Belgian forget-me-nots

It has been exactly one year (and half a day) since I arrived in Belgium.

That seems completely impossible.

In two weeks I will have taught for an entire year (school year, that is).

I think I’ve grown more in this last year than I have in my whole adulthood over the course of several years, which is saying a lot, because there was much growing to do during itineration.

It was largely thanks to my itineration speaking experiences that when I stood up to teach on my very first day on September 19, 2016, I felt almost completely comfortable and fairly confident. I was astonished at how natural it felt. I talked a lot during itineration about how teaching theology was something God had given me to do that suited who I am intimately, but experiencing exactly that very thing was still incredible and delightful. But I’ve also learned so very much.

I’ve learned how to be authoritative and assertive without feeling uncomfortable about it and also without shutting down the inquisitive nature of many of my students. I’ve learned (am learning) how to keep control of a classroom, how to balance friendliness and firmness without harshness, how to decide when to follow tangents and when not to. I’ve learned to be comfortable with ambiguity and with not knowing things. I’ve learned (sort of) to be fine with dealing with controversial theological topics. In short, I am learning how to be comfortable with leadership in ways I’ve never been before.

Both my students and I are getting quite a lot out of my classes. One of the students, whom I’ve had in two different classes, told me yesterday that it seemed he’d gotten more out of my classes than a single year seemed to warrant. The same is true for me. Both in preparing my lectures and giving them, I’ve been learning new things, old things in new ways, deeper backgrounds and wider perspectives on all my subjects than I’ve had before. Teaching is amazing.

Buttercup field

Up until now I’ve often wondered why I had to wait until I was in my 30s before I could finally get into missions. Now I know that it’s because I needed the time to develop my theological and psychological depth. I have much more depth to give my students now than I would have in my 20s. Long years spent in preparation are not wasted.

All of the above I attribute to God’s wisdom, providence, and kindness. People don’t go into missions to please themselves but to please God and to use what they have to grow His Kingdom, but of course God, being the kind and wise and intelligent Person that He is, uses missions to grow the very people doing it. That’s part of being the Body of Christ. Not only do you contribute to the growth of others, but your growth is also contributed to. I like the way God works.

If you own a domain name, please be aware (and beware) of this scam.

Click to view larger

I received this in the mail today. It’s very official-looking and appears at first glance (or second or third) to be a legitimate request that I renew my domain name. I did not recognize the name of the company, iDNS, but at first I thought perhaps my domain registrar had sold to another company or changed their name or something. I might very easily have filled out the information and sent it in.

Upon closer reading, I realized that this is actually an authorization to transfer my domain name from my own registrar to this other company. I consulted my personal domain professional (i.e. my mom Nora McDougall), and she told me that this is actually something of a scam to steal your business from your own registrar. It won’t necessarily steal your domain name from you–it might be a perfectly legitimate domain registrar–but it is using a very clever, very legitimate-looking tactic to steal your business from the company you chose.

If you have a business or a church or any kind of ministry, don’t let your secretary or accountant just blindly pay internet/website/etc. bills. Investigate everything that isn’t coming directly from the companies you have chosen to do business with. If you don’t recognize a business name, find out if your companies have had a name change; if the bill looks different than normal, contact the company and find out if they sent it. If someone purporting to be from a company calls you up or emails you and asks for credit card or bank information or account passwords or payments for something, contact the company yourself and find out if it’s real. Do a tiny bit of googling and find reviews and complaints. Check with the Better Business Bureau. Don’t just do stuff blindly. It’s not good business, and it’s not wise.

The Belgian Synod Attestation is a statement from a religious body in Belgium attesting to the fact that you are a religious worker in official standing with a religious body in your home country which has official affiliation with the Belgian Synod. The application for it requires these documents:

• The application, which is longer and more complicated than the visa application.
• A notarized affidavit from the Assemblies of God that it is what it is and you are what you are in relation to it.
• A notarized letter from the Assemblies of God that it endorses your visa application and guarantees your salary.
• A notarized letter from your insurance company affirming that you have insurance that is effective worldwide.
• A list of your educational credentials.
• A photocopy of the official agreements between the Assemblies of God and the Belgian government or the Belgian Synod, or something Belgian.
• A photocopy of your passport.

6. All of this must be scanned and emailed to the nice person with AGWM who will pass it on to the Belgian Synod. It can take up to three months to get the attestation.
7. Select the FBI background check request as the second thing to do. Really it should have been the first thing. Tsk tsk.
8. Rush madly about all the tiny towns in the area of western Washington where you still are until you find a police station that is doing fingerprinting. Find out they require cash payments and run to the nearest ATM to get some. Get fingerprinted, which is a most interesting procedure.
9. Go to a Rite-Aid to buy a money order to send with the FBI background check request, and stand in line for ages only to find out they, too, require cash. Spend more money at an ATM to get more cash and stand in line for ages again. Get the money order.
10. Send in your fingerprints and request to the FBI. This can take up to 15 weeks to get back.
11. Finally go home to Montana and start packing your house.
12. Pack a lot.
13. Receive the original documents from AGWM that were sent in digital form to the Belgian Synod. Don’t lose them. I almost did.
13. Pack some more.
14. Find out from another missionary also going to Belgium all the absurd things you have to do for the medical form required for the visa. Realize you’re going to have to go to Billings (5 hours away) to get it apostilled (a governmental certification).
15. Suddenly receive the Belgian Synod Attestation in the mail with a lovely cover letter, only a month after you sent in the application.
16. Pack some more.
17. Find out from another missionary that if you send in your background check request to an FBI-approved channeler, you might get it way faster than you will from the FBI.
18. Rush madly about Missoula to find a place to get re-fingerprinted (electronically, which is also a very interesting procedure).
19. Send off your second background check request with an even larger fee.
20. Make a doctor’s appointment for the medical form. Make sure they know you have to have a notary present. Make sure they make sure the notary knows he or she has to have his or her notarial certification present.
21. Pack some more.
22. Study a lot of Dutch. Ik leren Nederlands graag.
23. Find out you actually have to go to Helena (3 hours away) instead of Billings for the apostilling of the medical form. You have to make an appointment and pay another fee.
24. Pack some more.
25. Sell a lot of stuff.

This is where I am presently. Here are the additional steps I know about but have not yet taken:

26. Go to your doctor’s appointment and have a lot of bloodwork done to certify the following:

And has found him/her free of one of the following illnesses as mentioned in the annex of the law of 15/12/1980 and representing a danger for public health :
1 Illnesses requiring quarantine as stated by the international health regulation n°2 dated 25 May 1951, of the World Health Organization;
2 Pulmonary tuberculosis, active or progressive ;
3 Other contagious or transmittable diseases by infection or parasites if they are subject in the host country to provisions of protection of the nationals

Who knows what these are?

27. Wait for the bloodwork to come back, possibly several days.
28. Pack some more.
20. Go back to the doctor’s and have the paperwork signed and notarized.
30. See if the notary will also notarize your signature on the visa application.
31. If not, find some other notary to do it.
32. Make an appointment in Helena for the apostilling. Send them a scan of the medical certificate first to make sure it’s been notarized properly.
33. Drive to Helena and get the medical certificate apostilled.
34. Hope desperately the FBI-channeler background check has come.
35. Make sure you have all the pertinent forms from AGWM. Make lots of copies of them.
36. Get a certified check in dollars from your bank made out extreeeemly carefully to the Consulate General of Belgium.
37. Place 2 copies of your visa application (which took about 3 minutes to fill out) tenderly and graciously into a large envelope with the following:

• Your passport
• A language form completely in Dutch explaining that you want all your paperwork in Dutch because you will be living in a Dutch-speaking section of Belgium. The other options are French and German.
• 3 passport photographs
• The originals and two copies of all the documents you already sent to the Belgian Synod
• The Belgian Synod Attestation
• The FBI background check
• The signed, notarized, apostilled, and bathed in camel’s milk (not really) medical certificate with two copies of the same.
• Yet another fee, the certified check.
• A self-addressed, self-stamped address so you can get back your passport and all the other documents, which you need to have in hand to get into Belgium.
•  Your firstborn child who can spin straw into gold (not really).

38. Take said envelope to the post office and give them a lot of money to send it very quickly to the Belgian Consulate in Los Angeles, which has jurisdiction over Montana.
39. Have your bank wire yet another fee, in Euros, to the Consulate.
40. Gnaw on your fingernails and pray it doesn’t take the possible two months that it could take, because by this point you want to be in Europe much sooner than that.
41. Pack some more.
42. Have a goodbye party.
42. Find out, oh frabjous day, that you have been issued a visa.
43. Make an appointment to receive it.
44. Fly to Los Angeles. Yes. Fly to Los Angeles to pick it up. You have never had any desire to go to Los Angeles—in fact you have sometimes in the past said to yourself that while San Diego is perfectly lovely, you never ever want to go to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, fly to Los Angeles.
45. Figure out how to get to the Belgian Consulate from the airport.
46. Do whatever you have to do at the Consulate to get the visa.
47. Go see the La Brea Tar Pits, because they’re like 3 blocks away.
48. Fly home again.
49. Buy a plane ticket.
50. Go to Belgium, taking care to bring all the reams of paperwork with you to bemuse the poor immigration agents.

This has taken you five months. But if all goes to plan, you will be celebrating your 35th birthday at a missionary convention in Croatia.

The rigors and demands of itineration are all ones which would seem to rely more on extraverted strengths than introverted ones. Hours most days are spent on the phone, trying to schedule services with pastors, and most introverts hate the phone. Every weekend entails a new church (or two), being the stranger in a large group of people, and standing about talking to people one has never met for an hour or more, another activity most introverts despise. Then the whole focus of the weekend, and ostensibly the whole focus of itineration, is the moment when the missionary must stand up in front of a group of people and be a public speaker—a cross between a preacher and a salesman. These three main aspects of itineration make the picture of itineration a nightmarish one for a classic introvert.

Thank God He is not constrained by stereotypes. I realized recently how thankful I am that itineration is very far from a nightmare for me, that I actually like it. Mostly. Yet I do everything I do as an introvert, not a pretend extravert. Mostly.

Telephone calls, I confess, are still the source of my greatest stress. I hate talking on the phone, to friends almost as much as to strangers. Every time I dial a number, there is a little shock of anxiety, or at least a discomfort, at the thought that someone may answer. This puts me in the conflicted state of hoping no one answers while desperately needing them to. I recently calculated that I have made nearly 3,000 phone calls in the last two years. Seriously, it’s the worst part of the job.

My listening face.

The second worst part is indeed meeting hundreds and thousands of strangers. Hey, now, you say with a stern frown at such an unloving attitude, these are your brothers and sisters in Christ. They are your supporters, in finances and in prayer. They are the lifeblood of the missionary. Yep. I agree with every word. That doesn’t make it one whit easier. I have always felt unbelievably awkward around strangers. Thankfully, I’ve been well-trained in the art of being polite and gracious, so I am desperately polite and gracious and let strangers hug me and tell me their stories of traveling in Germany in 1983, and all the while my poor brain is shrinking back against the walls of my skull and longing for someone to strike up a conversation about theology or Doctor Who.

Which sometimes someone does, and I want to keep him or her forever. That’s the other side of the coin, that in the midst of feeling unbelievably awkward and acting perfectly gracious, sometimes I meet someone whom I wish I could know better. Sometimes I meet someone who feels a connection to me, and then a perfect stranger chooses to support me with hard-won dollars and time taken to pray for me. Sometimes someone I will never see again says something to me that I will never forget. Sometimes hundreds of strangers combine into a complete church that encourages my socks off. The moments of awful, inward awkwardness are (usually) worth it.

And then there’s that great bugbear, that collective phobia, public speaking. Did you know that, supposedly, more people, introverts and extraverts alike, are afraid of public speaking than they are of death? (I am far more afraid of the dentist than I am of either public speaking or death…or at least I used to be, until I met my current dentist, but that’s another story.)

I’d done public speaking in 4-H (that was one of the worst experiences of my childhood…), taken speech and preaching classes in college, taken more preaching classes in seminary…and I hated every moment of every one of them until my very last sermon in my very last preaching class. That was when I realized I could put my creative writing skills into my sermon preparation and that I could put my acting skills into my sermon delivery and that I could infuse my learning and thinking and my own way of being into what I presented and how I presented it. And then I loved it.

My first two or three presentations as an itinerating missionary were very nerve-wracking, and then suddenly I settled into it and started loving it. In the first place, I’m getting to share God’s plan with God’s people. I’m getting to talk about something I’m passionate about. I’m getting to open people’s eyes to new and creative ways of being a missionary. I’m getting to offer them encouragement from my own experiences.

In the second place, I’m using all the skills I have developed over my life. I’ve always loved acting, and while I’m not acting a part when I speak in a church, I’m using what I learned about how to present myself on a stage, how to use my voice, how to address an audience. I’ve always loved theological and psychological depth, and I can put that into my presentations and use it to share my future with people who might not be used to thinking that way. I’ve always loved contextualization, and I find great enjoyment in altering my “usual” presentation to suit age groups and the cultural backgrounds of congregations and in incorporating things from the service I’ve learned about the group I’m speaking to. I’m using my introverted tendencies, in thinking and analyzing and studying, to add depth and enjoyment to what is a very extraverted activity. I am good at public speaking because I am an introvert, not because I’m faking being an extravert.

And then on the way home, I am deliciously alone. I have used up all my energy in the couple hours of church service, and then I get to go drive by myself for a couple of hours. I love traveling by myself. If you feel sorry for all the time I have to spend alone traveling around the country, you’re wasting your pity, because I relish it. I’ve seen so much of the country without having to consult another person or talk, and it’s terribly delicious, after all the talking I do on the phone and in church services.

Then also, because I’m single and live alone and don’t have an outside job, I spend loads of time alone at home, recovering from traveling and speaking, making phone calls (or dreading them), doing paperwork, cheerfully writing thank-you cards (I’ve written hundreds of thank-you cards, and it’s still one of the nicest parts of my job), and writing reams and reams of journal entries in order to reflect on, analyze, and incorporate into myself everything that has happened while I’ve been traveling and speaking and making phone calls.  I am on my 11th journal since this whole journey started in 2013; I have written 2,124 journal pages in 2 1/2 years. I love being an introvert.

All in all, there are aspects of itineration that appeal to extraverted strengths and aspects that appeal to introverted strengths. I am glad I am doing it as me.

A few clarifying statements about this should be made (and already have been, since I stole this directly from my About page:

   

This doesn’t mean:
I don’t like people.
I’m shy.
I’m antisocial.
I can’t minister to people.
I can’t speak in public.

This does mean:
A lot of social interaction exhausts me, but having quiet time alone re-energizes me.
I like to think very deeply about everything.
I think before I speak, and sometimes I think instead of speaking.
Writing is easier than talking.
When I say something, it is nearly always well considered.
I love to get to know people very deeply on a one-on-one basis.
Once I do, I love having long and involved discussions on topics of mutual interest.

There has been a lot of talk about introversion and extraversion in the last couple of years, for which I am greatly thankful, because it has taught me quite a lot about the way I interact with the world. It has enriched my ideas for what I want to do as a missionary professor.

Scientific study has determined that there are actual differences between the brains of introverts and extraverts. If you’d like to read a bit more on that (it’s very fascinating), this blog post gives an excellent overview, and one of the books referenced, The Introvert Advantage, by Dr. Marti Olsen Laney, is one of the best I have read on the subject. And this blog post has a deliciously explanatory scientific cartoon about it.

This means that these categories are not merely social constructs but are actual physical, neurological differences between people and perfectly normal differences at that.

Unfortunately for American introverts, our social constructs have declared introversion to be an abnormality from the extraverted norm, and churches follow suit, desiring only outgoing, charismatic pastors and seeing something intrinsically wrong with quiet people. But nowhere in Scripture is normal introvert behavior condemned. Stillness, quietness, contemplation are all as highly valued in the Bible as togetherness and community are. It’s where introversion goes to the extreme, as in fear of people or complete isolation from community, that it becomes unhealthy and unbiblical. The same is true of extraversion. It becomes unhealthy and unbiblical when there is fear of being alone with oneself and God and when worth is entirely derived from being surrounded by people. Both kinds of people bring both weaknesses and strengths to the Body, and a healthy church will allow both to have their place to shine.

As I tell almost any time I speak somewhere, I struggled for a long time with the bias toward extraversion in American life and still do, to an extent. No none ever came out and said, “Extraverted people are better than introverted people!” But there has always been this implicit attitude pushed on people like me:

It is selfish to do things by yourself.
A truly godly person would love meeting new people.
If you were a real servant, you would want to do all these activities.
If you really loved people, you would want to do this and this.
If you really loved God, you would be jumping up and down in the worship service.
If you just sit there thinking, you’re not engaging.
If you want to be the kind of minister God desires, you’ll be bright and outgoing and charismatic.
Being by yourself is selfish and lazy.

I even had a seminary professor, an intelligent, extraverted man whom I respected, say in class, “Privacy is all about sin.” When all I craved was privacy, space, boundaries.

If you’re a good Christian, you’ll want to be with people 24-7! Tell that to Jesus Christ and His withdrawn tendencies. He only had thirty-three years on earth, so how wasteful and selfish of Him to always be trying to run away from the crowds of people who needed Him so badly! Right? Not right. Jesus knew that some things cannot be accomplished except by solitude, that solitude is of great value in ministry.

And yet I still struggle with feeling selfish when I do what I do best, what I know I was created to do.

This is me, being perfectly happy.

Before I’m a professor, before I am a missionary doing my part to build up the Body for the work of ministry, I am a person who thrives spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, in solitude. The majority of what I have to offer in ministry is a direct result of my hours spent thinking, studying, writing, passing everything that happens through the filter of my analytical, contemplating prayer, just an endless ruminating on life and theology between me and God.

I still feel guilty for doing this more than all the things my church culture has drilled into my brain as most holy and worthwhile. And yet this very tendency toward solitary thought is a large part of why I may be an effective teacher.

Later he and his wife and I talked about the concept of being a female intellectual. He said that many times it is used somewhat pejoratively, as if appending “female” to “intellectual” brings down the impact of “intellectual.” And it occurred to me that even when that doesn’t happen, “female intellectual” is used as the exception that proves the rule. There are intellectuals, and then every once in a while there’s a female one, an abnormality even if just as intellectual as the “real” ones. “Female” is unusual among intellectuals, and “intellectual” is unusual among females. Very few people would come right out and state such an attitude, but it’s often present, invisible and implicit.

I’m thankful to this particular pastor for treating me not as a female who wanted to take part in his theological conversation with another pastor but as a fellow lover of theology and a welcome part of his district convention experience. And I’m particularly thankful for an upbringing that taught me not to see “female” as a barrier to anything I was suited to do nor as a detriment to any profession I might enter or activity I might want to take up.

In my family growing up, boys washed dishes and girls cut wood; boys learned to sew and girls learned to fish. These things were things that needed to be done, and everyone did them, and they benefitted everybody. Everybody was expected to get good grades in science as well as in English. Captains Courageous and Tom Sawyer were not books pushed on boys and not on girls; they were on the bookshelf, and anyone could read them who wanted to. My older sister was interested in the small engines class in high school, and I was interested in taking Spanish and Russian at the same time, and both were perfectly fine choices. I grew up recognizing that my parents would be fine with any career choice I made, as long as it wasn’t selling drugs or being a mob boss or something. There was no bias that said girls shouldn’t take up certain interests or professions any more than there was a bias that said people with brown hair shouldn’t do them. You could do whatever your mind was fit for.

Add to that the conviction I had that I could do anything God called me to and gave me the talents to do, and that God called me to ministry and gave me talents for education, language, theology, analysis, contemplation. I’ve never felt out of place in my various educational and ministry settings; in fact, I felt very firmly in place, because I knew I was where God had designed me to belong. For a great part of this I owe thanks to the Assemblies of God, which welcomes women in the callings God has given them. My ministry and theological education has only affirmed me and my place in God’s mission.

and beautiful landscape

Don’t get me wrong: I love being female. I may share my personality type with far more males than females (INTJ in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and I may share interests with more males than females (ministry, theology, science fiction, superhero movies, programming), and I would really, really prefer to have a nice theological conversation than a nice conversation about children or shoes or most anything else that’s stereotyped as belonging to women—but I love dresses and teacups and figure skating and Pride and Prejudice and—well, many things stereotypically assigned to the feminine persuasion. I love being who I am, and being female is part of who I am. Part of who I am. Not the single deciding factor in who I am.

The thing is, I’ve never felt like a “woman in ministry,” that separate and special category assigned to separate and special ministers who happen to be female, and I’ve never felt like a “female intellectual.” I am first of all me, a human being with a brain and a soul and interests and talents and weaknesses and struggles. I am not a female modified by “intellectual,” nor an intellectual modified by “female.” I am me, and I am modified by “intellectual” and “female” and “introvert” and “short” and “quirky” and “American” and everything else that coalesces to describe me. They all have varying effects on each other and on the totality of who I am. Take any one of those things away, and I wouldn’t be me. They are all valuable parts of who God has made me to be.

Before you ever start to classify someone, as, for instance, “the female intellectual” or “the woman in pastoral ministry” or “the introverted youth minister” or “the teenaged writer” or anything that may in any way cause you to discount that person, stop yourself for a moment. Recognize that that person is first of all a sovereign human being, a bearer of God’s image, a person with a calling and a soul, a personality and point of view that has something to offer which you don’t. And only then begin to examine the characteristics which make up that complete person: her gender, her nationality, her race, her interpersonal style, her talents, her weaknesses, her interests. Don’t let “female” or “intellectual” or anything else force you to make assumptions about what that person can or can’t contribute or about that person’s value in ministry or any other situation in life. This is first of all God’s child, a divine, sovereign person valuable in and of herself. Only secondly is she your pastor or your professor or the short, brown-haired missionary who wants to join your theological conversation.

It seems like I’ve read a thousand blog posts on singleness recently, and while I’ve enjoyed a lot of them, it seems like they entirely deal with ways of convincing singles that singleness isn’t the worst thing ever. As if The Norm is hating to be single, feeling second-class, longing to change your state, feeling incomplete or unfulfilled by not being married. Maybe that is the norm. Maybe a lot of people need some encouragement in a difficult situation.

This is me, gently swinging and reading. With a pen, for underlining and making notes. And a photographer.

But I’ve read so many of these sorts of posts that I can actually start to think, Is there something wrong with me that I don’t hate being single? I would like to read a blog post from the point of view of someone who loves being single. So I figured perhaps I’d better write one.

This is not a blog post to convince you that you ought to love being single if you’re single and you hate it. This is a blog post talking about how being a single itinerating missionary works for me and what I’m really enjoying about it. (And the few things that are difficult.)

I should start out with the disclaimer that I don’t dislike marriage. I have wanted to be married my whole life, and I am indeed looking forward to a potential future marriage. Intellectual and emotional (and physical) intimacy appeals to me. So no sour grapes here.

The difference is, I’m really enjoying my present. I’ve discovered contentment in my current state. It’s really nice.

Being single and living alone has introduced me to independence. I grew up in a house of five children, three of whom were girls. The first time I ever had my own room was when I was a Junior in college, and the first time I ever truly lived by myself was when I was about 30. Until that point, I really enjoyed living with the people I’ve lived with, the interesting conversations with roommates, cooking together with my sister when we lived together, and so forth. But in living by myself in my own place, I’ve discovered the pleasures of living alone.

I love it that I have my own room (no snoring!) and my own kitchen, in short, that my house is mine. Everything is where I put it—which is not to say that it’s perfectly tidy by any means, just that the only messiness I have to deal with is my own. I can cook what I want when I want and still have it there in the refrigerator the next day (unless I ate it). My getting up, going to bed, eating, showering, and all that are not dictated by anybody else’s schedule, and I can hang my towel where I want and keep my window wide open in winter if I want. There are no debates about the temperature of the house or car (unless my sister comes over, at which point it’s an amusing novelty). I get to decide the most logical place to put the silverware and the olive oil and the bamboo steamer. I can play music all day long and not bother anyone (at least the neighbors haven’t complained…).  I can stay up late reading without the light bothering anyone, and I can eat amazingly healthy oatmeal (with figs and flax and coconut milk and nutmeg and maple syrup…nomz) or chocolate cake (it’s been known to happen) for breakfast at 1pm without deranging anyone else’s nutrition.

My schedule is my own. When I’m at home, I can choose to leave my house at any hour of the day or night without answering to anyone or answering questions or having to take anyone with me. My decisions about where I’m going and what I’m doing are completely independent. When I’m traveling, I can pack up and leave in an hour, and I am sure many a parent would envy me my ease of departure. I can decide at the last minute that I’m driving to church instead of biking and sleep in an extra fifteen minutes. I can suddenly decide to bike downtown for the art festival at 35° F without having to organize an entire entourage.

Bike. Did I mention my bike? This is The Blue Gale. One of my best friends.

I can come home from an exhausting spate of traveling and speaking and have delicious, blessed silence and solitude in my house for hours (or days) on end. I can invite someone over on the spur of the moment (it’s been known to happen) and not have to consult with anyone else about whether it’s alright.

I can sob deliciously about something God is teaching me and not have to answer concerned questions about whether I’m having a nervous breakdown. I don’t have to wait on anybody else’s college loans before applying for missions. I don’t have to worry about my calling fitting together with my husband’s or about whether moving to Europe will adversely affect my children. When I go to speak at a church, I’m not the missionary’s wife: I’m the missionary. I don’t have to try to balance adequate care of children with adequate attention to ministry. My life is exponentially simpler and more flexible because I am single.

You know, I’m beginning to feel sorry for all those poor married people out there who don’t get all these advantages. [Tongue only slightly in cheek.] Actually I’m not even entirely joking. I have come to love the flexibility of singleness so much that I’m beginning to be afraid I won’t ever want to change it.

All this has come as something of a surprise to me, simply because of how much I have always wanted to be married. I’m rather blessed with a few advantages that make singleness so fun: I love being alone and rarely get lonely, and I’m not very emotional or emotionally dependent upon other people.

Lest I make the wrong impression, let me say that I love community. I am so glad I am going to Europe, where the AG missions community is rich and close. But I like my own little hobbit-hole within a community, with elbow room and independence and flexibility. That’s got to be an advantage to the community as well, the flexibility of a single without family responsibilities.

But as promised, I have discovered a few distinct disadvantages of being single. Do you know how hard it is to change a light bulb when you’re short? Or zip up the back of a dress by yourself? Have you ever tried to lift a fairly heavy bicycle into the back of a car by yourself? Forget about trying to put it on top of the car.

Actually, I already have a butler. He is a knitted, stuffed Dalek (click on the picture to find out what a Dalek is) who spends all his time making tea, writing poetry, and trying to learn chess.

Those are hardly serious. I could hire a butler to do them. But there have been occasions recently in which I have, for the first time, been seriously jealous of married people, and that is in facing the struggle of itineration by myself. Mostly I like itinerating alone. I love traveling by myself and staying alone in a hotel room and quietly driving and thinking my thoughts.

But I am doing all the hard work alone. I am the secretary and the scheduler and the telemarketer (missions edition) and the salesman and the business manager and the accountant and the grantwriter and the tax preparer and the car mechanic (well, I did put in a headlight by myself…) and the emergency response person and the receiver of all the No’s and the person who decides where to go next and then person who has to have all the ideas and the person who sets up and the person who tears down and the navigator and driver and oil checker and windshield washer and the person who calls to confirm only to find I’ve been forgotten about and the thank-you letter writer and the person who has to be able to give a speech to 7-year olds and 16-year olds and 85-year olds and to cowboys and bankers and single mothers and the sole public face of the ministry I am going to be doing, the chatter and small-talker and listener and answerer of impossible questions, the emailer and Facebooker and blogger and newsletter writer and printer and addresser and stuffer, and I’m the person upon whom it all depends without a shoulder to cry on when I get overwhelmed and discouraged.

People encourage me, certainly, but it’s not the same as going through it together with someone, sharing the work, sharing the stress, supporting each other. (I don’t even want to think about how hard single parents have it, just in general.)

Well, God reminded me recently that I’m not actually doing this alone. Durr. He understands my weaknesses, and He’s not just the God who’s all-wise and makes perfect plans from afar: He’s the God who’s intimately with me, feeling how I feel, sympathizing with my weaknesses, going along with me while I’m calling and traveling and replacing headlights.

Even with all that…goodness, I love being single. And I love being a first-time itinerating missionary. I still would not want to be doing anything else. Any other job, any other state of being—it just wouldn’t be right. I am where I’m meant to be, and by George I like it.