“Oh, I’m too dumb to be scared”

I
love conversations with strangers. You never know who you might meet,
and what you might discover. It’s like digging for treasure-
sometimes you find that old soda can, sometimes you find bones, and
sometimes you find the chest of jewels.

Today
was full of treasure. It began the way I think everyday should begin:
prayer that God would put people in our paths to love.

We
went out, with random words and pictures in our heads, that we
assumed were from God. The blue mosque, water, a crab, tapestry and
the color yellow. Weird.

First
stop: a store on the side of the street that had a yellow dress in
front that stuck out to me. We began talking to Solomon, a Nigerian
who worked at the store. Solomon is a christian, and we had a lovely
conversation about Rwanda, Nigeria, life in Turkey, and ways to pray
for him. While in the store, we saw tapestries and paintings of
water.

We
left to go to the mosque. We walked past a woman who was drawing the
Hagia Sofia (or the “red mosque” as we called it), her back to the blue mosque. I paid no attention to her,
excited to see what God wasd going to do at the blue mosque, but
Colby said, “Hey look! Bright
yellow“
and he pointed to the paper the woman was drawing on.

I
turned around, introduced myself to the woman who was drawing on
paper the color of a taxi cab, and began one of the more interesting
conversations of my life.

LaRita
is 85-years old, and from Jackson, Mississippi. She owns an art
gallery back home and has been in Istanbul, with her sister, for
about a month now. We tell her who we are, and she pulls out her
camera to film us. “Oh.
I just love hearing people’s stories. My memory isn’t good so I have
to record them. Where did you say you were from again?”
We tell her, for the fourth time, but this time into the camera.

What
Emily and I loved about Rita was that she changed the subject all the
time. “I
wasn’t in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, I was in Russia, but
my sister in law died there…. where did you say you were from
again?… You have eyes the color of turquoise, I’ve never seen
anything like them [zoom
camera in]…
they just don’t know how to do the call to prayer here, in Baghdad
and Morocco, it’s beautiful. But here, they don’t even know the right
tone…. where were you from again? “

She
launched into story after story about various things in her life. My
personal favorite: that time she volunteered to be a human shield in
Baghdad during “shock and awe.” She told her family she was
going to Jordan “to,
you know, see where Jesus’ was baptized, because I didn’t really
think that man would go to war. I told my family that I would go to
Baghdad if he did, but I said it real quietly, and they think I’m
crazy anyway so no one believed me.” When she was
certain that the war was happening, this 77-year old tenacious woman
jumped on a bus headed to Iraq, and volunteered to be a human shield.

“Weren’t
you scared?” Emily
asked her.

“Oh,
I’m too dumb to be scared”she said, quite seriously.

We
parted ways, onto our next divine encounter. While walking away- do
you ever get that feeling that a very important life lesson is about
to hit you?- well, that’s what I got.

“OH,
I’m too dumb to be scared…” I’ve lived in fear
for most of my life. I’ve gotten pretty good at facing my fears, but
it doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.

“I
would love to be too dumb to be scared,” I
thought.

Hmm…
what if it isn’t a lack of intelligence that Rita was talking about?
The words “Faith
like a child”popped into my head. Many times people think that
children are dumb, because they say the craziest things. Sure, kids
haven’t learned everything that I have learned, but, after doing
preschool and nannying for the last several years, I definitely have
a high appreciation for the simple wisdom that kids have. In
so many ways, they just get it.

At
training camp, we were told that we needed to go through a process of
“unlearning.” We need to unlearn the things that have warped our
hearts and crushed our identities, and I think that there is much
truth to that.

I
want to be dumb to the reasons why things can’t happen.
I want to walk in the belief that people can get raised from the
dead, because Jesus says so, regardless of what science has to say. I
want to walk in the confidence that healing will come from my touch,
because Jesus says so, regardless of what modern medicine has to say.
I want to walk in the authority that the troubles of this world are
insignificant, because Jesus says so, regardless of what the thorns
in my life have taught me.

I
want to be to dumb to being scared of the things that are dumb to be
scared of. I
have the authority of the kingdom of God in every breath, and yet I
let things of this world frighten me. That seems really dumb to me.