Parenting a Missionary, Pt. 2

I got an email today from WordPress telling me that there was a comment on a blog posting I'd written several years ago.  Regular readers will know that I switched my blog over to Blogger back around 2010 so a lot has happened since then.  Anyway, the comment was from a mother of a young woman who was feeling called to be a missionary.  The mother was hurting at the thought of the potential separation that might lie ahead.  Thank goodness WordPress notified me so that I was able to respond to her but it got me to thinking that perhaps I should repost my initial advice up here on my "active" blog, which is monitored daily, and also give you a little update:

Five Things to Consider When Your Child Is Feeling Called to Be A Missionary:

1.  If your child has been called by God to be a missionary, your desires are secondary. I say this without bitterness.  God’s call on a person’s life is going to trump a parent’s wishes or hopes every time.  And if you stand in the way of that call, shame on you.  I have had to remind myself over and over since my children were born that they are not “mine.”  They were given to me by God for a season only…to nurture them until it was time to release them.

2.  Conditions can be quite fluid in a missionary’s life. There seem to me to be a lot of parallels to life in the military and life as a missionary.  With the military, there is a lot of “hurry up and wait.”  There is a lot of that in a missionary’s journey, too.  You don’t just feel the call to a foreign country and then head out.  You have to determine what organization you should join.  You have to raise support.  You must obtain visas.  Countries become “closed” and you are diverted to other countries.  Orders are changed and you get sent to different places.  You don’t buy homes because you never know how long you are going to be in one spot.  You might need to be sent off for additional training. You can’t always tell loved ones where you are nor communicate regularly with them.

3. Be prepared for a lot of surprises, twists, and turns as their missionary call is defined. Many parents (and the child being “called”) immediately think overseas when they think they are being called to the mission field.  But over time, as they pray and listen to what God is directing them to do, that missionary call could be to work with the homeless in Camden, NJ or with immigrants in San Antonio.  Or it could be a call to go to medical school and then head over to Paraguay to be a missionary doctor.  There are many forms that missionary call could take.  And a child’s missionary work can change over their lifetime.  God will use them when and where He sees fit.  You, as their parent, will become quite familiar with the word “adaptable.”

4.  You might feel angry. Shocker, I know.  Folks at church will probably be hugging you and congratulating you once they hear that your child feels called to the mission field.  Little do they realize that you might be experiencing a whirlpool of conflicting emotions, not the least of which is anger.  You’ve been throwing your whole life into keeping your child safe.  Now they want to go somewhere where they will be living in terribly unsanitary conditions, where people might want to harm them, in voluntary poverty, away from loved ones for long periods of time…….and you’re supposed to SMILE about this?  Are they nuts?  Take a deep breath.  What you are feeling is normal.  Acknowlege it and then you can work through it.  Personally, I worry more about those parents who are giddy with joy when their kids want to be missionaries.   Are they counting the cost?     Be prepared but then pray that God will keep you pleasantly surprised.

5.  Start developing a support network. When your child becomes a missionary, you will most likely not see them for long periods of time.   Seek out other parents of missionaries.    You can find them through your denomination or the missionary organizations.  Become familiar with the computer and long-distance communication tools like Skype and email.   Stay connected with your  friends and church family.  Let them know if you are having a tough time with loneliness.  Get that passport up-to-date and then make plans to do some traveling to places near enough to connect with your missionary child.  That means you need to take steps now to be healthy enough to travel, if at all possible.  And at the risk of sounding trite, remember that you can talk to God about what you are feeling every step of the way.  He’s along for the entire journey.

Bonus Advice:

6.  Take advantage of great resources like the National Network of Parents of Missionaries.  This group (also known as "NNPOM") has a website at http://www.pomnet.org/ and it is chock-full of good advice and resources for you.  They also have a Yahoo group for POMs (Parents of Missionaries) that I can tell you is wonderfully supportive.

Update on MY missionaries:

My son and his family are now back in the States.  At the risk of repeating myself for regular readers, my dear daughter-in-law became pregnant while they were serving overseas and, since she has high-risk pregnancies, they had to return to the States for her final trimester.  Before they had returned, they were beginning to feel that God was changing their call and once they returned, it became clearer to them that this was the case.  Our granddaughter was also experiencing physical problems brought on by the environment overseas, which was a cause for concern.  Now my son is attending seminary while still working as the North American Sending Offices Director for his missionary organization.  We have two wonderful grandchildren.  They live half-way across the country but that's a walk in the park compared to halfway around the world.  The Commander volunteers as a treasurer for Jason's organization and I like to joke and say that I'm the "Postmaster" for the group since I print off the postage and mail off the contribution statements around the country and also mail off books and cover letters to those interested in serving with the organization.  It's a small thing, for sure, but it helps me feel connected to my son's missionary work.  I wonder sometimes if it didn't take me finally  throwing up my hands and releasing my son and daughter and their precious family through my tears to God before He, in His graciousness and mercy, gently restored them back to me.

Battle in the Sanctuary

It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?  How can a person have a "battle" in a "sanctuary" which by its very definition should be a place of refuge or shelter?  Yet there I sat this past Sunday in our sanctuary and it took every ounce of self-control that I had not to stand up and bolt down the aisle and out the door.

I guess my first mistake was not paying better attention to the sermon topic listed in the bulletin.  My second mistake was sitting in my usual spot, right in the front.  I had adopted that habit several years ago in an attempt to stay awake during the sermons.  For some reason, I had gone through a period of about a year where I'd fall asleep almost as soon as our preacher started preaching.  It was embarrassing and frustrating.  For awhile I had snuck up into the balcony which was technically closed during the early service because, with just a few other "rebels" up there, I could take my coffee mug with me and chug caffeine if I felt myself starting to nod off.  When even that failed to work, I decided that perhaps the best approach would be to sit myself right up front, under the direct gaze of the pastor.  Surely the thought of nodding off right in front of the man would be enough to keep my eyes open.  Most of the time, it worked.  I had gotten used to sitting in that pew so that's why I was way up front Sunday.

We had a guest speaker and I knew I was in trouble the minute he introduced himself and his topic.  He was a missionary and would be speaking on world missions.  It's not an easy topic for me because I have a child who is far from home in this calling.  It's a touchy topic with me because even though I know it is a good thing that he is doing, there are many days when I wish it was someone else that was doing it.  I miss him and his family and I hate the fact that they are so far away.  And that's the honest truth.

Our guest speaker hadn't gotten any farther than his introduction before I was already scrambling to build a wall around myself and strapping on my armor.  He had armed my defenses when he said that his first missions assignment had lasted twenty-five years on the other side of the globe.  He'd taken his family there and raised his children there.  Twenty-five years!  I was trying to cope with the thought of having my family away for three years and hoping mightily that at the end of that time, they'd at least come back to our continent.  I didn't want to hear someone talking about keeping themselves and their children away for twenty-five years.

I sat there glaring at him for the rest of his talk.  I'd heard it all before.  I knew all the key missions verses.......the "harvest", the "workers", the whole shebang.  I just wasn't feeling particularly charitable yesterday.  I was feeling lonely.

When the service ended, I hightailed it out of there and went off to my Sunday School class.  One of my good friends came into the classroom and I confided to her how hard it had been for me to sit through the morning's sermon and why.

"When your son was born, didn't you dedicate him to the Lord?" she asked.

"Of course," I replied.

"Well then, you know that you need to let him go and do God's work," she continued.

"Look, I know all that, but it doesn't make it any easier.  I just find myself sometimes looking around the church at families sitting together and wishing that God had taken someone else's child to go to the mission field.  Why did it have to be mine?" I answered.

"You just have to accept the fact that he's doing a good thing and let him go," she went on.

"That's easy for you to say," I lashed out.  "Your son is just an hour down the road and you can see your grandchild any time you want."

I felt ashamed as soon as I said that but part of me wanted to hurt her, to make her feel part of my pain.  Stupid and childish, I know.  But that's life sometimes, as a missionary's parent.  People forget that we weren't born saints or that we didn't receive the "call."  A lot of us have struggled to accept our child's vocation and all it entails, even though we know that it is a worthy and good thing.  Like Abraham, I keep hoping that a sacrificial lamb will show up and take my son's place so I can hustle him back down the mountain and on home.

For now, the battle continues and many days, I'm my own worst enemy.  But where I am weak, there He is strong.  That's the promise, right?

May the Circle Be Unbroken

If you remember almost two years ago, I posted a blubbering picture of me saying "goodbye" to my youngest who was heading off for California and seminary. I've never been very good at goodbyes especially when it involves my children. I frankly hate to see them go. But my, how time flies.

There's hardly been time to blink an eye and yet here I am saying farewell yet again. Things have changed a little though, since that last snapshot. You might notice another person in the shot this time. Yes, my baby now is a husband and I have a wonderful daughter-in-law. But that only makes it doubly hard to say goodbye, especially when you don't know when the next time will come when you'll see them again. They're heading off to rejoin the mission team in Canada and then eventually off to their next mission field.

So there I was fighting back the crocodile tears. "Crocodiles." Hmmm, made me think of Peter Pan and Captain Hook which made me think of my dad and how he faithfully wrote me letters on his supper break on the graveyard shift at the factory in the evenings, pretending that they were from "Peter Pan" when I was going through my "Wendy" phase. I wondered how Dad felt when he had to say goodbye to me on my many trips off to Europe when I was in the military, which made me think of my nephew, Kevin who just finished a training session with the Army in San Antonio where he worked at one of the big hospitals there.

A person can pick up a lot of things in a hospital, like germs and infections, and things that could be as scary as the Asian bird flu, which just goes to show that you shouldn't be handling birds in Asia if you don't know where they've been or at least until they come up with a vaccine against that flu. I made a mental note to remind Jason and Laura about that. But I was already thinking about flues and the time my brother and I had toured a mansion in Newport, walking into the drawing room just in time to see a chimney sweep crawl out of the fireplace covered in soot.

Soot! If I could only sing like Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and have a friend like Dick Van Dyke to dance around the tops of roofs with. And what about that scene where she takes the children to visit old Bert Lahr and they end up laughing so hard that they all float up to the ceiling? I have friends like that, who make me laugh so hard that tears roll down my face and we all clutch our stomachs because they hurt so much from laughing. But I've yet to float up to the ceiling. I can float on water, though. I'm about as buoyant as they come. Guess it's all those fat deposits all over. They must help you float.

You know, a root beer float would taste good right about now. I can remember the A & W Root Beer stand where I grew up and how good those frosted mugs full of root beer and vanilla ice cream tasted on a hot summer's day. We'd have to roll our car window partway up so they could hook the little tray on the window when they brought our floats. I don't know if they have many drive-in's like that anymore where they hook trays on windows.

Speaking of hooks, it's been awhile since I've done any crocheting but I am getting pretty close to finishing another pair of socks. What I really should do is get going on that shawl that's been languishing in my workbag.

Going? Did someone just mention "get going?" Oh no, it's time for Jason and Laura to head out. But I don't want them to leave. There are too many scary things out there. Have I warned them about all the things that they need to watch out for? "Now, you just be careful, young man," I admonish my son. "You take care of that wife of yours and don't take unnecessary risks or I'll....I'll.......

Isle of Skye....now that's a place I'd love to return to visit. It's been far too long since I've been to Scotland. Yessir, I think it's time to go. And it was. And they did. And now you see how my mind works and why most mornings I'll look up from the breakfast table and be amazed that it is almost 10:30 a.m. and I'm still in my pajamas. I'll have no idea where the time has gone but I DO know that I've done a heap of thinking since I came down for breakfast.