Ten Years Later....

10 Things I've Learned Since Leaving the Mission Field

Happy Monday, friends!

The details are all a bit hazy now, given the amount of time that has gone by. But I remember waiting as long as I could to take a shower that day so we wouldn’t arrive at the airport already sticky. I remember friends stopping by our flat to take the last bits of food off our hands before we left. I remember putting an entire box of paper airplanes - my son’s Very Beloved Collection - into our storage unit because he could not bear to part with them. I remember the sound of the gate of our compound clanging shut behind us for the last time. I remember that for some reason it took over 2 hours to get checked in for our flight, and I somehow managed to keep three children (ages 5, 7, and 9 at the time) happy while my husband wrangled with the gate agents. And then running upstairs and straight onto the flight that was already boarding. But only after that last bag of plantain chips that I had set aside and promised to the children “once we got on the airplane” got confiscated by the security guards because they weren’t in a sealed package.

This week marks 10 years since our family left Cameroon and came back to the States to stay, ending a 15-year adventure in overseas missions. We didn’t “officially” know that it was the end when we boarded that flight in Yaounde on the evening of May 22 - that actual decision didn’t come until a few months later, once we had taken the summer to rest and pray and discern and receive counsel. But somewhere deep down inside, I knew that that season was coming to a close and my intuition was right. And now here we are, an entire decade later. The passage of time is a funny thing.

Just outside the gate to our housing compound in Yaounde.

I was raised in a church tradition that held up missionaries as the pinnacle of Christian faithfulness, and I went overseas to teach immediately upon graduating from college so that was all I had known my entire adult life. The decision to remain in the States was not one we took lightly. But ten years later, I find myself so very grateful for the ways that the Lord has shown Himself to be just as faithful to us here in the States as He was when we were overseas.

So today, I present to you 10 things that I’ve learned in the 10 years since we left the mission field (in no particular order).

1. I love my dryer.

   Okay, so maybe this first one is a little shallow. However, line-drying my laundry was the bane of my existence during our years overseas in the tropics - especially in my nursing babies+cloth diapers era. (Do you know how many times I had to decide between a hangry baby and rescuing the laundry off the line during a pop-up thunderstorm?!) Ten years later I still have a profound sense of gratitude every time I put a load of laundry in my dryer and pull them out soft and warm instead of crunchy and stretched out.

2. On the other side of failure is grace.

   It’s a long story for another day, but a huge contributing factor to our decision not to go back overseas was my own mental health. At the time, this felt like failure: like there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t “hack it” anymore. But on the other side of this “failure” - on the other side of admitting that I couldn’t do it on my own anymore - Jesus met me, and there was so much grace.

3. There is more than one “correct” way to live out faithful Christian womanhood.

   I was raised by a long line of happy homemakers, so when my first child was born I didn’t feel like there was an alternative path for me. I left the teaching work I loved to stay home with her - and the other two that came along in rapid succession after that. I spent the next number of years trying to find my identity in mothering and later in homeschooling. These are of course worthy endeavors, don’t get me wrong. But for me, it was profoundly unhealthy. In the years since we have come back to the States and I began to have opportunities to pursue other work, schooling, and ministry endeavors, I have experienced so much joy. My housekeeping has suffered somewhat, but it has made both my marriage and parenting stronger to take advantage of these outlets to pursue my gifts. It has also contributed to a greater sense of teamwork in our family as a whole because we’ve all had to share that load. It has been so freeing to realize that being a SAHM - while the right choice for some people or in some seasons - isn’t the only or best choice for everyone.

   

   Playground on our housing compound.

4. God is faithful to provide in unexpected and miraculous ways.

   When we left the mission field, it was with fear and trepidation that walking away from that meant that God would not continue to bless and provide for our family. I am here to tell you that somehow, someway we are still here and that we have never gone without anything we truly needed, although our finances make absolutely no sense on paper. (Ask me sometime for the 15 stories for each of the 15 semesters it took me to finish my seminary degree debt free.)

5. If you need help, ask for it.

   One of the things that contributed to the mental health crisis that led to our decision not to go back overseas was the faulty idea that it wasn’t okay to admit I was struggling. If I had gotten help sooner, maybe things would have been different. When I realized that even the Apostle Paul struggled, it blew my mind. If you think you might need help…or if one of your children might need help: please don’t be ashamed to reach out for it. If you think you might need it, it’s a sign that you probably do.

6. If you have the gift of community, embrace it.

   I mostly don’t miss or regret leaving our overseas community. When I was in it, I was working way too hard to keep up a brave face to really enjoy it. But, I am Facebook friends with a good number of the people we knew when we were there: people who are actually really interesting people with more common interests than I ever realized. I regret now I didn’t take the time to build those relationships while I had the chance. The reality is that in suburban America, it is really, really hard to build the same kind of community that we had in our missionary community overseas. Everybody is always so busy, and sometimes this is deeply lonely. What is it that Andy Bernard says in the Office finale? Why don’t we realize were in the good old days while we are still in them? Friends, if you are blessed with rich community: enjoy that community for the gift that it is and prioritize it when you are planning out your calendar.

   

   Our road, leading down to the main highway.

7. Don’t be ashamed of who you are.

   I was not only afraid of people finding out that I was struggling with my mental and emotional health during those missionary years, I was also deeply afraid of people thinking I was a weird nerd. So I kept a lot of my interests - particularly the kinds of things I was reading - close to my chest. In retrospect: this is just silly. Don’t do it, people. I am grateful for the way I have gradually become more comfortable in my own skin over the past ten years. (Being over 40 has absolutely contributed to this too.)

8. Missionaries - and others in vocational ministry - are regular people too.

   If you haven’t gathered from reading the above: missionaries (and by extension clergy and others in vocational ministry) are regular people with regular people struggles just like you. On top of this is a whole extra layer of pressure that they mostly can’t talk about. Pray for those people in your life who are serving in vocational ministry. I can guarantee that they need it whether they have asked for it or not.

9. The church is a flawed institution, but one that we need. It’s worth the (sometimes futile-seeming) effort to see it flourish.

   We had lots of *Christian* community available to us among our missionary colleagues. But we did not have a *church* community. (We were making an effort to be part of a French-speaking Cameroonian church, but it was a struggle and increasingly became a battle we didn’t want to fight with young, neurodiverse children.) That said, it was a church community that caught us when we crash landed 10 years ago and it was a church community that nursed us back to health. Yes, there is a whole lot that is really messed up about the American evangelical church. I’ve experienced my fair share of that too. But when a church is functioning the way it ought to function: there is something there that can’t be replaced by anything else. It’s worth the effort to see the institution of the church flourish.

10. Don’t let your ideals become idolatry.

    This right here: this was another part of what killed community for me. I let certain ideals about parenting and homeschooling that I had imbibed from the internet become idols that came between me and relationships I might have had. I got cagey and defensive when people tried to challenge these ideals. It’s not worth it. Don’t hold so tightly to ideals that you miss out on the good things you can gain from walking in relationship with people who are different from you.

    

    Layover in Brussels on our final flight home.

I’m not sorry for our missionary years. There were a lot of good and beautiful things that came out of those years right along with the hard things. And, in retrospect, I’m not sorry for the hard things either, although I would not choose to relive them. Those hard things broke us, but Jesus met us in that brokenness in powerful ways and has been faithful to heal and restore. And it is that very experience of healing grace poured into my brokenness that is the foundation of the ministry that the Lord has given me now. Nothing has been wasted.

If you are standing on the cusp of a free-fall, if you are in a situation where you are considering walking away from what has become safe and familiar for the sake of your health or for the sake of your family: know that while it won’t be easy, there is so much goodness and grace on the other side.

Until Next Time,

Lord Jesus, Master Carpenter of Nazareth, on the Cross through wood and nails you wrought our full salvation: Wield well your tools in this, your workshop, that we who come to you rough-hewn may be fashioned into a truer beauty by your hand; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end.¹

Jen

Bits and Pieces

Reading/Watching/Listening:

With our college kid home for the summer, we are reviving our beloved family read-aloud tradition with these two - The Greenglass House for fun and Reconnected for something to think about (but also for fun - we’ve gotten some good laughs out of the first few chapters as well.)

Taking Delight:

Our youth group kids have been working hard to raise funds to go to summer camp next month. This past weekend, they did a craft and baked good sale outside of our local downtown coffee shop. My 15-year-old did these beautiful bookmarks and the cute little mushroom people. It is a great joy to watch my children discover and develop their gifts.

Thinking About:

“Self-sufficiency spells the end of all relationships. The disciple, then, trusts that God will provide for them through others. This simple teaching, I’m convinced, sets up for each of us a profoundly life-giving ethic for our engagement with strangers. Dependency creates relationships, conversations, and a need for one another.”

~ AJ Swoboda, A Teachable Spriit, 62

1. Collect 71 “For Christ to be Formed in Us”, 2019 Book of Common Prayer, 668.