Right now my head is a little bit all over the place. The last couple of weeks have been fairly quiet at my desk, but all of a sudden this week my work has exploded and there's plenty to do. So it's not very helpful that I'm having trouble mustering my brain this morning. But I think the main reason would be grief.
Sometimes it's getting hard to write here because there are themes that just keep coming up and I wonder if I've said all I can say on them? Or if I'm boring my audience?
But then I run into a new-ish missionary who asks questions about the same themes I've experienced and I remember that they are also on a journey of learning, though perhaps not as far along as me, and that perhaps I can continue to speak on these themes helpfully...
This week it's grief. On Tuesday, part of my job was to write a short obituary-like piece that was used in our mission's social media yesterday. Just doing my job, but it's about someone about my age who I knew, someone I had lunch with in Brisbane last home assignment, someone whose daughter is around the age of my kids, someone who comes from the same part of the world that I do, and who was a missionary like me. Last night we attended his funeral (online). [Link to the post I wrote is here.]
In 25+ years of service more than half-a-dozen of our missionary colleagues have died (i.e. pre-retirement age, currently in ministry when they first became ill), mostly because of cancer. It's always a shock and the questions arise: Why Lord? Why now Lord?
Even if we didn't know some of those colleagues really well, it's still a shock and a grief, and I'm often surprised by how much I get affected by each one.
But I've come to understand that the missionary life is laden with a lot of other grief, so many goodbyes and losses, many more than most people encounter this early in their lives. And that grief piles up.
This week I Googled "missionary grief" and this nine-page article came up in my browser: https://www.emsweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/OB_Winter_2014.pdf I've yet to steel myself to read the whole thing (I'm pretty busy this week and also not good at reading longer articles on my computer), but these points from it grabbed my attention:
"HIDDEN LOSSES are crippling many on the missionary field and they don’t even know how to identify where it all began."
The article lists typical losses missionaries experience when they first go to the field, and, I would argue, ongoing losses:
- language (the ability to communicate)
- identity
- a place in society
- life skills
- sense of safety (less in Japan)
- family (knowing the wider family and seeing them regularly, and these goodbyes happen again and again)
- friends
- intellectual and professional peers
- places (e.g. favourite places in home country)
- things (e.g. favourite foods, familiar furniture, house)
- pets
- smells (familiar scents from home country)
Many of the above are "hidden" losses, many of these we often don't identify or notice.
The difficulty with many of the losses of a missionary life is that there is no funeral, no socially acceptable way to acknowledge our loss. And indeed, it might even seem that we don't have permission to admit that we are grieving these things.
I am attentive when a younger colleague mentions a sadness that is in the list above, because I know that it is not going to get any easier, if they continue to work as a missionary.
Life happens at a fast pace and missionaries make massive transitions that involve multiple griefs all at once, there is often simply a lack of time and emotional energy to process. As well as that, we live life amidst other missionaries who are also experience more transition than the average person. We build a friendship with a colleague at language school and they graduate and move to another part of the country. We build another friendship with a colleague who lives near our place of service and they go on home assignment, or we do and when we get back, they have moved somewhere else. No one is having a "funeral" about these losses; we sometimes get to say goodbyes, but they are hard to do again and again and again.
Another quote from the article, sorry it's a bit long:
“Ambiguous grief” is a response to “an unclear loss that defies closure.” This barrier stems . . . hidden losses. The losses are hard to acknowledge and therefore the response of grief is muted. The groundbreaking work of Dr. Pauline Boss in her book entitled Loss, Trauma, and Resilience; Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss is very helpful in understanding this barrier. Dr. Boss explains, “…ambiguous loss is the most stressful kind of loss. It defies resolution and creates long-term confusion…. With death there is an official certification of loss, and mourning rituals allow one to say goodbye. With ambiguous loss, none of these markers exists. The persisting ambiguity blocks cognition, coping, and meaning making and freezes the grief process.” Ambiguous grief is born from a loss that is often hard to recognize, therefore it is also hard to resolve. In order to overcome this barrier to grief we must make a concerted effort to name these hidden losses so that the grief process can be experienced.
As you get older you accumulate grief. I see this in older people—they're gradually losing their friends, parents and siblings, their professions, and their strength and health—it takes a toll. Missionaries accumulate grief at a faster pace, though:
Accumulated grief is usually a result of ignoring many small losses and allowing them to build up. . . . Although the losses many missionaries experience may seem trivial and small, much like the paper cut, their accumulated effect cannot and should not be ignored. (also from the above linked article)
Hence, I'm writing here today about grief. Because I have accumulated a lot of small paper cuts, and larger grief-wounds over the years and a death like we experienced in our community last week hits deeply. It's easy to rush into the next thing (my work on the magazine and in social media hasn't stopped, the emails coming across my desk haven't stopped, I still have a dental check up today and a seminar to attend this evening). But I'm instead taking a moment today to stop and process my thoughts by writing.
To newer missionaries and those who are headed that way: I don't want to discourage you. This calling we've received is hard, but it's not impossible. Indeed, the text that Steve chose for his funeral was Joshua 1:1–11. These are a bunch of instructions from God to Joshua, just after the death of Moses. He uses this phrase, or similar words three number of times: "be strong and courageous". Why? Because "I [God] will never leave you nor forsake you" (said explicitly twice in the passage, but also implied in other words multiple times). Because our God is great and has promised to be with us wherever we are, because he's called us into this work—he will provide all we need, he will be all we need. Fix your eyes on him, again, and again.
To those who have been around longer and are feeling this deeply. Take some time. Reach out to someone to talk it through. Journal. Take a walk. Acknowledge this accumulated grief.
To people who pray for missionaries: Keep praying. Let them know you are praying for them. See if there's anything practical you can do to help one of them. Remember when you see them that they are carrying some accumulated grief, and ask God how you can help. Ask good questions.
