively few agencies have clearly articulated a commitment to staff well-being in policy documents or outlined proactive plans for staff support.

Key over-arching issues related to staff support included:

· The critical role of skilled managers in effective staff support;

· The equity of policies and programs as applied to national and international staff;

· The availability of funding and other resources for staff support purposes; and

· The complexity of the situations in Sudan and Chad, and the challenge this poses to designing and implementing relevant and appropriate policies and programs from headquarters.

The assessment report outlined specific findings and recommendations concerning staff selection, preparation and orientation, and support during and after assignments. Recommendations to InterAction regarding improved policy and practice within the broader humanitarian community included:

· Supporting a series of interagency workshops on stress and trauma management and self-care to promote resilience and hardiness for staff based in Sudan and Chad.

· Supporting a series of interagency workshops on management skills for crises environments, including communication and conflict management.

· Overseeing a process to identify, disseminate and implement minimum standards for staff care.

Disaster, conflict, hymns, and hope...

Lisa McKay — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:31:10 -0700

I'm never quite sure what will happen when I walk into the office on any given day. Tuesday there was a very... enlivening... earthquake. Earthquakes, I learned, are a more effective stimulant than caffeine!

Yesterday I spent a big chunk of time planning for a trip to Kenya and Tanzania in October. This, unfortunately, falls two weeks after my fiancee moves from Papua New Guinea to LA. We thought it would be nice to spend more than the six weeks we have so far logged in the same city getting to know each other face to face before we get married next January. The same city thing will also help with pre-marital counseling, although if we make more than half of the 10 classes together I'll be impressed. As it stands I'm going to have to attend the first two alone in September before he arrives, he'll have to cover for me for two weeks in October... and I haven't told him yet that it's likely that I will have to go to Washington DC and South Africa in November.

Today we got a call from a Canadian Broadcasting Company wanting to interview one of our staff members about the impact on other passengers of witnessing a rather horrible crime (that I will not detail here, given it's one of the few articles on CNN recently that's been able to turn my stomach) on a Greyhound bus overnight.

After that I settled down to think about our annual report for Headington. Yes, I realize that sounds boring... but it wasn't. It's always a bit of a challenge for us here at the Headington Institute to describe what we do, and why it's needed.

One of the best ways I can think of it to do that is to help educate people about what's going on around the world - especially when it comes to disasters and conflict. Because where there are disasters and conflict, there are humanitarian workers helping those most in need. And those humanitarian workers - they're the one's we're trying to help. Help them stay sane so they can do their jobs now. Help them do their jobs now in ways that mean they can still be doing them in five years (a lifetime in an aid workers career) if they want to.

So this morning I was researching how to describe what has been happening in the world in the last year and a half. I won't reproduce the text of the entire introduction of our annual report here yet, but I will share two paragraphs from early on, just because I found the statistics fascinating. Fascinating, and sobering.

"A German insurance company, Munich Re, which maintains one of the world’s three largest databases on disaster, reported 960 natural disasters in 2007 – the highest number ever recorded in a single year. Asia was hardest hit. Eight of the worst 10 disasters in 2007 struck Asia. After the earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, that trend looks set to continue in 2008.

While Asia weathered more than its share of natural disasters, Africa has been fighting a different foe. ReliefWeb reports that the spread of conflict makes Africa’s people the most threatened in the world. Minority Rights Group International’s 2008 annual report identifies peoples or groups that are most under threat of genocide, mass killing, or other systematic violent repression. More than half of the top twenty countries on the list are in Africa – Somalia, Sudan, DRC, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Chad, Central African Republic, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda, Angola, and Burundi. Zimbabwe just misses the top twenty and Kenya, a state widely considered to be stable, rose precipitously in the rankings this year after violence followed disputed elections in December 2007..."

So there you go - a brief snapshot. Asia's getting the short end of the stick when it comes to natural disasters. And Africa, well, in Africa that proverbial stick is often being put to brutal use - especially against those least able to defend themselves.I've been listening to hymns at work today, as I often do at the moment. More and more in recent years I've come to appreciate hymns. In a mere couple of stanza's I feel like so many of them manage to look, unflinching, at the mess we are all in and yet, at the same time, hold out hope. That sort of balance is... well, tricky. I admire anyone who can pull that off. Especially if you can then write about it compellingly. And not only that, come to think of it, but capture it in three brief verses (as a novelist I'm a bit in awe of that brevity!). So I'll let a hymn writer finish for me today. Many of you will recognize this line... "In Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song."Amen.

First drafts, weddings, and Rilke

Lisa McKay — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:34:24 -0700

I’ve been writing this last couple of weeks. Not just putting down a hundred words here or there, but sitting here for hours at a time. Hours when I don’t feel like sitting here. Hours when I’m not sure what needs to be written next. Hours when I rather desperately want to be... anywhere else, really. I’m aiming for five thousand words a weekend which, for me, is an extraordinarily ambitious goal that I couldn’t even hope to meet if my mother wasn’t rather busy in Australia at the moment planning my wedding.

Unreasonably, though, she has refused to make every decision. Yesterday we had a conversation that went like this:

"But muuuuum. You asked me last week what you could do to help me with this next book, and I said you were already doing the best thing possible by planning the wedding."

"That might be," she said sternly, "but I am NOT making the final decision on catering all by myself. You talk to Mike about this... Lisa... are you paying attention? Pay attention. Write this down. You talk to Mike about this and email me back and tell me what you want. Did you write that down?"

“I can’t talk to Mike,” I sulked. “Mike’s in Vanuatu doing fieldwork. I don’t know if he’s going to have email during the next two weeks. Or cell phone reception.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Mum said, unmoved. “Did you write it down? I’m not going to do anything else on this until I hear from you again.”

I did write it down, or I wouldn’t have remembered it long enough to write about it now. First drafting is a weird, weird place. The story takes over every spare corner of your mind, and some corners that aren’t spare. I’m having a hard time keeping track of the rest of my life at the moment. Thank the good Lord for mothers who were born event planners.

So while I was thinking about fictional characters in Thailand this weekend instead of catering, I spent some time dwelling on these words from Rilke which have found their way into the first draft. First drafts being what they are, goodness knows if they’ll stay there, so I thought I’d share them now so you can think on them too should you be so inclined:

“Oh, not because happiness exists,

that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

…Ah, but what can we take along

into that other realm? Not the art of looking

which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.

The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,

and the long experience of love, just what is wholly –

unsayable.”

Thanks for stopping by,

lisa

Unexpected Joy

Lisa McKay — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:48:05 -0700

I’ve been in love with reading since before I can remember. Our family photo albums are peppered with photos of me curled up with books – in huts in Bangladesh, on trains in Europe, in the backseat of our car in Zimbabwe. Recently my parents went on holiday to Northern Australia, and I got a postcard from them not of Ayers Rock or Kakadu, but of a little girl propped up against the side of a sleeping calf, reading.

I can’t remember my parents reading to us before bed, although they swear they did – sweet tales about poky puppies and a confused baby bird looking for it’s mother. No, my earliest memories of reading are solitary, sweaty, ones. They are of lying on the cool marble floor of our house in Dhaka. An overhead fan gently stirred the dense heat while I chipped away at frozen applesauce in a small plastic container, book in hand. But it’s from around nine, when we moved from Bangladesh to the States, that my memories of books, just like childhood itself, become clearer.

Of all the moves I’ve made in my life, this was one of the most traumatic. Abruptly encountering the world of the very wealthy after two years of living cheek by jowl with the world of the very poor, I discovered that I didn’t fit readily into either world. My fourth grade classmates in Maryland had no framework for understanding where I had been for the last two years – what it was like to ride to church in a rickshaw pulled by a skinny man on a bicycle, to make a game out of pulling three-inch-long cockroaches out of the sink drain while brushing your teeth at night, or to gaze from the windows of your school bus at other children picking through the corner garbage dumps.

I, in turn, lacked the inclination to rapidly absorb and adopt the rules of this new world – a world where your grasp on pre-teen fashion, pop-culture, and boys all mattered terribly. Possibly I could have compensated for my almost total lack of knowledge in these key areas with lashings of gregarious charm, but at nine I lacked that too. I was not what you would call a sunny child.

So I read instead. I read desperately.

I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. One of the few good things I could see about living in the States was the ready availability of books. Some weekends Mum and Dad would take us to the local library’s used book sale. Books were a quarter each. I had a cardboard box and carte blanche. On those Saturday mornings I was in heaven.

Like many kids, I suspect, I was drawn to stories of outsiders, or children persevering against all odds in the face of hardship. I devoured all of C.S. Lewis’ stories of Narnia and adored the novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially the ones featuring little girls who were raised in India before being exiled to face great hardship in Britain. But I also strayed into more adult territory. I trolled our bookshelves and the bookshelves of family friends, and those bookshelves were goldmines for stories about everything from religious persecution in Russia, to murder, to sepoy uprisings, child brides and honor killing in India.

“It would be nice,” my father commented dryly upon reading the first draft of this essay, “if you could manage not to make it sound like our personal library was stocked exclusively with troubling filth.”

“Dad,” I patiently explained, “that’s why I used the goldmine analogy. You don’t just stumble across gold, you have to dig for it. I worked really hard to find that stuff in amongst all the boring family-friendly fare.”

Mum and dad didn’t know everything I got into, of course. After they caught me reading a tale set largely in a brothel in South Africa and confiscated it, I got stealthier with censorable material. I also found their hiding place – behind the pile of sweaters on the top shelf of the wardrobe – and read the rest of that particular book in chunks during times they were both out of the house.

In retrospect, even at eleven I wasn’t reading largely for pleasant diversion, for fun, for the literary equivalent of eating ice cream in the middle of the day. I was extreme reading – pushing boundaries, looking to be shocked, scared, thrilled, and taught. I was reading to try and figure out how to make sense of pain.

It is entirely possible that had we remained in Australia throughout my childhood I would still have spent the majority of these years feeling isolated and misunderstood. After all, in the midst of our mobility I never doubted my parent’s love for me or for each other yet this did not forestall an essential loneliness that was very deeply felt. I suspect I would still have grown into someone who feels compelled to explore the juxtaposition of shadow and light, who is drawn to discover what lies in the dark of life and of ourselves. But I also suspect that the shocking extremes presented by life in Bangladesh and America propelled me down this path earlier, and farther, than I may naturally have ventured.

It was largely books that were my early companions on this journey - stories of poverty and struggle, injustice and abuse, violence and debauchery, yes. But they were also threaded through with honor and courage, sacrifice and discipline, character and hope.

Most people seem to view “real life” as the gold standard by which to interpret stories, but I don’t think that does novels justice. For me, at least, the relationship between the worlds of real and fiction was reciprocal. These books named emotions, pointed to virtue and vice, and led me into a deeper understanding of things I had already witnessed and experienced in life. They also let me try on, like a child playing dress-up, experiences and notions new to me. They acted as maps, mirrors, and magnifying glasses.

In all those years of reading, however, I had never put down a book, no matter how much I loved it, and thought to write to the author to thank them for what they had given me.

Which is probably why I never expected to get letters about my book.

You spend years writing – going over every word again, and again, and again. You hear the title the publishers have chosen and feel an inner ring of “yes”. You reverberate for days with the shock of seeing something that has existed fully formed in your mind through someone else’s eyes in the cover art they have designed to clothe your story. Then one day you get a box from the publisher, and you open it, and you pick up a copy of your own book for first time…

These were all incandescent but largely solitary moments. And after that, when the book actually came out, it felt as if it was out there doing it’s own thing without me – roosting on bookstore shelves and in libraries, cruising around town, flying across the country.

After so much nurturing I was left alone in my empty nest and I felt a bit bereft, frankly.

And then I began hearing things.

It started with friends.

One wrote from the heart about reading the book during a trip to the town where he had once lived in far North Queensland – a place he had not visited for five years, not since the traumatic death of a close friend there.

“It was somehow nice,” he wrote, “to have these guys trekking through the jungle dealing with their experiences whilst I was getting flashbacks.”

A friend here in California told me he had taken the book with him when he’d returned to Vietnam for the first time since he’d fled as a refugee in 1978. When he left that time, Hai reported, he’d been a frightened seven-year-old on a small, rickety, fishing boat headed for Thailand. As they’d neared land a Thai police boat stopped them and instructed them to turn around and sail back to Vietnam.

“We had to sink the boat and swim ashore so they wouldn’t send us back. Then they picked us up and took us off to prison,” Hai said. “I was reading your book and it all came back. I know what it is to set out at night on a small boat and not know whether you’ll live. They went through what I went through.”

Then letters started filtering into my website mailbox. Total strangers – the ones who had accompanied the book in its meanderings without me – were writing to let me know about their journeys together.

They’ve written of how reading the book brought back their own experiences of short-term mission trips, of how grateful they were for an account of the difficulties involved in returning home after life-altering experiences, of how they came away challenged to learn more about what is going on in Indonesia and around the world. They’ve written demanding to know how the relationships in the story play out. They’ve written just to admonish me to write faster. One letter that made me laugh out loud started with, “Lisa. I have just two words for you – HURRY UP! I am a quarter of the way through your book and I am already hitting your website looking for a new one.”

There have been a handful of these letters that have taken my breath away and left me profoundly overwhelmed. Many of these came from those who themselves survived the conflict my characters found themselves caught up in. One woman who lived in Ambon for many years and must remain unnamed, wrote:

“Your book really captured the gut-wrenching, tragic stuff that that conflict in the Maluku islands was all about. I must say it was a bit of an emotional ride to experience Cori's journey as I read it. My colleague just read it, and her word was, “raw”. We and basically everyone we knew there, Indonesian and ex-pat, lost our homes, and some lost much, much, more.

I'm very thankful for the healing from the wounds caused by hearing so many stories of human tragedy and loss, but found myself realizing anew that all that we heard and experienced has changed how we see things… Obviously, this conflict affected us all in many ways, but by God’s grace, we’ve found new ‘normals’, and can relate to the suffering in our world that we had no idea about prior to this.”

These letters have been many things – not least encouraging and energizing. But most of all I think, they have been humbling.

It amazes me to think that “Hands” has called out to others – that it has stirred memories, given voice to struggles and questions, and kept people company as they reflected on how they have changed as a result of pivotal times of suffering and struggle in their own lives.

I didn’t write it hoping for that, not consciously. I wrote out of many of the compulsions that drove me to read as a lonely child. I was reaching for a private understanding. I was plumbing the depths of things that scare me. I was trying to figure out how to make sense of pain. And I was trying to follow through on a promise I made at eighteen.

What specific designs God may have on our lives, and how on earth we figure out what they might be, is a mystery that’s been pondered at length by minds far more versatile than mine. Personally I don’t think God minded overmuch whether I studied psychology or medicine in 1995, whether I moved to Croatia or Kazakstan in 2001, or whether I ate raison bran or cherry strudel for breakfast yesterday. This book is one of only a handful of things in my life I dare use the word “called” in reference too, and when I made that decision at eighteen and even while I was writing it I had little firm idea why I might feel that way. I had no training or experience in writing. I had never had a single thing published. And I had so little idea what I was doing on my first draft that I wrote seventy thousand words too many and didn’t grasp until much later how unusual it was to be offered a contract off an unsolicited submission by the first publisher I queried.

Sometimes, many times perhaps, we may feel that abstract soul-tug of “calling” and never get a glimpse of reason or impact. So these echoes that come to me now in the form of comments and letters, they have been an unexpected joy.

They remind me of all I love best about reading, and gift me awe that I am so blessed to have been granted privilege to feed in some small way into other’s essential dialogue between fiction and real, between us and God, between what is story and what is remembered, and between what has been and what will yet be.

Thank you.

shock and awe in love...

Lisa McKay — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:07:43 -0700

I’d always wondered how someone is caught by surprise by a marriage proposal in this day and age. I mean, if you’re in a solid relationship, you’re both good communicators, it feels right, it feels easy… surely you’d have some idea if one party in that equation were scheming to pop the question, right? I mean, how dumb are people?

So, yeah, apparently I’m dumb.

Well, it’s one possibility. Another possibility is that Mike is crazy.

Or Mike could be both dumb and crazy. Or I could be. Or maybe we both are.

I’m still undecided and after the last week they’re all plausible options as far as I can see.

So let’s set the scene here – because setting the scene is a valuable life skill that should be exercised during the shaping of all excellent stories and, the last week suggests, quite possibly in advance of all major life-altering decisions.

I’ll bypass how Mike and I met. That’s another story for another day. Suffice to say we met in January in Brisbane airport for the first time after several months of emails bouncing back and forth between Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Los Angeles, Kenya, Ghana and Washington DC. He walked out of immigration. We smiled nervously at each other as we exchanged our first words. And then I promptly took him home and dropped him into the middle of “McKay family holiday” – which meant parents, siblings, eight month old niece, brother’s new fiancée, and approximately ten friends who cycled in and out of the house while we were there. And what were Mike and I doing in the midst of that, you might ask? Well, chatting lots and figuring out if we were going to take a chance on an against-the-odds long distance relationship, clearly.

Two weeks later we parted company in Melbourne airport. Mike headed back to PNG, I headed back to LA, and we set about figuring out a relationship across an 18-hour time zone difference when one of us lived in a town where there’s only one, unreliable, high-speed internet connection point. Despite some communication challenges that were exacerbated by intermittent electricity in PNG and Mike’s propensity to spend weeks at a time in the bush with no cell phone reception at all, we persevered. By April we’d begun discussing when between August and December Mike would leave the field and move to LA.

Fast forward to May. Mike was coming back to the US for a month and I was thinking something along the lines of… We’ve decided to put off talking about when Mike’s going to leave PNG until the end of May, so we’re all set to have a lovely, relaxed, fun month. A month full of plenty of talking, and all those normal date things that are pretty hard to replicate over skype –movies, candlelit dinners, picnic blankets, strawberries, wine, hand holding…

Meanwhile – from what I’ve managed to piece together in the midst of all the discombobulation of the last couple of days – Mike was thinking something along the lines of… We’re going to talk about when I’m leaving the field at the end of May. Big decision, that one. Major life implications. Lisa might like some assurance of where we’re heading before then, and I’ve been sure for a while of where we’re headed, so looks like May’s the time to pop the question…

Fast forward to Saturday night, the end of Mike’s first week in LA. Picture a picnic blanket, a grassy quiet hill, my favorite white wine, macadamia nuts, cheese and crackers, sunset and the Pacific Ocean.

“Ah, Australia,” we said as we toasted the Pacific, looking out to sea.

“It’s just over there,” I said fondly, pointing.

“Well,” Mike said diplomatically, “you could get to Australia that way… if you wanted to go through Ecuador first.”

He handed me a strawberry. “So,” he teased, “we have this whole list of topics to talk about that we haven’t tackled over skype. What weighty topic do you want to discuss tonight?”

Somewhat tired, I opted for the easy option. “You pick,” I said, smiling magnanimously.

“I don’t want to talk about anything on the list tonight,” Mike said.

“Oh, okay,” I said, thinking that Mike must have finally had his fill of intensity and was after light and fluffy conversation. “Pick something else then, any topic.”

“Any topic? Any topic it all? Do you realize the power you’ve given me?”

“Use it wisely,” I said, lazily wondering where he was going to go with it.

And that was when he got on his knees in front of me and asked whether I would marry him.

As best as I can remember, before total shock set in three seconds later, I thought, WHAT???? Lisa, focus! You’ve just been asked a yes or no question. The answer is absolutely, categorically, not a no. So, uh, it must be… yes?

So that’s what I said. Or, probably more accurately, squeaked.

There are a couple of things I do remember clearly about the rest of the evening. The restaurant where Mike and I met my parents later was gorgeous, and the food incredible. I took the fact that I was actually able to eat as a good sign (although worryingly, and completely out of character, I wasn’t able to finish desert). But as they filled me in on the backstory – Mike’s weeks of planning and data gathering via email, and how he and Mum and Dad talked all morning on Friday while I was at work getting mock-kidnapped by drunken militia at a checkpoint in Uzbekistan during a security training exercise… I started to get progressively more overwhelmed.

“What did you talk about on Friday?” I remember asking them.

“I asked for their blessing, and their concerns,” Mike said. “It was all very natural, comfortable. It was great.”

“I did ask whether he thought you’d say yes,” Dad said.

That counted as “comfortable” and “great”? I sneaked a look at Mike. He seemed unfazed.

“I said absolutely,” Mike said.

“I said I wasn’t so sure,” Dad said.

“Then your parents spent the rest of the morning telling me my proposal plan wasn’t credible enough and we needed to tweak it to come up with something that was absolutely credible,” Mike said. “You’re plenty smart and I really didn’t want you to figure it out and ruin the story. Because I know that you need stories.”

I bit my lip.

“Mike, you just proposed to me after we’ve spent three weeks, total, in the same country. I really don’t think story was ever going to be our biggest problem.”

After dinner Mike and I talked until almost 2am. By then a somewhat sobered Mike had begun to realize how far off our respective timelines had been, and I’d regrouped enough to say I wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet and that I needed some time. The answer, I said, was both “yes and wait”. I didn’t know whether that meant for two days, two weeks, two months, or two years. But one thing I did know in the midst of this out-of-body-experience was that I didn’t want to start on a long list of “people to tell” and risk repeated conversations along the lines of…

Lisa: “Mike and I are engaged.”

Good friend #23 (looking totally stunned): “Oh my WORD! Isn’t that a bit fast?”

Lisa: “Uh, yeah, I’m a bit thrown by that myself. I didn’t think we’d be addressing this question QUITE yet.”

Good friend #23 (delicately): “Are you sure you know what you doing?”

Lisa (edging towards hysteria): “Yeah, I think so. I really think I do. All my instincts say yes. But then I came home this afternoon and he was cleaning my kitchen and playing Shakira and I realized that I didn’t know he likes Shakira and I don’t know what music is on his iPod and is it safe to agree to marry someone when you don’t know what music is on someone’s iPod? Is it?? Huh???? HUH????”

Good friend #23: “Um…”

So at 2 AM after a rather exhausting conversation - the kind of conversation that anyone would want to have on the night they get engaged - I did something I’ve never done before.

I took a valium.

Well it didn’t take me two years, two months, or two weeks to regroup – at least partially – and when Mike asked me that question all over again on Tuesday night this week I was able to hang onto coherence and say yes without squeaking (and without the need to resort to valium afterwards). We’re celebrating this as progress.

Oh, and we’re also celebrating the fact that we’re engaged.

And that I am now able to anticipate conversations along the lines of…

Lisa: “Mike and I are engaged.”

Good friend #23 (looking totally stunned): “Oh my WORD! Isn’t that a bit fast?”

Lisa: “Don’t forget we’ve been getting to know each other since October last year. And, anyway, fast is all relative according to Einstein.”

Good friend #23 (delicately): “Are you sure you know what you doing?”

Lisa: “I never get 100% sure about anything in life; I don’t think it’s in my nature. But I’m more sure of this than any other major decision I’ve made. Definitely a statistically significant result on the surety scale.”

So as for crazy, dumb, or some combination of and/or in relation to Mike and me… I’m pretty sure neither of us is actually dumb even though I regularly do a vintage imitation. Crazy, however, is not as easy to dismiss, so I’ll just completely blame-shift on this front and posit a classical and elegant formula that goes: Mike is crazy.

But then again, life would be very sad, lonely, and boring without some crazy now and then, right?

I think so.

Yes.

I do.

Pedophiles and proselytizing

Lisa McKay — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:09:29 -0700

The second half of the interview I did for Canadian public television in Vancouver last year took an unexpected turn. It veered away from the psychological impact of aid work and touched on pedophiles and proselytizing. Didn't think the two topics naturally went together? Neither did I - until questioned on live national television :). Anyway, here's the six minute clip...

The psychological impact of aid work - interview part I

Lisa McKay — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:28:14 -0700

Last December I went up to Vancouver to be interviewed by The Standard on Canadian public television about work and writing. They've recently started posting these interviews online, and here's part one of my 15 minute interview. It's a seven and a half minute clip that looks ever-so-briefly at the psychological impact of aid work on humanitarian workers and some of what the Headington Institute does.

Cheers,

Lisa

The power of presence

Lisa McKay — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:48:52 -0700

On Monday I was up at 5am. This was partly because my body was convinced I was still in Michigan (where it had woken up on Sunday) instead of in California. And partly because I needed to be at work at 6am.

In my opinion 6am is practically an obscene hour of the morning. It’s an hour when no one should have to be at work unless it’s for an exceptionally good cause. But although I grumbled a bit to myself as I left the house in the dark, I did have to admit it was for an exceptionally good cause.

How it all came about is a long story that starts in January as I was planning for workshops in Kenya. We’re trying a new thing this year at the Headington Institute called regional training - the idea being that we run free workshops on understanding and coping with stress and trauma for humanitarian workers in different cities around the world. In January we were well into organizing our first regional training for humanitarian workers in Kenya.

Regional training is simple, really. You pick a city. You estimate how many people you think might show up to these free workshops. You book a venue, organize catering, and review your budget. You pull together a team of experienced trainers and counselors. You co-ordinate everyone’s dates, book air tickets, get visas, review the security situation in the destination city, remember to pick up malaria medication, plan the workshops, backup presentation materials, and organize handouts. Oh, and check and double check which day your flight leaves (believe it or not that one has almost derailed me more than once).

Okay, when I look at all of that maybe it’s not quite so simple. Maybe it’s more like organizing a wedding. In a foreign country. When you don’t know how many people will be attending the reception. And when everyone who does show up is bound to be pretty stressed out.

So back to Kenya. This was where I was supposed to be heading in March. It was all planned. We’d estimated that about thirty people might show up and we’d made all the bookings. I’d even organized to take a couple of days after the workshops and travel down to Tanzania to spend a couple of days with fellow Conversant Life blogger Lisa Borden, who I know from Pasadena. I was psyched and things were on track.

I was leaving in January for almost a month but my amazing project manager, Bree, was going to take care of sending out the fliers and organizing the registrations. In the flier we asked people who were interested in attending the free training to send us a 200 word statement of interest about why they felt they’d benefit from attending the workshops. These, I hoped, would help me make sure the training I planned would meet as many of the needs as possible of the approximately 30 people we estimated would turn up.

So I went on a much needed holiday. Bree sent out the fliers. And instead of thirty registrations, within the first forty eight hours after we sent the announcement out we got flooded with emails from well over a hundred humanitarian workers and mental health professionals who wanted to attend the workshops. And their statements of interest… gut wrenching.

At the same time things were going from bad to worse in Kenya. I knew when I went on holiday that things were unstable. I’d moved forward anyway, reasoning that the violence would probably have simmered down by March. But by the time I returned to the office in February it was clear that the prudent course of action would be to postpone these workshops. The chances of someone getting hurt, or worse, when we had a hundred people who would have had to travel around Nairobi to reach the training… Given that we can still go later this year, it didn’t seem worth the risk.

So we postponed, which we hated to have to do when the need there is so clearly acute. And we started thinking about what we could do in the meantime to help support these hundred people who’d wanted so much to attend the workshops. One thing we decided to do was offer some free phone counseling to any registrant who wanted to take us up on that. Another was to organize several hour-long webinars (virtual online trainings) on the topic of resilience in the face of trauma. It was one of these webinars I was trundling off to co-facilitate at 6am on Monday morning.

The session this past Monday was designed for other mental health professionals, and we had several counselors who are currently working with kids living in slum areas. Kids who have seen and heard awful, awful, things in the last four months. “It’s overwhelming to know what violence and poverty can do to children’s lives,” one counselor said. “My passion is about helping advocate for children so they are better served and more protected. So when the political situation means that stray bullets from the police have killed two of our students, I feel powerless.”

We ended up talking a lot on Monday about this issue of feeling overwhelmed and powerless and what can anchor us in the face of that. In the face of violence, and injustice, and the fragility of life in a place where people are regularly being killed in the streets what do we have to offer as helpers? And what weapons do we really have to fight against this feeling of powerlessness? These are important question to ponder, because research on “learned helplessness” suggests that when we become mute or frozen for too long in the face of powerlessness, we tend to end up rather hopelessly traumatized.

One person talked of the key role their faith has played in helping anchor them. “I have found that because I can release my powerlessness to God there is a sense of relief. I feel so for friends who do not have faith and can only release the powerlessness into anger.”

“Being there is so critical, even if you don’t know what to say,” someone else said. “Your mere presence is hope. The fact that you are alive, and walking, and talking, and present – that sends the message that there is life and hope somewhere, that a different kind of future is possible. Jesus walked among the people. We tend to focus only on the miracles that were performed, but he must have spent most of his time walking among the people, and I think that, in itself, brought hope.”

This theme of the power of presence is what stuck with me long after we’d wrapped up our discussion. Presence can seem like such a small offering. More than once I’ve sat on a plane myself wondering what I can possibly say in the workshops I’m going to give that will make it worth the time, the money, the energy and the risk to get there. But I was reminded again on Monday of times when the presence of other people in my life has been that anchor. I might not now be able to recall even what they said, but I do remember their presence. Their loving, caring, understanding presence, and the message that sent that I was not alone.

This is what the counselors we had the privilege of talking to in Kenya are trying to do for children in the slums of Nairobi right now. And what we at the Headington Institute, imperfectly and across many miles and time zones, are trying to do for them. This is what makes a 6am start worth it. The chance that you might, by showing up and through the power of presence if nothing else, sow some seeds of hope in fields of violence and despair.