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.

My five missions trips, taken to Mexico at age 9, Romania at age 17, Mexico again at age 18, Austria at age 21, and Croatia at age 27 completely changed my life and influenced the direction I went in in ministry. I am very excited for the students who will be going this year. Last year a newly married couple gave up their honeymoon to go to Congo, and now they are leading the trip there this year.

These trips, however, can get very expensive. The one to Japan is nearly equivalent to a year’s tuition at CTS. I was thinking how lovely it would be if people in my missions-minded network of acquaintances were to give to a scholarship fund for some of these trips. Not only would it be of financial assistance, but it would also be a blessing to the students to know that their futures and their ministries are cared for by some Americans they’ve never heard of. American brothers and sisters.

If you have any interest in giving to this, please send me an email. It needs to be quite soon because of the way donations are filtered through AGWM, banks, and two different continents.

If giving isn’t an option, please pray for the students at CTS, that those God wants to go will hear and obey Him, that they will get the finances they need, that they will do amazing work where they go, and that they will be blessed and grow themselves through these trips.

One of my excursions, to see the Flower Carpet Brussels creates for three days once every two years. Click on the photo to see more pictures.

One thing I never thought about before was how much lecture preparation is necessary. Since this is my first time teaching these classes (Introduction to Theology and Christology/Soteriology), I have to start from the beginning and write lectures for 12 weeks of 3-hour classes. After reading textbooks for most of June and July and writing lectures for most of August and September, I have about 8 weeks of each class prepared—and I’m already done teaching the second week! And as soon as I’m done writing those, I have to start on next semester’s lectures. As I knew it would, my being a tourist has reduced quite a bit in favor of my being a teacher.

I have to say, it’s a rather magnificent job to have, getting to read and analyze theology books and write a couple hundred pages on theological subjects, with the goal of teaching them to people who may be complete neophytes to theology. But sometimes I have to force myself to do it and to focus on doing it. I could use your prayers for focus specifically.

My desk, where I do most of my studying and lecture-writing

The best part, after my two whole weeks of experience, is definitely the teaching. I rather adore it. When I was itinerating, I loved the part where I got to get up and tell people all about what God was doing in my life and calling and European missions. That love has transferred to the process of teaching, which is really quite similar. I stand in front of people and tell them wonderful things about God.

After my second day, as I was biking home from school, I realized to myself that the act of teaching doesn’t feel like a job, even a job that I enjoy (I loved library cataloging, but it was still a job). It feels like doing something I love. It causes the same emotional sensations in me that doing things I do just because I love them does, such as reading or bicycling or taking interesting photographs. It might perhaps be almost like the feeling I get when I write fiction (though nothing is quite like that in the world). And to think that once upon a time I declared to myself my intention of never becoming a teacher (that was a very long time ago).

My 7:30am bike commute to CTS.

I have two classes of a dozen students each (large class sizes, for CTS), and each one has a couple of Americans, a couple of Nigerians, a couple of Belgians, a couple of Dutch, and one English student (each), with the odd Italian and Pakistani and Ghanian thrown in for good measure. Most are college age, but a couple are a little older and have already been in full-time ministry. Some of them have amazingly good brains. Some of them know absolutely nothing and ask the most interesting (and difficult) questions (“Is God still faithful to Israel?” “If God is King of Kings, how is Jesus King of Kings?” “If there is natural revelation, what about people who see the existence of God through nature but never hear the gospel?”).

One of the classes told me they would never have imagined I hadn’t already been teaching for ages. I think this is because, for one, I’ve spent my whole life contemplating the topics I am teaching on (when I was about 9 years old, for instance, I would probably have told you that Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection for our benefit were only logical, given the nature of God—though not necessarily in those words); and for another, I’ve just spent two years doing public speaking almost every single week, which has helped me feel comfortable and natural being in front of people and speaking to them. Thank you, two years of itineration!

And, yes, I have cried in three out of four class periods. Once was when I was talking about the importance of John the Baptist to the life of Christ and read Isaiah 40, where Matthew and Mark get their prophecies which John fulfilled. (Go read it. Go, right now. And think about John the Baptist declaring this about Jesus before His baptism.) The second time was when I was talking about Jesus’ servanthood as revealed in the Last Supper and read Isaiah 53. (Go….you get the point.) The third time was today, in my Intro to Theology class, where I’ve been talking about the attributes of God (holiness, love, justice, and so forth), and in my section about faithfulness I told them about my own experience of God’s faithfulness. I don’t think I could not cry while discussing such wonderful subjects. But I warned them all ahead of time that it was entirely likely I would. And who knows, maybe now whenever they read the beginning of Mark and read about John the Baptist, they will remember about Isaiah 40 and remember that it is so lovely that their theology teacher cried about it in class. (I don’t think I’ve ever had a theology teacher cry in class, which makes me wonder what’s wrong with them.)

Most of my students have been mostly paying attention, which is perhaps as much as a teacher can ask for. (And of course those who don’t seem like they’re paying attention very well might be.) There’s often discussion and questions asked, and a couple of times students have kept talking about things we talked about in class as they put their things together and leave, which means they’re interested. Quite delicious, I must say.

I can’t wait to teach again on Monday.

Footnotes:
*I also got to watch the building next to my new apartment get completely torn down, observe a crane pull the demolition backhoe out of a hole it fell into (almost falling into my kitchen as it did so), and usher men through my apartment to look at the hole they accidentally drilled into my guest bedroom. That’s enough for a whole blog post itself.

My new friend Sigmund, chomping away at the building next door. This picture is taken from my bathroom window.

And what people mean by “something better” is something spectacular, something amazing, something miraculous, something that will burst over you all of a sudden with fireworks and magnificence and joyousness. A miraculous provision of funds. A perfect, European, missions-oriented spouse. A place in missions which will be all the better for the long delay.  God’s better must always be something that will make our hearts cry out in joy, right?

But then, what if it doesn’t happen? What if you prayed desperately for a spouse, or a baby, or a healing, or a miraculous provision of funds, or supernatural favor, and either it didn’t happen, or it didn’t work out the way you planned and dreamed it would? Does this mean God has failed, or didn’t care, or has been too busy to take notice of you? Does it mean “God has something better” is a lie? Should we just stop hoping?

By “God has something better,” people never mean, “You are just going to keep slogging on and on and on in the face of a stony silence in regards to miraculous outpourings.” They never mean, “Actually what you dreamed when you were 9 is never, ever going to happen.” They never mean, “You won’t get to the mission field until you’re 35, and then only by sidling in sideways.”

This is a gratuitous photo of the weather conditions on my last big itineration trip.

But what if that’s what “God has something better” actually means? What if God’s better is actually the thing that feels so much worse while it’s happening? What if the very thing that is undesired and feels harder and more painful and unfair and even traumatizing is actually God’s better, better for you than miracles and short cuts and open doors and being given what you want so badly?

Over my two years of itineration, I filled 12 journals with reflections on my journey. I was reading over them this week and realizing how many times I made plans that I was certain were what I needed. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by January 2015. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by May 2015. And when those plans fell through, how many times I wrote confidently that God was sure to do something miraculous just around the corner to cover for it. And He never did. Nothing miraculous and extraordinary happened to make up for the dashing of my plans.

This is a gratuitous picture of a mushroom in the rain.

I’m making more plans right now, because I am a natural planner and plotter and dreamer. I plan on getting my visa application into the mail by next week, and I plan for God to expedite the process through the Belgian bureaucracy, and I plan to have it approved in time for me to be in Europe before a big missionary conference that is happening on my birthday. It’s a brilliant plan. So reasonable. So logical. It could happen.

It also could not happen. Maybe I’ll spend my 35th birthday pouting to myself in my apartment in Missoula. Maybe nothing remarkable or joyous or delicious will happen in exchange for my lovely plans not coming to fruition.

This is not a cynical, hopeless blog post. It’s actually a joyous one. Because God’s better is better, no matter how it feels at the moment.

What’s better than instantaneous, miraculous provision that makes people glorify God? How could struggle and pain and lots and lots of crying and pouting and disappointed hopes and slogging and finally having to take the undesired route be better than miracles?

Because of this:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5

I actually never understood these verses before. I didn’t even like them.

But the hope for favorable events, the hope for our own (perfectly good and God-honoring) plans to come about, the hope even for miracles to get us out of our situations is a hope in circumstances. Such hope is easily dashed. Whereas the hope that comes from perseverance in the face of difficulty and pain, and the character and maturity God desires for us that come from such dodged, white-knuckled perseverance…that is a hope in God. A trust in His authority, His sovereignty, His wisdom, His superior plans. That hope does not disappoint us.

That is the better that God has planned for us: not necessarily (but not necessarily not) better external circumstances but rather better internal development into who He created us to be. Better maturity, better faith in His never-changing goodness, better submission to His will. It may be wretched getting there (or it may be brilliantly delightful—it may be both at the same time), but it is better. Better than having what we ask for and never getting there.

God did not give me financial and timeline miracles while I itinerated (well, maybe one or two little ones…), and He paid absolutely no attention to my brilliant and reasonable plans, and He did not expedite my process, except at the end, when He did it in a way I absolutely didn’t want. But He’s made me into a person who understands perseverance a whole lot better than I did two years ago and who is willing to say, “I want this awesome thing…but if You don’t give it to me, I trust You.” It took a great deal of whining and “Whaaaii aren’t You helping meeeee?” and no doubt I have more opportunities for whining and pity parties to look forward to in the future. But I have greater hope in God’s eternal character than I did when I started out itinerating with all my optimistic plans for Him to follow. I suppose that’s better.

This is a gratuitous picture of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean in Washington.

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.

My memories of Advent from my childhood involve being given Advent calendars with chocolates behind each of the little doors by my Catholic relatives and being terribly excited about opening each day’s little door. That is the extent of my exposure to Advent for nearly thirty years. Though I was raised in a strong, Christian home, we were Pentecostal and didn’t celebrate the Christian Year, except for the normal Christmas and Easter. As an adult, I simply didn’t think of it, because it wasn’t part of my culture.

Until two years ago, that is, when I read a short editorial about it in the Religion section of the Sunday paper, and suddenly Advent took on a great deal of significance. The very theological concept of it intrigued and excited me, because theological concepts do intrigue and excite me. My soul is enlivened when my mind is stimulated by some lovely theological idea, and the idea of Advent certainly did that. But it’s also become significant over the last two years because of the current situation I find myself in, a kind of perpetual Advent.

Advent is a state of waiting. It’s a short amount of time that symbolizes the whole history of the Jews waiting for their Messiah, the whole longing of creation for a Redeemer. This is the time where we sit back and wait as if we were old Anna and old Simeon (Luke 2:22-38), recognizing God’s promises that He is going to change everything for the better and yet not seeing how or when. The Jews waited for thousands of years, and we Christians join them during Advent in waiting for Christ, the Messiah, to be born and turn the world right-side-up again.

Advent is a state of liminality, and that is where I find myself these days. Liminality is a term used in anthropology to describe a state of in-between-ness, and I have in a way reframed it to my own context. To me it means the state of waiting between the promise and the fulfillment, the period of time that stretches out for seemingly eternity while you wait for something to happen. It’s Christmas Eve night when you were a child and couldn’t sleep all night for anticipation of the next day. It’s sitting in the hospital waiting to find out whether your loved one is going to make it or not. It’s the time of numbness between a death and the funeral, of waiting backstage for your cue to go on, so nervous you think you’ll throw up, of the hundreds of years between Isaiah prophesying that the virgin would conceive a son and name him God With Us and the time when Jesus was actually born. It’s Christians for the last two thousand years saying, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus” and not yet seeing it. It’s me, stuck between a call to missions and that undefined, tantalizing time in the future when I will be financially in the position to go do it.

Tantalizing, aggravating, frustrating…just waiting. Waiting and hoping. It’s a time for hope, this liminality, and for trust. Liminality gives us room to learn a quiet trust in our Father, who is not slow in keeping His promises. Isaiah, the prophet we quote most when it comes to Christmas, says, “You shall triumph by stillness and quiet; your victory shall come about through calm and confidence” (Isaiah 30:15, Jewish Publication Society version). We’ve been given promises by the God whose nature we trust; I’ve been given a call to missions by a God who has never broken faith with me. I think of this little piece of Hebrews, in between two verses: “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8c-9a). We see what God has already done, and that gives us room to grow in faith, hoping for a promised future we cannot yet see.

I am in a state of liminality, and Advent reminds me to hope that more is coming.

I’ve just realized today what it is that turns me off to this sort of movement thing. It’s that “I Am Enough” thing. I am enough? I am enough for what? I am enough for me? I have everything I actually need? If I just dig down deep enough into my own inner soul I will find out that I am actually all I need, everything I need? I can fulfill myself? I have the strength and power within myself to do everything I need to do and face everything I need to face, and all I have to do is believe in myself?

I have spent my entire life being told I’m not good enough (mainly by my own brain), and I have spent my whole life trying desperately to prove that I am. I have never strayed from God. I have never done anything particularly bad. I am a responsible, pathologically polite person. I am very intelligent (probably not a genius, which is frustrating) and creative and quirky, and by George, I think I’m interesting. I like my own company, and I try very hard to never give offense to anybody under any circumstances and never to appear irresponsible or unable to do what I should be able to do. Criticism (especially constructive criticism) flays me alive, because it demonstrates that I am not as good and able and responsible as I should be. I am supposed to be enough for everything that is expected of me. After all, I am The Missionary. The Good Christian. The Intelligent and Rational Person. I have been Called. I have so much going for me. I should be enough.

I am not enough. Digging deep inside myself to find all those hidden reserves of magnificence and power and stuff, I have found that under the intelligence and capability and proper behavior and interesting, creative quirkiness is actually a very small, naked, frightened person who’s probably about 5 years old and has no idea what on earth she’s doing.

Someone has given this particular 5-year old a job, and that is raising $6,213.92 per month for 3 1/2 years. Doing so in a timely manner will prove that I am good enough to go do an even bigger job in Europe. I have applied to this job all the considerable resources I have, all the intelligence and responsibility and courtesy and analysis and new-found public-speaking ability and creativity and love of missions and new web development skills and writing skills and story-spinning ability and the story of my call and personal development and my emotionality and my rationality and my personal contacts and love of baking, and found…I am not enough.

Thank God for that.

Honestly. Having to prove that you are enough is so stressful. Always trying to be invincible and impermeable and infallible because that is what you perceive is required of The Missionary (Itinerating Edition)–it’s exhausting. Constantly living in fear of the disapproval of the people who review your progress every month…

I am not enough for the task I have been given. God never intended me to be. He didn’t give it to me because I would do it perfectly and instantly. I think maybe He gave it to me to teach me this:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God has given me many strengths that will be invaluable in the work I will do. He really has given me a calling that suits who He made me to be. But I am still not enough. I will never be learned enough or good enough or an efficient enough fundraiser.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2 Corinthians 12:9

That’s the way it works, in those magnificent paradoxes that make up the Christian life. We are weak, frail, unable, fallible little creatures, and it is in our weakness, frailty, inability, and fallibility that the power of God carries out its work.

I am thankful for my strengths, for who God has made me to be. I am so thankful I can use them in the work He is doing in Europe. God’s creativity and kindness are revealed in them.

But I am learning to be thankful for my weaknesses as well. I am not enough for everything that life asks of me. Not sufficient. It is God’s grace that is sufficient and His power that is currently being perfected in my weakness. My weakness and lack of sufficiency and enoughness (new word; I invented it myself) provide a space in which God’s power works.

How nice not to have to be enough, not to have to fulfill all my needs all by myself. How nice to have Somebody Else to hand them to. (When I’m not busy taking them right back and cuddling them and pouting over them and worrying about them…) How lovely that the only Person I have to prove myself to is the only Person I don’t have to prove myself to.

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.

We tend to see struggle as a bad thing. I know I do. I’ve grown up with money struggles, with struggles to be the kind of Christian I ought to be and figuring out what that looks like, with my perception of who I am as opposed to my perception of what society thinks I should be. Right now I am struggling with figuring out ways I can effectively raise my missions budget without being pushed into doing things that feel like a betrayal of who I am and how I approach life. I have tended to think that if I am struggling, it means I am in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, dealing with things in the wrong way.

But recently I read a blog post that put such things in a different perspective. It was called, “What If I Fall Apart On The Mission Field?” and here is part of what it said:

“But — what if that’s not such a bad thing? I mean, what if it doesn’t end there, with you at the end of yourself? What if all the stuff that surfaces is supposed to surface? What if the only way to know what’s inside your heart is for it to come out? And what if the junk that needs to come out wouldn’t actually come out in your home country?
So maybe those multiple breakdowns have a purpose. Maybe knowing your weaknesses means you know God more intimately. Maybe you are exactly where He wants you to be, right at this moment. Maybe living overseas means becoming the person that God created you to be.”

Can it be true that God has ordained this fundraising struggle for me? The fact that I am struggling means that I am dealing with something that needs to be dealt with. That God has a purpose for my wholeness and strength, and to get there, I must have this struggle.

It made me think of the familiar verses from Romans 5.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

This struggle can be a reason for joy, because God is in it. God has a purpose in it. God is producing perseverance in me, creating in me the character I need for the life He has given me, developing hope that is not mere naive optimism but is based on the love He has poured out on me. Through my difficulties in fundraising, God is making me the right person to go teach future missionaries in Europe.

I’ve definitely not fully learned this yet. I’ve only just discovered it for myself, as if I were the first person who ever came up with it rather than hearing it over and over my whole life. But I’ve realized that whatever struggles are involved, I would rather be here in this place, itinerating, fundraising, struggling, than anywhere else in the world (except in Europe where I belong, of course).

Wyoming is a really incredible state. Random, crazy things to see everywhere you go. Also lots of antelope. Lots.

The most amazing thing I saw in Wyoming was a place called Hell’s Half Acre. It’s an escarpment.

Nebraska and Missouri are both less spectacular but more inviting.