Comfort gained from gathering with others

Earlier this week over 2 ½ days I talked to dozens of people, almost all were missionaries. 

On Sunday afternoon we caught a train to a fairly new church plant. After the service we talked to several missionaries about the church.

It helped that on Tuesday we met in a beautiful
location (Okutama, western Tokyo), though it
rained all day, so we didn't get to go walking.

On Monday morning I travelled in a car with five other OMF missionaries across the city to meet with maybe around 50 other people, most of whom are also involved in cross-cultural work. This was our monthly regional meeting for worship and fellowship, but this time we also had a working bee to help with some deeper cleaning of our Japan headquarters and guest home. I travelled home with three people, arriving home around 5 pm.

On Tuesday morning I took our car on its first trip filled with cross-cultural workers. Our four-seater car was filled with ladies attending a Women in Ministry worship and fellowship time out in the far west of Tokyo, where we met with around 35 other women from variety of organisations and backgrounds. This was a total of three hours of driving and talking in the car, plus six hours at the meeting.

Monday's meeting (lunch)

Adding it all up, I spent over eight hours in cars with eight different people (nearly half of that I was driving) and about 100 people over the three days.

I've been very tired in the wake of all that, and have struggled these last couple of days to push through a headache (again).

So, was it worth it? Yes! I desperately needed the encouragement and re-focus that these meetings provided. Here are just a few tidbits from conversations and the speakers:

• Encouragement from two couples who have moved back to their passport countries after serving here until their mid 60s. It was great to hear them encourage us to keep our eyes on Jesus; that the task was too big for any of us, but not for God; and that God uses each of us differently.
• Time and encouragement to focus on praising God. Something that was surprisingly hard to do with my tired, squirrelly brain.
• Praising God for being an author (Acts 3:15 ESV), was particularly meaningful.
• A conversation with another mum, just a few years behind us, who has a neurodivergent daughter. She needed some hope about the future.
• I chatted with a single lady who is doing things that she couldn't have imagined, even 12 months ago.
• I spent time getting to know one of my newer teammates and her husband. So encouraging to see how they've grown while we've been away and they encouraged me too.
• A colleague and friend who brought up a sensitive topic, made me cry, but then encouraged me hugely in a short conversation!
• I gave a short back rub to a friend who was celebrating her birthday.
• I was encouraged to hear the wife of a former leader talk about them choosing a church to attend once they were no longer church-based in their ministry.
• Two of the ladies who rode in my car yesterday are new to our area and have never been to one of these Women in Ministry events. One of them couldn't stop saying thank you for bringing her.
• Lots of hugs with women who I've grown to know and love over the years. I only see them two or three times a year at these events, but they're precious to me. "My people" from a vast array of backgrounds.

There's much more than I can write here, or even remember, but I'm grateful for it all. 

Today I read an article about Australian farmers finding community at their local cattle sales and how important that time of gathering is. It's easy for people on the land to become isolated and lonely. That is also true when you are living overseas. And even more so as Christian workers: our enemy doesn't like what we do and he targets our weak spots, especially when we live too much inside our own heads. It's important for us to gather with "our people" for encouragement and connection. I'm so grateful for these times, they help me to remember who is really in charge, as well as opportunities to pour into other people's lives from the comfort that God's given me over the years.

Expectations

Expectations play a big part in how we experience life.

One example is weather. We had a dinner party on Saturday night with three American friends. They all come from a cold part of the US. One of them experienced his first Tokyo winter earlier this year and he didn't feel it was cold enough! In contrast I had an online meeting last week with a young Filipino lady who visited Japan for a month early this year. I asked her how the cold weather was for her! She didn't come with any winter clothes (she didn't own any)! Thankfully she was able to get some here. She also saw snow for the first time and was amazed. Tokyo's winter was well and truly cold enough for her!

The contrasts in the above two stories aren't with who these people are, but the differences were their expectations which were shaped by life experiences.

Likewise, our 19 years of experience with Tokyo summers have led us to expect that the weather will cool down in early September—but this year it didn't, not until the 22nd! My expectations, sadly, made me unsettled and unhappy as I waited for the weather to change.

So why have expectations come to mind to write about today? Because as we've come into this new chapter of our lives I realise that I've held various expectations, and worse, imagined that other people had expectations of us. I don't think I've been living up to my expectations and certainly feel as though I fall short of what I imagine others expect of me.

Interestingly, as I've thought about this today I've had two sides to the "coin" brought to my attention:

Side 1: You're robbing God

Over lunch I listened to the sermon that was presented at our home church in Australia. It was on Malachi 3:3-12, entitled "Robbing God". It looked at how the Israelites were not giving God what was owed to him (the tithes and offerings he had told them to bring). In short, the application to us today was–are we robbing God by not generously giving. This isn't just in money, but in time and capacity. How can I serve God? Is my life a testimony to his goodness? 

Romans 12:1 "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship."

Many sermons and books and other things we say to one another are along this line: you're not good enough, you're not trying hard enough, you're not committed enough. My tendency towards rule keeping and wanting not to disappoint others (first born child?!) means I often end up beating myself up on this front.

Side 2: God's grace

This morning I read an article by a missionary in Japan. She wrote: "I regularly wrestle with wondering if God is disappointed in me." So do I! The article she wrote is here and is about the time when in a small Bible study with a couple of Japanese believers, she saw a different side of the Parable of the Workers that Jesus told (in Matthew 20:1-16). It's a story that showcases God's generosity, but also challenges our right to question God's choices. She was impressed that God's grace is not connected with our capacity to serve him, that God loves us and accepts us anyway.

My thoughts go to other places in the Bible that say similar things like:

Isaiah 40 where we're told God knows how frail we are and that our faithfulness doesn't endure (vs 6-8), and yet he holds us close like a shepherd holds a lamb to his chest (vs 11).

Mauve dancing ladies ginger, 
spotted in Geelong Botanical
Gardens in May. Isaiah 40
compares us to flowers that fall.
It's good to remember!

Psalm 103:13-14 Which talks about how God has compassion on us because he remembers we are "made of dust".

Psalm 139 which tells us that God knows even our secret thoughts and he knew us before we were born, he created us just as he wanted us to be, yet he also never leaves us, he always guides us and "holds us fast".

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 where it talks about how God chose (to be his disciples) the foolish, weak, low, and despised.

What are God's expectations of us? And, which of these two sides should we choose? Well, I say we need to choose both. Because, like many things, they are both true. It's not a black and white situation, though my small mind wants to make it so.

I both need to strive to obey God and do my best to offer my best to him, but I also need to rest in his grace, to know that he accepts me even when I don't meet my own (or my perception of others') expectations. My own bent is to be very hard on myself, so I probably need to lean towards the second side of the coin to counterbalance the "being good to earn God's approval" mentality that I so easily slip into.

How about you? Which of these is easier for you? How do you keep a balanced attitude to your expectations of yourself?

It's messier than I like to admit

I kinda regret that I had to talk about our ministries to people in Australia. How many of you have to stand up in front of friends and strangers and talk about your job and why you do your job? It's one of the weird things that missionaries often have to do, and not one of my favourite things.

Why do I regret it? Because I said things about the past that sounded like I'd resolved them, that I was past all that. It's tricky to get up in front of an audience and tell a story about your life. You have to have a point and a conclusion. Sometimes to make that point or come to that conclusion you have to make it sound more complete than the story actually is.

So here's what I regret: I told a very brief version about how I came to be doing this pretty specialist job as a missionary (editing and publishing). The story I told was only about 400 words long and took 2 to 3 minutes to say. That's a radical summary and it's not that simple. And nor is it complete. Part of the reason I ended up doing this was because I struggled with learning Japanese and was asking God why he brought me to Japan. Saying it like that makes it seem like that was all in the past. The truth is that I still struggle (so much!) with Japanese and that I still wonder sometimes why God brought me to Japan.

One significant part of my job these last 23 years has been raising children, and obviously that is over in a day-to-day sense, which means I'm less busy (even cooking dinner and doing grocery shopping takes less time). 

I'm also sitting with transition within the two main jobs that I've done these last seven years: magazine editing and social media for mobilisation. With both these jobs, at present, I don't have as much day-to-day stuff to do as I've had in the past. 

I wish I wasn't feeling so unsettled, but the old thoughts about why I'm in Japan keep coming back. That's despite spending a whole year telling people we met in Australia why we were going back to Japan and fighting so hard to make that possible! The fickleness of the human heart astounds me sometimes. The other annoying thing is there's so much evidence that I should be here, that God's put us here again. Despite understanding that transition takes time, I don't really understand why I still feel so unsteady, and so grumpy at times.

Cosmos were almost the only blooming plants
in the whole park (aside from weeds). I took a
moment to enjoy them.

Then yesterday I took some time to ride to my favourite park—something I've been looking forward to for months. I'd been waiting for the weather to cool off a bit, which it did on the weekend, and then, on a meeting-free day, I hopped on my new bike and went on an adventure.

It wasn't the nicest of days. It was grey and gusty, with a threat of rain, and despite the much more pleasant temperatures it was a little unsettling out there. I headed to a small shelter in the park and ate lunch and later headed a bit further south to a favourite cafe of mine that I've visited in the past.

My intention during this time out of the office was not just to get some exercise and go to favourite places, but also to ponder what was going on in my heart. A retreat, of sorts. I've been thinking about the question of what God's got for me in this new season in Japan, but the much bigger question of what my purpose is as a human. The Westminster Catechism (shorter) summarises that as "to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." The New City Catechism says "God created us . . . to know him, love him, live with him, and glorify him".

What does that mean? I found an article from The Gospel Coalition called Enjoying God. It was a little heavy for my poor little brain, reading it on my tiny phone screen while I ate lunch, but still good. One Bible reference it pointed to was Psalm 145, which I encountered again at my next stop.

Then I rode to the cafe and, after a spot of birthday-present shopping nearby for my husband, I ordered a coffee and retreated upstairs (yep, it's a two-story cafe) and pulled out an old favourite that I've started re-reading: Awe, by David Paul Tripp. To my astonishment, the chapter I was up to was called "Ministry" and spoke right to me (and quoted Ps. 145 in its entirety). 

This blog post is getting a little long now, so I'll commit to writing a followup on it because it's easy to sit here at my computer and simplify the journeys that God takes me on, putting it all down in black and white as if I've got it all figured out. Doing that denies the reality that it's messy! I'm hoping to sit down again tomorrow with my Bible and a couple of books to listen further to what God is saying. 

Suffice to say, that I need to take a bigger picture approach to my life and ministry. My last 25 years have been full of the minutiae of raising children, the last 14 years have been full of deadlines pertaining to the magazine, and the last 7 years have been full of social media deadlines. My life has been very busy, and I've loved it. But change is inevitable and indeed necessary. I need to refocus my eyes on Jesus and remember that he didn't make me just to be a mum to my kids or just to have a schedule full of deadlines.

I'll be back...

Something to ponder: "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV).

What's it like, being in Japan without your kids?

Missionaries with younger kids are asking me: How does being here without kids feel?

A few different ways to describe it and I'm grappling for the best way. The most dramatic is to compare it to the grief of losing someone you love. You know they are in heaven and without pain. You’re happy for them, but still sad. You wouldn’t wish them back for anything. Like any metaphor this breaks down pretty quickly, but it does convey that there’s an emptiness in our lives, and it’s a matter of sitting with that and finding a way forward. They will always be part of our story, just not an everyday part. It's weird that we're meeting people now who have never known our sons, and often I feel compelled to bring them somehow into the conversation: they are part of who we are, they bring context to our lives.

Today I'm a little sad because its one of our son's birthdays. It's the first year that I won't celebrate with him in person. He's not a big one for parties, but we'd always have a cake and presents for a small family celebration. I'm not making a cake or wrapping presents today.

But if you think about it just a short while you realise that it is also sad if they don’t move on! It's a natural and expected change and when that doesn't happen it's a cause of grief too. A Japanese colleague pointed out to me that having them remain tiny and dependent is not what we want.

Parenting is all about sadness and happiness. Both emotions regularly occur at the same time from very early on: when a child begins eating food instead of drinking mum's milk, when they start school, have their first sleepover away from home, get their licence, finish school. All these evoke both sad and happy emotions for the parent. And often other emotions too like fear and pride.

And then there is expectations that we place on ourselves and our kids and that society places on us. When those expectations aren't met we run into emotional challenges too.

People working cross-culturally generally expect that their kids will move to another country after high school. Most of our expat peers here with adult children are living in a different countries to their kids. So in that sense it is normal.

Arggh, basically parenting is an emotional business, there's no way around it, not even not having kids.

On the positive side of things, it is wonderful watching our sons living life independently (even if we're doing it from a distance). There were many years when I wondered if they ever could learn to take showers (or go to bed) without us prompting them. But to be all taking care of their own basic needs (including feeding themselves) is nothing short of amazing, when I think about it. None of them have someone else cooking or housekeeping for them. None of them has someone else driving them around or keeping an eye on their schedule. That they are all functioning as independent adults is a source of great joy.

It must be said that there is less stress in not living in the same house as them: out of sight out of mind, is fairly true. It's not that we don't care and we don't think of and pray for them often, but we aren't spectators to their daily lives and so things that are stressors don't weigh us down like it would if we were closer. We are also not rubbing each other up the wrong way on a daily basis (living with someone on the autistic spectrum who also struggles with anxiety and misophonia isn't a walk in the park). I think we have more to give others as a result.

There's joy in doing (and eating) things that we could never do when they were here. Eating out has gotten more affordable, and so has eating in! We can be more spontaneous too. I still remember, as a young adult hearing that my parents has spontaneously gone out to the movies. It seemed quite out of character...but I only knew them as people who had children at home and they were discovering who they were without that responsibility.

Yes our house is quieter, that is mostly good. What's weird to me is that they all moved out more than six months ago and I'm still feeling the difference. We left on our two month sojourn just after they left, so didn't have much time to grieve then. Then we got back only three months before leaving the country, so there was a lot to do to plan and execute that move. 

Now it's all over and there isn't much to plan, not so much to talk about. That's weird. We've sat for so long with trying to figure out "what's next" and especially wondering how we'd be able to achieve all that was necessary for our guys to all move out and us move back to Japan without them. After living with that tension and stress, it's an adjustment to get back to a more "boring" life. Living life with contentment is obviously something I need to work on.

So, overall it's good, but there's no quick answer to "What's it like without your kids?"

A week in the life of Wendy

I'm glad to say that I'm feeling much better. Which is good, because I've had plenty going on. Here are the more interesting bits: 

Friday gathering

On Friday I went to a prayer gathering in a Chinese friend's home. It's a gathering of expat and Japanese mums who have kids with special needs. Our kids range in age from 6 to 36, but it doesn't matter. These ladies understand the unique challenges of being mums to kids who don't match the norms of their peers and who have extra challenges to overcome. We shared, and cried, and prayed, and talked. We only gather six times a year, and it's always special. It was great to be back in person with them, in Australia I joined via Zoom a couple of times, but that was difficult. 

One of the questions that they each carry with them is what will the future look like for my child. It was great to be able to share some of the big successes we've had with our sons over the last year. One of the mums reminded me that last time I was with them in person I was a mess, it was the week we moved out of our old house. I was stressed and tired and was facing a lot of unknowns in the months ahead. I'm in a much better place now and we were able to praise God together.

After I got home I did some quick email checks and then hopped on my bike to get groceries for the weekend.

Saturday fun

Preparing our house for guests. A table cloth
on a folding table makes all the difference!

Saturday morning I hosted an online magazine team meeting with the express purpose of having fun together. It was the first of four meetings we're having this month as part of our annual planning process. And it was fun! I love the energy of these colleagues.

Saturday afternoon was also fun. This year there are four families from our mission living in our little city (12.88 square km). We invited them all over for afternoon tea and games. If everyone had been able to come there would have been 15 in our little place, but we ended up with only 11. And it worked! I feel like our place is a character in our lives and we're just working out how it best works for different scenarios (the previous week we hosted dinner for a family). I'm excited. This is tapping into the extrovert side of me that has been a little repressed in the latter years of our boys years at high school (and the pandemic, of course, had an impact).

Sunday

Church in the morning and video chats and games with our sons in the afternoon. It was a full, but good day.

Mammoth Monday

Monday turned into a 12 hr work day for me. I left in a car full of male colleagues at 7.30 am, we travelled to the other side of Tokyo for the monthly OMF Kanto prayer and fellowship day. All these guys are married, but none of their wives could come (and David had to work at school too). These are the same families we spent Saturday afternoon with.

It took over an hour to get there, and then there was lots of chatting and catching up with people before the meeting began at 10 am. The acoustics in this room are pretty bad which means that when a large group gathers and everyone is mingling, it's really loud. I didn't count, but I'm guessing that there were probably around 50 people there. We had to shout to make ourselves heard!

It was a good time of worship, pondering God's word, sharing, and praying for one another. After the meeting we stayed and ate lunch (again loud). Not long before 2 I left with a good friend to have coffee somewhere else that was much quieter. We spent about two hours together. It's the first time I've seen her in over 12 months, and though we've kept in really regular texting contact, it was wonderful to have the time to sit in person and ask the questions that don't get asked or answered otherwise.

Then I jumped on a train and headed home (the car that came from our city had long left). Four trains later and a 10 minutes walk, I got home around 5.30. David had dinner organised and we ate. At 6.30 we jumped into a Zoom meeting with a group in Australia who pray each month for Japan. We spent the next 45 minutes talking about what we do and answering questions. By around 7.15 I was fading and pleaded for mercy. They prayed and we logged off around 7.30.

Tuesday desk day

It took me some time to get going the next day after waking with a headache and general fatigue lingering from the day before. I did email and other desk work in the morning. After lunch I dashed out for some much needed grocery shopping and then had a two-hour meeting with the OMF Japan social media team. I love their enthusiasm and "youth", so helpful in this particular ministry! After the meeting I dashed off a few more emails pertaining to things we'd discussed or decided in the meeting.

Wednesday more desk work and an outing

I spent Wednesday morning and late afternoon at my desk, but after lunch I did some light cleaning (it takes 15 minutes to vacuum my little apartment) and then took the car to pick up the same friend I had coffee with on Monday. She was on our side of town meeting with other missionaries, and really wanted to see our new place. So I fetched her and we spent another 45 minutes together before she had to head home. So lovely to have friends in our place, especially when they're so pleased with how it looks!

Thursday

This is another desk day. No meetings or shopping. My only outing today will be walking after dinner. I enjoy these quiet home days in the midst of other busy days. It gives me a chance to get some momentum on various work that requires good thinking. I'll also take time over lunch to listen to a church service from home, my long-time habit to help with my nurturing my own faith because I regrettably (still) get little out of a Japanese-language service on Sunday.

It's been a good week. I'm still gathering threads of life after being away for 12 months. It's a significant period and stuff has happened in that time. But in general I'm getting into a good rhythm. Each week looks different. None of the above happen on a weekly basis (except Sunday)! Some weeks are busier than others. Home assignment often felt like we were treading water waiting for things to happen. I'm glad to be back here doing the things...and now I don't know how to describe it. We spent a year in Australia talking about what we're currently doing. It's good to be doing them now, not just talking and thinking about them?

It's been a lot of change!

A week and a half ago I came down with a cold that David had already had for a week. We’re both still recovering, though each day our symptoms are receding further. We both have chronic asthma that is well controlled, but at times like these, it's in our face and limiting our capacity; both of us have lingering coughs. I went to the doctor last week to get my regular asthma meds and he thought I had sinusitis too, so fun times and lots of tissues. 

A friend captured the proposal
from a distance (only our son
knew the photographer was there)

Last weekend I had very limited energy, but nonetheless we had an exciting weekend: on the Saturday (24th) our eldest son asked his girlfriend to marry him and she said yes! So we’ve been digesting that news and gradually telling people. I started this blog in 2010 when he was only 10 years old. It’s hard to believe that we’re now already at another new stage of parenting: getting ready to welcome in a daughter-in-law! (And we’re only just starting to get used to having no kids at home in Japan.) Of course, we’re not in the same country as them, so we’re now planning a trip to Australia in January to help them celebrate their wedding. 

Every now and then I'm amazed at how much change has gone on in these last few months:

• our younger two sons moved out and that has precipitated many big and small changes that we're still adjusting to
• we moved countries, again
• we moved to Japan without children for the first time (and yes, this warrants its own bullet point)
• after a year of both of us based at home and not working regular hours, David's working outside the home again, 8–5 Monday to Friday, and I'm at my desk at home for many of those hours too
• we've downsized into a small apartment and small car
• I'm learning to cook again in a smaller kitchen with a smaller space for storing ingredients
• our eldest son has made a lot of changes in his life in the last couple of months, and believe it or not that is taking a bit to adjust to in our thinking
• our middle son, who has been unemployed since leaving school in June 2021, has a job, a licence, and a car, and continues to surprise us as to what he's able to achieve
• we are adjusting to the idea of having a future daughter-in-law whose name we know!
• we're planning an unexpected short trip to Australia for a wedding in January.

There are a few other things, including changes in the two teams I work with in Japan, but I'll leave the list as it is.

That list makes me feel tired! It partly explains why we got sick and it's taken so long to recover. It helps me to remember to be gracious to myself when I'm feeling wobbly or weak, and that transition of this magnitude takes time to recover from.

But aside from that, there is so much to be thankful for in the above list and we're amazed at God's provision, his leading, and his care for us and our children.

Briefly reflecting on home assignment

Now it's over a month since we left Australia and officially we aren’t on home assignment anymore, so I want to put some brief thoughts down about how the year went. It’s not an uncommon question from people as we meet them again here. And depending on the context and time available, our replies vary in depth.

The street we called home for 12 months.

We had a good rest, ate good food, read a lot of books. We spent valuable time with family and friends and have so many precious memories.

It was a time of achieving some big audacious goals, particularly with our sons. And as we worked through achieving those goals there was a lot of work to actively seek God and trust him while we didn't know the outcomes of what we'd set out to achieve. I'm very thankful that we've been in a position to spend a year walking alongside our sons in their passport country as we all make this transition, and be paid to be there without changing who we work for. Not too many people who work outside their passport country could. (That's awkward writing...I hope you get my drift.)

It's the first time we've done home assignment without our kids being in school (in October I wrote about how this HA was different in several ways to any one we've done before). Our first HA, in 2004-2005 our eldest son was at school. It gave us much more freedom, but was also very weird not having that as a daily routine marker. In the past school terms is something that shaped when we did things, like visit our more distant family, so with so much choice, decision making was a little more difficult!

In February, almost six months ago, we entered the so called "empty nesting" years. That was not without challenge, but we also had a few "dry runs" earlier as we left our sons alone at home for weeks at a time. It was a significant achievement, given the rental situation in Australia right now, our income, the needs of our sons, and the specific dynamics in our family. In many ways doing this is counter cultural—many of our urban peers in Australia have their young adult children living with them well after high school. It is not counter cultural to most of our peers in the cross-cultural community, nor to those who live in rural areas of Australia (our family backgrounds). But these are supposed to be brief thoughts...I could probably write a whole blog post on this topic, so I'll move on.

We travelled a lot, I daren't even try to add up how many kilometres. Only two aeroplane trips (nearly four, but the trip to Melbourne just before we left didn't happen), but those were big flights: six hours to Perth on the other side of the continent. We drove, I think, ten different vehicles during the year, so an odometer reading won't help either. Long service leave (motorhome trip to Tasmania) was awesome, but if you've been reading my blog this year you've probably already read A LOT about that.

We had fewer churches to visit because various churches we used to have a relationship with either no longer exist, or no longer support us. It was a bit weird, but also nice, to not be in so many different churches (although long service leave took us away from our home church for an extended period). So overall we probably did less public speaking than we've done in the past. We did a couple of camps this time, as guest missionaries, which was fun, and exhausting.

It was good to be in Australia for many reasons, but no, it isn’t 100% home anymore. We missed Japan, although not with the intensity that we missed Australia in our first years in Japan. You might be interested to know that we ate relatively little Japanese food when we were in Australia.

We’re continuing to learn that home is the people. It’s where there are people we love and that is in both Australia and Japan. On both sides of the ocean we've had people "welcome us home". That statement is just too shallow to do this subject justice in any way.

It was good to step away from the intensity of our jobs here in Japan, we now come back to them with slightly different, and hopefully better, perspectives.

Just a few thoughts. It's good, in many ways, to be back in Japan. But it also feels like we've gone through the whole transition into "empty nesting" a second time! However, that's for another blog post.