The Crazy Aunt

Dear Aunt Alice,

You probably know that you were/are the crazy aunt in the family. They all still talk about how you couldn’t figure out the clock radio, the molten fur coat you wore to your sister’s funeral and how you pinched pennies tighter than a vice grip. Some of them think that Africa got to you in the brain. I think that they might be on to something, but not because of any tropical illness.

What I’ve seen here is a mere fraction of what you saw and experienced. The poverty, the sickness, the influence of the witchdoctors and the tribal religions are still here, but not in the same way that they would have been when you came. How could anyone expect you to spend nine years in a place like this and return unchanged???

I’ve spent six months here and I find myself viewing the world differently. Losing the internet, having no running water at the drop of a hat, grading papers by candlelight or not having phone service aren’t quite as big of a deal either. I never worried about fashion, but I really can’t justify being too worried about it when I know that many people here literally have no shoes.

How could you live here that long and not come back a little “crazy”? But, it really depends on whose definition of crazy we use…I’m not so sure that you were crazy. I think your mind was broadened by a world no one else in your family could even imagine. I think your focus was on Christ, not money, on His kingdom and not your earthly pleasures.

Maybe I’m wrong. I never did meet you after all. But, I do know that I hope to be a “crazy” aunt. I want to be one whose live is so changed by Christ that it shows in everything I do.