Letters to Emma (and Her Friends): On Crucifying Missionaries

Oh Sweet Emma,

Just a few short days and you will be back in my mountains with me! You have worked so hard and waited long to get back and I am so, so proud of your whole team. You have claimed the identity of missionary and made it part of your daily lives, not just a once a year adventure. You have formed yourselves and studied and learned and taken charge of the work you will do here in an exemplary way. You are bringing us back our beloved Friars to bolster us and inspire us and bring us joy. Gift, I tell you, Emma, you are gift.

And because you are so and I hold your heart so dear, and you are almost here, I am going to share with you today the very best piece of advice anyone has ever given me about being a good missionary. It was this: " Crucify the imaginary missionary in your head." Stay with me here, I am going to make this make sense.

Emma, in our planning and preparing, and especially in these days as you pack and its becomes real that you are on your way back, I bet you are building big dreams and high hopes. I want you to dream and hope big, sweet girl, because I am utterly certain that our great big God has a great big plan for your time here.

But, you and me, Emma, we have a little issue with dreaming big. When we hope high, we build the foundation on expectations. And our expectations are high. We expect big things of God. We expect big things of others. We expect even bigger things of ourselves.

We are good at vision. I am sure by now you have imagined in great detail the smiling faces of children, the sound of your voice ringing out in a little mountain chapel, the sun shining as you walk dirt roads, misty mountain mornings with your Bible and your journal and a new song rising in your heart.

Of course you have. Which of us girls with the spark inside wouldn't have?

There's only one itty bitty problem with those dreams, Emma. We spark girls, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves with our expectations. We tend to shoulder the responsibility for making them a reality.

And, Emma, don't be discouraged when I say this hard, true thing. It won't be like you imagined, this trip. It will be real, and so, so good. But it won't measure up to your expectations. You won't measure up to your expectations.

It's going to rain when you most wanted the sun to shine. You are going to get here and feel sad, alone, sick, or, worst of all, nothing. Your voice is going to crack and the prayers aren't going to come. People are going to care more about soccer than what you put your heart into planning. Maybe. Or maybe it will be something else all together that sullies your perfect dreams and pretty imaginings for this trip. But something will, dear one. It is the one thing you can count on.

And you are reading right now and I know what you are thinking. "I know that already. I am good. God is in control. It will be what He wants it to be." And you are right.

Because those expectations are just the tip of the iceberg, Em. The thing that happens next is the destructive force that takes down so many good ones. One that has almost steam rolled me right off my little missionary mountain more than once. It is this.

All of sudden, as expectations crash and you adapt and you make way for God to move, there will be a moment when the mission may not be what you dreamed it to be and you will be okay with that. But a worse thing will happen. You will find yourself not being the missionary you dreamed of being. 

You will be irritable and angry when you know you should be peaceful and kind. You will want to be peaceful and kind, and you will not be able to will yourself to do it. You will want out. Away from the very people you most dreamed of enjoying this experience with. The spotlight will shine on you and you will hate how you look in its glare. The pressure you have built up in your hoping and dreaming will boil hot inside you.

And you will be angry. Not at God. Not at everyone else. Not at the world. (Although they all might get caught in the crossfires.) But at yourself. At the missionary you thought you would be who, for some reason, decided not to show up when you most needed her. You will find it hard to accept that the adaptable, sweet, healthy, fun dream Emma stayed at home and this stranger you never met in you dreams came along instead. And she's not a very fun traveling companion.

If you fuel that beast, Emma, pretty soon you will be quite certain you should not be here at all. Quite certain you were completely silly and ignorant to think you ever could have had a missionary calling in the first place. Quite sure that there is no way God could want to use you in your ugliness and your brokenness. And even a little unsure whether He could possibly love a person who does this over and over again no matter how hard she works to shore herself up against it.

And then you will want out. You will be tempted to want to give up, give in and go home. And that would be an awful place to find yourself. Ask me how I know, Emma, ask me how I know.

This is when that odd little piece of advice starts to make sense. Don't try to leave behind the imperfect, broken Emma when you are packing, dear girl. God loves that girl. The real Emma. With all her gifts and glitches and messes and misses and missionary dreams. That's the girl He wants to use.

The other one? The imaginary perfect missionary Emma? Go ahead and leave her behind. As a matter of fact, in order to make sure she doesn't sneak her way in (she's a creeper, that one), go ahead and take that advice I offered at the beginning. Crucify her.

Pin all your hopes and dreams and perfectionist tendencies and expectations and pressures to the cross, Emma. And leave them there. In the suffering, triumphant arms of Jesus. Hand your Savior complex over to the real Savior and come with empty hands, ready to receive.

That, dear one, is the way to be the very best missionary you can be. That is the girl I want to hug hard and tight upon her arrival and spend the week with. So pack her up and get her ready. We are waiting, me and Him.

Letter To Self: You Shall Not Perish

Dear You,

 Yeah, you. You with the brave word KNOWN tattooed on your heart for the year. You with the new commitment to sink deep into the Word and speak in tongues not your own. You who thought maybe John 3:16 might be an easy place to start.

I watched you this week. I know you found out it wasn't. You found out that familiar isn't the same thing as easy with the Word of God. I watched Love pierce deep in a dark place. Say a hard thing to you.

Because you, daughter of the King, child of Light, lover of Love, you've had a pretty messy year. A good one in so many ways. You counted more than 1000 gifts. Marked them out in pen. But even still, you were dogged by the darkness of anxiety more than ever before, felt the pain of loss open fresh old wounds, trusted and mistrusted yourself for the trusting then felt the guilt of unfounded mistrust. In the Word this week, you heard it. The hard word from Love itself. You have been living like you are perishing. Instead of living this:

You who lay down your life to help others believe, you have forgotten to believe yourself. Forgotten to live knowing no one is relying on your heroics to save the day, and that the dark villain chasing you has already been defeated by the only Superpower. You forgot that at the beginning of it all He WAS. And at the end, He will be. And right now, He is.

You have spent your days swirled in the dark mist of discontent, the bitter sting of hope dashed. And you have refused to believe in eternal life. Day after day, you lived like you were perishing, like any minute now, it was all going to fall apart.

You lived, dear one, in fear. In that unspoken and lonely fear of failure who is your worst enemy yet long-time companion. You courted her a bit this year, invited her in for coffee one too many times. And she wooed with quiet accusation. Made you believe you not only needed to fear the possibility of failing but that you had already failed, that you were a failure.

That the dishes left in the sink overnight said more about you that a God who put on skin to save you. That lack of routine and continuity and kids who went to bed too late and didn't do as much school as they should have said more about you than the miraculous fact that the God of the Universe trusted you enough to put eternity in your hands in the form of people who are His. That your body's betrayal, its inability to cup life safely in its womb, its bleeding out of hope said more about you than the Blood He shed so that your pain matters for something.

That the to-do list without the check marks and the so many days you made no lists whatsoever because you didn't care any more mattered more than the fact that it is done in eternity. That what people thought about you and their approval of your work made you who you were more than the knitting He did in your mother's womb.

You ran and raced within from the menacing threats, from mortal peril, from perishing, so many days. And more often than not, you still felt you had not run fast enough, that the darkness had caught you. But:

And as you have dug back in over the last month, heard Him say, "I know. Come out of hiding, sweet one. You are known. You are loved. Even with, even if, and even when. You are loved. And there is mercy and there is grace and there is light enough for all your dark battles. I put on skin for just this reason. So you would know. I laid my head in the meanness and cold of your cruel world so you would know. I held out my hands and embraced the tears of the woman who wept at my feet and the one who his at the well and the one who banged pots and pans in the kitchen in frustration so that you would know. I became incarnate in the womb of a woman that you would know. From the inside from forever until never-ending glory shines, I have known you. In the beginning, I WAS. And because I lived, I live in you. And you do not have to perish, only believe."

I hear the question forming before you ask. And I know that you know that you already know. All you have to believe is this one little thing: it doesn't matter if you are enough because He is. It doesn't matter what you know because you are known. It does't matter what you do, because it has already been done. So just live and breathe grateful. Keep counting. Live in the embrace of His Word.

You have chosen well, sweet soul sister. This is your year to remember that you are known. And to believe. And to live like you have eternal life in you. Because you are not in peril. You shall not perish, dear. So live in the light. Let it shine on your darkest places and let them be known. Because you cannot fail at what has already been won. And you cannot perish when you know you will live forever. So live lavishly and love long and let it go. He's got you. 

Come link up with us at the Grove at Velvet Ashes  this week.
You don't want to miss the opportunity to be part of this space.

Day 14 of Giving That Gives Back: Why I Am Not That Sorry I Bailed On You

So, in case you haven't noticed, I kind of bailed on you guys in the last couple of weeks. I wanted to start this post with an apology and an explanation, but when I began to think about the factors that explain my disappearance, the truth is, I really can't be all that sorry.

First of all, there was a practical factor involved. We had a short term mission to lead in one of our most remote outposts and were away from reliable internet. It was a wonderful week. And it made me realize a few things. I needed to unplug a bit and be present here. I was grasping at community in this wide internet world and ignoring very real relationships. I was pushing toward the future so hard, I was missing the joy of the present. I had lost the simple joy of just loving well and walking in mercy right here, right now. And on the inside, I was having a bit a soul melt down that needed immediate triage.

I can't say I know exactly why I found myself frazzled, feeling deeply broken and unfixable and unwilling to lean in to the one Answer I know is all I need. I know the instability and dependence required by this life I live had something to with it. I know some difficult personal griefs I was facing had a lot to do with it. And I know that getting caught up in how I wish things were instead of doing what I can with what I have was a lot of it. But there was also another component, and it has to do with the reason I started this series in the first place. It was to speak in to the injustice of modern day slavery. And I think I have not done that as well as I would have liked.

The reason is because sometimes I get caught up in talking about an ISSUE. I get fired up about INJUSTICE. I want to become an advocate for change for the WORLD AT LARGE. And then something happens to make me realize this is real. It is not metaphorical justice for an ambiguous world that we are advocating.

It is freedom from slavery. For real people. With names. And mothers who don't know what happened to their babies who were stolen. Who are locked away behind walls and can't even remember how long they've been there. Girls who are daily being ravaged mind, body and soul for the sake of another's perversion.

Last week, one of The Exodus Road's teams raided a "dance bar" in India. They were finally able to successfully execute the raid after a number of tip offs had thwarted their efforts. They raided, made the arrests, and began to process the victims on site. After seven hours of processing victims, they began to hear sounds coming from behind a wall. When they broke through a portion of that wall, they found 22 women and girls trapped there, in a confined space without food, water, or air to breathe. You can read the account for yourself here. And see real video footage of the space where these women were trapped here.

You guys. Not a day has passed that this reality has not stung me at my core. Real women, 18 of them minors, CHILDREN, walled up in a hole by slave traders. Clawing and scratching, desperate for release. Robbed of the very right to breathe the air around them. In utter, desolate darkness. And freedom came. Release came. And I am so, so grateful.

But I am stuck. I cannot figure out how I am supposed to make mashed potatoes for dinner and order sweet gifts for people knowing there are millions more still trapped. MILLIONS. If this is not rocking our humanity like an earthquake, friends, what will?

And then there is this aspect of my life that is breaking me wide open too. It is caring for moms. Real moms. Who have the same hopes and dreams that you and I do as we welcome a baby into the world. They want labor to go well. They want a safe delivery. Even though they will be alone, with no one at their side, they want access to medical care that will keep them and their baby alive in the case of an emergency. They hope they will make enough milk to breastfeed and that the baby is healthy. They hope that baby will grow up and be able to go to school and have opportunities for a good and productive future.

Moms watch their babies die at an alarming rate because of premature births that could be prevented. Because of a FREAKING MOSQUITO BITE. Because of Strep B infections that can be detected by a simple test. You all probably know that I am a mom who has held my child, not breathing, in my arms. Handed him over to paramedics. Placed him in the ground and had to figure out how to walk away. You may not know that I have suffered four subsequent miscarriages, two in the last six months. I cannot compartmentalize the reality that while there may have been nothing I could have done for my own son, there are moms who are holding dying babies in their arms who can be saved by our help. I can't pretend that it is not a really hard thing that God has chosen to redeem my suffering by asking me to love moms and help save their babies while my own have not been saved. I will not pretend that this is easy for me all the time. But I will not back away from the chance to keep one more mama's arms full, one more little one alive and well and with a hope for the future.

And I break sometimes under the weight of needing to figure this out. How do we fix these things? What is our Savior asking of me? of you? of us as the Body of Christ?

And so I find myself a bit quieter these days, because I have got to seek the voice of the only Answer. The only voice that saves. The only one who can heal this brokenness and bring light to the darkness, the one who sets captives free. And me, I am feeling a little bit broken, dark and held captive. And I need an advent. A new beginning. A waiting. A settling into the very real reality of darkness so I can hold fast to the Light when it breaks upon us at Christmas.

I need to read stories to my guys and spend the afternoons with my neighbors. I need to bump along dusty roads and watch a seventeen year old expectant mom change her plastic tarp roof out for a tin one thanks to generous friends. I need to rock baby orphans on my lap and deck the halls of their home and scoop rice and beans into their hungry mouths and love. I need to remember that love conquers all, my friends. And for that, I need to be here. Where I love and am loved.

So, I am going to go ahead and proceed here for what it's worth to those of you following along. But I am not going to force the happy holiday joy of the world. I am going to write the things that are pressing on my heart. And I am going to do so without much fanfare. Without hoping you'll see it as worthy of sharing or applauding or commenting. Just me. Real. In my space. With my heart open and broken and bleeding and waiting for the dawn of something new.

So, I bailed on you guys. But I am not sorry. And I hope you understand why.

How to (Not Really) Make New Friends

You know how your life is just normal to you and so you just run along most days doing what you do and not really thinking that much of it? And then you have some experience that brings light to the fact that the rest of the outside world may just not perceive your life as exactly normal? Yeah, me too.

One of the things we long to find here in our mountain mission post that feels so isolated to us at times are a couple of friends who might just "get us" culturally, speak English even, know what life is like where we are from and understand the struggles that come with adapting to life in this place. And, in all honesty, who might crave pizza regularly too and rejoice when they find peanut butter stocked in a local store.

So the other day when we were in the grocery store in the city and a gentleman spoke up in perfect English and asked us if we lived here, we got a little excited. We later figured out we might have been slightly over eager for his conversation. And maybe, just maybe come off as a little "oh, please, please, be our friend creepy". Greg and I chuckled at ourselves as we relived this interaction afterwards.

After the initial introductions, he took us to the car to meet his wife (she grew up in the town where we live) and his daughter (she grew up in Connecticut where they have lived for the last 25 years until they moved back to Costa Rica a few months ago). They explained they are living in the city so she can attend the private high school our oldest son attended last year. But that they come to visit her mother in our town often.

Us: (Holding bags full of crackers and juice boxes) Oh, you should come by and visit us some time when you are there. We live right across the street from the soccer field. We're almost always there, we're just in town right now visiting the indigenous mom who has been living with us awaiting the birth of her baby. She's in labor right now. We're bringing her juice boxes....

Them: General conversation with the overall theme being "we've heard those indigenous people are weird".

Us: Generally awkward response the gist of which was "yes, culturally they are very different from us and difficult to understand at times but we let them live with us and sometimes we go live with them because that's what God told us to do and so we've gotten over it"

Them: Awkward response about how maybe they'll come visit some time and how they have a deacon friends in the States who might think what we do is cool

Exchange of information

Us (Over eagerly offering additional options to hang it with us): Yeah, and we should get together some time when we are here in town. You guys should come with us when we go visit the orphans (you know, for fun, on Friday nights). Or maybe you want to come feed the homeless with us (you know, because sometimes you need more than one fun thing to do)...well, we have to go back to our friend now.

Them: Yeah. Maybe we'll come by tomorrow when we're in town.

They didn't. Is anyone particularly surprised by this? I mean, in hindsight, perhaps inviting them to meet up for pizza with a casual nonchalance might have been a better plan?

Or maybe they would have preferred to join us to tie up live chickens in sacks in their Mass clothes? Because that's how we roll.

I mean, you'd want to be our friend, right?

A Letter to Emma (and Her Mama)

Dearest Emma,

Your mama, she saw Ann  hugging Katie today, and she got scared again. Scared of you, dear. Do you know why she's scared of you? She's scared because she sees a girl so ready to let God wreck the young life she's living and by default, wreck her mama's. She sees a girl with a fire in her heart and the flames dancing in her eyes, big dreams, big hopes of faraway places and blessed feet bringing the Good News. And she wonders how to help you live where you are now, how to pour everything into you she wants you to have, how to connect you to home enough that you'll always long for it. So that when the time comes for you to run away with Jesus and wreck your life, and by consequence hers, you'll know who you are and where you come from. And you'll take it all with you and come back to it all when you need it.

And this is what I want to say you, darling. Let her. Let her your mama love you and teach you and lead you and guide you. Do the dishes when she asks. Camp out in the backyard with your brothers and laugh at their goofy jokes. Go on dates with your Dad. Share confidences with your sister. Plant a vegetable garden for you mom. Serve the poor in your own neighborhood until you know them by name. Do algebra and geometry problems with vigor. Read about history. Learn the lives of the saints and some solid theology. Make the waiting worth the while.

Because in all these things, the real lesson is this: Submit. Be obedient. Be faithful. And find joy in the ordinary. And do you know what, beloved girl? You're going to need to those lessons. If there is anything I wish, it is that I had allowed myself to learn them better than I did. We, the girls with the fiery spirits and drifting dreams and the wide eyes full of distant shores, we sometimes lose the forest for the trees. We sometimes forget that if we save the whole world and lose ourselves, it is all for naught. We drop the ball on our own sanctity in pursuit of the will of God. We worry so much about God's plan for our lives we forget to live it, to enjoy it. We strive so much for the extraordinary that we lose the grace of the ordinary. We forget that we serve a God who makes himself present to us in simple bread and wine. The greatest miracle in the most ordinary of things. And that we must live equally. We are hounded by the feeling of "not enough".

But, sweet Emma, whether God calls you to the married life, the religious life or the single life, living it will be all about those three lessons: submission, obedience and faithfulness. You will always be stuffing down the desire to do what you feel like doing in order to do His will. You will always be fighting the desire to rebuff wise counsel you know is right for the doing in the now. You will always be tempted to look for more, to want to be somewhere further doing something bigger, than to love what and who there is to love where you are in the moment. And the only thing that will keep you where you need to be is the daily discipline you have practiced over and over and over again of obeying the will of another.

Because you know what I want you to know, Emma? The mission field is more often like the drudgery of daily life at home than not. Only on steroids, Emma. The bathrooms stink more and more quickly. The dishes get dirtier and there is no dish washer. The clothes have to be washed earlier and put on the line and brought back in before it rains and if you forget to pay attention, you have to start all over again. And if you do that twice in a row, you find yourself at Mass in someone else's fuschia velveteen sweat pants and your husband's polo shirt. Ask me how I know, Em. Ask me.

You know what, sweet girl? Most days saving the world is a lot more like solving an endless string of algebra problems that it is like being Wonder Woman. Most days it looks a lot more like sore feet and itchy legs and toilet paper than needs to burned and someone at the door right when you were about to take a shower. And you have to have practiced a lot to know the order to put things in. To know whether to add inside the parentheses of your home first or multiply your giving first. To know whether to subtract time from chores or prayer before you divide yourself to serve. Know how many chapters to read and how many chapters to write and how many chapters to live in one day before you implode into emotional mush. You have to see the comprehension questions in the Word of God and know how to answer them, for the love. And you have to know when life demands a comma, a period, an exclamation mark or a question mark. You can't just live in all caps and never take a break.

And, Emma, your mama, she knows a thing or two about that. And she wants to teach you. Let her, sweet one. And don't regret a moment of it. Soak it all up. Because if God is doing in you what we all think He might be doing, one day you might be far away and full of the the world's pain and the love of Christ to the point of bursting, and you will want nothing more than a warm bath to soak it all out and someone to talk to. All you'll use the newest to gadget to send an S.O.S. to the world out there for a little love, a little encouragement to keep going and you'll hope and hope that your mentors and your friends will show up to cheer you on. And they won't, Emma, they won't. And your eyes will sting with the tears of loneliness and your whole body will hurt from the desire to just be held. And you'll have practiced. You'll have done your homework.

So you'll run to Jesus and you'll read His word and you'll sing His praise and you'll see Him in the simple bread and wine. And your faithfulness will be what gets you to other side. And your obedience will be what keeps you in the place He has you when you want to run. And your submission will be what lets you sit in that place and wait until He moves you rather than going your own way and screwing it all up.

And then, your little gadget will light up with a ray of encouragement to cheer you on. Someone will reach across the miles to be the balm your lonely heart needs. And do you know, what, Emma? 9 times out 10, it'll be your mama.

See this girl right here in this video? She is me at my core. She is who I always dreamed I would be. I'm forty, Em. Do you know how many of my days have actually looked like this? Only a fraction, my friend, only a fraction. But do you know what? Every time I get to live one, it makes the dishes and the mopping and the walking dusty roads and getting blank stares in return and the pain of loneliness and the suffering and the struggling so worth it. Do you know why? Because those things make me look like more like Jesus and less like me. They force me to give me up until He can shine through. And how awful would it be if I finally got to a day like this and brought them me instead of Jesus? I've done it enough to to know, Emma. It sucks. The pain of repentance is so much harder to bear than the waiting and the learning. Ask me how I know, Em. Ask me how I know.




Oh, and Emma, one more thing. Get ready, girl. Because after all that waiting, when He does finally move? Girl, it's like you don't what the heck hit you. You're all, "Wait, wait, wait a minute, Lord. I just need to get a few things together and catch my breath. I didn't finish Algebra yet!" And He's all, "Oh no, honey, we're going. Now." And all I can say is, hold on for the ride, Emma. Cling tight. Because it will be wilder and more glorious than you have ever imagined. And it will good, Emma. So, so good. And I hope I am  there to see it.

And, Em, if you're reading, will you let me make letters to Emma a regular part of my writing? I like talking to you. You help me think. You help get my thoughts together and get them out of my head where they're driving me crazy. And you know, Emma, I've got enough crazy to last me a lifetime.

With the greatest of Love, the peace that surpasses understanding and the highest Hope of all,
Mrs. Mitchell
aka

On Growing Up, Grief and Grace: Part 2, Grief

I wrote recently that I have been processing a bit about our past missionary experiences compared with this one and why I seem so much more able to cope this time. I wrote a little about how how I've grown up a bit since our first mission last week.
Another reason I think I'm coping a bit differently this time is that the experience I've had in losing my sixth son Bryce 3 three years ago and suffering two subsequent miscarriages since then has changed me. I am a different woman in many ways that I was before. But I think the thing I have seen most in our time here in this mission post is that grief has taught me how to be lonely.
This mission life is an inherently lonely life. No we are not the missionaries of old who waved goodbye to their families, stepped onto ships and were fully prepared to never to see their homeland or families again. I mean, just since our last spell in missions six years ago, the availability of internet, Facebook and Skype have drastically changed communication. I can daily peek in to life back home and check on a family member in the hospital or a friend about to give birth to twins. I can readily communicate with supporters and people helping to meet the needs of our ministry. It is a huge difference in the level of isolation we feel.
However, regardless of how much easier communication is now, the missionary life is an essentially lonely one and battling feeling lonely and forgotten is part of the daily struggle of this life. I think it is in God's design for this life, really, because that daily hunger for something that you can't quite put your finger on (and not the hunger for a bacon cheeseburger and margaritas -- that's a different issue altogether) can, if you let it, keep clinging to the grace and the love that is meant to fill you with only good things, that is the only way to keep walking this missionary road without completely falling apart. Ideally, the loneliness should draw you to prayer, and into the heart of your marriage if you are a married missionary, which I am. Ahem, let me stress, ideally.
You leave behind a lot when you go to the mission field, including real face-to-face contact with your family and having the encouragement of a friend a text message away. You also leave behind the happy chatter with your sister on your drive home from the grocery store and the chance to recharge from a stressful day by hanging with mommies on the sidelines of the football field or the lobby of the play rehearsal for a couple hours. Days are long and stressful and often lonely. You chat with your neighbors and it helps, but it's not the same. You feel the terrible sting of disappointment in your friends because, well, their lives go on and are not all about keeping you happy on the mission field. And then you get over it. Ideally. Ahem, let me again stress, ideally.
Because, you see, last time, six years ago, I never really got over it. I am an off-the-charts extrovert who has long dealt with stress and trial by seeking a little socialization and the company of others. A laugh with a friend, or to be quite honest, a perfect stranger, is like pushing the reset button in my brain. And it can be a good coping strategy. However, there have been times in my life when I have clung to that need like it was oxygen. Like I would die without constant contact with others. In times of difficulties, sorrow, or trial, I am tempted to use the company of others to placate the wounds.
I didn't quite have the self-awareness I do now six years ago. I couldn't put my finger on that hunger and call it loneliness and tell myself, "This is you looking to cope with stress in the way you are accustomed to, and that's not going to work here. Slow down, settle in, you'll figure out how to cope." Instead, I became increasingly panicked about that nagging feeling that something wasn't right. I frantically searched out the company of others. I built resentment toward my husband that he couldn't fill this growing thing inside me. And I was completely ignorant of what it really was and that it was and would always be an inherent struggle for me.
In the growing up I've done in the past six years, I've come to see this tendency in myself. I can't say I've learned to rein it in. It's still a daily struggle for me. But when I was plunged into grief after the loss of Bryce three years ago, I was plunged into a lifelong sense of loss and loneliness that I have had no choice but to learn to live with. And that has made the transition back into missionary life a bit easier to live with this time around.
Don't get me wrong, the loving support of family and friends was essential to my survival after Bryce's death and my subsequent losses. But the truth is, grief drives a wedge into your heart that leaves you always feeling a little disconnected from the rest of the world, always a little bit apart from everyone else. Your internal dialogue is constant and intense and it's not something you can articulate regularly to others without risking getting a reputation for being the new crazy lady in town. I mean, when the phone rings and a friend's voice rings out sincerely, "How are you? What are you doing today?" you can't well answer, "Well, I just convinced myself to take the last ten breaths! In a row! And then shook each of my kids in their beds to make sure they were breathing. Now I'm cooking breakfast and counting to 100 while I stir to try to shake my brain free of horrific images. What about you?"
So you give away little pieces of your heart to make sure you don't implode. But you come to live with the reality that this is an essentially singular process. And that the hunger and loneliness you feel is largely for the person you lost and the future you won't have and, well, that's not going away no matter how many good conversations with friends you have or how you fill up your days with constant interaction.
However, if you can look at yourself honestly and recognize the hunger for what it is, it can drive you to honest communication with your Heavenly Father, a real clinging to grace, and to baring the most vulnerable parts of your heart to your spouse, which is how it should be.
I think in my initial grief, I did pretty well with this. As time went on and I experienced the two miscarriages and the pain of reality became a little much to bear, I slid back into old habits, filling life with hustle and bustle and laughter and joy, but leaving my real interior living and processing, and the chance to heal, on the back burner. And running from the very person for whom I should have reserved that vulnerability, my husband.
But an incredible grace accompanied me into this mission along with that new grown self-awareness. I knew I was going to be lonely. I knew it was going to be terrible intense. I knew I would battle a rising hunger, a craving nothing could seem to meet, and I knew what it was. Loneliness was no longer foreign to me. I surrendered to it this time around and admitted that, if I was honest, I had paid the price of clinging to others to feed that hunger and it just wasn't worth it. I'd rather be lonely than disappointed, hurt, and betrayed, which are the inevitable results of giving too much of yourself away in the search for the company of others.
That's not to say I haven't felt its pangs here. I have. Desperately at time. I've cried for loneliness and I've laid myself at the feet of Jesus over and over again. But what is different is that I have not rushed headlong into the frantic illusion that it can and must be fixed. When I throw a lifeline out to a friend via e-mail and get no response, I cling to the grace to sit in that pain. When I feel the temptation rise to run after the response of others, I strap on my shoes and pound it out into the pavement with a long walk or run. When I need to spill it all out somewhere, I grab my journal and head to a rock on the river's edge.
We've been here almost a year now. I've spent a lot of that time living the dull ache of loneliness day in and day out. And it's a familiar ache. And it doesn't scare me the way it once did. Because, in all truthfulness, it's been long coming that I let go of the illusion of belonging, of fitting in. I used to look for that in places like homeschooling communities, circles of like-minded friends, mommy buddies. But, really, where does the women who has turned birth into death three times in the last three years fit in those circles anyway. Pictures of pretty cupcakes and cure crafts don't really bridge that gap, if you know I mean. I've been long recognizing that the diet of spiritual cupcakes I used to feed myself on in loneliness, the company and approval of others, wasn't enough to give me the strength to recover from the enormity of these losses, from the desperate hunger for love and intimacy it has evoked in my soul. In His grace, the Lord used missions to force me to fully surrendered to this gift of wisdom He had long been growing in my heart.
Yes, I've spent the better part of the last year feeling the dull ache of loneliness. And I've realized it is not a panicked, haunting feeling for me any more. It is a familiar, albeit occasionally unwelcome, friend. And in surrendering to it, I've learned a little more how to cope. I've felt the gaping wounds of grief close a little tighter in my heart as I lean in to the embrace of the Savior and the ready arms of the man I love. And I've learned to settle into it when the hunger just won't go away and let it be what it is. Not something to fix but something to carry, in cupped and careful hands, because it is the work He is doing in my soul and it is sacred.
And I am daily singing myself a new song. This one. And reminding myself daily to settle down. It'll all be clear. To pay no mind to the demon of loneliness that can fill me with fear. Because He's going to make this place my home.