Category: When You Struggle

Finding Peace Amidst the Pain of Field Life

As 2025 wound to a close, a local friend posted on Facebook that he could not remember a year more full with tragedy on our island. Honestly, neither could I.

A friend’s missionary-teacher daughter was shot with an arrow in her neck. She required immediate evacuation and surgery, thankfully making a full recovery. Another missionary teacher in a different village was killed in front of her students—attacked by a man with a machete as she helped her class plant trees.

Multiple missionary families evacuated their villages due to treats of violence. Other missionary friends suffered the loss of their school buildings burning down.

I stood next to my friend and her children as we watched smoke in the distance and realized her home was on fire. A teenage MK passed away right before Christmas from complications with dengue and pneumonia.

Dear friends ended their terms serving in our town and prepared to move on. In addition to all of the usual security threats, landslides, flooding, and illnesses.

Where do we turn when our hearts are anxious and pain seems to be around every corner? How do we last on this field? How do we serve God in very hard places?

In his book Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr. Jacques Philippe writes:

The essential truth that we wish to present and develop is the following: To permit the grace of God to act in us and to produce in us (with the cooperation, of course, of our will, our intelligence and our capabilities) all those good works for which God prepared us beforehand, so that we might lead our lives in the performance of good works (Ephesians 2:10), it is of the greatest importance that we strive to acquire and maintain an interior peace, the peace of our hearts.

I came across Fr. Philippe’s book this past summer while listening to a podcast. Our family had just returned to the field from an unplanned month-long break following my husband’s close encounter with burnout. Peace seemed a long way off, especially the kind Fr. Philippe seemed to be pressing for.

Lord, I’m trying to do the work you’ve given me, but it’s hard! Where is the peace? I wondered.

Fr. Philippe goes on to use the image of a lake:

Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly will it be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun cannot be reflected in it. It is a little bit like this with regard to our soul in relationship to God. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us. On the other hand, if our soul is agitated and troubled, the grace of God is able to act only with much greater difficulty.

With that image, my pursuit of peace — real, true peace of heart — began. I understood the stakes. Not only would my fears and undulating heart be harmful to me but would hinder God’s ability to work through me. And isn’t that why we’re here (in this field, on this earth) in the first place?

I am not a naturally peace-filled person, though. At my sickest I was diagnosed with OCD and severe anxiety; at my best I’m a bit of a worrier.* Yet true peace of heart is not only available but promised to us:

Peace I leave with you, My own peace I give to you; a peace the world cannot give, this is My gift to you. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27)

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you. (2 Thessalonians 3:16)

These truths at times seem utterly at odds with our present reality, but that doesn’t make them false. Lack of safety, lack of health, lack of finances, lack of relationships. We may experience all of these things but will never be in lack of God himself. What a truth to rest in!

Amidst pain and uncertainty, there is a deeper truth that sustains us: the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. Whatever our external circumstances, God’s presence remains a constant refuge.

True peace is not the absence of hardship, but the ability to trust in God’s sovereignty in the midst of it all. By surrendering control and embracing His providence day by day, we can experience that peace of heart, a peace that enables us to continue serving, loving, and reflecting His grace even in difficult places. Our challenges are real, but so is God’s promise to be with us. It is in that truth that we find the strength to persevere, with hearts at rest in His unshakable peace.

 

*Please don’t read this post as a “Just have more faith!” pat solution to walking out a peace-filled life. I needed a mental health diagnosis and therapy to work through and understand my OCD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy gave me the tools I needed to sort through what was real and what was OCD talking in my head. If you suffer in this way, please know there is help available and that your difficulties are likely highly treatable.

Are You Following God for the Wrong Reasons?

My footsteps squished into the pine needles covering the cold, rain-soaked ground. I should be making footprints in the snow, God. Why didn’t you give us snow? We hadn’t visited family during Christmas for seven years, and now, home with my kids who knew nothing colder than a chilly-ish day in Thailand, I felt cheated. 

Something in me recoiled at my own entitled attitude, yet I felt the Father’s invitation. “Go on,” He seemed to say. “Tell me all about it.” So I did. I walked through the woods on that drizzly Christmas Day, following deer trails with my feet and my own sense of disappointment in my heart. 

It wasn’t long, however, before my grumblings turned into wonder at the little red berries beside my path and the signs of hidden wildlife—a squirrel chattering in the distance, deer droppings to step around, a broken branch with star-like seed pods discarded by a creature passing by. 

And wonder, as you know, quickly gives way to praise. My perspective soon shifted, and I could see the gifts God was providing in this not-yet-frozen woodland for both His animals and for me. I could find the Father’s comfort, and I settled into His peace. 

But sometimes I question my heart. Do I follow Him because of how He makes me feel? Or do I follow Him, trust Him, and praise Him even when I don’t experience His presence? Even when the way is dark?

“If you follow God only to feel His presence and comfort, then you follow Him for the wrong reasons.” (François Fénelon, 1651–1715)*

Oof.

Fénelon continues by writing, “Your mind is anxious to know, your heart wants to feel sweet feelings, but you are not willing to follow Christ to the cross. Is this dying to self? . . . To seek pleasure and to ignore the cross will not get you very far. You will soon be trapped in the pursuit of spiritual pleasures.” 

Spiritual pleasures might include a sense of peace, joy in worship, comforting fellowship with God and others, insight into God’s Word, pride in sharing an inspired message, recognition of the Spirit’s voice, discovering and using God-given talents, and the ability to forgive and love. These are wonderful gifts, but they aren’t God Himself.

I confess that not only am I often trapped in the pursuit of spiritual pleasures, but I am also often trapped in my desire for earthly pleasures—snow on a rare Christmas visit to America, for example. I wonder if I’ve forgotten (ignored, even) Jesus’ pointed statement to His disciples that, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24)?

Many people like to ask the Lord for a word to frame the New Year. It’s a beautiful practice intended to give prophetic shape and spiritual intention to the coming season. I often hear people choose words like hope, renewal, trust, growth, or faithfulness. Words I’ve never heard chosen? Sacrifice. Death. Cross.

Christian leaders of ages past didn’t shy away from the concept of suffering as a means of spiritual growth, however. Miguel de Molinos (c. 1628-1696) writes: “God loves not the believer who does the most, nor who feels the most, nor who thinks the most cleverly and best, nor even that one who shows the greatest love, but He loves him who suffers the most.”

I’m likely as uncomfortable as you are with his suggestion that God loves one type of person more than another, but overlooking the awkward implications of that, I agree that God isn’t impressed by our works, feelings, or cleverness. Perhaps He does, in fact, find the most joy in our willingness to suffer for Him.

Of those who attempt to connect deeply with God but give up at the first sign of struggle, Molinos says, “There was no sense of God, there was no power, there was no sense of being pleased with their own thought, or being impressed with the way they formed their words and sentences to God. Actually all of these approaches to God are nothing but a hunt for sensible pleasures. This, to God, is but self love and seeking after self. It is really not a seeking after God at all. It is necessary that you suffer a little pain and a little dryness.” 

The Church and missions (and culture in general, for that matter) seem to swing on a pendulum. Over the generations, we slide from one extreme of self-sacrifice to self-care, or from works-based to faith-based theology. The far side of either is detrimental, so we look at the errors and trauma caused by the past generation and over-correct. 

Very few in this millennium want to pack up all our belongings in a coffin, leave home without any plans to return, and watch our children and spouses suffer, break, and even die under the mental, physical, and spiritual strain of our ministry. So we (myself included!) swing toward member care, soul care, retreats, debriefs, TCK care, counseling, sabbaticals, and even beautiful, supportive online communities like A Life Overseas in order to maintain health and longevity in life and ministry.

These things are absolutely wonderful and necessary.

But let’s not throw the gave-up-His-glory-and-comforts-of-Heaven-baby out with the I’m-drowning-in-ministry-demands-and-stress-bathwater. Maybe the way to true healing and wholeness is the way of the cross, the way of suffering, the way of death. Maybe we still need to receive a little of the exhortation of the past.

“How much do you desire to hunger after God? You will hunger after God, and find Him, in the same proportion that you hunger after the cross. Here is a true spiritual principle that the Lord will not deny: God gives us the cross, and then the cross gives us God.” (Madame Jeanne Guyon, 1648-1717)

Hunger. That just might be a New Year’s Word for us all.


*Quotes taken from 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards

 

Are You in Burnout?

I was talking to another worker recently who mentioned that she might be in burnout. She was expressing her frustration with a long season of exhaustion, low capacity, and lack of motivation. 

“I keep thinking that this will go away and I’ll get my energy back, but it’s been months and I’m still struggling,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “What is wrong with me? I just can’t do everything that needs to be done.”

Having been there myself, I knew exactly what she meant. I could fully empathize with her tears and frustration. It wasn’t what she wanted as she planned her year, but I knew it was vital for her to recognize it and get the needed help for recovery.

Our conversation moved into new year dreams and plans, keeping the conversation low-pressure and gentle. When burnout is involved, gentleness is the only way forward. 

What is Burnout?

Unfortunately, burnout is common among those living and working overseas. It’s especially prominent in ministry contexts. With the added layers of language, culture, and transition, workers experience high-stress, high-overwhelm jobs and lives. 

For global workers, burnout rarely comes from a single crisis. It more often develops slowly through prolonged stress, great responsibility, cultural adjustment, relational strain, organizational dysfunction, and limited space for rest and recovery.

So what is burnout? Burnout can be described as a state of on-going physical and mental exhaustion that is caused by chronic, unmanaged stress and that often presents with memory loss, brain fog, low sensory tolerance, and a reduced sense of effectiveness.

According to the World Health Organization’s classification, burnout is an occupational phenomenon that results from chronic, work-place stress. 

In pop psychology, it can be defined simply as what happens when you give more energy than you have for too long, without enough rest, support, or relief. It’s not just being tired. It’s feeling emotionally drained, mentally overwhelmed, and disconnected from things that once mattered.

You find yourself more cynical, less patient, easily irritable, and continuously annoyed.

You can’t solve problems as easily as you once did, and you might be more prone to sickness, unable to sleep at night, fatigued even after resting, and feeling internally depleted.

If this sounds familiar, you could be in burnout. 

Remember, burnout isn’t caused by one bad day. It’s the result of chronic stress, intense responsibility, and a lack of recovery time between stressors. It’s then magnified when it hasn’t been seriously considered or properly supported. 

In overseas ministry, burnout can be ongoing due to cultural adaptation, high emotional demand, spiritual needs, family pressure, blurred boundaries, limited access to safe support systems, and a call to keep going, keep serving, keep doing no matter the cost. 

And even when this is recognized as burnout, it’s often misunderstood, minimized, or spiritualized away.

What about Neurodiversity and Burnout?

For neurodivergent individuals (including ADHD, autism spectrum, sensory processing differences, and other neurological variations), burnout can develop more quickly and take slower recovery.

This is especially true in cross-cultural settings where sensory input is high, social expectations are different, there is a need for sustained masking, and daily life lacks routine and stability.

Neurodivergent burnout may include increased sensory sensitivity, loss of executive functioning skills previously available, heightened emotional reactivity or shutdown, and feeling unable to “bounce back” in familiar ways.

This is not personal failure or a lack of faith. It is your nervous system on full overload.

Getting Help and Finding Support

The first step is to recognize burnout as part of the story. The next step is harder because it means giving yourself permission to be human, need rest, and ask for help. It requires taking an honest look at your capacity, job requirements, team structure, family needs, and all the things that impact your energy each day.

It could also mean both big changes and small adjustments that require boundaries, saying no, or showing up differently. It might mean evaluating what is working and what is not working in your current situation or place of service.

Burnout recovery is most effective when it includes safe support. For overseas workers, this means finding intentional, structured spaces that are aware and ready for full vulnerability.

Support may include coaching, counseling, or debriefing with someone who is trained in cross-cultural work and/or neurodiversity care. 

Recovery requires safe spaces to name grief, loss, or resentment without judgment with the permission to pause, reflect, and recalibrate without fear of consequences.

Gentle Reminders for Burnout Recovery

Burnout recovery is not linear. It cannot be rushed. There must be a reduction in responsibilities, intentional slowing, incremental change, and increased rest.

Restoring the nervous system means predictable rhythms, sensory safety, and relational attunement, knowing that capacity returns slowly.

Burnout recovery happens best when you can recognize the signs, seek support, and know that you don’t have to carry it alone.

Burnout is not a spiritual failure, lack of faith, or a personal deficit. It’s not evidence of calling or ministry ability. It’s not due to disobedience or sin or bad character, though God often reveals areas for growth, surrender, and honestly in these seasons of recovery. He lovingly helps name what’s been wrong or out of balance and brings healing to broken, hurting places.

Burnout can be a signal from your body, mind, and soul that something needs care. Often, that care needs the help of professionals who understand trauma, burnout recovery, and the impact of complex stress on your nervous system.

For those living and serving overseas, burnout is not easy to fix or something that can be willed away. But, thankfully, it does not have to be the end of your overseas story. 

With this new year beginning and plans unfolding, discovering that burnout is present can be discouraging and hard, but healing is possible. 

 

Download my burnout guide for global workers.

Find other A Life Overseas articles about burnout here.

 

Neurodiversity in the Kingdom

by Lila Saleeb

My husband had a late autism (ASD) diagnosis the year he turned 40. When the possibility first came up, it really surprised us. We didn’t know much about autism and how it can play out so differently depending on so many factors. 

My husband had always been really successful both academically and professionally. He had lived overseas as a single man and had led ministry teams. He is a gifted public speaker and has a deep heart to care for others, especially those on the fringe. Even though he is an introvert, he easily comes across as an extrovert. He is warm and really caring. So the thought that he might be autistic had never crossed my mind. 

At the same time, we were struggling in other ways. In our marriage we were stuck. After thirteen years of marriage and seven years on the field, my husband and I found ourselves facing conflict that we didn’t fully understand. We love each other deeply, are committed to one another, and have built a strong foundation of trust throughout our marriage. We are both intelligent and gifted communicators, yet we couldn’t figure out why in the world communication had become increasingly difficult between us. 

I wrestled with why our family couldn’t function like many other families on the field around us. Why couldn’t we share more responsibilities in the home, or partner better for language learning? Why was flexibility more and more a lost skill? Why was it so extraordinarily difficult for us to find a life that made sense for both of us on the field? 

I knew my husband loved me, but I felt unheard, suffocated, and incredibly lonely. We both felt so lost. What was wrong between us? We had always been so aligned in vision, had shared a heart and passion (goodness, it was that heart that drew us to each other!). So why on earth did we feel like we were often at opposite poles as we tried to make ministry decisions? We had no hook on which to hang our struggles, no name to help us label the issue. 

When my husband stumbled upon a YouTube video that described what Asperger’s (the label used in the past for level 1 on the autism spectrum) is, he was shocked to discover it sounded so much like him. He had never heard someone else talk about their life in a way that resonated with him in the way that video did. (While this video is not the original one he found, it describes a range of characteristics and experiences of autism in a helpful way.)

This took us on a process of about six months, exploring whether or not he was on the spectrum. And sure enough, after tests and evaluations we finally had a category, a key to start untangling the knots that made up our life. 

Since then we have been on a bumpy journey, learning how to factor both our brain wirings and both our nervous systems (I have a C-PTSD diagnosis) into our life together.

Autism and Its Impact

In case you are not familiar with autism, clinical psychologist and autism expert Tony Attwood describes it as a variation in neurological wiring, as a “different way of thinking, learning, relating, sensing, perceiving, moving, and empathising. An important word in this definition is different, not disordered, defective or dysfunctional” (emphasis added). Attwood goes on to describe neurodivergence as a rainbow of at least eight dimensions, and not a linear dimension from low functioning to high functioning.

The nervous system of people on the autism spectrum is greatly impacted by the way their brain processes sensory and social information. Their nervous system is usually a vulnerable nervous system due to years of living in a world that doesn’t understand them or their processing differences. They often have to “mask,” a form of adapting or compensating for the way they function naturally, which is different than most of the world around them. 

In a world where they often don’t naturally fit, it isn’t safe for them to be truly themselves, and so often either consciously or unconsciously, neurodiverse people adapt their behaviors, mannerisms, ability to make eye contact (and so much more) so that they avoid seeming offensive, reduce their exposure to bullying, and can form emotionally intimate relationships. This constant work can have an incredibly harmful impact on their nervous system, as they survive by existing outside of their window of tolerance. 

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Dan Siegel defines window of tolerance as the ideal range of emotional arousal where you feel calm, balanced, and able to think clearly and function effectively, managing stress without being overwhelmed. When you live a life of chronic and relentless stress (hello life overseas!), your window of tolerance tends to get smaller, and your ability to be present and connected to yourself, God, and others significantly decreases.

When you live outside of your window of tolerance, you live in a state of protection, not connection. Our nervous system is not able to function in both at the same time. This all explains why our family’s capacity had become more and more reduced as demands, changes and stress on the field increased and also as we navigated toxic relationships both on the field and in our sending church. We were stuck in a nervous system survival state.

When our nervous system is stuck in a survival state of protection, it is incredibly detrimental to our physical, mental and emotional health. It impacts our sleep, digestive system, and executive functioning skills. In that state, we tend to mute or ignore our body’s cues of hunger, exhaustion, or overwhelm. It also impacts our ability to make Spirit-led decisions; when we are outside of our window of tolerance, our awareness of the presence of God with us really diminishes. In that state we have tunnel vision, and our decisions are fueled more by anxiety, catastrophizing, and fear than faith.

The Need for Neurodiverse-Aware Member Care 

As a mental health coach, lay Christian counselor, and member care provider, this reality has only fueled my heart’s passion to see member care done well for every kind of brain wiring. As I continue to process the impact of a late autism diagnosis for my husband and an even later diagnosis of Complex PTSD for me, I grieve many things. One of them is that we didn’t know how to set up a life that actually worked for our family from the beginning. 

For many years, we were not equipped to find a life that would set us up to thrive holistically on the field. I grieve that we didn’t know how differently our brains functioned, what each of us really needed, or how to partner better in light of our differences. We experienced much heartache, conflict, and tension between us as we tried to make sense of what was happening and as we tried so hard to make our life work.

We didn’t have skills for self-advocacy, or even understanding of where self-advocacy was needed. With a theology of suffering that overemphasizes sacrifice for the kingdom, I think we missed important needed holistic care. My husband is a soldier, and he soldiered overseas—until he couldn’t anymore. A health crisis brought us back to the States, and we are here for now. 

A worker friend wrote us a letter recently, asking about how to help neurodivergent workers thrive. She said something like, “It seems like right now the only way forward is for ASD people to mask really hard until they burn out. There has to be a better way.” My heart resonated deeply with that statement. There has to be a better way. 

If Christ’s kingdom is made up of both neurotypical and neurodivergent brain wirings and both types of brain wirings are a gift and sure reflection of the multi-faceted wisdom and riches of God, we need to better equip and support neurodivergent individuals and families. We need to. 

This conversation is not a fringe conversation; it needs to be more and more mainstream. It needs to include topics like: 

  • Equipping gospel workers about neurodivergent brain wiring and needs
  • Equipping team leaders to recognize neurodivergent brain wiring and how to lead, develop and care with that kind of brain wiring in mind 
  • Equipping all workers (both neurotypical and neurodivergent) to recognize when their nervous system is in a vulnerable state, when it is functioning constantly on survival mode, and how to develop resilience for their nervous systems
  • Offering affordable coaching support for workers to develop resilient nervous systems on the field
  • Affordable coaching and counseling resources for neurodivergent (ND) workers 
  • Affordable coaching and counseling resources for neurotypical (NT) spouses
  • Affordable coaching and counseling resources for parents of ND children
  • Equipping organizations, team leaders and workers, to think through expectations, to redefine what “success” on the field is, to truly allow the Spirit to lead and define each individual and family thrives
  • Creating a safe culture for self-advocacy where people can safely discern their physical, mental, emotional needs and expect they will be received without judgment or condemnation by their community. 
  • How to leverage the strengths and superpowers of ND brain wiring for the good of the kingdom 

Personal Flourishing and Kingdom Expansion 

Friend, I am not sure who you are as you read this. Maybe our story resonates with you. Maybe you are exploring the possibility of neurodiversity in your marriage or in your kids or in yourself. Wherever you are, and whoever you are, I see you. You are not alone. 

There is so much hope for people of all brain wirings to thrive. The Lord made you, and He wrote your story. He will walk with you every step of the way so that your God-given design and Spirit-filled longings can function together in a way that causes you to flourish mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and that expands the kingdom in you and through you. Both personal flourishing and kingdom expansion are possible; it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

I hope to keep writing on this in the near future. But in the meantime, I want to share some resources that have been a blessing to us. 

Coaching (these are all believers) 

Barbara Grant – Coaching for ND Marriages, Coaching for ND individuals and NT spouses.
Jeremy Rochford – Coaching for Autistics (Jeremy is on the spectrum himself).
Melissa Corkum – Coaching for families under relentless stress, helping them reset their nervous system and learn how to function under stress with resilience.
Jana M. Smith – Neuroplasticity and resilience coach. Also offers brain spotting. Equips neurodiverse individuals in nervous system care.

Podcasts 

Jeremy Rochford
Neurodivergence, Family and Faith
Neurodiverse Christian Couples 

Books

On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity by Daniel Bowman, Jr.
Uniquely Us: Gracefully Navigating the Maze of Neurodiverse Marriage, Autism, and Faith by Dan and Dr. Stephanie Holmes
The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Aspberger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to be a Better Husband by David Finch

Articles, Courses, and Other Resources

Jennilee Rachel – Articles and resources here
Global Trellis – Neurodiversity week 

~~~~~~~

Lila is a writer and soul-care practitioner who writes about belonging, faith, trauma, and the slow work of becoming whole. Shaped by a life of cross-cultural living and deep community, she is especially interested in what happens when we lose the places and people that once gave us belonging — and how we learn to be at home with God through Christ in such a way that our souls are safe to flourish and hope. Her work explores the intersection of embodied faith, healing, relationships, and the courage to tell the truth.

As an Adult TCK, I Was Resistant to Grief Processing. Here’s What Changed My Mind.

I first learned about the Grief Tower model while taking a course on providing care for Third Culture Kids. Some things weren’t new to me. I’m a TCK. I’m married to a TCK. And I raised two TCKs. But some stuff was. 

In the course we learned that global childhoods are ampersand in nature and that we can honor both the good and the hard things that shape our backgrounds. We learned that global kids are twice as likely as monocultural kids to experience harmful risk factors—but that their international upbringing is also full of deliciously unique potential.

We heard how much expat parents love their kids—but also how goodbyes, starting over, losing people, exposure to trauma, and relationship disruptions can stack up during childhood until the body finally says, “This is enough,” and our health topples over, often when we least expect it. 

These things made sense to me. For other TCKs at least. I could picture the faces of kids I knew who had experienced Big T traumas, and I began to understand why that first or second year of college was disastrous for so many, as they suddenly developed risky behaviors and health problems. They must have been going through a lot, and it all caught up.

Part of me wanted to interrupt the instructor with my perspective as a TCK and let all the eager participants know that most of us still love TCK life. But I held my tongue, literally between my teeth. Even when I disagree with someone or don’t like what I’m hearing, I believe in keeping an open mind. 

So I tried to think of these new thoughts, the ones I was resisting, on a personal level. I thought back to my first year of college and remembered the unexpected turn my life took. If my parents hadn’t planned a home assignment for that same year, I don’t know where I would be today. My thoughts about “those” TCKs suddenly turned personal. I’d had some hard things stack up too. But in my fierce love for growing up global, I had brushed them off.

Our class was instructed to make a timeline of some of the harder life experiences that stood out to us. A disquieting malaise settled over me. Were we ever going to get to the good stuff? The adventures of my childhood in Cameroon felt strangely compromised by this exercise. I needed people to know that global childhood is wildly beautiful.

At the same time, I knew these instructors were experts in TCKs, and my single experience didn’t tell the whole TCK story. They were coming at it from a research background, while mine was totally anecdotal. But this exercise still didn’t feel very ampersand-y. It felt more like a betrayal to my entire life. So, do I say something? 

I decided to wait and see if we would get a chance to write about our positive experiences too. My pen was ready to wordify the memories flooding my mind—

My whipping ponytail flying down dirt roads with five friends piled high on my bike. Stirring corn flour into fufu over eucalyptus embers. Joining the beat of goatskin drums and Cameroonian choirs to worship God in the way that became normal to me. Twisting horsehair into birdtraps and roasting our reward with my friends. Huddling around the radio to listen to the BBC chime of news every evening. My family of six devouring Mom’s pancakes made from precious flour and sugar from the capital city. Muddy soccer wars in torrential tropical rains with my high school friends. Learning from the actions of my international school teachers that Jesus doesn’t recoil from our ugly parts, He leans into them. 

These were a massive part of my childhood, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing down the bad stuff without also acknowledging the good. It wouldn’t fairly represent me or my experience. And it might just scare my classmates off from the good work of raising their own kids abroad. 

I was forming a model in my head for how the class could better balance the good with the hard. Then came the instruction: “When you’ve drawn your timeline of grief blocks, go ahead and write two emotions you felt under each block.”

I could no longer keep silent. I’d watched some TCKs get stuck there on an unforgiving path of retelling their hardship. So I formed my concern as a question: “Will we go back later and write down some of our childhood highlights? Those are really important to me.”

Her knowing smile told me she’d heard this before. Her look wasn’t patronizing. It was gentle.

“That makes sense. The good stuff is so important to honor. But the reason we focus on grief for this timeline is because the good stuff doesn’t weigh us down. Unprocessed grief does.”

If I’d been struck by lightning, the accuracy of her words couldn’t have cut any faster or truer to my heart.

The good stuff doesn’t weigh us down. 

It’s there. We honor it. We remember it. We celebrate it. But the good stuff is not what caused some of the TCKs I knew in college to suddenly engage in risky behaviors, try drugs for the first time, abuse alcohol, start having nightmares, develop hair loss, become hypervigilant, have health crashes, or harm themselves.

It was the hard stuff that caught up to us. We ignored it because we were so busy focusing on the good stuff. Or we thought we couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Or we had internalized messages that anger and sadness are bad. Or it felt like betrayal to our rich experiences to acknowledge anything remotely negative. Or we simply hadn’t learned how to hold two truths in tension—that life can be both good and hard. 

God was at work beneath my resistance, and the tectonic plates of some un-nameable thing in my core began to shift. I realized that I had learned the ampersand truth in my faith. Wrestling with God through hard seasons, devastating seasons, I’d learned deep in my cells that He could hold all of me, not just the best of me. He could hold my questions, my anger, my unhealth, and my valleys, alongside my gratitude. 

But I’d not applied the same full care to my TCK story. On some level I had acknowledged the hard parts, but I hadn’t honored them with the space they deserved. For my spiritual life, grief and tension felt appropriate. For my global childhood, sitting a bit longer with the hard parts felt like a betrayal to the wonder that it was. 

I began to sink my teeth into deeper truths about the incredible gift of a global childhood, but this time of acknowledging and honoring some of the harder things about globally mobile life truly impacted me.

And I didn’t get stuck. I didn’t negatively or irreversibly polarize my experience. Quite the opposite. This exercise unlocked an even deeper appreciation for my full life—all of me and all that shaped me. 

I began to hold some of the beliefs I’d built up to the light and re-examine whether they were helping me, and whether I wanted to carry them into the next decades of my life. Beliefs like processing the hard parts diminishes the gift, anger is bad, and acknowledging hard stuff betrays someone or something.

My faith already had ampersand depth. Now I was being asked to apply that same depth to something I cherished as positively wonderful — my TCK story. God had already taught me the beauty of holding truths in tension. Now I was inviting Him to show me how to hold this full truth in tension. I was inviting Him to help me honor the goodbye to Cameroon that sucker punched me, the reverse culture shock that bewildered me, the cultural isolation that marked periods of my life. 

This exercise unlocked something else of equal or greater value. The ability to hold all of my family and all that shaped and is still shaping them. My husband. My daughter. My son. 

And this kind of ripple effect started to spread outward to other relationships.

I no longer feel compromised by making space for all of life—not only my own. As I work with expat families and their children, there’s a fuller and newer space for their entire story. We can synthesize the whole story—including the parts that haven’t taken up enough space—whether good or bad. We can talk about the joy of friends and the missing of parents at boarding school. We can talk about the thrill of travel and the hardship of living in a war zone. 

If their story is mostly great, we can acknowledge the hard parts they might have glossed over—the lonely birthday party after a big move or the long, empty nights of a parent disappearing into the overwhelm of their own mind. And if their story is mostly hard, we can honor it and still be curious about the hidden sweet moments that may have been overshadowed for years—their host country nanny picking them ripe mangoes or the tropical sun streaming through banana leaves on a steamy morning. Because either extreme of grief—ignoring it or getting swallowed whole by it—isn’t helpful. 

And now I understand better why some TCKs get stuck. They don’t get stuck because they’ve dared to examine the hard things—they get stuck because they’ve never had enough space to process them. Maybe they’d been rushed past their hardship too many times, told to focus on the adventure, the privilege, the good. Or maybe they weren’t told anything, and the silence was thundering. They never got a chance to catch their breath from those hard stories in the safety of loving arms. As a global community we need to make space for the full TCK story, not just the instaperfect parts we’re comfortable celebrating.

I’m reminded here of God’s tender provision to make a shade plant grow quickly over Jonah as he sat exposed and vulnerable to the sun’s pounding heat, grumbling about God’s grace to Nineveh. Scripture tells us the plant was to ease the discomfort that Jonah faced as he listed his grievances (Jonah 4).

Even though Jonah had just been the recipient of immeasurable grace himself, God didn’t shut his frustration down. He provided shade and a receptive place for Jonah’s reflection. And when Jonah still couldn’t escape his negative mental loop, God allowed the sun to touch him again, sparking an honest and welcomed conversation. 

If God could hold space for Jonah’s fury without rushing him past it, then maybe I could learn to do the same. For myself. For the expat families I work with. For my own kids. I have a living picture of a God who didn’t say, “Get over it, Jonah. Focus on the good,” but made room for the mess. First He offered the comfort of shade, and then He initiated an honest conversation. He didn’t recoil. He stayed present to hold the whole story. It didn’t start with a lecture, but with shade.

In a way, all this grief processing brought me back to the same place I started. I have a more full appreciation of the hard and painful parts, and still I’d like to raise my hand to the whole global classroom and say, “And it was wildly beautiful. All of it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Aching for the Promised Rest

After this hectic season of (fill in the blank), things should slow down.

Once I complete (name your project), I’ll be able to catch my breath.

Someday, (choose your goal) will be finished, and I’ll take a vacation.

Name your taskmaster, but you’re likely spinning the same story to your tired self that the rest of us are. This is just a season, we tell ourselves as we trudge on. 

And maybe it is. After all, God has woven cyclical patterns into all of His creation, including the seasons of our souls. We’re designed to grow through the newness of Spring, the productivity of Summer, the release of Autumn, and the stillness of Winter. One season without the others equates to dormancy or death.

Or maybe it’s not merely a season, it’s habitual drivenness and overproduction. It’s the drumbeat of Western culture, much of Christianity included: Just a little more. Just a little more. Bigger. Better. Just a little more.

This is one of those Psalm 139:23 moments where we ask the Lord to search our hearts and expose our motives. Yet even if you discover that your exhaustion is of a self-inflicted kind, you still have the same human ache for rest as those who are keeping in step with Jesus.

“There remains, then, a sabbath-rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9) We aren’t free of the burden of toil just yet, are we? Our true rest is yet to come.

This struggle reminds me of the iconic feeding of the five thousand portrayed in Mark 6:30-44. What comes to your mind when you think of that story? 

Loaves and fish? Hungry crowds? Twelve basketfuls of leftovers? Yes, all those. But did you consider Jesus’ weary followers? The disciples had just been sent out on a preaching tour. They left with a buddy, a staff, and the clothes on their body. That was it. They returned, apparently, with all kinds of stories:

“The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’ So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place” (v. 30-32).

I can easily imagine their joy and relief as they settle into the boat with Jesus, headed for a time of retreat. These fishermen and tax-collectors now turned traveling preachers had been stretched to the max on their journey. If there was one thing their bodies and spirits needed, it was a snack and a good nap! That, however, was not to be.

You already know what happens next:

“But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things” (v. 33-34).

Am I the only one who feels a twinge annoyed at Jesus for His response here? Sure, teach the crowds, Lord, but how about after that getaway You promised the disciples? What about compassion for them?

Obviously, I identify with the weary kingdom workers. But I also recognize that their season with Jesus was in full-on summer: the harvest was plentiful, and they, the few workers, had an invitation to partner with Him in it. In fact, while Jesus was the miracle worker, He used his disciples’ own hands to provide the abundance of bread.

And what an abundance it was! Five loaves and two fish fed over five thousand people, and how many basketfuls were leftover? Twelve. How many disciples were there? Twelve. They received back much more than they gave. 

Yes, I mutter, but what about their promised quiet time and rest with Jesus? When will they get that?

Apparently the moment for retreat is gone, because according to Mark, Jesus “immediately” sent his disciples off in the boat again where they were buffeted by a storm before Jesus joined them by walking on the water. Nor do they rest when they reach Gennesaret on the other side, for people recognized Jesus and “ran throughout that whole region” to bring the sick to him.

It would seem that Jesus has forgotten His promised rest for his followers.

Here, I’m tempted to tie a nice little bow on this apparent point of tension and tell you that surely the disciples were nurtured and sustained in Jesus’ presence and through His words in ways that go far beyond a merely physical nap. After all, if He could miraculously multiply the bread and fish, surely He could suffuse his followers with supernatural energy.

And perhaps He did. But I also want to acknowledge the everyday struggle of living with willing spirits yet weak flesh. We’re holistic beings, created to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength. From the very beginning, our Creator designed a day of physical rest for us through the sabbath. He doesn’t discredit our bodies and our weariness whatsoever. 

How, then, do we balance both work and rest with Jesus?

I’m left with the conclusion I often land at when finding a lack of clear biblical prescription about a topic. The answer is in abiding. 

I must align my life so tightly with His that I’m not shaken when our course changes–He’ll get us where He wants us to go, even if it seems to be a total shift from the original plan. I trust His compassion for both those I serve and for me–He will provide abundantly for my needs, as well. And I thank Him for His patience–that none should perish, that more souls will one day enter true Rest alongside me.

This life of hardship, hard work, and heaviness is a blink. Let’s cling to Jesus in it, and let Him lead us through.

 

What Happens in Your Sending Church Doesn’t Stay There

If you think that when you move overseas, you leave the dysfunction and unhealth of your church behind, think again. 

My categories for what a healthy church is have grown and changed over the years. In the beginning all I cared about was a church’s confession of faith. Later, I primarily cared about whether it had gospel-centered teaching and a heart for missions. And so when my husband and I landed in a church that was very Christ-centered in its teaching, we felt settled.

A few months after we landed there, I started to sense yellow flags. At the time I don’t think I had the category to trust that that could be my God-given intuition, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking. I sensed it as fear. And again, I didn’t realize that there is a fear, a sense of unsafety, that shouldn’t be present in our spiritual community. That it is not a yellow, but a red, flag that we need to pay attention to.

My concerns kept growing. I worried about the preaching – too academic and out of reach for the congregation. I felt uncomfortable under the leadership of our church. There was dissonance between the desire to keep the gospel central and the way that counseling was handled – where it seemed there was a disordered emphasis on performance and on sin-hunting rather than truly understanding a person’s story and their suffering. More and more I felt like it wasn’t a church I wanted to bring unbelieving or unchurched friends to. 

The leadership didn’t model what it was like to be a work in progress. They were rather untouchable and out of touch with the people. There seemed to be a glass ceiling, and the feedback of the congregation wasn’t usually taken seriously.  The leadership didn’t play well with members when they brought up ideas. In fact, they didn’t play well with other churches. They became more and more isolated from the network of churches in our area with very likeminded theology and practice. 

At different times I mentioned to my husband that maybe we needed to bring things up, but at that point we were in a process to be equipped and commissioned to be sent out. He felt like it didn’t make sense to bring it up since we would be leaving anyway. 

But what happened was that the dysfunction followed us overseas. Being sent out by low-trust leadership was like having a cloud hovering all the time, shaking our sense of confidence in the Spirit’s leading. We felt like we couldn’t fully adult in ministry, because we didn’t feel affirmed by our pastor, nor were we encouraged to pay attention to how we might need to pivot in light of what we were learning. 

The pastor over our ministry hadn’t really bought in on our vision; he had his own vision for who we needed to be and what we needed to become overseas. And so even if that wasn’t a shared vision, we didn’t have the freedom to pursue what we needed to flourish. We needed to stay under authority. 

Almost every time my husband connected with the pastor regarding our overseas gospel work, he had to remind him where we were, what we were doing, and how long we had been there. He would normally end those calls feeling defeated and destabilized. He didn’t think he was ever doing enough to meet this pastor’s approval.

Finally, over a decade after we arrived in that church, an event occurred that broke our trust in the leadership’s capacity to partner well with us. We had been experiencing significant difficulty overseas. We then experienced betrayal of trust from our church back home when they dropped a pretty big proverbial ball and hardly cared about the impact it had on us. That was the last push we needed to quietly leave. 

We met with our pastors over several weeks and really wrestled with the Lord in prayer and seeking advice from close friends. We realized how deeply trust had been eroded over the years we had been gone and that we couldn’t really stay. We needed better support as we continued to serve in a very difficult and dark place. We were able to preserve relationships and affirm the ways that the church had blessed us, and then we were free to find another faith family that could partner in our ministry. 

God was so kind to provide for us through another church that we had a pretty long relationship with. They took us under their wings and carefully sought to build trust with us. It was such a breath of fresh air! Over the following year as we continued the process of switching our membership to this new body and interacted with one of their pastors every couple of weeks, we were blown away by the contrast. Every time he said something that showed he trusted us, we were surprised to experience how healing that was. I don’t think we fully realized how hard it had been not to have trust until we had it and realized how empowering and encouraging it was. 

Low-trust, high-control environments breed so much discouragement, and we could see how much we had been tempted to lose heart on the field because of what we had at home. 

I think it may have been William Carey who talked about those that stay, about those who “hold the ropes.” It turns out that the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of those who hold the ropes really matters. The people holding the ropes need to believe in you and what you are doing. They need to understand that holding the ropes is vital for you to persevere in the work of going down a deep dark mine to rescue those in the pit. Ideally, they will be able to take feedback, so that when you say, “I need you to hold the rope this way for us to be able to do the work down here,” they will trust your perspective. 

Mutual trust is vital in the type of partnership needed for gospel work. You need to trust they will hold the rope well, and they need to trust that while you are down in the pit, you are faithfully doing what you were entrusted to do. Emotionally healthy spiritual leadership is vitally needed both in those who go and those who send. 

Chatting with one of our ministry coaches, I was struck by his statement, “Emotionally unhealthy spiritual leaders are one of the most destructive forces on the planet.” I found myself nodding emphatically. Leaders need to know their Bible, yes, and know and love sound teaching. But there is a kind of emotional health that impacts humility and vulnerability, that enables leaders to be safe for their people and that creates the kind of environment where people flourish and thrive – even those who are not geographically close but still impacted by their decisions and capacity to care thousands of miles away. 

Healthy leaders stay human-sized. They neither overpower nor domineer, nor do they shrink in fear or flatter instead of speak the truth. Healthy leaders remain connected to themselves, to God, and to others. They relax in the presence and love of the Father; they embody Jesus and practice resurrection; and they live by the power of the Spirit. As they live and lead that way, those they lead are also able to do the same – staying human-sized, connected to themselves, God, and others, and present to God in the life they have been given, flourishing and rooted. 

I don’t know what your specific situation might be and what hard questions you are asking and facing. I know that working out difficult issues and conflict with your sending church may feel scary. But don’t downplay the impact of oppression and dysfunction in your ability to live with hope and confidence on the field. 

So name your needs, face your capacity honestly, and chase the ability to live in the freedom Christ bought for you. The Spirit meets you right where you are, not where you wish you were. Come to Him with your perplexity about what to do and how to navigate confusing relationships, and dare to hope He actually cares enough to walk with you every step toward deeper rescue and deeper freedom.

Neurodiverse Marriage on the Field

When diving into the topic of neurodiversity, it can be complicated to navigate all the different ways it can show up in your children, your family, or your marriage. The more we learn about neuroscience and brain biology, the more evidence we have that adults and children alike are on the neurodiverse spectrum, and the impact carries through life. 

Neurodiversity in adults can be fun and quirky from the outside, but the internal and relational challenges of neurodiversity can be magnified by the stress, transition, work load, sensory differences, and social needs of being in global work.

Simply stated, neurodiversity is a biological brain difference. A neurodivergent brain functions and processes differently from what is considered “typical.” These differences include conditions like autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities, as well as slow processing, auditory processing disorder, and sensory challenges. 

In my previous article about noticing neurodiversity in TCKs, I mentioned the process of looking inward because this does not just impact children. I wrote, “Neurodiversity has an 80% heredity rate. That is high enough to warrant a look at you or grandparents or aunts and uncles. If it is in your children, it’s probably in the family, and it could be impacting your experience overseas. It also tends to have a very high impact on marriage and relationships. If you’re struggling, neurodiversity could be why!”

I want to dive more into the relational impact and how, if present as an adult, it could be affecting your friendships, work relationships, and even your marriage.

Just as there are ways to help your TCKs with neurodiversity, there are ways to help adults who are on the spectrum. But first, neurodiversity in an adult must be acknowledged and noticed.

 

What can this look like for adults?

For adults, neurodiversity looks like challenges with emotional connection, executive function deficits, missing social cues, and differences in communication. There can be challenges in showing empathy, difficulty completing tasks, emotional regulation problems, and heightened sensory responses that make daily life confusing and disorganized.

There may be special interests, hobbies, and a deep, hyperfocus on specific things that may look like hours spent researching, complete loss of time doing an activity, or incredible knowledge about certain topics that often do not reflect the actual requirements for work, tasks, or needs of life and family.

When neurodiversity is unsupported, unknown, and undiagnosed in adults, there can be increased instances of burnout, anxiety and depression, especially in global work. Lack of motivation, which doesn’t always match the intense focus of other activities, can make life very difficult to manage. 

For these adults, there can be a relational, emotional disconnect that often presents with selfishness, entitlement, anger, criticism, and many levels of frustration for all involved.

 

Neurodiversity in Marriage

The levels of frustration grow for those in close, intimate relationships with the neurodiverse person because there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to the varied interactions or conversations. There is an ebb and flow of energy, up and down emotions, black-and-white thinking that feels critical and judgemental, and higher rates of conflict that can be overwhelming.

This dynamic can be especially lonely, frustrating, and harmful when the confusion, dysregulation, critical questioning, and crazy-making behavior happens during meltdowns or shutdowns at home but isn’t seen by others. The neurodiverse person can hold it together, masking and mirroring in public, but then unload the impact behind closed doors with their spouse or children receiving the consequences.

These consequences can be obsessive-compulsive behavior, shutting down, impulsivity, anxiety-inducing actions or words. There might be passive-aggressive communication, or loud and angry meltdowns requiring help to regulate or calm. This behavior can even escalate into physical, verbal, or emotional abuse of others.

Often, this roller coaster of intensity will leave a much greater amount of responsibility, adulting, parenting, social pressure, and executive functioning on the neurotypical spouse. This unbalanced mental load can be heavy and harmful to carry and has a direct connection to the longevity of marriage.

 

Why is this important?

Because of the negative impact it can have when undiagnosed, it is vital that we start to notice, pay attention, listen, and accept neurodiversity in ourselves or our marriage. 

Trying to struggle through on your own, whether you see it in yourself or in your spouse, is not sustainable or helpful. Leaving this unnoticed can be the reasons behind marriage struggles, ministry challenges, personnel conflict, and unhealthy team relationships.

Being an adult on the neurodiverse spectrum presents social, emotional, and relational needs that often require support to work, be equipped, and participate in overseas work in healthy ways. 

As more information comes about the topic of neurodiversity and as organizations begin to better understand the depth of impact on families and marriages, I believe many of the harmful dynamics can change, burnout can decrease, accommodations can be made, and neurodiverse people can thrive in global work.

Together, as a global community, we can notice, help, support, and accommodate families and marriages on the field.

 

Neurodiverse Marriage Resources:

Global Trellis Neurodiversity Week

Christian Neurodiverse Couples – Uniquely Us Book

Jenilee Rachel Coaching

The Marriage You Want Book

Leslie Vernick Podcast Episode on Neurodivergence

When Neurodiversity Collides with Ministry and Missions

Fighting for Awe and Wonder – And Why It Matters

It was her question that I couldn’t shake. The type of question where harsh reality clashes with idealism. And I couldn’t ignore the drive to chase an answer, even if it took months to unpack. Or in this case, twelve months. 

“How do we maintain awe and wonder?” 

She wasn’t asking because I knew the answer. She’s way smarter than I am. She was asking because she sensed that our souls earnestly wanted to discover some answers together—or at least start trying as we meandered the whimsical neighborhoods of Portland. Her poodle sniffed a statue of Ramona Quimby at the Beverly Cleary Park. 

Speaking of awe and wonder while exploring my favorite childhood author’s hometown and secretly snapping selfies outside her childhood home was the backdrop to her inspired question. Standing where Beverly Cleary would have sipped lemonade and chased playmates in Mary Jane shoes felt surreal. Ramona, Beezus, Henry, Ribsy, and even Scooter, and their white-picket-fence lives were friends who flooded my imagination as a child. I devoured their stories—where the biggest challenge is the neighbor’s complaint of your scruffy dog—over and over by the flicker of a kerosene lantern in a village in Africa. 

The spark of our awe and wonder conversation felt magical, and everything in me was alive. The fact that I was having this exchange with a brilliant children’s book illustrator made it all the more invigorating.

Until I found out the hard truths about Beverly Cleary’s dingy childhood. There wasn’t much sipping of lemonade and chasing of friends along idyllic streets like I’d always imagined. It seems like her writing was less of a memoir and more of an escape to places deeply longed for. 

It hurt to shatter the romantic lens. It was also inspiring. Because there was no better place for me to begin to wrestle with the question of how to maintain awe and wonder in a dark world than outside the childhood home of an author who lived this tension. 

How do I maintain awe and wonder in a world that’s bent on crushing it? 

And why does it matter? In a world where the bodies of children are swept away by swirling waters in Texas, the children in warring strips of lands are paying for centuries of conflict, and the minority children in Cameroon have been prohibited from attending school for fear of their lives, why does it matter to the beating of my very soul if I fight for a sense of awe and wonder? These things feel secondary when I can’t even ensure the protection of the least of these. 

Twelve months later, I still don’t have a clean answer, but I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far and open the conversation to learn from you. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ve lived a hard journey across global borders, raised children in hard places, served the unseen, lost a lot, been hurt a lot, wrestled with God a lot, and maybe, just maybe, have lost some awe and wonder in the process. So I think this community has something to teach me.

Why does any of this matter? Why did this question resonate with me and all of humanity?

Because the opposite of awe and wonder is everything that tears us apart from each other and from God. They are the things that disconnect us, suck our souls dry, separate us from empathy for our neighbor, and drive us away from praise. In stark contrast to awe is cynicism, indifference, disenchantment, boredom. On the farthest end of the spectrum of the human experience from wonder is jadedness, apathy, detachment, contempt, and dread. 

A dreary worldview leads us to disconnection, comparison, and inaction. It leads us to seeing others as less than fully human and a growing disdain for the many forms of the goodness of God. We lose our ability to love selflessly and take on pride, gossip, narcissistic tendencies, and even war.

I do not want to be accustomed to these things taking up space in my heart. They are diametrically opposed to awe and wonder. I can hardly think of a closer description of hell. Or things that take my mind further from the heart of God.

Against a landscape of evil, hardness, hyper-self-preservation, disconnection, ingratitude, and danger, I must engage awe and wonder because it leads me to 

praise God better,
which leads me to softness,
which leads me to share,
which leads me to connect,
which leads me to appreciate,
which leads me to protect. 

As a teen full of imagination and wonder, someone informed me that my rose-colored glasses were evidence of a head buried in sand and that my wonder insulted the pain of others. More than anything, I didn’t want to participate in disregarding the pain of others. 

So, instead of learning to better balance the pain of the world with my bursting curiosity, I tried to be mature like them. Bury liveliness. Embrace cynicism. Because jaded people seemed super informed, albeit crippled by inaction. 

As someone who has lived and worked overseas for decades, I’m painfully aware that the pursuit and expression of beauty may be interpreted as disloyalty and abandonment of those in hard seasons. 

But the abandonment of wonder left me hollow. So, I’m back at this question again. 

Practically speaking, how do we do this? For starters, we need to name the things that deoxygenate our awe and loot us of joy. Screens. Inauthentic experiences. Passivity. Pride. Hypervigilant self-focus. Reading comments online—where criticism is acutely trained to detect imperfection and is blind to the bravery it took someone to produce art or work.  

But simply avoiding thieves of joy isn’t what makes us connected and full. Our beings were made to actively seek the beautiful things that make us fully aware of God and in tune with each other. Here are a few fertile places I’ve found.  

  1. Good theology matters. Perhaps there was some level of truth that my childlike awe and wonder neglected to acknowledge the hard things of life, a TCK phenomenon I am only now grasping in my line of work with TCK research. Perhaps a better worldview and a deeper theology would have me explore the complex and uncomfortable truths—learning to hold in tension the beautiful and the hard—and that sometimes the hard is beautiful and the beautiful is hard. Perhaps my heart was meant for deeper worship without reservation when I am called to build a more solid theology of God’s goodness, suffering, sin, and to honor the feeling of paradox of things I don’t fully understand now, but will someday. Perhaps the greatest way to honor the good with awe and wonder is to acknowledge the hard and whisper an invitation for the Holy Spirit to be my teacher (John 14:26).
  2. Cultivate tenderness. Tenderness sees the brokenhearted, turns the throat-lump into sea water running down cheeks, delights in the petal formation of a rose, pauses to ponder the markings of a toad, rebels against the overloaded schedule, believes the best in disquieting misunderstandings, and makes creamy chai for the neighbor. If tenderness is a soft landing place missing from our ability to breathe, stop, praise, notice, engage, maybe it’s time to go back to the root of love—the type that bears, believes, hopes, and endures the things trying to break us (1 Cor. 13:7). 
  3. Throw off the things holding me back. With haste. A good, hard look in the mirror paired with the sacred work of the Holy Spirit burns the secrets holding me back from the Father’s innocence, joy, awe, and empathy. Hebrews 12:1 is a much sweeter bid to freedom than a list of shoulds and condemnation. It is the invitation to drink deep of the things that make me alive and release the things that threaten to sink me. It is a call to marinate in Shalom peace, receive it, root in it, fruit it, and share it. 
  4. Train my eyes upon the unnoticed things. God delights in the song of the sparrow, Leviathan’s froth from playing in the sea, and he even cares about the sorrow of the tax collector. It’s pausing to admire delicate forest fungi while hiking among towering redwoods or listening to the layers of music in a song you’ve heard a hundred times. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The innocent delight in the little things. To be easily awed is an enviable art these days. 

For the past twelve months and twenty-one days, I’ve been sitting on the question I bring to you today: “How do we maintain awe and wonder. And why does it matter?” 

Perhaps the steps of Beverly Cleary’s childhood house was the perfect place to begin wrestling with this question. The gift of her whimsical stories didn’t stem from an idyllic childhood but from a place of longing. Joy and wonder didn’t erase the scarcity but became an intentional step out of the dreariness. 

So what about you? How do you fight for awe and wonder? 

 

Photo by Chris G. Pexels.

God is Faithful in All Our Stories

by Sue Eenigenburg

Everyone has at least one story to tell, and probably more. It could be an amazing thing God has done. Maybe the Lord saw you through a time of deep sorrow or confusion. Sometimes something funny happens, like a language blooper or cultural blunder. When we share our stories, we feel less alone. Sharing our stories builds community.

Stories affect us differently than facts. Facts teach us information, while stories touch our souls. We still learn, but we do so with heartfelt warmth and understanding. We hear another person’s experience, and our perspective changes. We can empathize. We can celebrate. We can relate, because when we hear another’s story, we realize we aren’t isolated in our own. Stories don’t have to be dramatic or amazing. They can be simple and still memorable.

Jesus told stories that people could relate to. He didn’t just teach truth but used stories to illustrate what truth looked like. He wanted people to experience “aha” moments.

God speaks to my heart in the stories I live out. The older I get, the more stories I have that point to God’s faithfulness, patience, and kindness. As I share my stories with others, I pray that my stories touch their lives. I invite them to join me in acknowledging that God is the author of all our stories. We aren’t on our own—even when it looks and feels that way.

In Bags Packed, Hearts Ready, I share stories of God’s faithfulness to me. Like the time when a technician left me in an MRI tunnel long after the machine had stopped. I was securely strapped in and unable to move much. I tried calling out, but no one answered. I counted slowly to one hundred before I pushed the panic button. And when I pushed it no one came, which caused me to panic! I was starting to try and wiggle my way towards escape when finally, someone came and let me out.

Another time it was the middle of the night, and I was wide awake weeping. Sitting on my bed in Spain, I was texting with my sister and my dad who were in Ohio. They were standing around my mom’s hospital bed as she left her earthly home to go be with Jesus. I felt heartbroken that I couldn’t be there. Far from family, I knew Jesus was with me, but I missed being there and I would miss my mom. Stories flowed at her funeral and prompted me to ponder my own values and priorities.

I’ve learned a lot through our many transitions. Even with practice, they are never easy. We’ve moved at least seventeen times. We’ve gone through seven international moves on four different continents. God has been with me in my loneliness. He has held my hand as I adjusted to the many uncertainties in unfamiliar places. He watches over my aging and my responses to it.

Sometimes my stories are simple life lessons from an everyday object. My frother reminded me about the importance of rest. Let me tell my frother story:

A frother changed my life. OK, maybe that is a bit dramatic, but it really did change how much I enjoy my coffee. I used to drink coffee black (with lots of sugar). Then we moved to Spain, and I started drinking “cafe con leche” and cappuccinos. Frothy milk made coffee taste amazing. I loved going out for coffee more than ever.

Then, a friend gave me a frother of my very own. I could use it at home and make my own frothy coffee. Now if I want to, I can have warm, frothy milk in my coffee every day.

I love my frother (sorry for more drama—I like it a lot). It is amazing. I heat up the milk and add a little sugar. Then I turn on my battery-operated frother and froth away. I combine the frothy milk with coffee and get ready to experience liquid yumminess.

Recently, my milk hasn’t been very foamy. I started frothing the milk a little longer and it was OK, but it wasn’t like it used to be. The change happened so gradually that I didn’t realize it. I began to forget what frothy milk tasted like. I haven’t been to a restaurant in months, so I didn’t have anything to which I could compare it.

But I wondered about it as it was taking longer and longer for my trusty frother “to do its thing.” And its thing was no longer what it once was.

I hadn’t changed the milk I used. I had the same brand of coffee.

But it wasn’t the same. I accepted my new reality, a little sad, but what can one do?

Don made coffee one morning. The milk was foamier than ever! I was so happy. What happened?

My hero realized my frother’s batteries were low and put in new ones. My frother was dying, and I didn’t even know it. It needed help. But it happened so slowly over time that I adapted to the new normal of whatever foaminess it could produce. It wasn’t quite right, but it was what I had.

We can be like my frother. We may feel tired, stressed, and drained. But it happens over time, and we adjust to the new normal and forget what full energy feels like. So, we keep going, though a bit slower. We may think about diet, exercise, packed schedules, or what might be causing our fatigue. But there are so many ministry opportunities, we assume we can’t or shouldn’t stop. We keep going, but we are moving more and more slowly with less and less energy.

We don’t take a day off.

We can’t remember our last Sabbath rest.

We can’t afford a vacation.

There are so many needs. Isn’t stopping selfish? We don’t realize we need recharged. Our batteries are dying. We need help. We must take the time to get recharged. We must be intentional; recharging doesn’t happen without effort.

Take a weekly day of rest. Every week. Relax. Exercise. Have a fun day. Enjoy a hobby. Listen to your favorite music. Read a good book. Take a walk. Go to a movie. Watch children play in a park. Pet a dog. Sit in silence. Breathe.

Buy a frother!

Don’t let your batteries die. Learn this life lesson from me and my recharged, fully functioning, happiness-inducing, delight-giving frother: Choose to recharge. (pages 138-139)

In our move back to the States last year, my frother broke. I got a new one. And a backup, if needed. God used a little appliance to highlight for me that sometimes we need to rest. Refreshment is essential in the middle of busy schedules.

Other people’s stories have enriched, challenged, and blessed my life. We all need to share our stories. Write them down. Say them aloud. God wants us to tell our stories.

Psalm 107:1-3 says,

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south. (NIV)

The rest of this psalm hints at stories from days gone by. He mentions people who wandered and sat in darkness. He tells of those who suffered, sailed the seas, cried, rebelled, repented, and more. We read several responses to the stories told. But the psalmist repeats one phrase again and again in the psalm: “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.”

May this be the response to all our stories!

You can order Bags Packed, Hearts Ready through William Carey Publishing.

Sue Eenigenburg has been in cross-cultural ministry since 1986 and lived on four different continents. She is married to Don. Their clan includes four children, their spouses and twelve grandchildren. She is the author of six books including her latest devotional, Bags Packed, Hearts Ready. She likes playing word games, reading mysteries and eating chocolate.

And Yet . . . : Acknowledgement and Encouragement for Those Serving in Weakness

I did not come to this this place with superior eloquence or wisdom, but in weakness and in fear and with much trembling.
I became a little child among them.
Try as I might, I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.

God, I seek your face but I see in a mirror indirectly.

I started with such lofty goals, but my endurance has expired; I have lost all hope of deliverance from the Lord.

I am absolutely terrified, and you, Lord—how long will this continue?
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
My physical body is wearing away.

I am a clay jar.

I have good intentions, but I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate.
I cannot hide from my guilt, I am aware of my rebellious acts; I am forever conscious of my sin.
Why do I continue kicking against the goads?

My eyes are worn out from weeping; my stomach is in knots. My heart is poured out on the ground.
I’ve been burdened excessively, beyond my strength, so that I’ve despaired even of living.

Sometimes I’m so angry at those against you I want to call fire to come down from heaven and consume them.

What has come of my work? Futile! Futile! Absolutely futile! Everything is futile!

How long, Lord, must I cry for help? But you do not listen! Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you pay no attention during times of trouble? How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me?
How long will you pay no attention to me? How long must I worry, and suffer . . . ?

The workers are few.
I feel so alone. I have had enough! . . . I alone am left.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

God loves us and walks with us and redeems us and makes use of us and pours himself into us for his glory. He has done it before and will do it again.

The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he delivers those who are discouraged.
Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

. . . .

(All of the italicized biblical passages above are are written by or about faithful servants of God—prophets, teachers, writers of scripture, disciples, apostles. In order, here are their locations: 1 Corinthians 2:1, 3; 1 Thessalonians 2:7; Exodus 4:10; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Lamentations 3:18; Psalm 6:3; Matthew 26:41; 2 Corinthians 4:16; Romans 7:15; Psalm 51:3; Acts 26:14; 2 Corinthians 4:7; Lamentations 2:11; 2 Corinthians 1:8; Luke 9:54; Ecclesiastes 1:2; Habakkuk 1:2; Psalm 10:1; Psalm 13:1,2; Matthew 9:37; 1 Kings 19:4, 10; Psalm 34:18; Corinthians 12:10. All are in the New English Translation [NET].)

[photo by Amanda King]

Embracing the Calling of a “Sent One”

by Alan Goddard

A calling can be a dangerous thing. There are parts to it that seem so clear—the cause, the purpose, the altruism. Then, when we get into it, we realize there are parts we didn’t expect. Yet, when we embrace a calling, we embrace all of it, for there is no other way to do it. That’s how callings work.

A calling is a sure sense of how one should use one’s gifts and abilities to best participate in God’s kingdom. It expresses how a person’s heart longs to see “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). A calling is bigger than a job; indeed, one might do any number of jobs while carrying out a calling, and many do.

Most often, a calling is recognized at the intersection of a Christian’s spiritual gifts, longing for God’s glory, and passion about where the world needs to be made more whole. It’s how we consider ourselves able to contribute the greatest glory to God’s name until he returns. Those of us called to apostolic, “go and tell” ministry—“sent ones” as the word apostolos meant—have to swallow hard sometimes in embracing our calling.

At the beginning of 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul found himself reflecting on his calling. The misunderstandings and division between Paul and the church provided the impetus for his reflection. Right in the middle of painfully pleading with them to recognize his authority as an apostle, Paul began reflecting on his call. Personally, I like the older NIV rendering best:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Cor. 2:14–16)

It’s as if while dictating the letter, Paul looked off into the distance and started to muse about all that his call required of him. Maybe trying to explain himself brought into relief the joy and the pain, the blessing and the sacrifice, and all the dishonor that came with it. I wonder if, at that moment, he felt tired.

Maybe that wasn’t the way it happened. I can only speculate. But it’s a profound statement of the calling of a “sent one.” In it, Paul declared the daunting nature of such an immense responsibility.

 

Learning Not to Quit

How do we fight for longevity in our calling?  In my own life and ministry, I have seen how a clear understanding of the nature of this call is crucial for weathering the discouragements and setbacks that continually tempt us to put it down, walk away, and quit.

We all know it’s not easy to be called where we go. As a new missionary in my second month overseas, I noticed something bad happening. I had been elated for weeks, enjoying the honeymoon phase, but now it was getting hard. The weather was turning colder. Ministry seemed more and more like a grind.

I started worrying that something was wrong, so I went to my team leader and told him. He did what all good team leaders do: he laughed at me. Yes, that’s what I said—he laughed. Then he told me how that summer he had gone back for furlough to Southern California after years on location, and when talking to members at his home church, several of them remarked, “You have been there so long, you must really like it!” We both shook our heads at that misunderstanding.

No one goes to the mission field because it’s so pleasant. No one goes to the mission field to retire. No, we are called to something else.

 

On Display at the End of the Procession

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, Paul offered a telling description of the nature of the apostolic call: “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”

He “leads us in triumphal procession.” What was Paul talking about? What immediate picture does that bring up for you? Perhaps you are like me. I usually get a picture of a Lakers victory parade with players rapping on the mic or a Yankees ticker tape parade after winning the World Series. But I don’t think that’s what Paul had in mind. In Paul’s thinking, the triumphal procession had a different meaning. There is an echo of it in 1 Corinthians 4:9-14:

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

When Paul spoke of what it was like being an apostle in 1 Corinthians 4:1 (“This is how one should regard us”), there was a sense of triumph and of being captive. They are paradoxically the same. Paul saw his calling as one of triumph, for he was called in Christ, who has triumphed as the King. What higher privilege could there be but to be called by him? Yet it was also a calling of captivity, for he was a slave to Christ and a servant to those to whom he ministered (1 Cor. 4:5), with all the humiliation and low status that accompanied it.

In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul describes the calling of an apostle as being put in last place and made a spectacle to all. This likely refers to the image of the captives in a Roman victory parade. When a Roman general returned home with a victorious army after a campaign, he was legally required to stop before crossing the river and entering Rome.

The army was soon after allowed into the city with a lavish victory parade with the general at the head, followed by the triumphant soldiers. The last members of the procession were citizens of the conquered nation who would become Roman slaves or be sent into the arenas for the gladiator games to be killed.

The tension in Paul’s reflection is poignant. On the one hand, we are victors, redeemed and raised by Christ, who has conquered the world. We are without fear, citizens of Heaven, and ambassadors of the rightful King. On the other hand, we are slaves, joyful captives of Christ who nevertheless must bear humiliation in the eyes of the world and suffer for the sake of his name until he returns.

Paul describes the lot of an apostle as labor and dishonor, weakness and homelessness, persecution and slander. As we spread the fragrance of Christ, some receive it with joy and are saved, while others revile us for the stink. We are a spectacle, something someone looks at for entertainment, as if we were curiosities, some strange creatures who no one quite understands but who don’t really matter anyway. We are the scum of the earth—the garbage of the world.

This is the call of the “sent one.” This is the tension those in “go and tell” ministry feel day in and day out. You may be feeling it.

Maybe you’re a young pastor trying to plant a church who gets asked, “So all you do all week is sit in coffee shops?” Or maybe you are the spouse, unseen, constantly serving in the background, carrying the load for the family, and picking up the dropped balls. Or perhaps you’re the campus minister sitting alone in a Chick-fil-A because some oblivious freshman canceled on you five minutes before you were supposed to meet, leaving you wondering who your consulting firm buddy is meeting at The Capital Grill.

Or are you the missionary who had people call out, “Look at the foreigner!” when you walked by, assuming you couldn’t understand what they were saying? Maybe you’re the Bible translator whom the locals assume only moved to the village to have them help you find a husband. Feeling the calling, each one.

It’s not glamorous, this spot at the end of the procession. But this is the nature of the call. Apostles are not called to anything famous, popular, or trendy. They tend not to be liked except by those on whom their influence has been more profound than the world could ever know. Yet, called they are.

No wonder Paul would say, “Who is equal to such a task?”

~~~~~~~~~

This article is an excerpt from the book Such a Task: Staying the Course in Your Calling as a “Sent One” by Alan Goddard. Alan Goddard (M.A.B.S., Reformed Theological Seminary) has served with Campus Crusade for Christ/Cru for more than 35 years in campus ministry both in the US and internationally. He lived for 15 years in East Asia, serving as a campus team leader and regional director, and has over 20 years of experience in coaching and training missionaries. Such a Taskis available on Amazon and CruStore.org.