The past few weeks have been crazy in our family. And things will remain crazy for some time to come as arrangements are made and news-updates sent hither and thither. A house that has to be sold, work interviews over skype, earthly possessions needing to be reduced. Really crazy.
I am the youngest of three children. We are all married and the other two both have children. Both of them, with their respective families, have now decided to move to new shores. They are emigrating. My sister and her family will be leaving within the next two months and my brother and his family will follow shortly after.
We have always been close. We love to go camping together and do family stuff. It is great fun to just come together for a Sunday lunch, as we really enjoy one another’s company. Our mother is still alive, and lives in another part of the country, by the sea, and the rest of us live close together in the middle of the country in Gauteng. Our dearest memories are going home, to the sea and Mother, all of us at the same time. This means some of us sleep in an outside room and some get the living room carpet and the couches. Its crazy, but it is fun and we go for at least three weeks over Christmas if we can. We dearly love being together.
With this background you can understand why I am taking the news of their leaving a bit hard. It has been a time for intense soul searching and asking deep questions, of ourselves and one another. It is true that for many people in South Africa the concept of having family-members living all around the globe has become a common occurrence. There are few white South Africans left who do not have some branch of their family living overseas. We ourselves already have some distant cousins living overseas.
The question is why? Why are so many people leaving for what they sincerely hope will be better quality of life? There are few people who still see Nelson Mandela's rainbow nation as a reality. Even to the rest of the world it is becoming clear that merely getting rid of the apartheid regime was perhaps not the whole solution. Perhaps the world was a little naïve in believing that handing the government to black people to rule themselves would be the beginning of a golden era.
Things in South Africa are difficult, and not for white people only. Crime affects all of us and no family, white or black or brown, has not been affected by it. People are in pain in so many different ways and it is totally impossible to describe, in this blogpost, the ways in which each and every people-group in this country feels betrayed by others. In our government and at all other levels of power corruption has become a byword. Even the jokes about it are not funny anymore. Laws are changing and we may soon lose our freedom of speech and even free enterprise may become another sacrifice. We know these things are happening, and that means we have decisions to make.
When we start looking for God's will, we need to understand that God works differently with each of us. To Abraham God said, take your family and belongings and go to a different country that I will show you. To Moses God said go back to your own people and take them away from Egypt. Others, such as Gideon, Deborah, Samson, God raised up to be deliverers of their own people. Yet another one of God's servants was Esther, who was taken out of her social class into the palace, because the Lord said He wanted her in a place of influence, for the sake of her own people, for their deliverance in such a time as this.
Many other examples exist, showing that there is no right and wrong way of obeying God. We cannot take one Biblical example and appropriate it for all. We need to hear what God says to each of us individually.
Needless to say, the past few weeks have been weeks of profound soul-searching and many questions. We each had to examine our own motives. For my siblings, their children come first and that is as it should be. As parents they are responsible for giving their offspring the best chances possible and those chances, for white children, might not be in South Africa anymore for the simple reason that white young people struggle to find jobs.
It seems clear that their calling is the same as Abraham's, to pack up their families and belongings and go to a new place. It may even happen, in years to come, that the children will be sent back to their own people, but that is not at issue right now.
So why am I staying behind? Why are my husband and I convinced that we should remain in South Africa? Are we just too dumb to see the dangers around us, or are we just too complacent and idle to pack up and begin our lives again, from scratch? We do not think so. In asking ourselves these questions over the past few weeks, as we have, indeed, many times through the course of our marriage, we are convinced that we already are where God wants us. As we do not have children our first consideration need not be their future. We believe God wants us here. We cannot go just because everyone else is going either. We need to be sure of where God wants us.
We sincerely believe we can make a difference here. We cannot change this country, we know that, but we can and do change the lives of those people who cross our paths. We understand these people because they are our people. We know the history of this country like no-one else, because it is our history. We understand the Church, because we know the triumphs and the shame of the church in its handling of the people of this country. I studied theology and pastoral counselling and ethics, because it addresses the needs that exist in this country.
My husband and I are not sticking our heads into a hole as an ostrich does, trying to convince ourselves that there are no problems in this country. We are not naïve and innocent. We know there are problems in this country and that some of these problems will get worse, but we also know that there are people here, good people, people who ask to be understood, who ask for compassion and encouragement. We can give that, because we understand and because God is using us to give peace, compassion, teaching and encouragement to people who are hurting on so many levels.
I understand why my family is leaving South Africa, and I believe it is God's will for them to go and do the best for a next generation. I believe that God is going with them and that they will become part of God's plan for this world, wherever they are. I also believe that we are staying behind, because that is God's will for us and we are part of God's plan for this country.
But it is not easy, not for a single one of us!!!
