The Process of Processing

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

We will always have information we have to upload into our brains, process and then digest. Naphtali and I are finally in a place where we are digesting what we processed in Europe. The thing is, I can sit here and write and write and write about all the meetings we had, the little fights we picked, the decisions we subconsciously made about our future, the ways we saw God working in everything we experienced. But none of it means anything until we sit down and allow it to seep into our brains and live out in our lives before we begin to pen anything. Sometimes I feel like I write things down so that I can make note and then move on. It’s like a form of therapy, they say, writing what you are feeling. The only thing is that sometimes when I write I allow the things I am processing to live there, on the proverbial page, and forget to take it up again into my heart. How many books have been written this way? Where we write out our thoughts, publish them, receive acclaim and then forget to live by them once they’ve been digested by multitudes?

And so, I ended writing Day 4 realizing we had much more to process before sharing it with the world. We needed to sit and talk, we needed to dream a bit more, we needed to confess and communicate to each other, as a couple, a unit, before giving you all that information. It’s like we didn’t want to write or say anything because words are hard to take back and we didn’t want to promise anything with our words before we really truly believed it in our marriage, our commitments and our hearts. Now, here I sit, three weeks after our return from Europe and I think I’m finally coming out of the fog of confusion on what just happened and am able to give my words a place for others to read with out feeling like I’m disconnecting with what they will mean.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean we know very much. Haha. Because in our commitment to letting God open and close doors for us, we’ve decided to take a step back in terms of defining things and take a step forward in simply trusting that we have some of it figured out. For instance, we know we are going to shoot for re-applying/going forward with our previous application at the end of this year/beginning of 2014. We know our goal is to be in the March Interview and Orientation that MTW (the organization we would be going with) puts on. We know that I have the opportunity of a dream job and so I’m going to begin to write my job description this week and pray over the back and forth that will happen over the next couple months and be a window into what God is making for us. We know that we are called to live overseas, hopefully within the next two years. We know we both finally feel the call to Chile. I’ve always hesitated, Naph has always known.

We don’t know when (realistically) we would go over seas. We don’t know when this job for me would kick in, where we would be located, if I could do it overseas or if it would be temporary, how much money we have to raise, if we are going to continue living in Chicago or if we are only here for another year. And these are just the things we don’t know in regards to the questions we asked of the Lord for our trip to Europe. We also don’t know when we should think about baby #2 (I have a bit of baby fever these days….like really bad. Ironic, no?) We don’t know if Naph’s job will continue being successful, when we will pay off debt, when I’ll finally take that stupid Corporate Finance class so I can get my degree! (It’s been four years). And for me personally – the things I don’t know could fill pages and pages. It’s quite terrifying really.

There was a point, perhaps I relayed it already in a previous blog, but Naph and I were walking on the beach in Spain. We were not truly appreciating the beauty and blessing in our surroundings because we were in a bit of a battle. There are days when I say I could go anywhere, do anything; that my heart is so big it could bear adopting or fostering hundreds of children who just need love. I could live in one place for a year and move the next and live a nomadic live. But then the sun sets, a new day starts and I am trapped in this cloud of fear. Where will my children go to school? Will they get a good education? Will they learn about God or will we forget? Will we have to learn a whole new language or can we just stay with what we know? Will we rent or own? Will we like it? Will we be the missionaries who cause drama, or will we be on the receiving end? Will we hurt others deeply? Will others hurt us deeply? Will one of our children give us more grief than we can handle? Will all our children?

And as I vocalized this all to my husband, he snickered and said, “so you want to control everything?” And as my mouth formed the easy excuse of, “No, I just…” it hit me. That is exactly true. I just want to control it because then God can work through me in the controlled environment that I’ve approved. Naph suggested that perhaps I talk with some other moms on the mission field and so I did. That night I talked to a couple who have been overseas only two months and they have a 15 month old. I asked her if it was hard doing all this transition with a baby and what they knew and what they didn’t know. She said they never chose Columbia but that was where they were placed and it was perfect. That they realized they trusted the Lord with themselves and then learned it wasn’t actually trust. It was just a term they used because they are adults so they can control their environment and don’t really need to trust the Lord unless something terrible goes on. But then, when they moved to a place they didn’t even know the language of with a new little guy, they actually did have to trust. In so many new and complex ways. Their little guy can’t talk, can’t speak multiple languages, can’t buy food, can’t do anything for himself. He is completely reliant and as a mother, she just has to trust that the Lord has all of them in his hand including their little helpless boy. And that was profound to me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. All this time I’ve been so hypocritical and ignorant. All this time I’ve taken my experience as a missionary kid and assumed that I know what it’s like to be a missionary. When in reality I have NO IDEA AT ALL. As an MK you are brought into the live of ministry but you weren’t called, you weren’t the one raising support saying goodbye to your parents to go do ministry in a foreign country. You’re a tag along. You’re still significant, but this choice to live overseas wasn’t yours. As a missionary you have to feel the calling of the Lord, you and your spouse should agree on this call and you learn that you will make the biggest most painful sacrifices of your live starting with saying goodbye to those you love the most to go share Jesus with those who don’t love you at all.

Wow.

My parents did that. My husband’s parents did that. The hundreds of missionaries who were at this retreat did that. They denied father and mother, took up their cross and followed Him. And I know that sounds super churchy. But think of this. These missionaries, especially those to Europe, have an incredibly hard way of it. Most countries in Europe feel that they have matured beyond the church. That God is a cute idea, or more, a foolish idea that our ancestors believed but Thank goodness we’ve evolved beyond that. You must be a fool to practice something so intangible as faith and beyond just that but faith in a higher Being ordaining all!? Bahhahaha. This is the European mindset towards God. SO these missionaries go and set up their lives among people who will laugh, and ridicule and mock and martyr them. They will go years and years just fostering a single relationship that finally is showing hope. And you know what? Sometimes that person kills themselves, or they move on, or they choose to stop talking to you. And year after year, in a country with no formal churches to go at least worship in once a week to receive some form of comfort, these missionaries do it. They form friendship after friendship, and feel withered and hopeless at times. But God sustains them and so they carry on. During our final Sunday service where all of us joined together for the final hurrah there was an opportunity during communion for families to go and receive prayer from different groups. And it hit me. These people must feel so refreshed being in this environment – where they can worship like they used to back home, where they can all speak in the same language with out having to run a dialogue in their brain before speaking so they don’t make a gramatical error, they know their children are safe, they receiving teaching from someone who wants to pour into THEM instead of vice versa. These people are tired and their cups are slowly emptying and then they come to these retreats and are given some sustenance so they can go back to the country they are serving in and do some more ministry and slowly be depleted again. And I’m not saying this to be depressing, but to be reminded of the seriousness that it means to give your life to the Lord. That when we say “Here am I, send me!” we aren’t being ignorant, or fool hardy but that we know things will be difficult and still we are able to consider it all joy.

Then I thought about what else it takes to be a missionary. For most people it means you shop at thrift stores for the rest of your life, that you don’t get a normal paycheck just for what you do but you have to make reports, visit churches, put your life on display so that others can judge and see if they want to support what you are doing financially. You give up the idea of nice things and manicured appearances. This isn’t something we are unaware of. If you look around our house you’ll see that it looks alright but it’s not cute or thematic in any way. In fact 90% of our home was either given to us or bought at a thrift store or from friends at really really low prices. The things we’ve paid full price for have taken months and months of saving. And this is how life will be for us forever. Sometimes I get depressed by that. I want to have pretty things, I want my house to be artistic and a gallery of whimsy and my personality….all the while incurring more debt. But instead we choose to put our money to pay off student loan debt and live as frugally as we can while also allowing for a few perks here and there. It’s the environment we grew up in but not the one we,deep down in our hearts, ever wanted.

So we are beginning to see how we are taking on more than we can handle, but we also know that that isn’t exactly true. God knows what we can handle and He is patient and gracious with us as we fail daily to recognize this and impose our on limitations on the daily choices presented to us. I’m learning to realize that this level of processing is what we will be doing for the rest of our lives. Hopefully, we will be on the look out for new things on the horizon that God has in store for us and we will, at each step, take a look at the process He is doing and try and recognize up from down, right from wrong, who we are meant to be from who we want to be. And truth be told, isn’t this the journey we are all on in one way or another, whether we are spiritual or not? We are all trying to figure out where we fit best and what we were most meant to do. We obviously are creative beings who were made with the purpose of something unique to us or else we would all look alike as would our environments. Hm.

So I think I’ve finally chewed the life out of these latest nuggets and will updating a little more on the trip this week. I think I needed a break from the story telling to do all the above thinking. Thanks for being patient with me.

In regards to the trip itself, there will be a better/less lengthy thank you letter coming out hopefully by the end of this/next week that will also remind you of the ways you can still donate to our trip. We are still about $1600 shy of what we needed to raise so we need to get that money back to those who fronted it for us. If you’re interested in more details let me know and I’ll make sure you get the letter.

Lovies

Tags: area retreat 2013, process, spain
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