Lessons Learned on a Family Vacation

My dear friend, Dr. Jim Walton shares insights from his recent family vacation to Guatemala in the post below. He and his wife, Dr. Rhonda Walton, and their four sons spent time recently in Central America. Jim serves the Baylor Health Care System as Chief Health Equity Officer and has been instrumental in the expansion of our Community Health Services here at CDM, as well as in the creation of Project Access Dallas, a growing and elaborate physician referral network. He also guides our innovative Institute for Faith Health Research Dallas.

What he writes here is eye-opening and challenging.
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I grabbed the USA Today as we boarded the airplane for the second leg of our journey from Miami to Guatemala City. As I settled into my seat, I read a quote from the newly elected President of Mexico, stating that if he could advise the immigration-concerned U.S. Congress, he would suggest they redirect every dollar that might be spent on erecting a concrete barrier between the two countries and instead invest them in economic development activities in Mexico to see a greater impact on stemming the immigration tide.

As we taxied for takeoff, I thought about his comment and realized that it made sense to my way of thinking, but it would be provocative to many concerned U.S. citizens. I have been mulling these thoughts over in my mind over the last few days, while vacationing in Guatemala.

I realized that the America I know and love has become preoccupied with ideological debates dividing us between the labels of "conservative" and "liberal" or "red" vs. "blue." Maybe it is the new perspective that a foreign land and its people provide, but I wonder if it more relates to the type of vacation we have embarked upon.

My family and I came to Guatemala to work with a small orphanage of "special needs" children. Viewing our current American culture while helping to care for children born disabled in a developing country has provided me a fresh point of view. As I have witnessed my four young American sons spend hour upon hour of their vacation holding and playing games with severely disabled Guatemalan children, I caught a glimpse of a future America. Watching them and then listening to their reflections, I realized that we have "unplugged" our lives from the American ideological debates around the relatives and countrymen of these precious children (i.e. immigration of Central Americans).

In the process, our family gained perspective based upon first-hand observation of these wonderful people and their cultural heritage. Moreover, and possibly more importantly, I think I may be recognizing a new breakthrough strategy for unwinding the paralyzing debates that engulf so many of my friends. An international trip to spend time with some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable citizens is an easy remedy for what may be ailing so many of us.

Through the eyes of children one can easily experience a melting (or at least a partial thaw) of the hardest ideological perspectives. Simply counting the number of digits or limbs a specific child has or doesn't have reassures you that we are all connected in this grand global experience. Walking with a child with cerebral palsy liberates, while holding a toothless, autistic pre-teen changes your economic metrics and sense of return on investment.

"What are we trying to protect ourselves from?" I wondered, while holding a young boy blinded by congenital cataracts? The profound impact of these children upon the lives of my family has caused me pause and temporary relief from the embedded opinions I held prior to arriving.

Here, in a Guatemalan children's home for the disabled, I gained freedom from the arguments that boiled in my mind and shaped my opinions without personal experience and knowledge. I recommend that each person holding a strong opinion of our current American political arguments around immigration and health care for the poor, spend time in a foreign country to better understand what God is doing. Because it seems to me and my four sons that God is still at work within all human persons (in Guatemala and the U.S).