LEARNING TO SWEAR ON THE MISSION FIELD
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
— Mark Twain
I didn't become comfortable with swearing until I entered the mission field.
Before that, only the very occasional "shit!" would escape my lips in shocking or frustrating moments. I recall times of embarrassment when someone else heard, or when I'd admit the tendency at a church small group. People were always surprised by the confession, which just cemented in my mind that I should work harder to replace certain phrases with "oh shoot" or "what the freak". It was what good Christians did, right?
At the time, part of my journey in being a good Christian meant going to the mission field. I moved to Ecuador and served with a mission community there for five years. Yet before I moved to South America, I had to learn Spanish, so I spent six months doing language classes and immersion in Costa Rica. All day I'd cram Spanish into my brain until it hurt. On top of that, daily life included money conversion, learning my way around a new city (one without addresses, only landmarks, so your house might be “three and a half blocks from the park on x street”), and lessons on cultural etiquette such as greetings and never being barefoot indoors. (Flip flops or slippers are the norm; if barefoot, the family I was living with would scold me, the foolish Gringa, because I was getting germs on my feet and would catch a cold).
In language school I met other mission workers who couldn't give a fig about bad language, and in fact used curse words more casually than I’d heard before. I also found that it was something of a therapeutic release at times; when a couple of girls I went to school with had a guy harass them on the street, or when someone was robbed, or when it was just a really tough day full of second language and cultural stress, I understood where they were coming from when they stated that something was f***ed up.
It was the same when I transitioned to full-time mission work in Ecuador. When you’re working with the impoverished and needy and your days are full of stories of abandonment, starvation, abuse, illness, and neglect, the common response becomes a combination of prayer, tears, and swearing. I’ve come to believe that some things deserve a few expletives. To soften one's response simply to be politically (or religiously) correct can feel like a disservice to the situation and to oneself. So, rather than take the time to censor myself in front of people who didn't care, I dropped the effort, and some f-bombs as well. Of course, if I was with people who would be offended, I would watch my words. Yet, many people felt the same way. It was cathartic to give a genuine reaction, and even more so to be affirmed by people who saw the same messed-up situation and repeating cycle of pain and said, "Exactly."
Personally, it's the timing of swear words which is key. Dropping them right and left, where everything is ___ this or ___ can be grating to hear. Plus, any word can lose its potency when overused. Expletives as little punches of color to highlight a point are what I learned to appreciate. I also discovered that rather than being the bad Christian for saying them, I would have felt as though I were being prudish (even just to myself) to not. Few would have cared either way, but I had one roommate in particular with whom we both found release in swearing after a long day, which led to camaraderie and broke some of the tension we'd been carrying. We realized that we didn't think God cared if we swore or not; if Jesus angrily overturned the tables in the synagogue, we didn't think he'd care about the dropping of a few expletives. If I'm honest, there was also a kind of delicious revelry in learning swear words in a second language. Swearing in Spanish never feels as bad as my native tongue, a dangerous obliviousness for which I chose to avoid overusing the few colorful words I've learned.
Living overseas broadened my horizons in many well. Stepping outside of the familiar American Christian culture in which I’d grown up gave me new perspectives and helped me begin to hold many things with open hands. Learning to curse on the mission field may be a downside to some, but not to me. I'm thankful for the release it gave me then and the relaxed self-monitoring it gives me now, as I'm a person who is prone to overthinking. I can wind myself up in thoughts which analyze ridiculous nuances, so to drop the concern about an occasional colorful word is a relief. After all, it wasn't in some shady way that I learned to curse; it was as catharsis, acceptance, and the acknowledgement that sometimes things are effed up and that's just how this beautiful, messy, broken, grace-filled world operates. I swear it.
