A dangerous question

We caught a glimpse of this beautiful sunset on our way home. This is the
playground and oval of the school. ("Oval" is Aussie for playing field).

I'm at the point of feeling like I overwhelm everyone around me if I actually try to answer the ubiquitous question: "How are you?" I open my mouth longer than five seconds and wrestling tumbles out (and it's not the first time, this has happened every year for four of the last five years, see here). If I manage to dodge that or get past it I'm stuck on the challenges of my son's and parenting then. Argghhh.


So sorry to anyone who's been bombarded by my current limited conversation. And for those who haven't, beware of asking me how I am because I struggle to just answer "Fine".

So, seeing as I'm not in a conversation and you can click away from this at any time, I'm feeling free to say here how I am.

I'm obviously caught up in wrestling. It consumes our family conversation and thoughts.

A sample of the many texts that went back and forth on Saturday.

Saturday was another big day. David with our two older boys left at 5.30am for the high school meet south of Yokohama, along with two other wrestlers who slept at our house. I took our youngest son on the train to support the middle school team (he sustained a hand injury last Saturday so couldn't wrestle) at a Catholic boy's school about an hour from here. 9am-3pm was spent in a loud, echoing gym. I cheered, videoed, directed (you were called up weren't you? Go and support your team mate...), and chatted.

Interspersed in all that was multiple texts. Our middle son was the only CAJ supporter at the high school meet. He kept me up-to-date on results, one bout at a time. And I passed the information on to those parents I have connection with. Which equalled lots of texting.

We got home from the middle school meet at 5pm, close to when our eldest son was wrestling in the final. I knew it would be a tough battle because he was up against someone from the host school. It's the same guy he's wrestled many times in the last two seasons, and they almost always are tough bouts. But I knew this guy would really want to win in front of his home crowd. Instead of being able to watch it I had to sit at my dining room table and wait for a text. It was hard, but once I found out that the final score was 14-10 to our son, I was almost glad I knew the result before watching the match. I may have needed oxygen afterwards if I'd actually been there!

However our son remains undefeated this season after 21 bouts and I feel like we're living a dream. But at the same time I feel a twinge of embarrassment. Success like this for my boys is something I've dreamed about and hoped for but not really expected will happen. So how do I deal with it actually happening? I'm absurdly proud of what he's achieved, but at the same time aware that many others who long for this don't get it. What do I do with all that? How do I cope with the pride welling up in me without bursting or overwhelming others with it? How do I keep a perspective that includes those who aren't experiencing this success?


There is now only one more meet on Japanese soil (this Saturday). Then next Wednesday the team (including David, as assistant coach) leaves for their three-day meet in Korea. I also leave to travel to the meet with three other parents, but we travel separately to the team.

Our younger two sons will stay with another CAJ staff family. That is a considerable disruption in the nice routines of life, which one of them, particularly, is struggling with.

So you can imagine how it is hard to focus on anything else. Of course, in the middle of this we have got work to do, and especially our year twelve student has tonnes of homework. But it's hard to concentrate...and to have conversations not related to what currently consumes my family.

But I must struggle on with a semblance of normal life.

I've got a magazine in the depths of editing, which means keeping tabs on a bunch of things and people. Lots of spinning plates in the air. Tomorrow I've also scheduled a coffee time with a new colleague. Hopefully I'll be able to exercise self control and talk about other things. Probably asking lots of questions will be a good strategy!

Dangerous territory

This morning I found a great post, one that exposes how missions can easily be idolised as the best form of service that a "good" Christian can do. The old putting the missionary on a pedestal trick! (Same thing happens for people in full-time ministry in their home country, I think.)

Please, please don't put me on a pedestal and don't let me
become arrogant or judgemental either. I'm an ordinary
person, just with a slightly "on the edge of ordinary" journey.

If you've read my blog for a while you'll know that one of the primary purposes I write as I do is to debunk that myth. We are ordinary people, just happens that the streets we're living and serving on looks a bit different to the street that Christians in Australia (or wherever you are) live and serve on (this analogy comes from Jonathon Trotter's blog post that I've linked to above).

Here's a taste of his post:

But aren’t missionaries the crème of the crop? Um, yeah, no. Turns out, we’re just people. We may travel more than most, and maybe we speak more languages than some, but the idea that missionaries are somehow “set apart” is dangerous. I’d like to begin a discussion about this. Care to join?

The article is really worth a read. Worth considering your own attitude, whether you are a missionary or full-time worker, or not.

Could it be pride?
Pride is an evil attitude that can creep into our thoughts as missionaries and we need to guard against it. It's easy to be the special person who stands up in churches and tells amazing stories, but never lets people see the ordinary moments. 

I read an interview in a respected missions newsletter the other day where an Indian couple in a school ministry in India reported that "We really don't have any challenges. . . We have few problems." I question that. I wonder if they just didn't feel they could talk about it, because we all have problems. I simply can't imagine that a ministry with 18 teachers and 300 children has no problems. It could have been a cross-cultural issue, but it could also have been the desire to only tell about the good. Most missionaries struggle with this temptation as they write prayer letters and when they speak. 

It can be too attractive to be the person that people say to (or think about), "I admire you so much, I could never do what you do." Hear too much of that and you are in trouble.

I'm very grateful to be in a Bible study here in Australia where (I hope) I'm considered just another Christian. Admittedly I'm not hiding the problems we've had with adjusting back to Australia.

Admiration gone wrong
Admiration is a sneaky attitude that ones who don't get to go on an aeroplane can harbour and can result in individuals and churches holding up missions and missionaries on a pedestal. I wonder if this is one reason that people go on so many short-term mission trips. Because subconsciously they want admiration? No one will ever say this, of course, but it makes me wonder. I wonder if it holds some people back from saying yes to the call of long-term missions too, because they don't think they can measure up.

Lots of wondering. Anyone want to add their thoughts?

It doesn't matter what we're called

A couple of months back we read a good devotion in Our Daily Bread (March 15).

Here or there, we need to focus on others,
not ourselves.

It reminded us that title we hold us not important. Our role is to strengthen the faith of Gods people (see Eph 4:11-16). So, as we come back to Australia it isn't so important that we have the label "missionary" or "in full-time ministry", but that we keep our minds fixed on the overall role that we have as Christians. We can do that in Australia, we can do that here. 

We can also do it by letting Australians and Japanese people see how God has worked in and through our lives as we live as his servants. This is a good antidote to any pride that might rise up in us because of the title that our job comes with.

Lord, please use me as Your instrument to touch others' lives. Help me not to be concerned about what title I hold but instead that my life might show others Your grace (quote from ODB).

Struggling with pride

I was recently introduced to a lady in her 50s at an English-speaking Christian women's gathering. She'd only been in Japan for nine weeks. Within a couple of minutes I was shocked as she admitted, "I came to Japan on the condition that I be allowed to buy all new stuff."

Huh? Many of the women at the gathering were missionaries, and I'd assumed she was too. My first reaction was one of judgement, What sort of attitude is that to have about being called to Japan? As the conversation progressed I realised that she possibly wasn't a missionary, and I had the opportunity to ask this later when we prayed together. She was the wife of a businessman. Still, I had trouble stilling that internal voice of contempt at the blatant materialism.

You see it is so far from how we and most of our colleagues live our lives, where we survive on a lot of secondhand and hand-me-down goods. I love new stuff as much as the next girl, but it simply isn't the first route that we choose for getting most things we need, particularly the larger items.

As I baked this afternoon my thoughts drifted along lines of where I had gotten a lot of my kitchen stuff. 

My "new" flour container.

My pink Tupperware flour container comes from my friend who recently left for Singapore (I posted about that here). Some of my larger oven trays come from a friend who's gone to her heavenly home. She gave them to me before she went back to the UK for cancer treatment. 

Oven trays, many of which were
given to us.

A few of our pieces of furniture come from missionaries we've hardly met. The telephone stand/cupboard houses all my recipe books and is very handy. It came from a family that had to return to Australia due to ill health.

Our telephone stand/cupboard.

We also have a number of things acquired more anonymously, like at second-hand stores or garage sales. Our little food processor I bought in Hokkaido very early in our time in Japan. I was so pleased at my "cheap" food processor.

My second-hand
food processor.

Ah, the memories, the connections (see here for a post on connections we find through food). Memories that new things just don't have. I'm not discontent with my lifestyle. Most of the time I'm not hankering after new things. That makes it hard when I encounter those who do. My first reaction is judgement against the materialism that I can so clearly see in them. However, it isn't my job to judge them, not even in my thoughts. 

I'm glad that I was forced to remain in that little table group on Tuesday and pray for that lady. Probing more deeply, she and her husband did feel "called" to Japan, but now she's here she doesn't know what God has for her to do. So I prayed for her. I asked God later for forgiveness for my judgemental heart, and asked him to reveal my own faults, because as soon as I put her down (even in my head), I'm elevating myself, as if I'm better in His sight than she is, just because I live a more modest lifestyle.

Pride. It is something that I don't want to take back with me to wealthy Australia next year. There is no good in being prideful that we manage to live on a small budget. But it is an insidious beast, poking its head up where it isn't wanted.