Subjectivity

Well it is finished.  Our time in Uganda with YWAM is over.  (We’ve actually been gone from there since the end of June.)  But I feel the need to post one more time to help bring closure to this chapter of my life.  Call it therapy.

Some would say I didn’t ‘finish well’, others might disagree.  Subjectivity…

I think to those eight young men who were students of the vocational school, and such a big part of our lives there – arguably the reason I was there – I ‘finished well’.  But to some of our fellow staff, especially those in leadership, and probably even to Beth, I didn’t ‘finish well’.  To them, the ‘anger, bitterness, and resentment’ which I displayed were not signs of ‘finishing well’.

So what is this ‘finishing well’ I write of?  Several months prior to ending our time at Hopeland there was another couple there also from the west.  We had met them on our first visit, and this was their third extended stay, and they were very familiar with the challenges faced there.  They also recognized the struggles I was having dealing with some of those challenges.  Their advice was that no matter what, I needed to ‘finish well’.  Meaning mending broken fences, healing wounds, fixing broken relationships.  Forgiving.

Using those things as the parameters to measure my final months at Hopeland, I didn’t ‘finish well’.  At some point I will find a way to forgive, but forgive what?  Incompetence, ineptness, corruption, apathy, immorality…  Sin.  Sin, we all struggle with it, yet in the leadership at Hopeland these things seemed to be an acceptable way of doing business.  And I struggled with that, I couldn’t get past it, and I allowed that to keep me from ‘finishing well’.

Obviously my experience wasn’t what I expected or hoped for.  I was disappointed, the picture I had in my mind wasn’t reality.  People are human and will disappoint other people.  Put me on both sides of that.  I guess I just expected more from Christian leaders in a Christian organization.  Apparently what I experienced had a bigger (negative) impact on who I am than I want to admit.  Just ask those around me, the ones I’m ‘close to’.

So, I left Uganda somewhat more cynical, skeptical, and a little jaded. I realize there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people wherever you are.  ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ works, too.  But ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can be matters of subjectivity…