Playing it safe

-post by Brin

My children arrive home after an afternoon of Brazilian school around 6:00pm, and with about another 30 minutes of daylight, Ava and Mia usually run to the street to find their neighborhood friends who also just returned home. I pity the neighborhood boys. This group of girls, sometimes as many as a dozen of them, rule the street. Or at least the portion between my house and my neighbors house 20 meters away. They patrol their turf with scooters from my garage and then whatever else they might find around. Adults would call it trash or yard refuse, but they call it a Barbie car, a bowl of rice or whatever they need to fit into their imaginative play. That is the part I like. Josh and I have often been impressed with the ingenuity we see among Brazilians friends (at least for Altamira, I can’t speak for the rest of Brazil) and I see that same trait come out in the children as well. I like that my children do not need a drawer of dolls and their plethora of accessories to play house. They would probably like it, and they do have some, but they have learned to play and have fun with simple things. I see their minds at work when they make up a game with a jump rope and bucket of dried açai berries. I really like it for one thing because I am a homeschooling mom, and hey, they are doing some of my work for me.

So clearly I will need to admit, I have found my children playing with trash. This leads to conversations about what sort of garbage they should leave alone, such as tin cans, cigarette butts and diapers. And then which trash can be used for play (am I really saying this?). I would probably give a go to an empty butter container that has a string attached so it can be floated. Which leads to another conversation about what sort of water is ok to play with. Yes to buckets that you make yourself and no to the gray water run-off from the neighbor uphill, however alluring that greenish, odorous little river running next to the sidewalk is to my children. During heavy rainfall, the drainage ditches fill with a swift current of water. Once I let my girls out to play in the rain with their friends and when I checked on them they were splashing around in gray water. I bee-lined it to the group and busted out admonishments about the filth of the water and how prone they all were to diseases like diarrhea and skin infections. They stared at me wide-eyed as I confirmed what the neighborhood girls already knew, that the American mom is weird. I think my girls wonder why I must complicate their play to the degree I do. I consider it too, because sometimes it is a lot of work for me. It would be much easier if I just kept all the kids entertained within the confines of my clean, safe yard. And I do, often. But sometimes, they are just too noisy. And sometimes, they are rougher with some of my girls’ belongings than I have taught them to be, as in throwing a Bitty Baby doll into the mango tree. Sometimes, they are frustratingly disobedient and disrespectful. However, what it really comes down to is the value I see in my girls learning from their Brazilian counterparts and gaining some of those traits that I find so desirable. So yup, my kids get parasites more than your kids do. And I still do not know my neighbors well enough to let my children have more than 5 minutes of unsupervised play. Not that my neighbors aren’t friendly, it is just that so many people come and go I never am really sure who lives there. That requires close tabs and fragmented email writing. For now, I think the extra effort is worth it.


I love this picture of Ava as Captain Hook. The beauty of her play is that we were at the beach when she came up with that and so she got to play out her Peter Pan story on the boat… err ship, back home.

A new pile of sand was delivered to the neighbors today for an addition on their home. What a treat for my girls because if I do not know how long the sand has been on the street, I won’t let them play in it. It is anyone’s guess as to what critters are living in it and so it is cruelly off limits. Mia is in the foreground and happens to be playing with a dried and discarded turtle shell, the likely remnants of our neighbors’ lunch.


I am thinking about this because I am realizing what a contrast it is to my antibacterial and garbage-less neighborhood back in Illinois. If I was concerned when my kids ran barefoot across the street, it was probably for their tender soles on hot pavement, not the dog hookworm larvae or scorpions hiding the in the coconut tree trimmings. My children’s every day play comes with a risk that I simply didn’t experience in my old life. Thanks to things like childproof medicine bottles, construction codes for stair railings and that forbidding skeleton and crossbones warning on the bottles that scares away even a pre-reader. But with the risk comes the creativity, the freedom of play and the expanse of mind that might not happen otherwise or at least to that degree. And so sometimes, with a decent amount of assessment and prayer, I choose risk.


But I am just speaking of risk within the context of my parenting my girls, but I know it plays out in so many areas of my life. Do I risk inviting a 20 year old girl to live in my home for 6 months even though I met her once for maybe 5 minutes and I don’t really remember her? Should I launch a new idea that could fail as easily as it could succeed? Heaven forbid people might suspect I have the incompetence I actually do. Do I risk telling my friend about a dangerous tendency I see in her life, knowing she is sensitive and might put me at a distance? Keep in mind, it is not fun to make friends with a foreigner who speaks annoyingly slow and asks a lot of questions, so I would like to keep the friends I have, thank you very much. So how about you, do you risk telling your boss some prickly feedback knowing his thanks might not come until the day of his retirement party after you have been passed over for a promotion 3 times. Or what about the risk that comes in revealing sin, hurts and betrayals. Admitting “I am getting close to the breaking point” can be uncomfortable, but downright risky if we know someone is going to suggest we take a leave of absence from work, enter rehab, or go to counseling. Believe me, that sort of risk runs especially costly when you work under and minister with the very same people you meet for small group with later in the evening. Imagine it with me, you have fleeting doubts of God’s faithfulness and you want to share it but that means you will be sharing it with people who make decisions on your role within the ministry. See what I mean?


So why do we risk? We know we should. I think the same reason I do with my girls. We undertake risk for the prospect of maturity, opportunity of a wide-open future and the expanse of heart and soul. When are you more likely to see the unparalleled hand of God in your own life than when you make a chancy decision in faith of God’s provision? However that provision might look. If you want your life used by God that might mean having an unsafe conversation with someone. It might bring an awkward difference to your relationship but it also might make all the difference with their soul. If our finite minds could comprehend what we are missing by not venturing beyond what we know, the risk would be not risking. Zero risk can get you zero gain, God is going to do what He wants, with or without you.