Beginning to Reflect

My brain is still overwhelming with thoughts and experiences from the past three weeks.  I'm not sure where to even start writing, but hopefully over the next few days of blogs I will be able to share pieces of the journey with you.  I ask that you continue to pray for our family as we process all that we learned and heard while we were in Michigan.

If I had to write a title for the past three weeks I'd say it would be "Goodbye Rose Colored Glasses."  It is easy to surrender to missions (or a lot of other things) and get wrapped up in the "fairy tale." You know, spending all day with all your new friends who speak the language you quickly learned seeing everyone you encounter coming to know Christ.  In addition, the experience is exciting and thrilling as you worship in many languages and shop in a variety of markets.

Reality is no where near that picture.  Consider a few of the topics, decisions, and assignments we encountered while in Michigan:

• If we were to die on the field do we want to be buried in Spain or have our bodies brought back to the states?
• Complete legal paperwork to allow our field leader in Spain to have temporary custody of our children in the event of our death, terrorism, natural disaster, imprisonment, etc until the permanent arrangements could be made
• Plan to feed ourselves spiritually and isolated since it will be quite awhile before we can participate in worship in a language other than our heart language
• Evaluate what major events are coming in the lives of our friends and family in the coming future and decide what we will be able to come home for and what we will miss (weddings, funerals, illnesses, graduations, ...)
• Be aware of the signs of depression - nearly all missionaries, and especially women, will deal with some degree of depression throughout their first term - begin to pray for a relationship on the field that is a safe place to express these feelings
• Moral Purity - easiest place for a missionary to fail - both on the field and in their marriage
• Language - be prepared one spouse is going to find language acquisition to be a natural task and the other will feel like it would be easier to teach a fish to live on land than to acquire a new language - just one stress on the family unit
• Day to day routine - if you are a task completer (anybody think that describes me?) you are going to have to establish new ways to measure productivity.  Just completing the daily tasks becomes overwhelming and productivity is equated with whether the laundry made it to the washer and clothes line and back in or a meal was tasty to the whole family with unknown ingredients 

This is just a tiny picture of what we learned.  Add to the picture the number of people who have been working to raise their support for 1 1/2 years and the time we spent really discussing the need for Jesus to be shared with the lost and the whole two weeks were overwhelming.

Bottom line of what I learned - the call to be a missionary is a God sized calling that only God can accomplish.  I can plan, work, and even fret and the task is still bigger than anything I could ever fathom.  If I don't learn to depend on God with every ounce of my being every second of the day, then I too will be one of the statistics of missionaries who went to the field and came home shortly after arrival.  If I choose to continue to wear "rose colored glasses" then I can expect defeat.  

I'm choosing to leave the glasses off and instead to wrap myself up in the Word of God - both written in scriptures and spoken through prayer - and to learn a little more about what it means to surrender it all to Him.  The road ahead is full of curves, mountains, and valleys - but the ride is definitely worth it!