He Giveth More Grace

You know, in all my contemplations about missionary life recently, I’ve been somewhat comforted by the fact that many of the things that I used to say I couldn’t live without I’ve been lately feeling as though I’ve been given the grace to get over.

For instance, I doubt there’ll be lots of philharmonic opportunities for me in the third world. Not only would I likely not be able to be a part of an orchestra, but I probably also would have to give up even the private enjoyment of playing the piano and my bass! Plus, if the neighbours aren’t gracious, I might also have to give up the piccolo and any serious pursuit of the flute! But somehow, I feel like I’m feeling okay with that. That’s grace for ya. (though I’ll admit that I know I’ll be on the lookout for a well-to-do friend with a  piano in the area….)

I also am a big fan of uniquely North American food stuffs, such as lactose-free milk (don’t even talk to me about milk substitutes…how dare you even think it. Go wash your mouth out! With AlmondBreeze!) And I would miss the comfort of the beloved Canada Food Guide label which assures me that its info is more likely than not an accurate description the contents of the package in question… these are things I love. But I can handle not having them.  

I would miss hearing English on a regular basis, and being able to express myself to people verbally (and culturally!) with relative ease.

I’d miss hot leisurely showers with adequate water pressure. Have you ever tried to wash dredlocks with inadequate water pressure?

Speaking of dredlocks, I’d miss knowing someone who could retighten my hair for me on a regular basis. I used to love doing my hair myself and scorn the idea of paying others, but now that I have almost 500 locks that need to be retightened every few weeks…well…what can I say. And surprisingly, sisterlocks aren’t prevalent enough -- even in Africa -- to guarantee that I’d be able to find someone who could do it outside of Canada/US.

More importantly though, I would miss being able to visit my sisters and parents at the drop of a hat. We have such a nice relationship lately its awesome! But, somehow, I think we’ll be able to find ways to deal with that. Both of my older sisters have spent extended time away from the family before and we made it work (not to mention my 8 year stint in New Brunswick!) Plus now that they’re all working, I hope they’d come to visit me and see what’s going on in the field. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy…but God’s given me grace to feel okay about this somehow.

I would definitely miss life with C &C. Its surprising how much one comes to rely on the housemate relationship for sanity and contentment. How does one get by without close camaraderie? Its not as easy to come by as I’d like. And I suppose if it were easier to come by, it wouldn’t be near so precious. Ho hum… but I think the three of us agree that we are each going to have to face that one day anyways (i.e. whether its because of a missionary call, marriage, career or whatever) so I’m learning to accept that. Any relationship involving a person, other than the relationship between a person and God, must end eventually.

But like I said, miraculously, even though this list is long and dear to me, all these things I am beginning to think I could live without. Maybe I could not have said that before, but of late I’m feeling a certain measure of grace to let go of them…graciously. Which is amazing.   

But then yesterday it hit me. The one thing that may totally unhinge my world if I lost it. The one thing that God has decided not to let me let go of with the same grace. And its something I am almost guaranteed to lose if I move away from North America…

Its my car time.

Aww, don’t roll your eyes. I’m dead serious!

I mean, I’m happy enough with my car, I don’t love it to death or anything. Its nice, its blue, its paid off. I enjoy driving but its not one of my favourite pastimes in and of itself.

But my car TIME is indispensible to my happiness, personal wellbeing, spiritual sustenance, and, by extension, the sanity of those who have to deal with me! Here’s the thing: there is nowhere else in the whole world that I can sing at the top of my capacity without any thought of public censure. And you can’t imagine how much I look forward to that part of my day. Every day. Music is an indispensible part of my heart and soul. I can live without the bass and the flute, I will find a way to deal without the piano, and I can definitely handle a lack of orchestra. But give up my private singing time? I need that! Worship music just isn’t *in* me if I’m not singing it myself (I can’t just listen to it. Its not the same) and once a week at church just isn’t going to get me by.

Also, there is nowhere else I can think of, except my car, where I can have a totally natural language conversation with God with any adequate measure of privacy.

Sigh…. So unbeknownst to me, my car has apparently become my sanctuary and my altar. I don’t know what on Earth I would do without it.

This is a problem. Not insurmountable of course. But it really did give me actual literal pause yesterday in the middle of the street as I headed toward my car, looking forward to my sanity-providing drive home from orchestra rehearsal. That’s when it hit me that I may not always have this… It rocked my world just a little bit.

But it makes sense to me that God would appreciate it if I lay this little thing down for Him without the grace. Without the aspirin-like ease of the pain that He’s given me to deal with the other more serious things on my list. Without His help for some of those big things, I might not be able to handle the degree of loss and would veto the idea of missionary life before I got started. What I mean is, He’s been gracious to me in that even though I take note of the great loss associated with each of those big things, He’s blessed me to not feel the huge sense of loss I normally would so that I am equipped to keep going forward in prayer about it and intending to obey Him in it if He does say to go.

Not so with the car time. It may seem minor to others, but you have to understand that its important to me. If music isn’t your thing, maybe you don’t get how serious I am about that. But I am serious. And God, in His wisdom, has seen fit to let me feel the prospect of this particular loss very keenly. Totally different from the way He’s kept me from feeling overwhelmed by the loss of the bigger things on my list. And I think that’s amazing and I think He’s done that for a reason.

As important to me as my private car time is to me, it is not as important to me as doing the will of my Father. If He’s given me grace for everything else I can think of but this one thing so that I can intend to sacrifice it willingly to Him and feel acutely the loss that is involved with that act, then I feel singularly blessed by Him for the honour. Sacrifice is meaningless if it doesn’t cost anything. Maybe He knew I wouldn’t be able to handle sacrificing the other things without His grace to help. But with this one thing… He knew I could bear this for Him. And I want Him to know that I will.   

ESL or no ESL???

So before I started really contemplating things with IJM I was planning to take an ESL training course so that I would have a useful skill for the mission-field if ever I was found there (not being a nurse or teacher or carpenter or anything practical like that!)

Now that I'm pondering whether I'm being deliberately called to advocacy work on the missions field I don't know what to do about this ESL business.

On the one hand, it still seems to make sense. "Tent-making" as a missionary -- supporting myself as I go out into the world to serve people. So, if IJM is only willing to take me for a year (or not at all!) but I've already quit my job, being able to teach English is definitely more conducive than a law degree to being able to pick up immediate employment almost anywhere. But on the other hand this thinking seems a little...faithless. If God wants me to advocate, He'll make a way for me to advocate and eat. Then again, maybe He's got ESL teaching on my distant horizon and I might as well learn to do it now while I have the resources... hmm.

Sure, if a person is called to minister by specifically teaching English, then by all means take an ESL teaching course. But if one is called to do something else, is it not an insult to God and a lack of trust to learn how to teach English as a "just in case" sort of thing?


Then again, I may still be here several more years and there are plenty of ESL ministries at the church here that I'm sure could use teachers. But then, you don't need to take a $2,500 course in order to do that... that is money I could be putting away for when I leave (don't get me started on the faithlessness of that statement! ;)

Well, I don't know.

I signed up for the course because the deadline is coming up. But I can still back out of it if it doesn't seem like the right thing to do. $2,500 is a lot of money that could be used for a lot of other things... but being able to give people the gift of English and having a teaching ministry that gives me time to spend with people spreading the gospel is mighty enticing.

Being able to speak English really is a gift. It opens so many doors. Kinda like shoes to an impoverished person. Everyone with shoes takes them for granted, until you realise that you can't get a job without a pair, but you can't get a pair without money, and you can't get money without a job...etc. Same with English if you ask me...

Hmm.

But I could take a 5 day or even a dirt cheap online course and be pretty set. Or even just get out some books from the library. Why get certified? I think I'm just addicted to accreditation. I would have been a mess during the time when apprenticeship was the thing.

Still pondering.

Shibboleth! There, I said it!

I won't go into my entire salvation story (maybe another time), but I remember that when I finally did become a believer I was terrified to tell anyone about it. Now a part of that terror was the terror of people laughing and mocking me for my faith in something that I'd once jeered at right along with them. But that didn't explain why I was terrified of even telling the people I knew were Christians.

And then again, when I wanted to be baptized and again when I wanted to become a part of a local church in a more serious way, that same terror was there.

And now again, I feel it as I contemplate letting people know about my leanings toward international missionary life.

The reason was the same for each instance -- I was worried that the people I told a) wouldn't believe I was really (saved/called by God to missions); b) would immediately administer an oral quiz on the veracity of my claim; and c) would declare me to be unsaved indeed (or uncalled, as the case may be).

Now that might seem ridiculous, but the truth of the matter is that people really do this. I have been a silent observer during conversations where people debate the salvation of someone else, or brand them as one who has "professed" but for whom the truth of the profession still remains in question. And I will say right here and now that I have done the same. I've worked with people who have said that they accepted Jesus but there's really no fruit of that decision in their lives, so you wonder whether they really understand what the Gospel means and whether they have really trusted it.

But on the other hand, I know that no one really knows my heart but God. I can sense him calling me gently and persistently to the work. I can hear His voice and see His hand in the things that have started to happen all of a sudden. But I can't communicate them to someone else who is administering this dreaded quiz.

Last week I had a conversation with someone about missionary work. This person wanted to know the story of how I had become a Christian. Its an interesting story and I love to tell a good yarn so I told her and she really enjoyed it. But at the end of my story it basically goes..."and through that research that went on over the course of those months I gradually became convinced that Jesus really was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. ... ... and eventually I got saved." The End.

Now, I have often had people look at me in puzzlement at that point wondering how I got from point Y in that story to point Z. And I know its bewildering. Its not the typical story. No one led me in a prayer or took me to hear a gospel message. No one led me through the salvation verses of the Bible or dissected a hymn with me. No one encouraged me to read my own name into John 3:16 or explained to me that "whosoever meant me!"

But even more than that, I can't give you a time when -- place where -- manner how -- that I got saved. I just know that in the fall of 2001, I realised that I was wrong about who Jesus was and that over a relatively short period of time I reluctantly asked God to show me who He really was and who His Son was and the more I learned about Him, the more I realised what He had done for me and that I was saved from death and hell because of it.

So when my friend looked at me all puzzled and concerned and then said "...um...are you sure you're really saved...?" and I responded with "well, my research led me to understand that Jesus had died for my sins" you could see the light of relief come over her entire body as she said "...Oh! Okay!".

I had said the right combination of words. Like a secret password into the society.

Now, of course, I know the secret words, so I can tell all the Christians I want to that I'm a Christian because I know just what to say to assure them that yes, I really am one of you! I am in the club! Let me say "Shibboleth" and you'll see (Judges 12:6)! I've been practicing you know!

But man... it is just perplexing to me that I find myself contemplating what the new passcode is to get people to believe that I've been called to the mission field. The truth would blow them away... should I come up with a watered down and heavily edited version of it that I know will get me into the club? Of course not. I plan to bowl ahead with the truth of what God has put in my heart and shown me and trust Him to work out the details. But it terrifies me. Because I hate to disappoint people. I hate to have people think that I make these rash decisions based on my own whims and not God's just because I can't articulate properly what He's been doing to me lately.

God has always rushed upon me. I go slow and steady... and then WHOOOSH. The complacency is shattered and all the pieces get sucked out into the void to be completely re-arranged by God in His own timing.

So yes, I have been praying about missionary life since about 2008 when Sam and Elizabeth first started talking to me about being hospital administrator in Chavuma. I know that is the sort of long-term contemplation that people want to hear. It was the same with when I moved to Toronto. No one wanted to really understand how quick a decision it actually was, they wanted to hear about how my family lived there... how I'd been in New Brunswick for the last 8 years but was always hoping to return home. That is true! But I didn't seriously start planning to go until God pushed me violently to it a few months before I actually did it.

It is the same with what is going on about IJM. All of a sudden its suggested. All of a sudden the circumstances have converged to make this the ripe time to go. All of a sudden there is nothing holding me back from going. All of a sudden the desire has matured. The bars have been removed. i.e., the glass has been shattered, there's no turning back. I can hold on to my status quo for dear life, but in the end, I'm getting sucked out that window into the abyss so I might as well go with it and let God bring me.

I applied for that position with IJM. Then I was feeling pretty blue about it because I didn't know if they'd think I was qualified. But then I was reading the story of David's job interview with Saul, which if I recall correctly, went something like this:

"I'd like to apply for the position of Goliath-slayer. I think you'll find my qualifications are in order"

"Riiiiight... well, we're looking for a more mature candidate... someone with a couple more years of leadership and Goliath-slaying experience".

"Hmm. I see. Well, look. I haven't slayed any Goliaths before. Its true. But God and I together have slain a lion and a bear. And as far as leadership experience? Well, sure I've never had actual PEOPLE under me, but I've been leading the sheep for years and they can be a real handful!"

David's qualifications didn't fit the job advertisement, but God had equipped him for it anyways. He had been groomed for this moment, even though no one else knew it. And God arranged the circumstances so that Saul offered him the position despite his shaky qualifications -- because God was going to help him do the work and David's job experience really amounted to a hill of beans in the face of God's will. 

If God wants me to have the job, He'll have equipped me for it and will arrange the circumstances so that the areas where I haven't had as much experience as the next guy will not bar me from being able to get the job. I know this from David's story, and I also know it from the recent story of another friend of mine who was recently offered a job and the means to do the work in the face of great personal and bureaucratic challenges. So I know God has done it in the past and I know God is doing it today. He'll show me what He wants to do with me by doing it. I just have to trust Him through it all and let him lead me. And if its not to this position, I know He'll show me just exactly what He wants me to do instead.

And when He shows me where He wants me to go, I'll go. And I'll pray about my talk with the leadership of my church and the leadership of my office, and I know God will be with their hearts as they contemplate what I've got to share with them.

I know God has started working. I've been feeling that stirred up pot sensation that I've learned to recognise as the sign of God initiating a major set of changes to my life. I've been waiting for it... like a settled pot of old broth. Stir me up, Lord. Turn the heat on, add some more ingredients, set my life to boiling so that I produce a savoury fragrance that is only for You. 

In the meantime, I better go find some sheep to lead and practice my Shibboleth. 

Swaziland Project Preparation

I'm still back and forth about what to do about IJM and missionary work and all, but for the moment I can concentrate on planning for our short term trip to Swaziland coming up in a few short weeks!

Tina, Christina and I are heading to Nsoko Swaziland to work with youth in the village there on Discipleship, Evangelism, and Leadership. I'm still trying to work out the topics for each afternoon of ministry as well as what the practical sessions will look like when we go visiting and ministering, but I can't wait to be there and also to spend 16 days in the relaxing company of my friends away from the office.

I know it will be hot and hard work, but the thought of spending my entire time there worried about nothing but reaching these youth for Christ's kingdom on earth just thrills my soul. Yet another reason why I'm starting to believe God is about to give me marching orders to go about his business more seriously in the lives of those whom He knows need it most.

To Go...or Not To Go

That is the question....argh.

I just don't know.

I have a great job that I love.
I make an excellent salary.
I have a whole host of excellent friends.
I have an excellent family.
I am near my sisters.
I have a great house.
I am part of a great church.
I have a work to do here with the youth group.

So why go?

How does defending professionals from malpractice actions fit into making the Kingdom of God a reality on Earth?
How can I sit around and enjoy my cushy life here when there are people crying out for help?

How can I ignore the fact that the perfect set of circumstances has converged to allow me to go at this time?

International Justice Mission IJM has need for legal fellows in all 14 of their field offices around the world to advocate for the defenceless.
I have no debt.
I have no dependents.
I have no family obligations.
I have nothing holding me back at all, really, except my wish to be loyal to the firm that has been so good to me.

Quit my job? Seriously? I just don't know about that.
Live by faith? No income? No savings? No long-term plan? Huh...

Its funny though, living by faith with no income really isn't the biggest fear I have. I am really more concerned with disappointing the partners at my firm than anything else. What an awful expense it will be to them to have to find another associate to take over where I left them in the lurch... I remember the last time I left a firm, in order to come here. It was awful. Sigh.

I just don't know.

Still praying about it. But it seems to keep getting pressed harder and harder into my heart with each period of contemplation.