Author: Amy Young

Want to know the irony of this post?

I was sick on Sunday. Well, it started Saturday evening with purging the contents of my stomach. To be repeated at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and 8 a.m. At which point I got up and laid on the couch for the remainder of the day (except for the times I had to scare the squirrel off the bird feeder and throw up again. #Priorities.)

Monday I felt weak, but returning to the land of the living. Thoughts turned to work and of the week’s theme and of the post I wanted to write about reviving. About how God is in the business of reviving. Reviving bodies, stories, even history.

Just look at Hannah made fun of for infertility and how God met her in her sadness.

Just look at Moses who blew it when he killed the Egyptian and how God met him in the wilderness.

Just look at Mary and Martha who were so confused when Jesus didn’t show up and he not only could handle their anger and confusion, he could bring their brother back to life.

Just look at the woman who had bled for years and the ways God knew it wasn’t just her body that needed reviving, it was her spirit too.

Yes, our God is a God who revives. He brings back to life. He restores. He gives new life and energy.

Though I like to be instantly well from an illness, I was experiencing reviving.

I tend to see metaphors everywhere. There is always a lesson behind the ordinary. The common is laced with deeper meaning. Which is a lovely way to live until I wonder what God is doing in the living metaphor that is my life.

Tuesday I was the opposite of revived. I was weak, and foggy in the brain, and wondering what God wanted to show me about reviving . . . because I was either missing the lesson OR a bit off track on how He looks at reviving.

I sipped 7-up, the drink of the ill, no interest in food or energy to move.

{Maybe this is just for children of the 70s in America, but does anyone else associate 7-up or Sprite and illness? This is how I know I’m really sick: I sip 7-up.}

As I sipped, I wondered how much I have confused the way God looks at reviving with how America—my home culture—looks at prosperity. Revival looks like a graph with the line going up to the right. It might be a slow and steady incline, or it might go sharply up, but revival is always up. It’s the underdog winning. It’s the music crescendoing at the touching part of the movie. It’s the electricity being turned on at just the right moment.

Or is it?

What does revival look like when the visa doesn’t come through or the diagnosis is not good or the heat will not end, ever?

Or your children are not adjusting well. Or they are and you are not.

What does revival look like when the financial support is dwindling or the assignment that was perfect on paper is more like a nightmare in real life?

Or the husband you thought would be here . . . isn’t.

What then?

Maybe being revived can sometimes be straight and simple, like going on a walk and clearing our heads and souls, filling them up with Jesus. But maybe it can also be messy and complex, winding this way and that. Revived for the moment, on a level that doesn’t deny the reality we face but is not defined by it, and doesn’t remove the deep sadness or exhaustion.

I’m still waiting to feel better. To not wince at the smell of food. To not wander around trying to think a thought. But even in this state, Jesus has revival for me, and, you.

When have you experienced revival that might not have looked like revival?

This post originally appeared on Velvet Ashes. Thankfully this past Saturday I did not throw up :).

When I saw that my monthly article was assigned to this particular date, I perked up. We all have dates that set off little alarms in us, and this is one of mine.

I almost wrote to Elizabeth Trotter and asked to swap with another writer. But then I thought, “What better time to talk about birthdays than on my actual birthday!”

Maybe your family didn’t celebrate or make a big deal out of birthdays. Or perhaps they were a VERY. BIG. DEAL. and the world basically stopped for a day. I know some people who celebrate a birthday week or a birthday month; from the family culture I was raised in, that seems a bit much. Which makes my point that we are first and foremost formed by the families who raised us.

Maybe you had a picture in your mind as a young person what 25 would look like. Where’d you’d be at 30. What your life would look like at 40. How your relationship with your children or grandchildren would look when you were 60. And your life looks nothing like what you imagined or much richer than anything you could picture.

I remember conversations with my sisters when we were teens and the thought of the three of us being 40 seemed so utterly ridiculous. It seemed so OLD. So very far away. So close to death. And now? Now it seems young :). Perspective, my friends, perspective.

When I moved to China I learned that decade birthdays (30, 40, 60) are significant and if you hit 80? That was to be CELEBRATED. I also learned about “your year.” If you’ve eaten at a Chinese restaurant with a placemat that has 12 animals and dates under them tied to the year you were born, that’s what I’m talking about. So, every 12 years is “your year.” I’m curious what are key birthdays in the land that you live?

A few birthdays stand out from the field. My first year my teammate invited three of our students to go out for pizza at a quaint cafe that was such a weird hybrid it stood alone and defied classifying. (Was it western? No. Was it Chinese? No. Was it like anywhere that you might recognize? Not really. :)) We five then biked to a sort-of-illegal movie theater and watched a western movie. I knew then that though though I was surrounded by people who hadn’t known me long, they would still find ways to mark my birthday.

When I turned 30 I had a weird sensation of “I am an adult. Like a real-real-real adult. Is this my life path?”

Then there was the year another teammate and I were in the middle of building renovation and we were the only people not to be relocated. (Why?! Why?) My birthday fell in the midst of four months without hot water but with the added bonus of nonstop construction noise from eight in the morning until eight at night.

Having a birthday between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, it’s typical I receive well wishes, but people are partied out. I understand. Honestly, many years I’m partied out too. But for my 40th birthday I insisted on a party and decided I wanted it to be a murder mystery. I had joyfully attended many a bridal and baby shower and anniversary party and decided that for one time I was going to inconvenience everyone and ask that on my birthday we gather and have fun. And friends, it was magical. They rose to the occasion and though I had to work that day and was stuck in rush hour Beijing traffic on my way home, it was all I had hoped. We laughed, we ate, we solved a mystery, and we rejoiced in the life that God has given me.

So when I say, “Let’s talk about birthdays!” what comes to mind for you? What birthdays on the field stand out to you? I will be away from my computer today, so tomorrow I look forward to reading all of your stories. You are wonderfully and fearfully made and God loves you.

Thanks for being here,
Amy

P.S. Sometimes when a year is all jumbled together inside of your head, heart, and soul, whatever is on the top of the pile is all that we can see. Sorting—aka reflecting and preparing—can help you to see gems or heartaches that you might miss because they are buried at the bottom. Get your Reflect on 2022 & Prepare for 2023 packet today and start reaping the benefits of reflecting! Available at Global Trellis.

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Howdy friends,

A couple of weeks ago an organization that does field orientation contacted me with a request. They have a unit on “resiliency on the field” but noticed a hole when it came to the intersection of sin and resiliency. What’d they noticed is that many who participate in their training think that because they have been called by God into full-time ministry, they will get a dispensation on sinning.

Those of us who have been on the field know this isn’t true. However, as I shared about this subject over lunch with a friend who works with pastors, she recognized this kind of thinking in many North American pastors who end up in total burnout and coming to the retreat center she helps run.

We know this isn’t a new subject. Paul expressed this tension well when he asked in Romans 7 about doing what he didn’t want to do and not doing what he wanted to do. None of us go to the field thinking, “I really hope I sin … a lot!”

The pre-field training organization wondered if Global Trellis had any resources related to helping Great Commission Workers be more resilient—or at least more aware of the realities of sin on the field. We don’t specifically, but I think it’s an important and fascinating subject, I created an anonymous survey to gather information from YOU. I’ll be happy to share the results/themes with you in future months. The survey is five questions and they are:

1—How long have you been on the field? Or how long were you on the field?

2—In what ways has being on the field had no impact on the ways you sin? (In other  words, you are you wherever you are in the world?)

3—In what ways has being on the field “positively” impacted your sinning? (In other  words, how has being on the field helped you to sin less?)

4—In what ways has being on the field “negatively” impacted your sinning? (In other  words, how has being on the field contributed to you sinning more?)

5—With where you are now, what advice would you offer to someone going to the field?

You can take the anonymous survey here. Thank you in advance and my hope is that even in this survey God will meet you as He uses you to serve and help the next generation on the field.

With gratitude,

Amy

Years ago, standing in our parent’s basement one of my sisters wondered what it would be like to deal with all of our dad’s paperwork. While not a hoarder in other areas, every piece of paper the man had touched through his life, he kept.

In that moment, the Lord gave me this insight: All this paper is more than paper, it is the container of your dad’s story.

Tax records going back decades were not kept in case of being audited. No, they were kept as a record. A record that said, “I was here, I took care of my family, I held a job, I gave to my church and charities. I invested myself in what matters in this world.” I can tell you this is not what my tax records mean to me because I do not keep my story in tax records.

Oddly, though a non-car person, my story is held, in part, by the cars I have owned.

As a college graduation present, my parents got me a car. It was love at first sight! She was a  red Dodge Shadow and had an air spoiler and a strip down her side. In sixth grade I was cast as Margot Lane in a radio play about The Shadow; so, her name was Margot.

My education program was completed with a year of student teaching and graduate classes. Margot drove me out to Perry Middle School in rural Kansas. We had our first near death experience along those roads. She drove me to South Junior High where I learned to love teaching Algebra. And from South Junior High we hurried to the University of Kansas where I taught ESL to students from around the world as I completed my Master’s Degree.

During the summers we spent hours together driving home to Denver. And then hours apart as she sat in a parking lot while I taught English and fell in love with China. After several years of teaching in Kansas and summers in China, Margot watched as my dad helped load a U-Haul to take my worldly possessions back to Denver to live for two years in my sister’s basement.

Dad headed off to Denver and Margot and I hit the road for a detour through Wichita. A dear friend had donated a kidney to her brother and I wanted to visit her one last time before I moved to China.

Because I was only going to China for two years, it seemed silly to sell her. So I didn’t.

I do not know where my story would have been stored if I had sold her. I am also not sure when she became the keeper of my story. All I know is that she did. Every time I returned to the U.S. she was there to drive me around and provide me with a sense of independence.

In the blink of an eye, nine years passed.

I returned to the U.S. on a study leave. Margot and I were united again. And again she drove me to school, to visit friends, to speak at churches. She heard me sing and bore silent witness to the tears I shed in the months leading up to another goodbye.

In the blink of an eye, three years passed.

I returned to China. My beloved Margot sat once more, waiting for me.

Whenever I returned to Denver, she was there. She provided me the gift of coming and going at will. But then one summer, it was obvious that Margot was aging and the time had come to do the unthinkable.

No one would have paid her true value and I could not bear to have her underappreciated. I called the local rescue mission and explained I had a car to donate. We set up an appointment for me to turn over the title, I had only one stipulation: You cannot take her until I have left for China. I cannot bear to see her drive away.

The pain cut so deep, it went beyond reason. I might have given my left arm to be able to keep her. And that’s when I hit me.

Margot held my story.

I loved living overseas. I thrived. But every now and then as I aged the twinge would come when I thought of siblings and peers who had houses and cars and other “normal” markers of adulthood. I had a passport full of stamps, yes. But I had nothing tangible to point to that indicated “Here is an adult. Here is a ‘real person.’”

Margot had been with me through my 20s and 30s. She was the one constant in a sea of change. While I lived a more nomadic existence, packing up after each year in China (another story for another time), and I found myself at age 30 having life rhythms I had had at twenty, I would say to myself, “Don’t worry, I am a real adult, I own a car.”

This week all of this flooded back.

Four years ago I moved back to the U.S. and bought another car. Much to everyone’s shock, after insisting on only buying red computers, red this, red that. She was blue. As a Honda Fit it seemed only fitting that she be called Fiona.

Cutting to the chase, she was pummeled in a colossal hail storm in May. This week she was deemed totaled. This had not occurred to me when I casually dropped her off the end of August. On the phone with the insurance who went over the details and what I would be paid and steps I need to take, she casually asked if I needed to get an any personal items out of the car before she was reclaimed at the repair place. Of course I do you idiot. (Only part said out loud.)

I still own nothing but a car as a sign of adulthood. And now that which held my story for the last four years, is no longer mine.

My story will go on. God at work in and through me, to be sure.

But I am left wondering who will keep the story now? And why can the cost of the call sneak up? Will Fiona’s new owner know what she is capable of?

It may not be taxes, paper, or cars, but in his mercy, God uses ordinary things of this world to help hold your story. What is it for you?

This first appeared at A Life Overseas here. I was reminded recently how cars help hold my story as another car was “murdered” (aka totaled by a stranger causing an accident) and the grief that came with it for me.

What comes to mind when I ask you, “What does a fruitful ministry look like?” Or “What makes an outreach event or discipleship relationship fruitful?”

I’m guessing that you didn’t struggle to answer those questions. Of course, your answer may contain nuance and offer context, but my point is that we all have pictures of what fruitfulness looks like.

In my former organization we held annual meetings, which were often a highlight of the year. Getting to be with my friends in person was a highlight and I loved hearing reports of what was going on around my country of service and other countries in the region.

But I also felt tension.

Undoubtably, someone would share a report of how they fit 1,352 people in their living rooming and had robust Bible studies every week. Okay, maybe the number was closer to 13, but when my “great testimony” involved one or two who were showing spiritual interest, I didn’t feel very fruitful.

And maybe where you live, the mortality rate for young children is high. Or someone coming out of drug addiction goes back into it, does that mean we are less fruitful?

Not necessarily. However, much of the tension you and I feel can be tied back to the question “What does fruitfulness look like?”

I recently released a book, Becoming More Fruitful in Cross-Cultural Work, that explores this idea of fruitfulness.

Everyone, whether individuals or organizations, has metrics of what success looks like. But over time, those metrics can become the primary way we evaluate our fruitfulness. Much like the Galatians, cross-cultural workers can inadvertently turn our metrics into a modern version of “the law” and be enslaved by it. As I studied Galatians, it dawned on me that Paul could as easily have written his letter to the Galatians as a “Letter to the Great Commission Worker.”

The Galatians had access to freedom in Christ and yet, they kept returning to the comforts and familiarity of the law. It’s understandable because the law was familiar. It was known. It was easier to track and measure. And the law wasn’t “bad,” it was incomplete.

If Paul had written to us, he would have become exasperated with us too. Too often we have substituted our own “law” and live under the bondage of ministry metrics—or what we wish a ministry context could be.

Now, I’m not anti-metrics. We need to have goals and reasons for being on the field, doing what we’re doing. However, we—both individuals and organizations—can easily slip into a modern-day version of the law à la metrics. But if our metrics, location (where we are allowed to be), and what we are allowed to do become the primary definition of “a fruitful ministry,” like the Galatians, we stay enslaved to something that never could provide freedom and life.

I wondered, “Did God call you to the field to set others free in Christ while you stay trapped in an unintended form of ministry bondage?” What if collectively we moved our metrics down a peg and allowed walking with the Spirit to be the true measure of fruitfulness? 

Over and over as I researched and wrote this book my mind was blown. For one thing, the fruit of the Spirit is not like the gifts of the Spirit. You and I don’t get all the gifts, we get some of them. But the fruit? We can have all nine all the time. All nine all the time. I have another question for you:

How much in your life do you experience:

Love,
Joy,
Peace, 
Patience, 
Kindness, 
Goodness, 
Gentleness, 
Faithfulness, and 
Self-Control?

If your answer isn’t “24/7 Baby!” then this book is for you. In it you’ll find that God has upward fruit (toward him), outward fruit (toward others), and inward fruit (toward yourself) for you. When God talks about fruitfulness, He has true, holistic, all-of-your-life fruitfulness for you.

Guess where grapes, the metaphor that Paul uses, produces fruit? In rocky soil. In other words, in the messy realities of your life on the field. So, fruitfulness isn’t just for the early morning “Tea and Jesus” time. It’s also for public transportation, annoying teammates, and doors that won’t open.

Because these concepts are to be discussed and wrestled with in community, Global Trellis is hosting a four-week book club in October to discuss Becoming More Fruitful. You (and people you work with) can join here and participate or receive the recorded meetings.

Redefining fruitfulness is both simple and hard. So instead of all of us reading the book and saying, “Yes, that’s the kind of life I want to live” and then moving on without much really changing, we’ll discuss the book for four weeks, allowing new roots to take hold.

We’ll discuss:

• The fruit of the Spirit and the idea of metrics
• The upwardly oriented fruit: love, joy, and peace
• The outwardly oriented fruit: patience, kindness, and goodness
• The inwardly oriented fruit: gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control

My hope is that this book will enable you and your organization to further experience the freedom and growth that God has for each one of us, even in the midst of ebbs and flows of what we’re able to do.

Becoming More Fruitful is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. Check it out here.

A version of this post first appeared here.

I remember the first time I felt the angsty feeling of anticipation coming up the escalator at Denver International Airport. My long trek across the ocean, through customs, and on one last final airport train was nearly over, and I was almost to my people!

Over the years, who greeted me changed as sisters may or may not be in town and nieces were born; but the one constant? My parents. It was all I could do not to shove people on the escalator as I craned my neck, hoping for a first glance.

And then one year, as I practically ran towards them, it happened: my parents looked shockingly older than the last time I’d seen them. They began to resemble my grandparents more than my mental picture of my parents. Though still in good health at the time, I had a stronger sense than I’d ever had that my parents would one day, Lord willing, be the old-old and not the young-old. What would be my role in helping them? How would I navigate it with my sisters? Would my parents be a factor in my leaving the field?

If you stay on the field long enough, you will probably wonder similar questions. Last fall, one of you contacted me asking for resources to help with aging parents. I wasn’t aware of many resources outside of anecdotal stories and the fact that when I mention the topic, it was a familiar scenario as cross-cultural workers entered middle age.

With this in mind, last spring Global Trellis decided to tap into the collective wisdom from those who have already walked this path and conducted a survey.

What came through loud and clear is that everyone’s story is unique and holds both beauty and pain. In addition, 12 areas that require attention and/or factoring in emerged:

1. Every journey is unique
2. Communicating with siblings
3. The role of faith (your parents’, siblings’, and yours)
4. Transitions you and your aging parents might experience
5. Legal and financial issues with aging parents
6. Property and Belongings (helping with maintenance and/or downsizing)
7. The underlying question: To return or stay?
8. Supporting from a distance
9. The Big 3: Safety, Comfort, and Dignity
10. Navigating aging parents with an agency, a board, or independently
11. Grief experienced with aging parents
12. Doctors appointments and declining abilities

As you read over that list, I don’t know how you feel or where you are in this journey. Thinking of these 12 areas may feel overwhelming, depressing, exhausting, torn, and lonely. You may also feel grateful for people who are helping and the mercies God is extending to you and your family.

All can be true.

Sometimes what we need is information. We have a situation that is solvable and what we need is help getting information to solve it. Sometimes what we have a situation that we need help managing the tensions that come with it because there is no easy or exact solution.

Often the best way to manage a tension is in community. Sharing your story, asking your questions, being with others who are also walking the path you are on. With that in mind and in response to the survey we conducted, Global Trellis has compiled a list of resources (it’s being formatted now, I can get it to you when it’s ready) and created a one year cohort to cover the 12 topics listed above.

The Aging Parents Cohort will run from September 2022 through August 2023 and registration closes at the end of August. You can read about it here and register for it here.

Since those early escalator days, my dad has gone on to be with Jesus and my mom is now considered to be more a part of the “old-old” than the “young-old.” I have to admit I hate seeing my parents age. I hate knowing that they will die. But I am so grateful that while God has ordained for each of us to walk out own paths, He has not left us stumbling alone.