motherhood – A Life Overseas |

Motherhood on the Field: Expectations versus Reality

by Katie Von Rueden

Before my husband and I arrived in West Africa to minister in remote village among a minority people group, it was pretty clear (to us) what we were going to do. We were to be literacy specialists, as our heartfelt prayers had prepared us for, and our degrees had trained us to carry out. Our ministry description was to engage with the people and culture, learn the language, publish stories, teach people to read, then train up teachers and storywriters to make the ministry reproducible.

And give or take the expected adjustments, surprises, and stresses of our first couple years on the field, by God’s grace we were more or less on our way to fulfilling those ministry tasks. And then we returned to the field after a home assignment, and several things came with the start of another term: a new baby in tow, stepping into branch leadership, and the necessity of shifting the central focus of our family’s ministry in our project from literacy to helping facilitate the Bible translation in process for our people group.

I can’t speak for my husband and the process he went through shifting from pre-field expectations and post-field reality that came to be within a few short years of our arrival in West Africa. It was an entirely different kind of adjustment. But I’ll attempt to describe that shift for me when I became a missionary mom.

It was if suddenly, though I continued to write updates for our supporters back home, I was relegated to the role of a spectator to our ministry. Available time to work on literacy initiatives, like creating and editing materials, was pushed into the small margin of my son’s afternoon naps, if it happened at all. In the context of our rural village life in a taxing, tropical environment, I felt like I had just enough physical and emotional energy to manage our home and care for my infant (and serve as the front-lines journalist of my husband’s ongoing adventure, of course).

In my head, I knew what I was doing was important … for my son, for my family, for our ministry. But in my heart, as I dug into the daily grind made up of the million wonderful, but mundane, moments of parenting, I felt the grief of an identity I felt I had lost, and guilt that I wasn’t fulfilling my ministry role as a literacy specialist.

I didn’t realize how much this seeming sidelining of responsibilities bothered me, though, until a young couple arrived on a vision trip to our field, and the woman, on observing my morning routine with our then one-year-old, asked me: “So, what do you do besides take care of Tristan?”

Uh… well, I wash and wring out loads of cloth diapers, make baby food, cook all our meals from scratch, and tend to the spontaneous visits, requests, and needs of our village neighbors Every. Single. Day. But I wasn’t quick-witted enough to fill her in on All. The. Things that encompassed that “singular task” of “taking care of my child.” (By the way, we all still have to live in the places we relocate to, and that in itself is a lot of work above and beyond the neat and tidy ministry we sign up for in this business.) Because I knew her underlying question was actually what did I do as a field worker?, I managed some reply about the literacy projects I worked on in my spare time. (Yeah right.) But that’s not the response she needed to hear that day from me.

What I should have told her, had I grasped it then myself, is that the discipleship and education of my children and the care of my family is the crux of what I do on the field. Family is ministry. Making my family my ministry actually plays a critical role in the Bible translation happening in our home office every day.

Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” For men means for other people, but I think it also means for you, yourself, and your ambitions. Work heartily for God’s glory, not to please others, or your own ambitions, or what you think God wants of you, or what others want of you.

When I took the time to examine my heart, I realized that the only one who had a problem with my “shifted identity” as a field worker was me. But through God’s grace, and my husband’s occasional, heartfelt notes of encouragement, I realized that I wasn’t a sidelined field worker not doing her job. The assigned task of literacy in its fullest capacity was yes, temporarily shelved. But my worth is not found in what my ministry description says I do, but who I am as a child of God.

But at the risk of sounding contradictory, I need to say there is a tension between following a calling and living under grace, free from unfair expectations. In following the path that God has called us to in life and ministry, we can fall into two ditches. There is the ditch of tenacity, of singular focus to a calling. This could be the call to translation, or literacy, or technical or administrative support, or healthcare. While this Apostle Paul-like commitment to a calling is good, a singular focus to a ministry may cause us to miss opportunities to be present for our family, our colleagues, our neighbors. Our ministry job descriptions are not finite: our life’s calling is to bring God glory, and clearly, there’s more than one way to do so.

However, we must be careful not to fall into the other ditch of capriciousness, or being too flexible in our service to God and what He has called us to. Being the all-around helpful, dependable man or woman is good, and it is God-honoring, but we must be careful not to stumble into the path of least resistance and lose trajectory in what God is asking us to do with our time and skills.

Here’s how these “ditches” translate for me: In this season as a missionary mom of young children, had I fallen into the ditch of tenacity to serving as a literacy specialist, I would be setting myself up for incredible frustration and missing doing my job as mom well. But I still risk falling into the ditch of capriciousness. I’ll admit, oftentimes it’s hard not to use my children as an excuse for not doing something hard or uncomfortable that I sense God is asking me to do. As I’ve attempted to tread the course between those two ditches, embracing my role as a missionary mom of littles, it has opened doors to different ministries for this season, such as building into the lives of village kids that flood our yard each day unannounced.

God isn’t into job titles. He’s not waiting for me to show up at my desk to edit a literacy tool.

He’s waiting for me, for you, to show up.

To do something, even when… especially when… it’s hard. When you feel side-lined and unseen.

To not be so blindsided by a change to what you expected to do when you got to the field, that it renders you useless for a real opportunity in the present reality He’s giving you—whether for the short or long-term.

To be focused, but flexible.

Your worth is not in what your ministry description says you do, but in the God you serve.

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Katie makes her home in a rural, West African village with her husband and two children. They serve with a Bible translation organization in literacy and scripture engagement, making the Word accessible in the heart language of minority people groups. As a teenager, Katie dreamed of teaching English at an international school in China. Her university degree and cross-cultural experiences were propelling her in that direction, when she met her husband and God rewrote her story (or invited her into a new chapter). Making Africa her heart’s home over the years has been a journey of surrender and of discovering joy and God’s calling in unexpected places.

The Ministry of a Missionary Mama

by Krista Horn

Two years ago our family moved to Kenya to live and work at a mission hospital which happens to host numerous short-term medical workers throughout the year. For my husband, this means having the blessing of extra hands-on-deck at the hospital. For me, it means occasionally hosting the visitors and answering lots of questions about living here long-term.

Recently I was asked, yet again, what it is that I do here. Besides the kids, that is. I’ve been asked this question many times, in various forms, both before we left for the mission field and certainly since then too. This time it was phrased, “The kids are enough, I know [insert awkward laugh], but have you been to the Pediatrics ward or the orphanages? I mean, what’s your thing?” I was honest: I don’t do anything. And I wasn’t embarrassed or guilt-ridden with that reply.

Long before we reached the mission field, and even before we had kids, I used to vex over this issue. What would I do? What would be my ministry, my “thing”? And how would I ever accomplish said ministry if we had kids in tow? What would it look like to be the non-ministry spouse as we headed overseas?

Well, after five years of motherhood and two years of missionaryhood, I’ve come a long way in my understanding of this issue. I currently don’t vex about it. The pressure to give an answer to the question “What do you do?” let alone give an answer the inquirer wants to hear, simply isn’t there. Not only have I given myself the grace to “do nothing” but take care of our three very busy and active little boys, but I’ve really begun to understand the fact that the value of “doing” and “accomplishing” is a cultural value – a high value in our American culture but not necessarily in this Kenyan culture. And that’s not always a bad thing. In fact, it’s often a very good thing.

It’s no secret that our Western culture is work-driven and success-oriented. It’s a wonderful thing in that it’s allowed our culture to come so far in areas like medicine and education and technology and infrastructure and countless other things. And being a Type A, super organized, task-oriented, efficient person, I love this part of our culture. Actually, I appreciate it so much that, since living here in Kenya, I’ve often had to fight my own cultural superiority when I see inefficient systems in place that perpetuate poverty and disease and lack of education. Sometimes I want to shout, “If you would just do something then it wouldn’t be this way!” And that’s partly true. There is certainly room for this culture to grow in just getting things done. However, I’ve been able to pull back a bit and see glimpses of the bigger picture, which has shown me that our own work-driven culture doesn’t get it all right, and this less-efficient culture doesn’t get it all wrong.

Here’s what Kenyan culture does really well: focus on people. Case in point: stopping to greet people is very important here. It’s unfathomable to the average Kenyan why you would have anything so important to do that it would cause you to breeze past them without stopping to say hello and shake hands at the very least, if not ask about the family as well. Another case in point: when you meet someone for the first time, the question “So what do you do?” never comes up. Why would that be pertinent? Most people are subsistence farmers anyway and wouldn’t be able to regale you with tales of their career path to date. On the contrary, people are not generally concerned with what anyone does, but they are concerned with how your family is doing and whether your children are well and how they’re enjoying the break from school. The people here care about people.

And that is something I’ve grown to love about this culture.

It’s also something that’s inherently hard to adjust to because, truth be told, it’s tiring to greet so many people along the way. It makes going anywhere twice as long as it should be, which is especially hard when you have a tired toddler on your back who really needs to get home and take a nap, or when you’re just simply not in the mood to say hello to anyone. And my husband often has a hard time coming and going from the hospital because there are so many “speedbumps” along the way (which is a Kenyan expression used to describe being late because of greeting people). But the point remains: this culture cares way more about people than our own culture tends to, and that is a good and godly thing.

So what do I do around the mission compound? Well, technically I teach Preschool and Kindergarten classes for MKs as well as coordinate all the holiday gatherings for the missionary community, which is something I suppose. But more than anything, what I do is take care of our kids. I feed them and clothe them and change their diapers and wipe their noses and teach, discipline, and encourage them. In other words, I have three little disciples in my charge every day, and mothering them is what I do each day as a missionary.

Doing the mom gig definitely looks different over here than in America, and our kids need some extra guidance and management due to living cross-culturally, and that is enough for me, especially during this first term on the field filled with major transition. We’re planning to be here for the long haul and we’re not trying to change the world in a day, which I know may not be the answer that people hope to hear. I know the idea of being a missionary who’s handling the home life on top of ministry and speaking the language and doing any number of other missionary-ish roles sounds so romantic and so right, and there are certainly plenty of people even now who are doing that, but it doesn’t have to be that way (and sometimes shouldn’t be that way).

As someone who knows and feels the expectations of others, especially as we are literally supported by others to be here doing this life and ministry, I am somehow able to presently say that I don’t do much of anything as a missionary except take care of our boys, and there is freedom in being able to say that confidently, without guilt. I am thankful to live in the freedom of doing less and being more with our kids. I am learning from this culture how to care more about how our family is doing than to care about what our family has done. And I truly believe not only that our boys will be the better for it, but that God is pleased that a Type A, efficient American is learning how to let the discipling of her boys be the greatest accomplishment He could ask her to achieve.

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Krista Horn met and married the man who once took her on a date to go tree climbing, which just about sealed the deal then and there. After her husband slogged through seven years of medical school and residency (with Krista doing quite a bit of slogging herself between work, grad school, and becoming a mom), they left for the mission field with three boys 3 and under. Now they live and work at a mission hospital in Kenya. While her husband is busy on the wards, she stays busy with all the details of motherhood on the mission field. When she’s not making meals from scratch or singing lullabies or chasing skinks out of the house, Krista loves to curl up with a book, bake chocolate chip cookies, and go to bed early. Krista blogs at www.storiesinmission.blogspot.com.

When your “exotic overseas life” feels ordinary

For months now I’ve had writer’s block at A Life Overseas. I’ve been busy, yes, but mostly I’ve had writer’s block. So you haven’t seen me around here much. I have so many things to say in general (and I do so, on my personal blog), but when I sit at the computer and ask myself, how can I help Christian expats and missionaries through my writing? I come up with nothing. Every time.

I feel useless for this community right now. My life just feels so ordinary. I’m in the thick of raising children and educating them. At this point I don’t have a lot of cross cultural advice to give, because I’m not doing a whole lot of cross cultural living or cross cultural ministering. What I am doing a whole lot of is homeschooling and homemaking.

Some friends left in May (some permanently, and some for home assignment), and I felt quite desolate. This summer I realized I have no desire to make new friends. Every relationship is so temporary, and I’m not in the mood to connect deeply with new people. They might just leave in a few years. But then I thought to myself, that’s not the kind of helpful, encouraging attitude I should be offering the readers at A Life Overseas.

On top of that, I’m not sure I’ve gained enough wisdom or experience from which to speak. I’ve only lived here five years, and that doesn’t seem like very much in comparison to friends who’ve lived here 10 or 15 years (or more). I’m not sure I have enough perspective yet. After all, I wouldn’t listen to marriage advice from someone with a five-year-old marriage.

So I figured I might as well just be honest with you: I don’t feel like I have anything to offer the expat community during this time in my life. But I thought I might resurrect the following post from my own website. Four and a half years later, it still captures how I feel about my life: Ordinary.

(If you are also an ordinary wife and mother like myself, you might be interested in this recent compilation of my motherhood and homeschooling essays.)

Ordinary

Learning a new language, interacting with an unfamiliar culture and its customs, living near an orphanage, living near a house of girls rescued from human trafficking, all these things can make my life seem overly exotic to someone living in America.

And while it’s true that living cross-culturally has been known to eat away at my mental and emotional margin, most of my life is extraordinarily . . . ordinary. I wash dishes. I fold laundry. I brush my teeth. I often combine those last two.

I cook. I grocery shop. I get to the end of some days and ask myself just what am I going to feed these people tonight??

I fetch the Band-Aids. I scrub the bathroom. I take care of sick people.

I make sure that my children study and that they play. I make sure that they put away their own laundry and that they brush their own teeth (though not necessarily at the same time).

I get irritable for all the ordinary reasons: being tired, being hungry, being hot. And during certain times of the month, I freak out. Even if I’m not tired, hungry, or hot.

I like to spend time with my husband. I like to spend time with my friends. I like to spend time by myself. (Translation: I like to check Facebook.)

These are not extraordinary things. These are the very ordinary things of my life, and I feel very ordinary doing them. In fact, I did all these things back in America, including the one-handed-laundry-sort.

And maybe, just maybe, you do all these ordinary things too.

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Does your supposedly exotic overseas life ever feel ordinary? Does that feeling ever bother you?

I’m a missionary. Can I be a mom too?

I balanced a plate of rice in one hand and a plate of curried meat and vegetables in the other. I was tackling the dinner line at a missionary retreat, gathering food for the whole family while my husband settled the kids at a table. The man in front of me introduced himself and we chatted for a moment until he stated, “So, you are in language school.” I replied that I am learning with a language tutor while I stay home with our children. I was not prepared for his response: he began berating me harshly for not being in full-time language school. I answered about being fully committed to my family and to language-learning, and then left before my tongue got me into trouble.

I am a mother of three young children with another on the way. My primary calling is to raise them up to know the Lord, and I joyfully pursue that calling. I also study the local language in a highly effective, learner-driven, multi-sensory setting, and build relationships with the women around me, using my background as a counselor in a myriad of ways. It’s a multi-faceted calling; I love it and I embrace it.

But the man in the dinner line isn’t alone in viewing children as burdens and obstacles to ministry. Jesus’ disciples keep the children away from him, worried that they will distract him from his Important Ministry Work. Jesus rebukes them and turns their ideas upside down, proclaiming that children are an example for all of us in their humility and trust. They have the proper heart orientation.

So why do some people—even Christians, who purport to believe the words of Scripture—act as though women being mothers is a waste of resources?

Being a Christian mother is almost certainly the most significant ministry that I do in our field. We are broken and greatly in need of God’s mercy, but by His grace we are living as a family of love and trust in God. My husband and I have a close and joyful relationship. Our children interact with their dad daily and know his affection for them. It shocks, confuses, and amazes our friends and students; they want to know more. One friend said that experiencing the family life of Christian missionaries completely reoriented her thinking about marriage, children, and the God we call “Father.”

God has called us missionary parents both to family and ministry, and He doesn’t make mistakes. While there are always choices to make concerning priorities, there is no necessary war between the two, but rather a world of opportunity for each to season and adorn the other. Serving others demonstrates and involves our children in the other-centered love that characterizes the Christian life. And in many settings, particularly in areas without a mature Church, being and sharing our grace-filled family is one of the most radical ways we can present the application of the Gospel.

If we shame missionary mothers away from their God-given calling, we also tell the hard-working mothers amongst us and in our passport countries that they aren’t doing enough. The woman who labors to care for her young children and blind husband, in a culture that shuns disability, serves God just as surely as any ministry project. The woman who creates a home of love for her family, and welcomes in the hurting people around her, is no less influential than someone who can point to events and numbers.

If God values children and the work necessary to raise them up to know and love Him, then denigration of motherhood is an affront to Him.

I once heard someone compare motherhood to being in a boat stuck floating in and out with the tide, because each child keeps the mother from “ministry work.” This person hinted at a life of aimless drifting borne by mothers, while others zip straight to their destinations in sleek speedboats.

But the truth is that all of us, no matter our stage of life, are equally dependent on God rather than ourselves for fruitful ministry. No one drives a speedboat; we’re all in the same rowboat being towed by a vastly bigger ship, whose Captain provides the direction, the power, and all the necessities for the journey. As for the “delays” caused by loving children or inconvenient people, or serving in mundane ways that bring us no glory—those are not nuisances but the core of the itinerary.

We mothers will invest in many people and endeavors, now and throughout our lifetimes, each of us in different ways; we do what we need to do. That freedom is a precious gift. But let’s not guilt missionaries away from being mothers. Let’s support mothers in attending to our high calling, rejoicing that God has entrusted us with something so precious as the shaping of eternal lives. Our children are a weighty gift to the world.

If our goal is glorifying and pleasing God in whatever ways He desires, then motherhood is not a deterrent but a means to fruitful ministry, because serving the “least of these” with love is serving Jesus.

The Language Learning Mother

I moved to Africa with two-and-a-half year old twins. One of the first things people ask me about that year is how I learned language, because I did. And I don’t feel like I abandoned my kids or neglected my husband in order to do it.

I’m focusing on the Mother here because I typically hear from moms. I don’t hear many dads wonder how they can learn the language while breastfeeding or potty training. A father has never asked for tips on getting through a language lesson while in the throes of morning sickness. I know dads have their own struggles to learn, my husband spent the early years working way over full-time as an English professor. I also know single men and women work loads of hours and lots of moms do too. But, all those caveats aside, here I’m writing to moms, especially moms with young children. Here’s what you do:

Hire help
Talk with your husband
Use your kids
Trust grace

On help: Pay people. Give them jobs, give yourself a break. If you want to learn the language, you’re going to have to put in the time and if you have little kids and need to cook meals from scratch or sweep up the dust several times a day, you need someone to help. This is not a bad thing, it is more people to love your kids. After my youngest was born, I paid three women: house helper, nanny, and language tutor. They also ran errands or came with me to hold the baby while I shopped. They not only helped with the kids and home but provided relational outlets and cultural learning. Those are still precious relationships for our family and I wouldn’t change those years or the money spent for anything.

On husbands: For me to learn language and spend time with people, especially when the kids were young, meant that my husband had to also value that and help me do it. We had conversations about personal goals and family goals. We talked about lowering expectations. We ate peanut butter and jelly for dinner for years. We had a less than stellar clean house. We didn’t have a lot of decorations. It is valuable to have a home that feels welcoming and comfortable and families need to decide what the priority will be in those early years. It can not be: elegant home, delicious meals, no baby-sitters, and language fluency. Talk about it. Make decisions. Sacrifice for each other. If you and your husband want language learning to happen, you both have to make it happen.

On using your kids: Maybe a better way to put this would be ‘incorporate’ your kids, but either way, you’ve got little people who are cute and friendly and can break the ice. I used to sit outside our gate and when I saw a woman walking up the street, I’d order (ahem, ask) the kids to run up to her and say hello. Since they were little and a donkey cart could come run them over at any time, I would have to follow to keep them safe, and would find myself stumbling through an awkward but friendly conversation with a neighbor.

Above all, trust grace. Trust that the struggle to learn language and balance a healthy family life has value. We’re all a mess. We all wish we could have it all, we’ve all prayed for language ability that descends like it did in Acts 2. But then we would miss out on the humility, perseverance, joy, relationships, and marital conflict resolution skills that come hand in hand with language learning. So press on, moms with young children. Press on, warriors.

Moms, how did you learn the language?

Dads, what have you done to help your wife learn?

Other more general language learning tips?