Lots to think about

Life has settled down again to a discernible rhythm. It's a bit of a relief, actually—I work better like this. I find it hard to concentrate and make decisions when my day-to-day routine is less stable and predictable. So when I do things like try to work and travel, even though most of my work is done remotely, it gets tricky and I don't do as good a job. But I also get bored if life is too same-same. So I'm glad for a job that always includes new challenges and has a fair amount of variety in it, even if, like last week, I sometimes get overwhelmed by it all.

Magazine matters

I'm glad that the Autumn issue of the magazine I manage has gone to the printer and we get to mail it out next week! I've been working fairly solidly on this since we got back to Tokyo in early August. 

I've been working on this magazine for around 15 years, and I can tell you that some "issues" are harder than others. There are all sorts of reasons for that. It can be team challenges, a difficult issue-theme, unexpected random obstacles, author difficulties, or at times when my own transitions or travel interfere with my ability to concentrate on the work needed. 

This issue was particularly difficult for some of these reasons, and has required "above and beyond" over the last few months. I hope that it was all worth it, and pray that God will take it and use it for his purposes.

This month is our magazine "annual meeting" month. Because our remote team works across several different time zones it's hard to hold meetings. I've never been a fan of meetings, they can easily be a waste of time! I'm in a position to have been able to shape my work in so many ways, both with the magazine and with the social media work, and I've tended towards setting up processes that mean we don't have to meet often, though I have been called out on that!

Our magazine team gets together once a year to talk about team and magazine stuff, to pray, to have fun, and to plan. In the last few years that has been achieved with four 1½ hr meetings. I really enjoy this team. We have fun when we get together, even online. They are passionate about the mission of this magazine and that makes them easy to lead. And the four shorter meetings are actually a lot easier to manage than a single one-day event, like we used to have. (I've written about this meeting/ these meetings before, here's one back in 2016 when it was an in-person meeting: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2016/08/energising-meeting.html)

What have I been thinking about recently?

Well, if you know me, you know that there's usually a lot going on in my brain! This week I've had time to listen to some podcasts and I've been trying to be disciplined about continuing to gradually (usually a short portion over coffee in the afternoon) work my way through non-fiction books that are on my to-read list.

I listened to John Dickson's Undeceptions (my usual go-to for lunchtime listening), an episode about the boy Jesus. It gave some interesting historical background to the life Jesus lived.

I came across an OMF US podcast interview with a new worker I met last week. She was effusive last week about the social media work I do and how that had been a pivotal part of her coming to Japan, so I was curious about her larger story (if you ever get into the position to ask, find out a missionary's "call story" they are usually fascinating and never the same as any other missionary's). The 45 minute interview was well done and I loved the bit where God led her to look at Instagram, just after she'd surrendered her desire to go to Japan...and she saw a post from OMF Japan!

I also listened to a podcast from Moore Bible College about Neurodiversity and the Christian Life (part 1 of 3). I wasn't so impressed with their format, it's a bit academic, although there were some redeeming interview clips. Yet it's a topic that is close to our hearts, so I'll go back later and hear what they have to say in the next two parts.

I've just finished one non-fiction book (after several months) and have started another. The first I've read before, and will probably read again. Gentle and Lowly is deep and full of many things that will take a lifetime for my heart to absorb. It's about the heart of Christ for us and what small amount I can grasp, even though I've been a Christian since I was a child, it still breathtaking.

The new book I've just picked up, Life interrupted, by Susan Chapman, an OMF colleague, starts out on a similar line: understanding that we are loved by God. It's something that is easy to say, but hard to live. I'm only just starting this short book, but am already challenged by what she says next: "we need to be totally content in being finite". She goes on to quote Ruth Hayley Barton who says:

Living graciously within the boundaries of our life as it has been entrusted to us gives our life substance. Oddly enough, something of the will of God is contained in the very limits that we often try to sidestep or ignore. Living within limits is not in any way an acquiescence that is despairing, passive or fatalistic. Rather it honours the deepest realities of the life God has given us. Life in this body at this age and stage. Life in my family at its age and stage. Life in this personality. Life with this community. Life in the midst of this calling. (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry), p12 in Life Interrupted. 

It's this that I need to continue to learn as I settle into this phase of my life. What does "life in this body at this stage and age, with the gifts and calling that God's given me?" look like. And how can I be content in that? I think it's something all of us probably need to think about at various ages and stages!

Another crazy week: but I'm thankful

I'm starting to realise that having a few less responsibilities means I'm more flexible! So I'm able to take up short-term opportunities more easily and have the space to recover from them.

This last week I've done a few not-usual things and it's been crazy busy. In fact this is the first time in seven days that I've actually sat at my desk.

David's office where we spent several hours on
Friday sorting wrestlers into weight classes,
recording their names, and setting up the
 initial bouts.

Friday and Saturday were crazy busy, but fun. David and I did the admin side of the school's wrestling tournament. We had 250 wrestlers on campus (a large number for our league). The gym was packed to the rafters. We held a middle school tournament, as well as a full raft of male and female weight brackets for the high schoolers. It's very hard to easily describe what we did because it included so many moving pieces and a lot of copying of names. As bouts happened we had to add those results to the tree diagram (called a bracket) and then create the scoring sheet for the new matches with the relevant wrestlers. We problem solved and answered many questions. One of the most satisfying things personally was solving problems by tracking down wrestlers whose bouts had slipped through the cracks somehow. We've benefited from others doing this for our sons over the last 13 years, so it was great to be able to serve others in this way. I'm thankful it was just those two days, though!

The busyness didn't stop after Saturday...but here are some photos to show you something of the weekend (see more about my week after the photos).

CAJ campus was stunning over the weekend...
but I spent most of my time inside!

No filter here (or in the one above)!

Wrestlers, coaches, and supporters everywhere!
The noise level was very loud...for 12 hours.

I got 20 minutes out of the gym
at lunchtime and I went for a short 
walk around campus. This
ginko tree was stunning.

This was admin central: where we spent about 12 hrs on
Saturday. We had several helpers, including the veteran
coach (Dan Rudd) who did announcements
until he ran out of energy mid afternoon. Coach Rudd
is the one who taught our eldest son in the earliest
days of his wrestling career (and answered so many
of our early questions).

I didn't see much wrestling...we didn't have the 
best seats in the house! Past all the people in
this photo is a CAJ wrestler getting his gold medal, he's
a former long-time teammate of our youngest son.

And the days moved onwards: Sunday morning was our usual time at church with lunch afterwards, then chatting to our sons over an hour or two. 

We had overnight guests on Sunday night, but due to their short stay (34 hrs) in Japan they had limited data on their phones to communicate with us as they travelled from the airport and a lack of on-hand cash meant they had difficulty buying train tickets. We live 1 ½ hrs from the airport, so it isn't an easy drop-in, but they were determined. We waited an hour for them at the train station. Thankfully we could pop into the cafe there for some warmth as the temperature was around 5C. It turned into a late night! The next day I showed them around the school and our neighbourhood and they treated us to lunch. We've had very few supporters visit us in recent years, so it was a delight to have this couple visit.

Another great Japan Harvest issue completed!

On Tuesday I went into the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA) office to help pack magazines. A friend from CAJ-parent era met me there and we caught up while stuffing magazines into packets. That was an excellent use of time and I felt refreshed afterwards. I left a little early to get back to school for (you guessed it): more wrestling! Just an hour as a spectator, this time.

Yesterday I had another new thing going on: I'm hosting a short term worker and I met her for coffee and to talk about her involvement with social media, her weekly schedule, etc. I then took her to meet a Japanese friend of mine at the JEMA office, we ate lunch and packed more magazines. Another really good use of time because while doing a manual job like that there is much time for conversation.

It's been a lot. I ended up on my bed before dinner on both Monday and Wednesday. I'm really tired! Today is an office day (and a short grocery run). I'm grateful for the peace here at home and that while I've been gone things have been chugging along in the two teams I work with.

Thankfully it looks like the coming weeks aren't quite so hectic. It's just under three weeks till we travel to Australia for our son's wedding, so hopefully we'll be a bit more rested and able to enjoy that time.

Exciting and scary

I think I'm pleased to report that we booked more plane tickets on Saturday. I have to say that after our journeys last year, I wasn't keen, but I'm also glad that it's done. At least this time there are no passport or visa dramas, and no Covid regulations either! I've also booked accommodation in three different locations (one in Japan and two in Australia) that will help us have places to lay our heads between July 10 and August 2. After that, only God knows!

This transition represents the next stage in our journey: the start of our 5th (!) home assignment. It's also a significant journey as we take our sons back to Australia for good. As I keep saying, we're not bringing them back to Japan next year.

I'm also pleased to say that this week I was able to submit the 4,500-word project I'd been working on since November last year. That felt both very good, but also nerve-racking even though it was something that I'd been commissioned to write. I'm glad to have gotten it to this point and to shove it into someone else's hands for the time being. I think all editors should periodically take a turn at being writers whose work is submitted to editors, I think it would help us all to have a good deal of insight into what writers feel.

Then on Wednesday, I found enough free space in my schedule to ride to the park—my usual haunt—to spend time with the blooming sakura (alongside hundreds of others). Last Friday we sent the latest magazine to the printer, and this week I only had one meeting on my calendar and no out-of-the-office responsibilities during work hours. So, from several years of experience, I knew that this week I'd have a little extra time and that a ride to the park was viable. It was a shock to realise I haven't done that in five months! It was definitely time and yesterday everything lined up: time to spare, beautiful weather, and sakura blooming. Ah, it was a blessed couple of hours. I relaxed enough to even lie down and read a book under one of the pink trees!

This week it's been delightful to have more time to think about home assignment preparation . . . though I need to stop writing now! I've probably already got sufficient "story modules" written for our rounds of speaking. Noting that we're often only given 10 minutes between us to talk about Japan and our ministry over the last 4 ½ years, and we rarely speak to the same audience, it's not too hard. Because I love to write and "stories" are my hobby horse, it's the easier part of HA preparation for me. The hard work of upending our lives and moving will be much worse.

So, now, I think, a story is warranted. Smile! Writing for publication can be a scary thing, but it's also an exciting thing. For the same reason: you never know where your words are going to end up. Editing and publishing are the same. I feel a little like a midwife, sometimes, in the various publishing that I'm involved in. 

A couple of weeks ago at the women's retreat I went to I saw one of my "babies" on a table. I think it was for sale. "Beneath the Surface" is a prayer guide I spent several months working on in 2019 and 2020. I wasn't a writer, but I laboured over the editing! Oh, I did write the initial draft of the "From the editors" at the beginning, but it was heavily worked over in one of the most intense "team editing" sessions I've ever been part of.

I've just done some intense searching, and I can't believe that I never wrote here about this big "baby". It was a huge project (that involved a lot of collaboration across organisations) to undertake on top of the other day-to-day responsibilities I have at work. Probably one reason that I never wrote here about it was that it happened in the middle of the pandemic, at least the end part did. We had planned a post-publication party for the three of us editors who conceived and worked together on the project, but we never ended up being able to do anything. In the end, in November 2020, the only thing that marked this going out into the world was an online launch party for the contributors. 

In any case, I'm still very happy with this amazing booklet and feel a little possessive whenever I see it around somewhere. I'm unsure how many copies have been sold around the world, but it's many thousand. And it's been translated into a few other languages as well. The Japanese version is currently being worked on.

I think the unique thing about the booklet is not only that it is not about the work of any one mission, but also that it delves into some really deep and difficult topics, but makes them accessible to many people because as much as we could we tried to utilise stories. Oh, and you can buy it here.

But that actually wasn't the story I was planning to tell you. I've got another one. I received an email early in March from someone in the UK. He's a Christian student worker (IFES), and specifically, he works with music students. One of the authors in the Winter issue of the magazine that I manage Japan Harvest happened to be in the UK and gave a copy of the magazine to this man. (This issue was themed "Arts in Ministry.") This man in the UK read the whole thing and wrote: 

"I found [it] fascinating—I've known for quite a while that using the arts in mission is something that is done to particularly good effect in Japan, and so it was eye-opening, encouraging, and inspiring to read so many articles documenting the thought and practice of so many missionaries in Japan."

He was particularly taken by one of the articles and wanted to reprint it on this website. https://musicnetwork.uk/.

The website is the "chief online resource for equipping music students here in the UK to live for Christ in the world of music. We are always trying to give them deep theological foundations for their musical practice, as well as actively trying to encourage them to think globally and missionally, and the article certainly did both of those things I feel."

You can check out the article that's now been republished here.

I was so encouraged by this little exchange. The magazine is primarily for people ministering to Japanese people, so to think that this went halfway around the world into the hands of someone working with quite a different audience is pretty cool.

I like my job. It is indeed both scary and exciting. Who knows what God's going to do with my words or the words I help into publication?

I'm also excited because we've got a camping trip planned for next week! So my next blog post might be a camping one!

Telling stories and being heard

I've had more time to write this week than I've had for some time. It's been lovely. One of the things I've been writing is my regular column about writing for the upcoming Japan Harvest magazine. But the topic is convicting: stories. I'm passionate about telling true stories, but, like many people who write non-fiction, I often fail to use them. Stories often aren't as direct and take up more space. It also takes attention to notice some stories. Others, like my hair-braiding story, told here just are begging to be shared.

So, I feel compelled to write a blog post this afternoon, but am struggling to find a story to share with you, because as an editor so much of the time I'm working with other people's stories and not having experiences that can be told...but it's good to struggle sometimes. Here are some stories from the last couple of weeks that I hope you find encouraging:

Talent Show

On Tuesday evening we went to the school's Senior Talent Show. This has been a tradition for many years, but of course this tradition has been interrupted in the last couple of years. It's a fundraiser put on by the senior class in preparation for their overseas ministry trip in March. It is usually a mixture of fun and serious acts, but there are also a reasonable number of acts that just make the parents and teachers feel old because they are based around current pop culture that we're not familiar with. 

I did enjoy most of the evening, but it did go on a little too long (2 hr 40 min). Or perhaps I'm just getting old and unused to going out in the evening? I have to admit to still feeling a little exhausted by large groups of people.

It was fun to have one extra senior staying at our house that evening because he lives far away, and to chat with our son and his friend the next morning . . . but they're tired. I keep reminding myself that I was the same way at the same age and that it's just for a limited time. This will be all over in less than four months!

The importance of people-focus

Twice in the last few days I've had unexpected conversations with team members. Members of teams I manage. The teams I work with are quite task-focused—we're teams with specific outcome objectives: publishing a magazine and social media posts (for the purpose of mobilising for mission in Japan). So, I'm not sure I do a great job at caring for the people in my teams because I spend a lot of my time taking care of many tasks with deadlines. I often measure how I'm going in my job with how many tasks I've been able to tick off my list. Because both teams work remotely, I often go weeks without talking to any team members directly. We communicate a lot via text, email, and other online tools. 

So, spontaneous opportunities this week to connect (via video calls) with two team members who are struggling in different ways was unusual, but also good. 

I also led an online prayer meeting with about half the magazine team and it was good to not just pray for magazine matters, but to pray for one another and the things that are on our hearts and minds also. I felt heard and I hope they felt heard too.

Being heard

Last week I had another online prayer meeting with some expat mums in (or with a recent connection to) Japan who have kids with special needs—various needs, various ages. I'm new to their group, but I already had met most of the mums in other contexts. I'm starting to feel like these are "my people", and I find myself telling them things that few other people know. 

Recently I've found that what we've dealt with as parents over the last few years in terms of mental health and neurodiversity has meant I've found it harder to connect closely with many people. There is an experiential gap, one that's hard to define. People who don't have an experience with such parenting challenges can find it hard to understand, or simply don't want to, and I feel constrained in what I feel I can share with them. I wrote a bit about this with a great deal of emotion, back in October. There is great power in feeling like you're understood, and that people want to hear about what you're deeply struggling with. I'm so thankful I was "found" by one of these ladies last year and welcomed into their midst.

It's hard to literally see hills from our location
in Tokyo (Mt Fuji is visible from certain 
points, but not our house). This is a view
of mountains from a wrestling venue back
in December, a place I'll be returning to
next month for a Track and Field meet.

I lift my eyes to the hills

At the magazine prayer meeting I'd decided to help us focus by listening to a song based on Psalm 121, which starts, "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth". 

Most of the team, it turns out, are labouring under some heavy burdens, so this was indeed God going before and leading me to use this psalm and song in our time together. Maybe this song will help you as you struggle with something today too: Psalm 121 (I Lift My Eyes) Lyric Video • Kristyn Getty • Jordan Kauflin • Matt Merker

Feeling very ordinary

I don’t like being in a season where margin is almost non-existent. I try not to go there, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Thankfully I have daily and weekly routines that help sustain me through them, but it’s not a healthy place to be. 

It feels like that for weeks I’ve been dwelling in the land of the urgent: dealing with what’s most urgent each day. And important things have had to wait until they are urgent before they are dealt with. As I look at the weeks ahead, I hope that that crazy season is coming to an end for now and that I’ll be able to take a few more breaths between the urgent tasks.

Last Friday I was able to combine a household responsibility with being a friend and being heard by a friend. I drove, with a friend, to Costco (about 45 minutes from here). Lots of time to talk in the car and over lunch, punctuated in the middle with the practical task of acquiring items for each of our households. This is something we do every 2–3 months. Noting that we don’t talk while we shop! I need my wits about me at Costco, and shopping is one thing I struggle to multitask on.

On Saturday the most urgent thing seemed to be to rest, but there were a few “household” things to do also. As an adult, and a mum, and a wife, many responsibilities don’t simply fall away when you are tired. But I managed to have a pretty restful day, nonetheless

Ironically, one of the urgent things I’ve been plugging away at these last few weeks is the working on latest issue of Japan Harvest magazine. The theme of the issue is “rest”! I’ve got a pretty cool job, in that to do it involves learning and thinking about life in ways that are often quite personal. This magazine issue has been both helpful and confronting, as I've read about other people’s journeys and thoughts on the theme of rest. When you work on a magazine you work first on the bits, but then gradually the bits come together to form a whole and it can be a surprise to see the final result. I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like as a whole. 

Now I’ve committed something of a writing crime here—I started this blog post, not knowing where it was going or what I really wanted to say. What’s my purpose in writing this? My goal to writing one blog post a week propels me onwards (and I missed last week), but my overarching goal for this whole blog, what I’ve been doing for nearly 13 years now, is writing about my “ordinary” life. Trying to give you, my readers, a glimpse into what the life of this person, who’s called to be a missionary, is like. Too often people called missionaries are put up on pedestals and believed to be something beyond ordinary. I feel pretty ordinary at the moment. I’m tired. I’ve got some very ordinary responsibilities weighing on my shoulders, as well as a few more unusual ones. True, my life as a missionary means I face some less-than-ordinary things, but I face them as an ordinary human.

My ordinary life last week included being a single mum. David was away in Kyoto helping with the accreditation assessment of a school there. We were not able to talk while he was away as his schedule was so full. …. So my lot has been all my own jobs, plus his, plus a busy week of work, plus looking after my boys (who are older and easier in many ways than when they were younger, although emotionally I think harder). Thankfully David got back on Thursday evening, and we both fell into bed exhausted.

This week has been a lot slower paced. School had its long-weekend, so called "winter break", which meant a five-day weekend for students and less for teachers (David got about three days off). Because I was still tired, I also worked minimally on Monday and Tuesday morning and I'm glad I did.

This morning I took one of my sons to a doctor's appointment at a hospital. It wasn't local, so took up most of the morning. It was also stressful for a few different reasons, so I took my time over lunch. It's really strange, after so many weeks of only having time for the urgent, that this week I'm finally out in front and able to take a few deep breaths. I'm thankful.

I won't lie to you, I've not been a bundle of cheerfulness this week. But I recognise that with the burden of frantic busyness lifted for the time being, I've got time to process some of the emotions of the last couple of months that have been pushed aside along with the other important and not-so-urgent things that I haven't had time for.

I was brought to tears by a post from Proverbs 31 ministries yesterday morning: 

Oh friend, we see you. We know you’re tired. We know you’re worn out and weary. We know your circumstances are weighing you down, with a heaviness on your chest that never seems to ease up.

It may feel impossible to keep going when the circumstances we face each day don’t seem to let up. But there is good news for us today: God is strong enough to carry us through these hard times.

Psalm 24:8 describes God this way, “Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.”

Our God remains strong and mighty through every battle we face.

When our hearts are heavy, our eyes are tired and our souls are worn down, we can have confidence that God will hold us up and keep us going.

His strength will never fail us, friend.

This morning as I faced that hospital trip, I was trying to cling to the promise that God gives us strength. No idea how that works, but it's clearly there in his Word. I tell you, I'm leaning into this promise, and not just for this morning:

He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29–31 NIV)

Curve-ball kind of week

 After a slow week at work last week, the burners were turned up this week. (You can often tell by how many blog posts I’ve written...in a slow week I write more, busy week, I don’t often get to write at all).

My working week ended with a pretty
cool sunset. This was the best I could
get from my balcony.

Last weekend the first curve ball landed of my week landed when two siblings at school were diagnosed with COVID. None of our family had close contact with either student while not wearing a mask (the main thing they consider in Japan), however they did “shut down” the two grades those students were in for the week and that meant one of our boys was back to online schooling. As my husband is on the leadership team at school I also heard a few bits and pieces as the week went on, as various circles of contact were tested and eventually cleared (that’s right, no one at school caught the virus from these two students). I’m pretty impressed—Japanese contact testing is thorough and well organized.

I spent Monday on the other side of Tokyo with some of my Kanto OMF colleagues. David got to come too, which was a lovely treat (although we tried not to talk on the 2.5 hrs we spent on trains...that’s one of the COVID guidelines here). 

As usual, it was great to spend time with colleagues. We even got to stay an extra hour and play games. That was both challenging and fun. I ended up being drawn into a Japanese language game that’s a bit like Taboo and surprised myself by not doing too bad. Actually “guessing” is a big part of my survival strategy in Japanese language, so I suppose it shouldn’t be such a surprise that I did alright. But I still ended up the day with a bad headache, traveling on public transport and being with people all day while wearing masks is not as  easy as it used to be.

When I got back to my desk on Tuesday I found a pile of work bigger than I’d expected, that was the next cluster of curve-balls. We’re into the design-phase of the Winter issue of the magazine and I thought I’d finished the hard-lifting editing last Friday. However one article came back from an author with some major changes. I also had to do some fast writing to extend one article I’d written, to better fill the space we had available (we had less content than we’d needed to fill the 40-page magazine).

Managing a magazine has lots of behind-the-scenes stuff that I never imagined. The most surprising to me is how tricky it can be to get just the right amount of content. That involves juggling many things, from word count and images, to actually where articles are placed in the magazine, not to mention ads.

So Tuesday was a busy day at the office. 

On Wednesday the next curve ball arrived, and it was in the form of a request to create a PowerPoint presentation for the content I’d be helping present on Friday morning for an orientation for new missionaries. The pressure mounted as I’d already agreed to help out an expat friend all Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday was fully booked with parent-teacher conferences, at school and other errands that needed doing.

By Thursday morning I was feeling pretty exhausted. I ended up having to reschedule an appointment (not because I was tired), but that gave me some extra wriggle room for getting things done. After dinner on Thursday night David had to go back to school to see more parents for conferences and I nearly fell asleep at 7.30 in my chair!

Friday was more sane. We did the orientation session just before lunch and it seemed to go well, despite our lack of experience at delivering training via Zoom (they were all in one room, but my colleague and I were in our own homes). That gave me Friday afternoon to tidy up a lot of the loose ends from earlier in the week. I got to the end of yesterday feeling both exhausted and satisfied. And very thankful for a quiet weekend coming up and that no further curve balls arrived on Friday!

How was your week? I’m still learning to go with the flow—to enjoy the times when the demands of my job and time and energy available are about equal. The difficulty I have is to not get too stressed when the demands exceed the time and energy I have available and not to overthink when I’ve got more time and energy available than the job demands.

Most people have no idea what I do

Yesterday I worked with the admin staff of the organisation that publishes
the magazine.  We packed the autumn issue of Japan Harvest for mailing.
These ladies also help with advertising, translation, and fact checking
from Japanese sources. While I was there an OMF colleague dropped in
for a while and I also spent time on the phone with another colleague. I always
enjoy volunteering in this way. Though it isn't what a managing editor usually
does, it is a good opportunity to connect with some of my team, but also to
network. I almost always am introduced to someone I haven't met or meet
someone when I'm doing this. The office is in a Christian office building in
downtown Tokyo. Yes! There is such a thing. How that came to be is another
story in itself, but it is a great place to network with others.

"People, in general, don't understand what editors do." I've found this to be true in my time as an editor. It isn't until I've worked with a writer through the process of getting something they've written published, that they have a better idea.

I seem to have ended up in a succession of careers that aren't easy to explain: Occupational Therapist, missionary, and now missionary and editor! None of these work very well in polite conversation with a hairdresser. Finding an "elevator speech" for any of them is challenging.

So when I found this short video by a newspaper editor that succinctly described what we do, I was thrilled.

Here is his summary of various species of editors:

Developmental editor: works closely with the writer in early stages, working with the writer on the idea, focus, scope, organisation, writing, and revising.
Line editor: focuses on the macro editing of a completed text, though focus, structure, tone, organisation, legal and ethical issues often come into it.
Copy editor: takes a micro approach looking at factual accuracy, grammar, spelling, usage, and house style.
Proofreader: takes a text ready for publication and checks it for typographical errors, spelling errors, garble, and similar infelicities. They don't edit the text.

These can blur into one another, especially in a small organisation. I do all of these, though I have a team to help me and I try to keep my hands off the micro stuff if I'm dealing with a piece that needs work at a developmental stage. There's no point in correcting spelling or capitalisation if that word is not going to be used in the end.

He said that editors overall try to establish: what is appropriate for the writer, the subject, the occasion, the publications, and the reader. And they all work to keep the writer from looking bad in public.

Though I do all of these, I find it hard to jump between one and another. I find it hard to do developmental work with one piece of writing and then jump straight into copy editing another. I'm glad that one cycle of our magazine lasts about two to three months, so I can take the time to put different hats on as I go. I also have difficulty jumping into an editing conversation without having had some mental preparation for that (so an unexpected phone call or encounter with an author wanting to talk about a piece of writing is hard).

On top of the above "species" of editors, I'm a managing editor, so I oversee other editors as well as the rest of the members of my team. Plenty of variety, which is just as I like it most of the time.

Because I don't fill out timesheets and aren't paid by the hour I sometimes wonder if I am full-time employed. But I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I am. It's hard to measure how much you do when you're a full-time missionary. All sorts of things are part of ministry: building and maintaining relationships, language learning, dealing with bureaucratic requirements (like visas), and supervising/being supervised. 

But many of these things happen in "regular" jobs too. How much time did I spend at team meetings, doing statistics for the number crunchers, or answering email when I was working in health care? Even just driving to and from home visits or between workplaces on a workday, these were counted as work in the full-time jobs I've had.

The big difference is that my personal life is now much more mixed into my work as I work from home. But that's what I grew up seeing my parents do as they ran a business from home.

Not having an easy measuring stick around your work can make it hard to know when to say yes and when to say no. Being a relatively reliable person who's been around a while now, I often get asked to do things, to attend meetings, help run things, meet with people etc. But I'm finding that I'm in a season of having to say no. I'm close to my limit in what I can do and stay healthy, so I have to pick and choose carefully.

But...now I'm rambling and probably should get back to one of those non-editing jobs I have: writing our prayer letter.

Fun meeting: an oxymoron?

On Monday I was in Osaka with my Japan Harvest magazine team. We spent the whole day together—looking at what we've been doing, planning for the future, and getting to know one another and what we each do better.

I always enjoy these days and I'm gradually getting less nervous about running them. We had our first meeting in 2012. I'm amazed at how far we've come since then! 

On Monday we had seven people attending in person and three joined us via Skype for part of the time. All the key team members were able to join us. One of the team, our proofreader, I met face-to-face for the first time.

Outside Osaka station at rush hour.

One of the reasons we had it in Osaka is that several of our team live in that area. Our proofreader actually lives on Shikoku, the island off the coast of Honshu near Osaka/Kobe. So he had to travel, but Osaka was a lot closer than Tokyo for him.

I still find this whole magazine thing amazing, even though I've been doing it now for nine years. I really wasn't a likely candidate for this job. I have no training in writing or editing or design, I'd never managed a team (beyond my own family), and no one has ever particularly noted that I have any kind of leadership abilities. Of course when I began I had no team to manage. My only qualifications were that I could write a bit and had a passion for communication. I have grown a lot.

That I now manage a team of around a dozen people is astounding to me. Plus I work with over twenty writers each issue of the magazine. I have learnt on the job about editing, magazines, and working with writers and editors. What a journey it has been!

The team learning about how the magazine is designed.

So I do not take what we have for granted. We have a strong, relatively stable team, who is passionate about what they do. They are working in areas that they are gifted in and enjoy contributing their time to serve the missionaries in Japan. No one (except our admin staff who manage the subscriber list and deal with the printer and mailing out the magazine) is paid. Everyone is donating their time and energy to this magazine. And they do such a good job!

As of this month our team is comprised of five nationalities. They live in four countries including Japan and several different prefectures within Japan. As no one is paid we do not meet as a whole team more often than once a year. I quite like it that way, not being fond of meetings, although sometimes it would be great to be able to communicate to people face-to-face more often.

On Monday we spent a significant amount of time walking through the process of the magazine, with people explaining what they do and answering questions from team members. It is the first time we've done that and it seemed to be really valuable time spent, especially the time we spent talking about the design. I think it's going to help us function better as a team and value what others do. Keeping a team together who almost never get together can be a struggle, particularly when trust is broken or miscommunications happen, but I hope that what we did on Monday will strengthen us.

Ken and Karen, our proofreading/design team. They're great and always push
me to up my game!

Getting to and from Osaka wasn't a small thing. It is about 500km from Tokyo. There are three main ways to get there from here: overnight bus, Shinkansen, and plane. I chose the latter. But that still included six trains on the way there and seven on the way home! I didn't rush: going on Sunday and coming back on Tuesday, but I was really tired afterwards. In fact I'm still tired, but more still coming down off the high that the day gave me (in fact I hit a motivational slump today).

Itami Airport in Osaka.

Well, this has been a bit of a mishmash of a blog post. I'm writing in the evening, which I hardly ever do. I set the goal of writing a blog post each week this year and this week is fast running out! Tomorrow we're up before six with school sport starting up again. After working much of last weekend, I'm planning on taking much of this one off, which essentially means trying to stay away from the computer. I'm planning to enjoy being outside at the cross-country venue tomorrow morning and to chill with a book in the afternoons.

I just want to finish this on a note of gratitude. Thanks be to my heavenly Father who has given me this rewarding work and gifted me to do it.

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:20 ESV).

Be excellent at what you do for the Lord

This article "Christian Authors and the 'Good Enough' Fallacy" is specifically "geared toward [Christian] authors who are trying to write full-time and/or who are serious about getting their work professionally published". However, it touches on an important point that goes much wider than that. 

The article talks about an attitude that can sometimes slide into Christian activities. Doing "just enough" and trusting that God will do the rest.

This is not how I would approach any ordinary job. I come from a health professional background and certainly one of the big things we had to learn how to be was "professional". That's a hard concept to define but includes doing the best you can, drawing a line between personal and work, acting with discretion, being reliable and respectful, and always seeking to improve. I think we sometimes fall down on these things when engaging in "Christian" work."

God exhorts us to do our best:

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." (Ecc. 9:10 ESV)

"Whatever you do, work at it heartily, as for the Lord, not for men." (Col. 3:23 ESV)

"Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts." (Ps. 33:3 ESV)

This was said of Hudson Taylor, the founder of OMF International (called China Inland Mission at the time): 

“He prayed about things as if everything depended upon the praying . . . but he worked also, as if everything depended on his working.”

I think it is a nicely balanced perspective. Exodus actually gives us a nice picture of the skills that people have. Numerous times people are described as "skilled workers":

"Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you" (Ex 31:6 NIV)

"Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer." (Ex. 35:30-35 ESV)

Quite clearly God explains that he's given the skills to people, but also that he expects that they use those skills to produce excellent work. The work particularly being undertaken in this portion of the Bible is the building of the tabernacle (in the desert, in those years of wandering between Egypt and Israel) that the Israelites used for many years before Solomon built a permanent temple.

I'm passionate about this and have pushed to make the magazine I work on a work of excellence, rather than just "good enough".

Today I went into the office of the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (an association of over 1,000 missionaries working in Japan under various mission organisations and independently). I helped them pack the Summer issue of the magazine. It's always satisfying to see this end stage, and such a different thing to what I do most of the time (playing around with words and images). It's great to lay my hands on a physical copy of the magazine we put together.

In order to make excellence happen in the arena of the magazine I manage, I've gathered people around me in the team who feel the same way. And they keep pushing me—every single issue! 

This photo particularly illustrates the dedication of our designer to excellence. She couldn't find a photo to fit this particular article, so she and her husband staged one. They downloaded an appropriate form and started filling it out. It fits the article perfectly, but took some time and effort and creative thinking!

It's time for me to go on with making our dinner, but I want to leave with the parting thought that sometimes we (and I'm talking about the church in general here) approach mission in the "good enough" way. We pray. Yes. that's really important. But sometimes God is calling us to do more than that. To take some risks, to commit to more than just prayer.

Crazy end-of-school year stuff

I’m feeling really quite exhausted today. Last night was the senior graduation at CAJ. Though I didn't have a graduate, this event doubles as a key time to catch up with a lot of people I haven't seen for some time and also to say some goodbyes. Always a bitter-sweet time. 

We must have had over 600 people in the gym last night after the ceremony at the "reception" or party. The biggest night of the year for the CAJ community. We got home after 10 and it took me well over an hour to quieten my spirit down enough to get to sleep, well after my usual bedtime.

This morning we had a Grade 8 family "picnic" lunch that turned into an inside picnic at the school cafeteria because of rain forecast. It was blessedly low-key and quite fun, a great way to quietly celebrate our graduating middle schoolers. (Yes, we've still got that coming up on Monday night.)

But when I walked into the cafeteria I almost walked out again straight away because it just felt like too much. I confessed my fatigue to another mum and she said she felt the same. So I offered to pick up some coffee from a local convenience store for us both, which helped a great deal!

This afternoon I've been finishing off the tail end of the Summer issue of Japan Harvest. I've just answered those last-minute questions that have arisen out of the 30-odd pages of proofreading that took up most of yesterday. Hopefully, we're able to send it off to the printer now and I can move on to the next one (proposals due Monday and I'm off on another editing adventure)!

This coming week is a crazy collection of celebrations and concluding school events, including two staff-spouse dinners, on top of my usual work. All good and important, but I think that my priority for the rest of the weekend should be rest so that I'm ready for it all.