purpose – A Life Overseas |

This Is Who We Are

Who are we over here at A Life Overseas?

As editor-in-chief of this blog collective, I’d like to give you my answer to that question. A Life Overseas is an online space where writers and readers show up to tell their stories. We share stories of wounds and stories of healing. We share stories of loss and stories of hope. And sometimes, we share stories that don’t yet have a label.

Our writers meet here from all across the denominational spectrum. Each of us is a different permutation of cultural and intercultural and cross-cultural experience. Yet we all show up here once a month, or once every few months, to connect across feeble lines of prose and shaky lines of code — and sometimes even shakier lines of internet cable. But we keep showing up anyway.

Why would we do such a thing? Well, we do it because we love you, and we don’t ever want you to feel alone in the life you’re living and the joys and challenges you’re facing. More than that, though, we do it because we love Jesus. We show up because there is something so compelling about this Christ-Man that we cannot help but speak about Him.

So we show up to worship this God-King of ours. When I say worship, I don’t just mean the songs we sing when we gather together as the Body of Christ on Sunday morning or Sunday evening or whenever it is we gather together. Rather, I mean that we are here to collectively proclaim His goodness and remember His power and hope for His return.

That doesn’t mean we’re all the same. Our readers and writers have lots of denominational, cultural, and personality differences, just like the global Church we represent. But we can experience an incredible amount of unity among diversity when our sole focus is Jesus and His healing, saving, forgiving power. When everything else is stripped away – our abilities and our doctrinal differences and our shadow comforts and even our heart languages – Jesus still remains.

Christians from all over the world and from every faith stream gathered together this past Sunday to worship this Jesus, the Risen King. Jesus brought us together this week and truly, He is what brings us together every second of every day, regardless of our other differences.

Jesus the One and Only is the only one who can define us as a people. We are the people who belong to Him, and we are the people who believe in Him. We are the people who are cherished by Him, and we are the people who are redeemed by Him. We are the people who daily lift up His name, and we are the people who are waiting for Him to make everything right again. That is who we are.

The following four songs express our relationship to Christ and recall the deepest foundations of our faith. May they remind us, the people of God, who we really are.

“We Believe” from Newsboys.

“This I Believe” from Hillsong.

“Even So Come” from the Passion conferences.

“Even Unto Death” by Audrey Assad, written in response to the execution of 21 Coptic Christians in 2015.

Learning to Live Flexibly and Intentionally

Several years ago I read a newsletter from a couple who have spent many years living and working in Amman, Jordan. The letter was an honest look at how they decide to spend their time. In it they described their particular styles and personalities — she was relaxed and spontaneous, always ready for an interruption and an adventure. He was methodical and loved to stick to a schedule, order was important and intentionality paramount. He was a planner.

They recalled the many negotiations they had to make in their marriage through the years and how this related to their living cross-culturally, blending American and Jordanian cultural norms and attitudes. The parallel between their marriage and cross-cultural negotiations and the words they used “learning to live flexibly but intentionally” resonated with me.

With purpose and goals, but always willing to bend those for the sake of people coming into their lives and unexpected circumstances demanding adjustment, flexibility and of course, time. This sounds like a balanced way to live, a critical mix of East, where people and relationships are paramount and West, where goals and ideas yield some amazing results.

A life overseas carries with it incredible joys and tough challenges. It is easy to become results-oriented to please both funders and fulfill our own sense of purpose, sense of worth. This too often brings with it a rigid way of life that demands control and order. And burnout is inevitable. But — a life overseas can also hold endless distractions and at times, utter chaos. It can be easy within that chaos to give up on any goals, to throw up our hands and succumb to endless interruptions. Auto-correcting in both modes can swing us one direction or another when what is best is a balance.

The “how-to’s” of achieving this is the challenge. From a practical point of view, I have found that life overseas takes more planning. At one point in Pakistan if I wanted to serve egg salad sandwiches for a late lunch I had to get up at the earliest call to prayer and begin making bread. I then went on to make the mayonnaise so it could sit in the refrigerator and get cold, boil the eggs and cool them off and finally end the process by making the sandwiches. A mundane example to be sure, but any of us who have been in that place know that without the many conveniences available in the western world intentional planning is a necessity just to get food on the table. When we’re interrupted in the middle of the process by someone spontaneously dropping by for tea, there are moments of throwing up our hands in despair. How do we do this life? Practical tips like having a high tolerance for ambiguity can sound good on paper but sometimes doesn’t provide the comfort or encouragement we crave.

Life overseas provides endless opportunities for projects and people. How can we be purposeful about these, always leaving room for God-given interruptions? Can we learn to live intentionally and flexibly in the world where God has placed us? Can we be spontaneous planners – creating the perfect oxymoron?

It’s when I stop and listen for the voice of God, a voice of wisdom and truth, that I learn more of living intentionally and flexibly. Because one look at the life of Jesus shows the perfect balance. He was intent on purpose and spoke truth in Galilee, but he recognized human need and stopped to make sure all were fed. He was on a journey with a destination in mind, but he stopped and took a drink from a woman by a well in Samaria. He was beaten and bruised, hanging on a cross but he paused and made sure to secure a promise that his mother would have a son, would be taken care of by someone who would love her.

In the book Hearing God, Dallas Willard says this: “His [Jesus] union with the Father was so great that he was at all times obedient. This obedience was something that rested in his mature will and understanding of his life before God, not on always being told “Now do this” and “Now do that” with regard to every detail of his life or work.”

The life of Jesus, lived in obedience to the Father and reflecting perfect balance, offers hope on this journey.

Do you struggle to live intentionally but flexibly? With purpose but room for the Spirit to intervene? What have you found to be key to living this way?

Here I Am To Worship

I spent our early days in the Horn of Africa going to the market in the morning and learning how to decipher goat from beef from camel meat that hung in fly-covered slabs and then grinding it myself, how to make French Fries from potatoes instead of from the Drive-Thru, and studying language. Sort of. We had toddler twins, no running water, electricity four-six hours a day. There wasn’t a lot of spare time.

I spent the afternoons trying to meet neighbors. This meant I sat outside our front gate and forced our kids to play in the dirt road. They wanted to (mostly). There were goats to chase, kids to greet, camels to watch, flowers to pick, stones to examine. When a neighbor walked by I would stand and greet her, pretend to be able to understand, smile like an idiot, and feel way too happy if she seemed to understand me back.

My husband was at the University most of the time and as the afternoons dragged on and I felt more and more ridiculous and alone and alien, I would start praying for the evening call to prayer to come quickly so the kids and I could scamper inside for dinner.

I ached for someone to talk to, for the ability to communicate. I had so many questions pent up, so many things I wanted to learn and discuss and process verbally. Loneliness pressed in and my foreignness stuck out.

One afternoon after a particularly awkward conversation in which I asked a woman if she was carrying a baby in the bundle on her back (I think that’s what I asked) and she responded that it was the dirty laundry of her wealthy neighbor (I think that’s what she said), I called the kids to go inside before the call to prayer.

I put on a movie for the twins and retreated to the office to listen to music by myself. I hoped their movie and my music would drown out the sound of me crying and for once was thankful my husband wasn’t home yet. Culture shock and isolation and feelings of uselessness consumed me.

“What on earth am I doing here?” I said. I’m an actor in a play, wearing strange clothes, eating strange food, speaking memorized lines. I’m an alien, transplanted to a planet where every single thing is different and I will never make sense.

“Here I am to worship” by Chris Tomlin came on. I remember standing in the center of the red carpet with my hands up and the words changed.

Instead of ‘here I am to worship,’ I heard ‘I am here to worship. I am here to bow down. I am here to say that you’re my God.’

In that moment, something inside me broke. The expectations I clung to that spoke of all the things I dreamed of accomplishing, all the pressure to speed language study along, all the anxiety about fitting in, learning local customs, participating in the development of an education system from the ground floor up, they crumbled in a heap at my feet.

The answer to my question, ‘what am I doing here?’ was answered in a whisper, in a song.

I am here to worship.

All other striving and work, good and beneficial though it may be, faded in the light of this beauty.

I am here to worship.

It was both promise and purpose, it was a phrase I would carry deep within me across borders and nations and new homes and neighborhoods. I would carry it back to Minnesota and to boarding school and to Djibouti. It hums and burns and undergirds my parenting and marriage and decision-making. It is a phrase for all of life.

In this moment, in this relationship, in the valley of this grief, at the height of this joy, in loneliness and fellowship, in brokenness and in success, God what do you want from me? Why have you set me here?

I am here to worship.

How have you felt your purpose challenged? Changed?

*image via Wikipedia

Landfill Harmonic and Redeeming Rubbish

A missionary friend shared this little video with me. Maybe us mission minded folk here at A Life Overseas can talk about it too.

Take a walk in our town and you will pass by large green trash bins, usually overflowing. If you see the lid of the dumpster propped open with an empty two liter soda bottle it means one thing: pilfering. You learn to not be alarmed when you walk by and hear a rustling from within. Tawny arms and legs scavenge through the refuse. Should I be ashamed that I laughed once when I saw a couple items come flying out that opening as if the bin itself spit out some parts it couldn’t chew all the way?

I have many trash tales I could tell. This is one of my favorites. Members of our church adopted a Bolivian child. They first encountered their daughter as an infant rescued from a trash bag thrown under a bridge on the rocky banks of a dry river bed. Her name suits her perfectly: Victoria. What a story of victory her life has been. She is a vibrant child getting ready to attend kindergarten. I marvel every time I see her.

Can you love what’s been thrown out with the trash? Can you deny the opinion of others and stoop to scoop a redeemable piece out of the trash heap? Can life be found in a putrid, rotting pile?

Yes. Yes. and Yes.

No matter if our life started in a trash bag, a pristine hospital room, or a stable; redemption must be the focus.

As Mary awoke on a day like today, the day after the first Advent, she gazed at the Infant on her breast. The fate of all humanity hung on that Life, cradled in her arms. The scent of dung and unclean animals hung in the air. A pungent reminder of the task of redemption ahead.

My friends took a baby from the clutches of an early coffin in the form of a trash bag, and roared, “NO!” in the face of death. Mary held an Infant in the midst of a detestable stable, filthy darkness all around, and gave the world LIFE.

What surrounds you? When was the last time you visited a dumpster and communed with humanity? What steps have you taken towards the smelly, filthy humans living around you awaiting a Redeemer?

I am speaking in quite a literal sense, though feel free to sweep it away under the figurative rug, should you so desire.

Jesus made us a promise. This promise shares rank with other powerful statements bestowing upon us faith, hope, and love. Sweet Jesus promises: the poor we will always have with us.

In the context of keeping precious communion with Christ the disciples receive a rebuke. They took issue with the extravagant “waste” of the woman anointing Jesus. How odd our human affinity to identify waste. Jesus promises the disciples that they will always have the poor with them and that they should help them, too. Then He draws us into the heart of the matter. He tells us to keep first things first. What we see as waste, he sees as valuable, precious, and necessary. (Mark 14)

Let us first waste ourselves on communion with Christ. From that “wasted” time communing with Him we can go to the “waste” of our community and bring the sweet smelling aroma of redemption.

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Where have you wasted your life lately? Or better yet, with whom have you wasted your life lately?

– Angie Washington, missionary living in Bolivia, South America

blog: angiewashington.com twitter: @atangie work blog: House of Dreams Orphanage