Tag: faith

When Callings Collide

As I woke up on Mother’s Day to breakfast in bed, hand-written notes from each of my children, and freshly picked flowers, I was deeply thankful not only for the blessing of my three sons but also for the much-needed reminder that I’m not a complete failure as a mother.

Two days prior I was weeping on my bed over a difficult parenting situation and reeling from feelings of failure that I couldn’t pull myself together to keep going with the day, to keep parenting, to even put supper on the table. I couldn’t keep fighting the fight.

And not only did I feel like a failure as a mom, but also as a wife and a missionary and a writer. In our current busy season, I couldn’t remember the last time my husband and I had connected, I still hadn’t visited the person I’ve been planning to visit who needs emotional support, I still hadn’t filled out the report my organization asked for last month, and I still hadn’t drafted an article for this blog.

None of the roles I play were performed. None of the hats were donned. None of the plates were spinning.

It was a classic case of callings colliding and the subsequent doubting of whether it’s possible to faithfully carry them all at once.

Most people have more than one calling at the same time, and most people have doubted those callings at one time or another. Some callings are lifelong, some are seasonal. Some are thrust upon us, some are chosen by us. Some are obvious, some are difficult to discern. Some are ours alone, some need to be shared and navigated alongside others. Some are vocations, some avocations.

And many of them exist in tandem. I don’t set aside my calling as a mother in order to pick up my calling as a missionary. They coexist today and will coexist again tomorrow. The same goes for everything I’m called to. I’m called to marriage, to motherhood, to missions, and to writing (among other things), and it’s the regular collision of these callings that is so difficult to balance.

It’s nearly impossible to succeed let alone excel in multiple callings at once. Many days I completely fail at one or another, and sometimes I fail miserably. I can easily identify all the things I haven’t accomplished in my various roles—all the writing goals I haven’t achieved, all the texts and emails I haven’t sent, all the times I haven’t played a game with my kids despite them asking several times, all the date nights I haven’t taken with my husband because it’s one more thing to plan for and it feels like too much.

It can be hard to pick all the plates off the floor, let alone get them spinning.

But that’s true for most of us. I am certainly not the only mother out there struggling to find time and energy to pour into my marriage at the end of a long day on the homefront. I’m not the only missionary in the world needing to process my cross-cultural life through writing and finding next to no time to do it. I’m not the only spouse on the mission field scrambling to justify the label “missionary” when I spend all day at home teaching the kids while my husband spends all day helping and serving the poor.

When callings collide, it can be rather difficult to keep track of all those callings, let alone live them out all at once.

Which is why it’s so complicated, and also why we need God’s grace every day to live out the callings He’s given us.

So what does it mean to be a wife and a mother and a missionary and a writer? What does that look like day in and day out?

I honestly don’t know. Because even when I focus solely on one calling at a time, I don’t do it well every day. I get annoyed with my husband, I snap at my kids, I shut myself in the house to avoid any cross-cultural encounters, I ignore my writing project because eating chocolate and watching Netflix is just plain easier. I fail, and fail, and fail again.

BUT. But God’s grace remains just as constant as our failures do, and His grace speaks truth into the lie that we probably weren’t actually called to this and God must’ve made a mistake.

God’s grace declares, “You were made for this even though you aren’t perfect at it.”

His grace speaks, “You should acknowledge your failure but you must also acknowledge My presence and My strength to hold you up.”

His grace breathes, “I created you and I chose you for this. I still choose you for this. I did not make a mistake.”

His grace sends the child who left you in tears one day to whisper in your ear the next day, “You’re the best. There’s no one like you. That’s the truth.”

When callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy. He is gentle with us when we fail. He is comforting when we grieve. He is kind in his encouragement, tender in his care, patient in his guidance. And perhaps more than anything, He is bold in his continued claim of us.

God never called me to be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect missionary, or a perfect writer. He called me to be all of these things and to make of them whatever I could, with His help. But when He called me to them, He knew I would occasionally fail at every one of them. Despite that, He still claims me as His own. And He still invites me to fulfill these callings.

I think God is pleased that I accept the callings He’s given me, and also that I wrestle through the difficulty of when those callings collide rather than throw them away because it seems too hard or downright impossible to figure it out any other way.

So I keep taking them up, these callings of mine, and wrestle with balancing them most days. And I pray that God will always send this reminder when I need it most: when callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy.

Photo by Theodor Moise on Pixabay

Do Not Worry About Tomorrow? How About Next Tuesday?

This is in the Bible: “Do not fret. It only leads to evil.” 

It’s not fair, really. People who fret are trying to prevent evil. They are being conscientious. Yet they are chronically misunderstood.

Take me, for example. You’d think that after over 100 flights with kids, someone would notice all the mission-critical tasks I perform. Shushing. Quadruple-checking departure times. Taking up more than our fair share of the overhead compartment weight limit. Producing entertainment out of thin air. Distributing pretzels. Fanning airsick kids with in-flight magazines. Finding lost Lego pieces. More shushing. 

Repeatedly praying the pilot is sober.

My family rarely expresses their appreciation for these services. But I suppose that’s motherhood—notoriously under-appreciated. The cooking, the cleaning, the listening . . . especially on airplanes, when one strange sound could mean an imminent nose dive into the Atlantic.

Every once in a while it would be nice if, for example, my husband would say, “Dear, I just wanted to tell you that I notice the death grip you have on the arm rests. Thank you for your tireless watch-care over our family.” Instead, he usually says something helpful, like, “Did you know there’s never been a successful water landing in the ocean?” 

In those moments, I’d like to call God up and say, “Are you sure you didn’t mean, ‘Do not joke around, it only leads to evil?’”

I know you’re probably thinking I sound imbalanced. So let me reassure you: I am very aware that flying isn’t the only thing I should worry about.

Did you know, for instance, that rabies can be dormant for a whole year? And that one of the first symptoms can be itchiness? If I don’t interrogate my son every time he scratches his left elbow, who will?

I once wrote an article about how Feeling Awkward™ is the job description of a missionary. But sometimes I’ve lived like my job description is to feel anxious.

I know, I know. Whenever Jesus and I hang out, He’s like, “Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself.” And I’m like, “No problem, Jesus. I’m totally not doing that. I’m worrying about today, and next Tuesday, and three years from now, but tomorrow is absolutely off limits.” 

And then Jesus is like, “I think we need to talk again.”

Two and a half years ago, I was at the peak of my “planning” prowess. I was spinning all the plates and getting my ducks in a row (ducks are surprisingly difficult to keep in order, particularly when you are already spinning plates). 

And then I got actually sick. Like, worse than elbow itchiness.

Like, lie down on the floor in the middle of the night crying out in pain sick. Waking up your husband to pray for you sick. Remembering that your grandma died young of colon cancer sick. And no matter how many funny Dave Barry articles you read, it’s hard to laugh away the paranoia that comes from not knowing why you’re in pain all the time.

It was a journey. And the journey began, as so many do, on an airplane.

I was tasked with visiting a single female worker in a creative access location. We bought tickets. I packed my minimalist backpack, making sure to include my Airplane Preparedness Kit: warm socks for potential polar temperatures, wet wipes for potential pathogens on the arm rests, and headphones, so I could drown out the sound of my heart palpitations with Scripture songs. 

It took several flights to get to The Location. My last flight was with a small national airline a friend of mine likes to call, “Maybe Airways.”

Anyway, there I was, boarding my plane, looking about 19 with my li’l backpack, even though I’d just turned 39. I walked to my seat, as one does, only to discover there was a guy lying across my seat with an IV going into his arm.

I looked at the stewardess, who was slamming shut various overhead compartments. 

“Um?” I said.

“Sit down, we need to take off!”

“But my seat . . .” She waved her manicured hand around dismissively. “Just sit anywhere.” A burly guy whose broad shoulders needed their own seats motioned for me to sit by him.

So I did.

Then I put my elbows on my lap to try not to get into his personal space or let him into my personal space, while simultaneously avoiding making eye contact. Then I put in my headphones to begin my Flight Preparedness Ritual.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . . there is plenty of air in here . . . breathe, breathe . . .

He-makes-me-lie-down-in-green-pastures-He-restores-my-soul . . . I’m sure the pilots are not even a little bit inebriated, breathe . . .

It was a special time with me and God. A thing we do together relatively frequently. To my surprise, though, God actually interjected a comment into this little one-way conversation. 

“The man next to you is safe.” I heard it in my heart, not my ears, but it was a very clear message. 

“That’s nice, God. Though what I’d really like to hear is that the pilot is safe.”

Two more times the Lord said to me, “The man next to you is safe.” I accepted this. Relaxed a bit. I was just beginning to enjoy my soothing music when God spoke again.

“Wouldn’t you like to get rid of that anxiety?”

“Not to be disrespectful, Lord, but I’ve prayed about this a gazillion times already. You and I have been doing this anxiety thing for years, and I don’t let it slow me down anymore. I do it scared, etc. I’ve accepted my thorn in the flesh.”

“But wouldn’t you like Me to heal you?”

“Of course, God. But Your grace is sufficient, Your power is made perfect in weakness, etc.”

“But Perfect Love casts out fear.”

“Touché.” 

“Is it possible that you think your worry is somehow keeping this plane in the air?” I froze. I looked up at the plastic ceiling. Suddenly, Jesus’ words came like a hurricane into my mind: “Who of you by worrying can add an hour to his life?”

It seemed absurd. My worrying had nothing to do with whether this airplane stayed up or fell down. That had to do with a bunch of physics diagrams I didn’t understand. My fear was just making the ride unpleasant. So why was I holding onto it?

“God, I’d give You my worry, but I’ve already tried so many times. Besides, I don’t know how.”

“You don’t have to know how. You just have to know Me.”

“Okay, then. You can have my fear of flying.” I literally opened my hands toward the ceiling, hoping the burly Arab guy wouldn’t notice. And after fifteen years of enduring flight-related anxiety, I suddenly felt relaxed. Peace actually flooded my soul, just like the cliché says it does.

“Wow, Lord! You’ve truly delivered me from all my fears! How can I ever thank You?”

“Share Jesus with that man.”

The first words that came to my mind at that moment were “bait and switch.” I did, however, share Jesus with the big burly Arab man, and I went on to encourage my friend in her service. But it was while visiting her that I first took special notice of the discomfort in my abdomen.

Over the next several months, as I endured pain and underwent testing, I felt Jesus draw near. We faced the truth together: God is God and I am not. He is infinite, all-powerful, and all-loving. I am finite, mortal, and have just two hands and twenty-four hours a day with which to hold things. I have plans, but He has The Plan.

God doesn’t have to rest, but I do. I am unable to carry this world and its cares. I need to trade my self-made burden for the one Jesus designed for me to carry. I can easily take on too much, but He will never give me too much.

In the end, the enemy of medical normalcy in my life, was . . . cue the drumroll . . . gluten. 

I’d always been the kind of person to say, “I’ll eat whatever,” when invited over. Now I am the kind of person who asks, “Is this popsicle gluten-free?” The doc says I’ll have to avoid it for the rest of my life, which is sad because I really liked bread. But I’ve been mostly pain-free for two years now, so it’s worth the sacrifice.

Here’s what I’ve learned: planning for the future, risk analysis, even feeling afraid are not wrong. But our bodies and minds can overreact to those things, just like they can to pollen, or pet cats, or pizza crust.

While there may not be a cure that will let me eat whatever I want, there is a way forward for me in freedom from anxiety. I know that because I’ve been on many flights since the day I agreed to let God handle my fear of flying. And, to His honor and glory, I am still free and at peace.

Worry sometimes shows up in other places, of course. Thankfully, I know exactly what to do when it does.

“Jesus? I think we need to talk again.”

You Were Never Meant to Break Alone

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of a tragic death.

If you’ve ever suffered alone, you know how unbearable it is. Suffering is bad. Alone-ness is worse. This is what Lent is showing me—that this liturgical practice of communal reflection, grief, and hope is a formative Christian discipline about togetherness. It’s teaching us how to hold together in the weight of human brokenness. It’s teaching us not to protect ourselves from grief or rush past it, but to sit with it, be changed by it, and move forward together in it.

I don’t want to be spared from sadness. I want to learn what to do with it, how to be changed by it, and how to live fully with others in the midst of it. I was eight years old when I first learned this.

“Something is wrong with Richard.” The name of my best friend in Cameroon fell heavy as my neighbor delivered grim news—the kind that is worse at night. Richard’s flu had taken a turn for the worse when his family sought a traditional healer, whose methods of cutting out the swollen uvula spiraled into disaster.

My dad, having the only vehicle in our village at the time, loaded the young teen into our family car/community ambulance and began the starry-night journey across wretched clay roads to a mission hospital two hours away. 

As the sun broke through the night the next morning, I woke to wailing. My dad drove up our driveway and delivered my friend’s body to his horrified mother. I later found out that my father had to watch as Richard’s eyes grew wider and his lungs filled with his own blood, mission doctors and nurses desperately trying to provide relief that never came.  

I remember falling silent and shaking on my front steps, overwhelmed by the sight of my village mamas who came running, screaming, tearing their clothes, fainting. The air filled full and loud, their wailing alerting the rest of the village that we’d lost our own. These women made grief a force that was fierce, collective, and fully alive. I was overcome. But I was not alone. 

Then the rituals began. They are customs too sacred and culturally protected to write for the world to see, but they are ones that honor the pain of the living while honoring the life of the dead. Ones where the body of a child is passed around, and the women who once nurtured life into this being now metaphorically drink of the death that the body experienced. That day my village mamas gathered around a broken body and remembered—together. 

This felt viscerally like communion. 

Was I afraid? Yes. Did I crawl into my parent’s room the following nights scared that my own lungs might choke the life out of me in my sleep? Yes. Was the sight of my friend’s body being passed around in sacred ritual overwhelming? Yes. 

But I didn’t need saving from the sadness. I needed to be taught what to do with it. I needed to see with my own two eyes that crying your lungs out with your neighbors is exactly what you do when life is lost. I needed to learn that shared shrieks of crushed hearts mean you’re not alone. I needed to see that falling to the ground and losing consciousness from grief is what mothers do when they put to rest the bodies that sprouted inside them—and that they have people who will do it with them. 

We were breaking. But we were breaking together.

My Cameroonian mamas taught me to acknowledge sadness for the violence that it is on the soul instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. They taught me to hold the paradox that grief feels so constricting because life was first good, because we first loved, and now we have lost. My parents taught me that crawling into their room for comfort instead of panicking alone is exactly what I should do when I’m afraid.

Years later, I went to my first Western funeral. The stoic suits and stifled tears felt almost hollow. The room felt uncomfortably polite, and this form of grieving seemed to tell only a partial story as everyone sat perfectly spaced in their individual chairs. That is, until I saw my normally put-together friend drag herself to her son’s casket and lay herself fully across it, refusing to rush mourning for the sake of the ceremony. And the whole room broke. 

It was then that I knew grief is universal. No matter the ritual, we need togetherness when anguish hits.

No one is truly protected from the shattering moments of life. But straddling worlds may mean there’s a little less insulation between you and death, poverty, war, injustice, bad medicine, and crime. Becoming one with our neighbors and bearing their burdens as our own makes these truths worthy of our attention, our energy, our love, and our sadness. And this sadness isn’t valueless. 

As we sit together around the world in the reflection of Lent, may we heave a collective Christian sigh. One where we commune to honor the hanging of Heaven’s Child while also hungrily accepting His atonement. One where we refuse to rush through the observance so we can start life’s ceremonies. One where we are not protected from brokenness but are changed by it. And one where we break—but never alone.

Photo by Marianna Smiley on Unsplash

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.

 

Our One and Only True Calling

I will never forget that August day, the day we learned we were being rerouted to a different mission site than we’d originally been appointed. We were at the tail end of my husband’s family medicine residency, finally finishing seven years of medical training that had consumed our lives. The end of residency signaled the opening of a door to finally tie up loose ends and head overseas as medical missionaries, a calling that had led and guided us for the past decade.

My husband was at the hospital when the news came, so I was home alone with our two small sons. I couldn’t call and interrupt his workday, so I absorbed the sudden shift in our plans alone. I lay on the bed, curled into a ball, and wept.

On the one hand, my highly emotional response might seem odd given the fact that we had never been to either the previously appointed mission site nor the newly appointed one. Our attachment to either place was minimal at best.

Yet on the other hand, our decision-making process had been filled with prayer and reflection, along with conversations providing counsel. We felt as confident as anyone can when making a decision of this kind. We were grateful not only for a place to go, but for the clarity and confirmation regarding the where and the when.

Until that day when the news came that we would no longer be going to the place we were sure we were meant to go.

When my husband came home, I unleashed a new wave of tears. Together, we asked the typical questions. Did we miss something? Did we misunderstand what God was asking us to do? Did we close our eyes and ears to what He was saying so we’d only hear what we wanted to hear? What did this mean, logistically and spiritually? Should we agree with the new direction our organization had set for us, or go back to the beginning and start again?

Although the questions continued swirling for a long time, our way forward was surprisingly and blessedly clear from the moment our path took a sharp turn. We chose to submit to authority, trusting that the knowledge of people who’d been in missions for years and decades ahead of us knew better than we did. That assumption proved true in the end, although it took a long time for us to understand all the dynamics at play that led to our unexpected change of course.

One question that didn’t initially occur to me at the time of being rerouted was one I thought I already knew: What is your calling?

Before the upheaval in my heart that August day, I would have said that my calling was to serve in medical missions alongside my doctor husband. More specifically, we were called to serve in Africa. More specifically still, we were called to serve with a residency training program in Kenya that educates and equips family medicine physicians from Africa for Africa. The final detail in our calling was the specific location in which we’d seek to carry out the aforementioned particulars.

We had it all sorted out. Our calling was specific and clear.

Being rerouted to a new location didn’t change anything else about our calling. We would still serve in medical missions, with the same residency training program in the same country as we expected to. The only change was the literal location within Kenya where we’d live and serve. In hindsight, I realize that’s a relatively minor adjustment compared to some changes other missionaries have had to endure. It was enough of a diversion from our expectations, however, to cause real emotional turmoil and require a long process of healing and coming to terms with our new reality.

Also, it was enough of an alteration to make me question our calling.

If the location of our ministry will be on the other side of the country than we thought, what is our calling? If we’ll be working with a different people group than we’d planned, what is our calling? If our ministry asks us to do something we don’t feel equipped to do, what is our calling?

In an unpredictable, ever-changing world, I had to land on the one thing that never changes: our one and only true calling is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Deut. 6:5, Mark 12:29-30).

On a practical level, the way we express our love for the Lord will differ from one person to the next. We are made with certain gifts and talents which are meant to love and glorify and serve the Lord in various capacities, and which are meant to fulfill specific callings He’s made known to us.

But when our circumstances prohibit our gifts and talents from being expressed easily, or at all, we are left with either despairing of fulfilling our callings or clinging to the foundation of our faith. That foundation is this: He who first loved us is ultimately inviting us to love Him back, to cherish who He is and what He’s done, and to respond with an outpouring of love (1 John 4:10, 19).

I’m reminded of David, who spent approximately fifteen years waiting for his calling to become the next king of Israel to come to fruition. After becoming the king of Judah following the death of Saul, David had to wait an additional seven years before becoming the king of all Israel (2 Sam. 5:4-5).

This was a man whose calling was as clear as it comes: the prophet of God anointed him as God’s chosen. And although David knew from the outset that he’d have to wait a while to become king (Saul was still sitting on the throne, after all), he probably didn’t imagine it would take as long as it did, nor that he’d spend a decent amount of that waiting period on the run, fleeing for his life through the wilderness.

For as obvious as his calling was, the details of how to fulfill it were as clear as mud. I can well imagine the questions plaguing David as he hid in caves and worked to stay one step ahead of Saul’s murderous mission: Why is this happening? Did I miss something? Is this even worth pursuing anymore? Did God choose the wrong man?

We get a glimpse into his inner thoughts through the many psalms he penned, not only over the course of a lifetime but even some that were written during the exact season he was escaping Saul. Given the intensely stressful situation he found himself in, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some lines of these psalms (Psalms 34, 54, 56, 59) are of an imprecatory nature.[1]

Other lines, however, offer insight into another layer of David’s emotions. After his close friend Jonathan urged him to flee from Saul, David found himself in the land of the Philistines, unsafe and pretending to be insane in order to preserve his life (1 Sam. 21:10-15). In tandem with that episode, David penned the words, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18).

The chosen and anointed future king of Israel was residing in a foreign and hostile land, behaving like a madman with drool running down his face in front of an enemy king. His calling had seemingly gone haywire. His expectations of assuming the throne were as far from his current reality as they could possibly be.

And while openly admitting how the circumstances had broken his heart, David also declared that the Lord was near and ready to save his crushed spirit. How can someone so far off from his calling say such a thing?

Because he knew the answer to the foundational question we must all ask ourselves: What is your calling?

David’s answer: to love the Lord. Regardless of the direction (or misdirection) his calling had taken at the time, David never forsook the truth that he was loved by God and was invited to love God back.

This is not to say that we can’t or shouldn’t grieve when our callings change course or even hit a dead end. Of the same event among the Philistines in Gath, David also wrote, “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?” (Ps. 56:8). Yes, we can and should cry, weep, and wail. God hears it all and receives it all.

But alongside our confusion, questions, and laments is the truth that David recorded for us while hiding in the wilderness of Ziph and having the locals expose his whereabouts to Saul (1 Sam. 23:7-29): “Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.” (Ps. 54:4).

How can someone whose calling has been derailed by enemies and other opponents proclaim that God sustains him? Because he knew that his calling was more than a situation or a time or a place. David’s calling was a position with God, a right relationship with his Creator.

My comparatively minor bump in the road that August day was vastly different than David’s years of aiming at a moving target, but it brought me to the same place it brought David. It made me go back to the core of my faith and remind myself that no matter where I am, what I’m doing, or when I’m doing it, my purpose is to love the Lord.

Yes, there are specifics to our individual callings, and we should not overlook them because they matter – we are gifted in specific ways for specific God-honoring tasks and I believe not only that they matter in this lifetime but will also matter in the next. We will, after all, be held accountable for what we have done here and now.

I certainly hope that the Lord was pleased with how I used my gifts to serve the kingdom when we landed at the new mission site, just as I hope He is still pleased with me for how I’m using my gifts at the original site we eventually got to. I hope that my response to our missionary calling, however convoluted it seemed at times, has honored the Lord.

But before we focus on the ways we’ve obeyed God’s commands, before we remember the ways we’ve responded to God’s invitations to follow certain callings, I hope we will rejoice in one another’s response to our one and only true calling.

When I get to heaven, my hope and desire is to answer the question, “What did you do in your earthly life?” with a resounding and emphatic, “I loved the Lord.”

 

[1] Imprecations invoke curses on one’s enemies, which was common among ancient near Eastern literature, although it should be noted that David’s imprecations place the responsibility of redresses in the hands of the Lord, the divine Judge. Imprecations may also appeal to God to act against evil.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preeze on Unsplash

 

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.

Could God Be Preparing TCKs to Meet the Deepest Needs of This Generation?

Motherhood photo by Mukil Menon.

Growing up overseas offers children an incredible opportunity to develop a global perspective based on the lived experiences of forming personal connections across cultures. I’ve certainly seen that unfold from my own childhood, and in my work as an expat consultant, I’m watching the next generation carry forward a global mindset that is making an exceptional impact on relationships, identities, and a strong witness for Christ. But this doesn’t happen by accident. 

My own story began as an American child living in Cameroon, where my parents served as Wycliffe Bible translators. Our missionary life started the day our ivory family of six spilled out of our Nissan truck and into the lives of an ebony clan who would become family, changing me forever. Two decades earlier, an elder of their village had written a plea to Wycliffe for a Bible translation in his language. He unknowingly forged the path that would make me a Third Culture Kid — someone who spent a significant amount of their childhood years abroad. 

Growing up in Cameroon shaped me profoundly. It made other people’s experiences anything but distant. News of war in Africa wasn’t a faceless story. I shared life with people who were killed or displaced in Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis. My husband is a TCK whose family lived through not one, not two, but several evacuations from war-torn countries. The people who experienced days without potable water, dehydration, hushing their babies while hiding in the bush, homemade bombs going off at social gatherings, retribution for speaking out, the terrible silence of ghost towns, and the wailing of women were not nameless people in a news article to me. 

A childhood spent with these people also made their joys anything but distant. The children they birthed were babies I carried on my back and celebrated when they brought home their first report cards. Witnessing the people of my childhood hold the Word of God in their own language for the first time wasn’t just a media post I swiped past. It was sacred and deeply moving — the culmination of sharing 20 years of my family’s life with a community that fed me beans from the same bowls as their children, taught me their songs and stories around kitchen fires, boiled herbal medicine when I was sick, and cried shouts of joy when they hugged me home from boarding school. They were worth sacrificing for, and they felt the same way about us.

Growing up between worlds gives children the chance to experience the love, joy, loss, pain, and victory of our global neighbors in a deeply personal way — one that often moves them to action later as adults. Often unaware of their own strengths, Adult TCKs tend to be highly sought after in today’s job market due to essential skills that were developed as a result of their globally-mobile childhood. 

According to wealth management companies Creative Planning International and Sable International, ATCK skills include compassion, empathy, adaptability, open-mindedness, independence, resilience, problem-solving, and the ability to consider multiple perspectives.1 These qualities are increasingly rare and extremely attractive in a Western backdrop marked by divisiveness, screen saturation, and overstimulation. This growing recognition is fueling the rise of world schoolers, families who choose to work remotely to provide real-world, cross-cultural experiences as the foundation for their children’s education.

Globally raised children are poised to make a significant impact on the next generation on a spiritual level too. Their experiences abroad foster carefully curated skills that will directly address the projected societal deficiencies of Gen Alpha. Experts predict that Gen Alpha will face psychological challenges from digital lives, including unsustainable pace, relentless change, lack of genuine connection, lack of face-to-face contact, risk-aversion, real-world interaction deficiencies, fragmented attention, and more.2 Additional challenges include social fragmentation, polarization, and difficulty forming meaningful relationships. We already see warning signs of this in Gen Z.

God’s heart for all people compels us to prepare ourselves and our kids with the tools necessary to minister to each generation’s unique challenges. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 reminds us of the breadth of God’s heart: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”3 So, how will we reach them?

I believe today’s TCKs are uniquely positioned to minister to Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s challenges with a clarity of the gospel that is a direct result of their global upbringing. TCK Training’s 2024 survey of 1,643 adult TCKs representing 92 nationalities uncovered exciting information about the third culture kid experience.4 Their strengths align remarkably well with the skills needed to meet future challenges:

  • 93% of adult TCKs report having a broad worldview — a crucial skill in addressing complex spiritual questions in an information-saturated generation.
  • 83% see themselves as bridges between cultures — a critical capability in holding the core truth of scripture in tension with an increasingly polarized culture.
  • 83% report compassion as a strength — a necessary trait as Gen Alpha is projected to be more deficient in meaningful face-to-face contact than previous generations.
  • 82% report adaptability — an essential skill as Gen Z and Gen Alpha face complex issues with unprecedented access to information.
  • 78% report open-mindedness — an important tool in an increasingly globalized world. 

When I consider the reported strengths of TCKs, I can’t help but wonder if God is purposefully building Gen Z and Gen Alpha TCKs to minister to the wounds of their own generation. Is it possible that God will use their upbringing between cultures to bridge the gap and equip them with a profound clarity of the lived gospel? Might this powerfully shake the world and bring healing to our spiritual sickness? 

But here’s the caveat. This only holds true when it’s done well. 

Over the last few generations, the international community has learned painful lessons about the importance of intentional parenting in the expat context. We would do well to learn from what works and what doesn’t in raising kids abroad. While the TCK experience offers a valuable and rich foundation, mishandling it can lead to grave repercussions. TCKs are at higher risk for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) than other populations, which can result in long-term physical and mental health complications when left unattended.5 

Does this mean parents should avoid raising children abroad? Absolutely not. 

Consider this analogy: I’m at risk for plantar fasciitis. Should I avoid walking, hiking, or running? Recent studies show that a sedentary lifestyle is as harmful to my health as smoking and diabetes. In fact, not exercising was found to increase risk of death by 500%.6 Avoiding exercise is not the answer to my fullest and healthiest life. Instead, I researched triggers and mitigating factors and pursued an active lifestyle while investing in supportive shoes, stretching, and taking breaks when I detected pain.

In the same way, parents can raise TCKs while addressing specific risks and implementing mitigating factors. Due to mobility, the number one risk factor for TCKs is loss of connection—with primary caregivers and with community. Stress for parents, frequent moves, and the loss of familiar environments all heighten this risk.

This is where the power of TCK-informed parenting comes in. If loss of connection is the primary risk factor for TCKs, what would happen if TCK connection were centralized in the expat community? 

In 2019, Dr. Christina Bethell conducted a study of 6,188 people at John Hopkins to determine which childhood factors built resilience instead of fragility in adult mental health.7 She found that even children who had experienced mild to severe trauma in childhood went on to have greater resilience and better mental and emotional health in adulthood if they also had positive connections with primary caregivers, peers, and the community.8 The study further showed that Positive Childhood Experiences, or PCEs, had a cumulative effect in that the more PCEs a child had, the greater their health in adulthood.

This study’s impact on preventive care science leaves us with hope that increasing access to PCEs may alter the trajectory of children at risk for trauma and higher ACE scores. It further explains the significant and lasting difference that caregivers and the community make in raising a healthy generation.

The eight PCEs are:

  1. The ability to talk with family about feelings.
  2. The sense that family is supportive during difficult times.
  3. Feeling safe and protected by an adult in the home.
  4. Feeling supported by friends.
  5. Feeling a sense of belonging in high school.
  6. Participating in community traditions.
  7. Having at least two non-parent adults who genuinely cared (Pinetree Institute).
  8. Belonging to a multi-generational group. 

Each of the PCEs center on connection, starting with the primary caregiver and then extending to the wider community. Children who consistently had 6-7 PCEs were 72% less likely to develop mental illness in adulthood. Those who had 3-5 were 50% less likely to develop depression and poor mental health.9 Everyone plays a stewardship role in building vibrant childhoods — from parents, to peers, and the wider community. 

Many of us in the expat community are painfully aware of crash-and-burn stories of TCKs whose needs were put on the backburner in a passionate pursuit of global work. Even armed with these insights as a TCK mom, I was not immune to my own blindspots and moments of disconnection. However, as an expat family instructor, I am deeply encouraged by today’s TCK parents and their strong commitment to centralize the needs of the family as a launching point for effective ministry, not a secondary consideration.

It is true that TCKs are at higher risk than other populations for a high ACE score largely due to mobility and loss of connection. Yet the good news is clear: Positive Childhood Experiences grounded in meaningful relationships have a protective and lasting effect. Even in the face of adversity, children who experience strong family bonds, supportive friendships, and a sense of belonging are significantly more resilient and healthy.

As an expat parent, it is within your hands to nurture your child’s potential to become spiritually whole themselves before becoming a globally aware citizen who brings God’s healing touch to their generation. It starts with TCK-informed parenting — knowing the risks, focusing on connection, and raising spiritually and emotionally vibrant children. The stakes are too high to remain uninformed.

If you would like to know where to start, here are resources I recommend.

Footnotes
1 Sengelmann, Peter. Benefits of Living Overseas with Children. Creative Planning International. (September 23, 2024). Accessed 01/29/2025; Shrosbree, Leanne. 10 reasons growing up abroad gives your children a head start in life. Sable International. (June 6, 2019). Accessed 01/29/2025.
2 Nellis, Joe. What does the future hold for Gen Alpha? Cranfield Executive Development. Accessed 01/28/2025; Haidt, Jonathan. End the Phone-Based Childhood Now. The Atlantic. (March 13, 2024). Accessed 01/29/2025.
3 English Standard Version Bible. Bible Gateway. Accessed 02/08/2025.
4 Crossman, T., Wells, L., Vahey Smith, E., & Kanabar, S. (2025, January 20). First Look: Data from the 2024 Survey on the Impact of Childhood Global Mobility on Adult Wellness, 52. Retrieved from https://www.tcktraining.com/research/first-look-data-from-the-2024-survey
5 Ibid., 9.
6 Mandal, Anaya. Not exercising is worse than smoking, diabetes or heart disease finds study. News Medical Life Sciences. (October 21, 2018). Accessed 01/28/2025.
7 Bethell C, Jones J, Gombojav N, Linkenbach J, Sege R. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels. JAMA Pediatr. (2019):e193007. Accessed 02/01/2025.
8  Pinetree Institute. Positive Childhood Experiences (PCES). Accessed 02/01/2025.
9 Bethell C, Jones J, Gombojav N, Linkenbach J, Sege R. Positive Childhood Experiences. JAMA Pediatr. (2019):e193007. Accessed 02/01/2025.

 

This article expands on data shared in “Key Takeaways for TCKs” in Mission Frontiers, May/June 2025.

Photo by Mukil Menon, Unsplash.

The Spiritual Discipline of Remembrance

by Lauren Wells

Remember when you were slaves in Egypt and I rescued you with my mighty hand…

Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other…

Remember my body and blood that has been shed for you…

I sat with a young woman as she and I spent another hour together recalling the life events on her Grief Tower — the hard parts of her life that had stacked up over the past two decades. Her Grief Tower Timeline was filled with some of the most severe, heartbreaking traumas of anyone I had worked with. And like most missionaries (and missionary kids) I’ve worked with, as she recalled each trauma, she also quickly dismissed its severity with spiritual platitudes. 

But God used it… 

But I can see how it worked out for good… 

But God is good… 

It’s all part of His plan…

She was deeply afraid to admit and articulate the gravity of the things that had happened and the depth of grief and heartbreak she had experienced. It was as if a steel shield covered those wounds and any attempt to uncover and grieve them was deflected by pointing to a nice spiritual bandaid plastered over the top. 

This coping method isn’t unique to her – I see it all the time, especially in the missions world.

I wonder if it is instilled in us that the correct, spiritual answer is one that dismisses the hard and proclaims the good? 

In my teenage years as a missionary kid, I certainly remember the admiration I received for such faith-filled answers.

I wonder if deep down, we feel the need to protect God’s reputation, advocating for his goodness by diminishing hurt?

I certainly don’t want anyone to question God’s goodness because of my hard stories.

Yet as I read the stories of trauma, grief, and heartbreak in the Bible, I don’t see a God who says, “just ignore the hard that happened and focus on the fact that I used it.” 

I see a God who says, 

Remember how hard it was…

Remember how painful that was… 

Remember how desperate you were… 

Don’t forget the depths of despair, the intensity of the heartache, the gravity of the pain.

Because if you forget, you also don’t remember how big I am. 

 

Holy Remembrance of Hard Things

Over and over, God commands his people to remember how hard, dark, sad, and ugly things were. And then, to celebrate the incredible contrast of his love, goodness, and might that rescued them from adversity of all kinds.

The remembrance we’re called to isn’t a “focus on the positive” outlook that skims past the hard and onto the happy ending. 

In order to truly understand the depths from which we have been saved, we have to admit how deep those depths were. 

The praise for how the Lord has rescued us with his mighty hand is so much greater when we give weight to the agony from which we were rescued. 

The weight of the cross isn’t so significant if we downplay the suffering. 

I’m so grateful that the Bible gives us a framework for navigating these paradoxical truths.

Many of the psalms of David guide us through this process: 

Cry Out to God 

Why…?
I felt so…
Where were you when…?
How…?
Did you…?

Ask for What You Need 

Show me where you were
Comfort me
Help me forgive
Remind me of your goodness
Show me how you’ve used that

Cling to His Character 

I know you are… (good, kind, gentle, loving, caring, etc.)
I know you didn’t (leave me, forget me, etc)…
I trust that you…

This framework guides us through processing hardships in a way that doesn’t skip over the big emotions, questions, and outcries. Yet it also doesn’t leave us in that pit but holds equal space for us to remember who God is and how he’s proven himself faithful in the past.

As we unstack the tower of grief that has grown throughout our lives and help others to do the same, let us make room to see how big and good God is by not downplaying how hard and painful life can be. By confronting the depth of our wounds, we create space for the extraordinary grace and goodness of God to be fully experienced. 

If you want to learn more about how to unstack your “Grief Tower” from a Biblical perspective, check out the What Made That Feel So Hard?: Bible Study Guide that pairs with Lauren’s latest book What Made That Feel So Hard?: The Unstacking Method. Both are available on Amazon. 

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.

25 Years After the End of the World

Who remembers Y2K – that epic turn-of-the-millennium moment when all of the world’s computers crashed, power grids failed, and we had to live off of the five-gallon buckets of beans and rice stored in our closets?

Wait. . . disaster didn’t strike quite as everyone feared that year, did it? 

The minor-scale disaster that I personally faced as a 16-year-old on New Year’s Eve 1999 when I accidentally drove away from the gas station with the nozzle still hanging out of my ‘51 Studebaker Bullet Nose sticks with me, though. Boy, was I embarrassed. 

The old bullet nose made a 4th of July parade appearance last summer.

Somehow I survived Y2K and learned a few lessons along the way, as well.

For one, fuel nozzles are made to detach from their hoses in cases of inexperienced driver neglect (not inebriated, I promise!). It was horrifying, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Two, over-preparedness always has two sides to it. The dark side, of course, is the fear motive. When we hoard or hide or hurt others in a mindset of self-protection, we aren’t living out of the boundless, sacrificial love of Christ. The ugliest forms of this at a societal level cause racial divides and wide socio-economic gaps, but on a personal level this likely looks more like snapping at my children when they’re interrupting my time — my precious, never-have-enough-of-it time.

The brighter side of over-preparedness, however, is generosity. It’s the neighbor saying, “Hey, we bought a bit too much flour because it was on sale. Care for a bag?” Or it could be the family who safeguards their sabbath time by working together the day prior to cook and clean so they can rest well together. Over-preparedness might mean that you use your time diligently to prepare for that project ahead of time so you can be fully present to enjoy it when it comes to completion. Again, whatever the motive, over-preparedness isn’t the end of the world, either.

Third – and this is the piece that frames my mindset the most these days – is the understanding that life has seasons, cycles, and processes. Centuries and millennia roll over, ticking on into the next. The earth spins through days, months, and agricultural seasons. Day to night to day, spring to summer to fall to winter to spring (or rainy season to cool season to smoky season to blessed rain, if you’re in Southeast Asia like me), our world rolls on. I’ve come to understand this as not only part of the created order, but also part of the seasons of the human soul.

In the past few years, I’ve witnessed my family move through the grief cycle in various ways and speeds as we’ve welcomed a son through adoption. As any adoptive family will tell you, it’s both beautiful and messy, and the sacrifices and trauma of it all need to be processed and grieved. It wasn’t realistic to expect our family to be in an outgoing season of fruitful, productive ministry early on in the adoption transition. We needed to hunker down, prune back, and let ourselves grow new roots together. 

Now, two years post-adoption, we’re able to do and experience more as a family again. Our season has shifted. But had we not embraced a quieter winter-type season of dormancy and underground healing and growth initially, we likely wouldn’t be able to function productively now.

This idea of recognizing and embracing my season has transformed how I make decisions and, as a natural outcome of those decisions, how I live life. I find myself not only asking, “What will produce the best results?” but also, “Is this the right time for production, or do I need to store up and wait for a while?” 

It feels like there’s maturity and wisdom in that perspective, and I’m claiming it as I move through my 40s. Seasons of new growth are exciting, but seasons of quietly solidifying that growth are necessary. Likewise, seasons of pulling back, navigating change, and waiting are often painful, but guess what? They’re not the end of the world.

The end of the world is in fact coming, and these mortality-bound seasons will one day end, but not until death is swallowed up in life, and the Lion’s roar carries us home. Until then, our aim is to live out of tender-hearted love and courageous compassion, knowing that the world’s end is safely out of our control.

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

 

The Harvest is Plentiful and the Workers Won’t Stay

Within three months of landing on the mission field, my husband found himself overseeing six departments at the hospital. Several factors led to such a sudden and taxing situation, but the underlying cause was the absence of nearly all other physician personnel at the time. Some had recently left for Home Assignment, others hadn’t yet returned from Home Assignment, and still others had left to make their final transition back to their passport country.

The all-consuming work and responsibilities my husband had to shoulder during that season hearkened back to a bygone era when pioneer missionaries were often entirely alone to bear all the work singlehandedly, enduring by pure grit and God’s grace.

It was the first of many times we’ve found ourselves remembering the words of Jesus: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).

There is nothing new under the sun. There weren’t enough workers when the disciples and Paul were traipsing around the Ancient Near East and beyond, preaching the Good News to whoever would listen. There weren’t enough workers when Hudson Taylor prayed and pled for more missionaries to serve in China. There aren’t enough workers now when the world has never been more connected and yet untold numbers still haven’t heard the name of Jesus.

The realities are not new – the workers remain few – but the reasons for that reality have arguably changed.

Although the lack of workers for the harvest has been a persistent problem since the time of Christ, nowadays there is a new and noticeable trend in missions: those who go don’t necessarily stay.

The definition of what it means “to stay” will differ from one person to the next. I won’t attempt to argue that point since I don’t have a concrete answer myself. What I’m pondering is the noticeable shift in less missionaries staying for an entire career or even a lifetime, compared to our predecessors throughout history.

Many missionaries famously gave the greater portion of their lives to living and serving cross-culturally. People like St. Patrick and Adoniram Judson spent decades in their place of service, ultimately living out their days there. Lesser-known servants like George Liele and Lilias Trotter also have incredible track records of spending more than half their lives overseas. Even in my own country of service, Kenya, a pioneer missionary named Johannes Rebmann served here for 29 years before eventually returning to his home country of Germany because he was so ill and blind that he was finally persuaded to leave.

There are still people who commit an entire career, or lifetime, to the mission field – we know several from our own organization – but the number of people staying for 20, 30, or 40 years is growing smaller by the decade.

Is that a problem? I’m not sure. The state of missions is much different than it was even a hundred years ago. No one boards a ship to spend weeks or months just traveling to a mission field, let alone knowing it will be an untold time before they might see family or home again. We hop on a plane and arrive at our destination in a time that can be measured in hours, meaning we can hop on another plane and return to our passport country in the same relatively convenient manner without much thought.

That is perhaps one of the most obvious reasons why not as many people stay long-term anymore: international travel has made it so much easier to come and go around the world that short-term and mid-term options have become plentiful and accessible for many. People can go without needing to commit to a career or lifetime of service. As missionaries who are regularly helped by short-term and mid-term volunteers, I can testify to how impactful that length of service is, meaning that although increased options for length of service have impacted how long people tend to stay, it also means that more people are choosing to go in the first place. Fewer are staying longer, but more are going than ever before.

What else has impacted how long missionaries stay on the field? Countless reasons exist, not least of which include required visas to remain in country (a concern of the modern era which neither Paul nor Patrick had to worry about), and prioritizing the health and welfare of our families (many great missionary heroes of the faith were faithless to care for the concerns of their families, who suffered greatly as a result of their missionary zeal).

All of these factors are part of the ever-changing face of missions. For various reasons, we’re seeing a trend that missionaries aren’t staying as long as they used to. Some of the reasons are troubling; some are good; all are interesting to consider.

Jesus was clear that the workers are few. That was true in His time, and it remains true in our time. We have personally felt that reality, but we also know that someday we’ll be the ones to leave (assuming we don’t stay here till we die), leaving others after us to feel that reality too.

What to do? First of all, we need to heed the words of Jesus: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest fields” (Matthew 9:38). The first response is prayer.

Additionally, we need to consider how to increase the longevity of those who are already in the harvest fields. If some can stay longer, the number of workers will naturally increase over time.

Regardless of whether a missionary unit decides to stay for long or short, what matters most is whether their choice to leave could have been a choice to stay if certain measures had been put in place to increase their longevity. Sometimes there is nothing to be done. A denied visa signals a clear exit from the country. A medical crisis compels us to get the help we need, often off the mission field. Sometimes our length of service is completely out of our hands.

My question is how to increase longevity when we do have some semblance of control? There is no clear-cut answer, but I wonder what measures could be put in place to help us in this modern era of missions?

One response is the current rise in both the awareness of Member Care needs as well as an increase in personnel in Member Care departments across mission organizations. Member Care services seek to improve and/or maintain the well-being of missionaries, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, relational, or spiritual. Member Care departments that can help missionaries remain healthy can also enable them to stay longer.

Another response comes from an organization that has noticed the trend away from long-term missions and is making an attempt to reverse that. The Longevity Project, a ministry of MedSend, exists to help medical missionaries stay on the mission field longer. Medical missionaries are notorious for experiencing frequent episodes of burnout, often due to moral injury and little time for self-care, ultimately leading to high rates of attrition. To combat this, MedSend created a “multi-faceted initiative to provide professional, relational, and spiritual support to healthcare missionaries. The Longevity Project not only supports the welfare of the missionary family but also works to ensure they can continue in their service on the mission field.” Some of the services they currently offer include financial assistance to access counseling, retreats specifically designed for medical missionaries, and support for raising and educating TCKs.

The Longevity Project is one attempt to overcome the barriers that keep people from staying longer on the mission field. How else can we, as a broader missions community, as sending churches and organizations, and as people committed to sharing the Good News around the world, find ways to increase missionary longevity?

We need to ask this question because our hearts are aligned with Jesus, who, right before He spoke that famous harvest quote, saw the crowds of people in need of hearing the Truth and had compassion on them because they were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

We care that the Gospel goes forth. We care that the name of Jesus is proclaimed. We care that the whole world has a chance to hear of the Savior. And this should lead us to care about how to help missionaries continue participating in the Great Commission for as long as possible.

Photo from Pixabay

Lessons with a High Price Tag

If you are in the thick of some really hard things as a global worker, you’re in the right place. If I could, I’d invite you to my farmhouse in South Africa. We’d walk barefoot to admire the blooming birds-of-paradise and enchanting jade vine. We’d pick a dragon fruit straight off the vine and let the juice run down our elbows. And of course, you’d meet my chickens. They all have antiquated names like Mabel, Blanche, and Gertrude. Then we’d make coffee and sit awhile so I could hear your story and you could hear mine.

We’d talk about the raw beauty of the places we live. How we’ve changed since we came here. What we’ve gained and what we’ve lost. How we have communed with God and also how there’s been a felt distance. And eventually, we’d roll around to the things that left an indelible mark on our journeys as global workers. These are the lessons we paid a high price to learn. 

We’d find out that we’re not so alone in some of the costly mistakes we’ve made and that we hope others can avoid. Because we know they are common missteps in global work. And we don’t want to keep paying for them.

These lessons were taxing and suffocating at the time, but I cannot be the same after learning them. I’m left with deep gratitude that God didn’t leave me in those places with the insufficient version of who I thought he was and the shallow version of who I thought I was. 

And you would sip your coffee and nod in agreement.

I know you paid dearly for some of these lessons too. I’m sorry. I know they cost you or those around you. I also know that on the other side of these lessons lies a more robust and clear picture of who God really is and what freedom really looks like. 

I’d explain how I wish I could spare pre-fielders and new global workers this messy process, but that it’s through this very process that we begin to notice smudges on the window of our worldview that don’t belong. We begin to see God’s sovereign brilliance more clearly. God becomes bigger, and he makes us stronger.

And then I’d share with you the lessons that came with a high price tag in my own life. And I know you would have your own to share.

  1. God is the driver of change, not me. I am not capable of changing the inner workings of the human heart. Only God does that (Ezekiel 36:26). My sufficiency, ability, and responsibility ends with my love for and service to others, not in their visible transformation. 

Some people don’t want to change. They want charity, but not change (Luke 15:11-32). And they will encourage my generosity with façades of change. When I recognize the motivation, I am reminded to slow down and respect God’s process, even if I’m already heavily invested.  

I paid a high price in real life to learn that the father of the prodigal son did not chase after him, chain him to his home, and force him to stay. The father loved, released, and welcomed his son back home again once his heart was in a new place. 

Early in ministry, I did a lot of chasing. A lot of enmeshing. A lot of enabling. I learned what codependence is and how it cleverly masks as true relationship. I paid dearly to discover that my attempts to force an intrinsic desire for transformation are futile. God changes the heart, not me. This truth freed me. 

I tend to chase the outcome and not the source. God calls me to stay connected to the vine before chasing fruit for other people (John 15:5). Sometimes in our line of work, we run after the newsletter-worthy fruit in others to the detriment of fruit inside ourselves. 

My approach to people and service has adapted as my understanding of God’s sovereignty has grown. I no longer seek someone else’s transformation as fruit of my work. My only work is to remain connected to the Vine. In love, I focus on investing and releasing people to own their process with God. 

  1. God calls us to be as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16). In my ministry, this has played out as a call to balance altruism with discernment. I’m altruistic by nature. A therapist once told me that many global workers are. True love, after all, is to lay down our life for another (John 15:13-14). 

But I’ve learned that altruism is often accompanied by naivety. And I’m not called to foolishness. God opened my eyes to recognize my tendency for altruism with pure abandon and helped me see that I have a duty to exercise muscles of discernment. 

Suspicion doesn’t suit me, and I don’t want it to, but there is wisdom in discernment. I’ve learned to beware of people who require constant rescuing or live in a perpetual state of conflict and drama, for my nature is to think that if I just help them one more time, they’ll finally be able to live a fruitful life.

For those who are altruistic by nature, saying no takes a lot more effort than yes, and I have learned to lean into that when needed. Because the wisdom of God helps me to love others better. 

  1. God is a forgiver (Ephesians 1:7). It feels like I’ve sinned more as a missionary than I ever did as a pre-fielder. Whether that’s actually true or not, there’s a reason it feels like it’s true. 

Stress is magnified in an environment where everything is unfamiliar and we’re learning to navigate a new life. We crave comfort. We crave the familiar. We need something to calm the heck down. We need to survive the moment so we don’t lose it on the people around us. Hard things start piling up faster than we can deal with them. They rage within and eventually claw their way out in the form of unhealthy habits. 

Unhealthy coping mechanisms surface or resurface. This happens more often than you might expect in global work. And it’s devastating. Because you’re just trying to do the right thing and you just want to serve God well. 

Here is also what is true. Cleansing lies in repentance (1 John 1:19). Change lies in seeking help (James 5:16). These two truths have been life to me. Maintaining a pristine reputation is far less important to me now than leaning into God’s forgiveness and seeking help when I need it. Because freedom lies in taking my humanity to him. 

  1. God gives me my daily bread and invites me to pray for it (Matthew 6:11).  If you rely on support like me, our entire livelihoods depend on the financial goodwill of donors. My current status and my future could be a lot more secure if I gave donors what I think they want: a moving story that appeals to their emotions. Even better if I attach an emotionally manipulative photo of a crying, snotty-nosed kid whose pigment is darker than mine. With flies on their eyes. Those tend to bring in lots of money.

But that is not serving. That is not loving. 

Growing up in Africa, I was impacted at an early age by a repulsion for the predatory nature I saw in the unfolding story of non-profit and humanitarian work around the world. The mindset seems to be, “If we can just get a good story, a great picture, we can get more money to help these poor people.”  We lose sight of our daily bread promise and our duty to the image-bearers in front of us when we exploit the people we serve in order to gain a buck. Even if it’s for them. 

This was a hard lesson I learned flipping through magazines at a young age. But God didn’t leave me in a state of anger and repulsion. I am eternally grateful for the honorable example that my parents set. They shared stories of the strength, beauty, ingenuity, and fortitude of the people in my Cameroonian community. I think they did this because they actually saw my Cameroonian neighbors as image-bearers of God. And because they trusted in God to move the hearts of their donors through stories of the strength and dignity of his people. Not through human efforts at emotional manipulation.  

My newsletter readers won’t get the sexy, sensationalized stories from me. Or the pictures that prey on the dignity of the people God has called me to serve, though those stories and images do exist in my work. But exposing someone else’s story in order to make a buck is not the love to which I’m called. It’s proven to be the quickest path to making more money, but it’s not my path. And I hope it isn’t yours. 

God is the creator of the people I serve, and they deserve honor. I am yoked to him in his work for his people, and his way offers life, freedom, dignity, and a love covering. He will take care of me. I don’t have to harm other people to get what’s mine. His daily bread is mine. And by God’s beautiful, miraculous grace, our incredible financial partners of 10+ years get that. 

  1. God has a pattern of redeeming the broken things and of showing us his goodness (Psalm 27:13-14). That may not be everyone’s story all the time, but it’s an overarching theme for many of us. In the hardest seasons when ministry has “gone wrong,” I’ve looked hard for that redemption. I’ve prayed to see his goodness. The puzzle pieces may not come together until years later. Or maybe not at all this side of heaven. 

But more often than not, I’ve been surprised by my surprise when he does indeed fix broken things. It might have been nice to learn the depth and breadth of God’s redemption without having to lose “all these things,” but without the loss, I wouldn’t have truly understood that everything was his to rebuild.

When ministries fold, when plans A, B, and C don’t pan out, when partnerships wane and relationships crumble, I’m told to wait and look for his goodness. It doesn’t mean that every tragedy ends in a miracle. But boy, have I seen some miracles. God repairs dormant relationships, raises up new partners, creates better plans, and builds new ministries. He is so good.

We’d probably cry over the losses and laugh at how appalling some of these stories actually are. We’d curl up and drink two more cups of coffee until it was time to feed my chickens. We’d check on Mabel, Blanch, and Gertrude, and we’d be grateful, though still healing, from the lessons that brought us together. We’d share comfort in remembering the things that felt costly and in which more often than not, God became bigger and he made us stronger.

Photo by Taryn Elliot on Pexels.

A Chat About TCKs, Faith, and Missions with Marilyn Gardner and Elizabeth Trotter

It was a joy to record this conversation with my dear friend and fellow expat writer, Marilyn Gardner. We talked about so many things that we had to split it into two parts!

In the first video, I introduce Marilyn, who wrote regularly at A Life Overseas for many years and has published two books on the TCK experience — Between Worlds and Worlds Apart. (She also raised her five children overseas.) We talk about writing, about her TCK childhood, and then begin talking about pitfalls in missions.

In the second video, we go deeper into some current and historical trends Marilyn has observed over the years, before pivoting to MKs and faith struggles. Marilyn knows what it is to struggle with faith, and her heart is so compassionate to those who are struggling.

I hope you will watch both videos when you have time!