Change and farewells…again

On Thursday I said another farewell. This one was a bit smaller than many, but still another farewell that stacks on top of the dozens and dozens we’ve said over the years.

Here’s a glimpse into (mostly) just the last three months:

Just three months ago I met a short-term worker in the city to welcome her to Japan and to our social media team. She had a three-month visa, and we didn’t know if she’d stay only three months, or if she’d be able to stay longer. Turns out that three months was all we had her for, despite trying for a visa extension. She’s the first short-termer I’ve had the privilege of working so closely with, and it’s been an enjoyable experience. She’s the same age as our eldest son, which made me feel old, but her age and energy was very suited to this ministry (in which I often feel like a dinosaur). We talked for a couple of hours on Thursday about various things, including emotional stuff that she’s facing as she returns to the Philippines. I feel privileged to have been a small part of her life at this time and pray that God would continue to lead her for the future.

Rachel, the short-term worker who was here
for three months

Earlier last week I said farewell to another social media team member. I’ve worked with this colleague for about three years and it is sad to see her go, but it's also has been a pleasure to work alongside her and see her grow. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see either of these ladies again.

A couple of months ago one of my magazine team members told me that due to family reasons he would be leaving Japan in the middle of 2025. He’s only been with the team a couple of years and originally joined to fill some of the gaps I left to go on home assignment. We’ve worked quite closely on one portion of the magazine process in the last 10 months and I really have appreciated his industry knowledge (he used to work as a journalist). It was a shock to hear he was leaving, but I’m getting better at my poker face when I hear news like this. We’ve been praying for a replacement for him. Just the other day I had a conversation with another team member who’s thankfully willing to take this specialist role on for a while and also heard the same day of someone else who's been on the edge of our team for several years who might be willing to share that role. 

We also got a surprising email earlier in the week about one of the OMF Japan field leaders who’s been considered for an international leadership role, which is a vacancy we’d been praying someone would fill (but not someone from our backyard, please God!). If he gets accepted for this, then that will be another loss for OMF Japan leadership that needs filling. This is noteworthy, because our OMF Japan leadership team of seven people is already undergoing a lot of transition: two members have recently left (one of those is yet to be replaced), a third is about to leave next month, and a fourth is leaving this time next year. Most of these leaders are remaining in Japan, but have moved in different roles. One of the leaders I’ve worked with a lot over the last 15 years, but will hardly see when she returns in a couple of months because she's moving to a different part of Japan.

On New Year’s Eve we had dinner with another (non-OMF) couple we’ve known and appreciated for almost 20 years—they’re retiring to the US. 

Another couple we’ve spent a lot of time with are going on home assignment in the middle of this year and are unsure what their future holds as they both have elderly and needy mothers in the UK.

Another colleague I spoke with on Friday also is unsure about her future in Japan after home assignment next year.

Then on Saturday night we heard that a former colleague who's been struggling with cancer for many years passed away in Singapore. 

How well we know/knew each of these colleagues varies greatly, but when I stop and think about it, the number of farewells just keeps piling up, like a relentless drip, drip, drip of a tap that we can't turn off. I tend to push it down and away and try not to think about it too much, but it can be depressing. Being called to “stay” is not easy.

I was unable to finish this blog post when I started it on Friday, and so have spent some time thinking in the meantime. I discovered this article on Missio Nexus. It talks about the accumulated grief and ambiguous grief, especially in relation to missionaries. It's helpful to note that small griefs can build up if they aren't acknowledged, until they really are overwhelming. And in missionary life, ambiguous grief often gets swept under the carpet. It's expected that our lives will contain much that is now being recognised as loss, and not just "hard but normal". I'm glad to be able to speak up about these things. It's starting to become more of a conversation within missionary circles, but I'd like others to know about it too (hence what I said into a microphone in front of 200+ ladies in October 2023).

One thing that I know is important is recognising loss and naming it, so writing about it here is part of grieving these things. I'm tempted to compare, saying that the losses we experience are nothing like the loss of a child, or parent, or spouse. Yet apparently comparison is also unhelpful. I guess it encourages the impulse to not grieve these things and therefore contributing to accumulated grief, so I won't compare.

I was listening to the Bible on Friday and was up to the portion in Acts where Paul is heading back to Jerusalem where it is foretold that he might be killed. I realised that he said a lot of goodbyes in his ministry too. Acts 20 records a long farewell speech he made to the church’s leaders in Ephesus, including these sentences:

“‘Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.” (Acts 20:25 NIVUK)

“When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship” (vv. 36-38).

Next verse:

 “After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos. The next day we went to Rhodes and from there to Patara” (21:1).

“After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.” (21:6)

“Then Paul answered, ‘Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus’” (21:13).

This last verse shows his resolve, despite the pain it must have been causing him.

Ah, once again I find myself longing for heaven where we will have no more tears, no more farewells or uncertain futures. I need to go running back to all those verses about God being my strong tower, my rock, my firm foundation! And be like a tree planted by a stream with my roots deep in him so that my leaves do not wither (Psalm 1). And pray these verses for myself (and others like me who struggle with these constant goodbyes):

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians‬ ‭3‬:‭16‬-‭19‬).

What's my purpose now?

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary since our role as parents-with-kids-living-in-our-house ended. Yes, "empty nesting" began. It's kinda hard to believe it's been a whole year, but then I look back at what we (and they) have done in those 52 weeks, and it's easier to believe :D 

It turns out that 24 years and 9 months is a long time. That's how long we had children living with us. And changing to not having any children at home anymore takes time to adjust to. Physically we've adjusted well to it—we like our little apartment and I've even managed to adjust my shopping and cooking to more appropriate quantities. But mentally and emotionally, it takes longer. Part of that is asking: What's my purpose now?

In quieter moments I find myself circling back to this question, like a dog with a bone. So, I searched my blog, as I often do, to see what I've written in the past. This one floored me a bit: 

Eight years ago I wrote this:

Because, as a mum, children take up so much of your time over so many years, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling that that it is your purpose, your main reason for being on this earth, and that there is nothing else worth doing. Yet, it is not so. I had a life before I had kids. (They're always surprised to hear that.) It's going to take some rediscovering, but I'll have it again—a life without kids in it on a daily basis. After 24 years of parenting it will take some getting used to, but I'm already dreaming about the possibilities. (from here)

Good to know I had a little bit of foresight.

And I also wrote this:

Someone else who has written about slowing down recently is our Japan Field Director. He's been battling two types of blood cancer for about a year now. He's currently recuperating at home after a particularly rigorous round of chemo and a stem-cell transplant. He's a high achieving fellow, who, by his own words, used to "whizz...around like a hare". These days life for him is more like the famous tortoise. Here are some of the words from a Facebook post of his earlier in the month:

All of this has got me thinking about what it means to slow down. And it has got me thinking about what the Bible has to say about the pace of life. Certainly when you ponder the Bible generally, there are many examples of ‘waiting’ and ‘perseverance’, topics I've explored in earlier musings. The word ‘patience’ or ‘patiently’ comes up not a few times. But when I thought of the word ‘slow’ I couldn't think of many specific examples apart from a few well-known verses. So, the Lord is slow to anger. In the same way, we should be slow to anger and slow to speak (but quick to listen!) Peter speaks about slowness towards the end of his second letter in the context of time - with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. 

As I considered this more, I came across this translation of Jeremiah 2:25. It's from The Message, so a paraphrase but nonetheless it makes the point very graphically - “Slow down. Take a deep breath. What's the hurry? Why wear yourself out? Just what are you after anyway? But you say, 'I can't help it. I'm addicted to alien gods. I can't quit.'” We may not be addicted to ‘alien gods’ but could we simply be addicted to activity and busyness? And all of that could just be a ‘chasing after the wind’ as one of the Bible’s wisdom books puts it. Or as one of the Psalms says - ‘in vain you rise early and stay up late’. There are quite a few ‘ouch’ passages in the Bible when we measure them against what our daily lives are actually like.

Many of us these days seem to live life simply moving from one thing to the next with little time in between to catch our breath, far less having time to reflect, meditate or even spend some unrushed time with God. And that can creep into family life, church life, corporate life, organisational life. There is so much to keep up with. But that begs some questions. Why do we need to keep up with the things we feel we need to keep up with? And are the things that we strive to keep up with the things we really need to be keeping up with at all? One valuable lesson that can be learned in the slow lane is simply to be able to take stock, reassess and consider what the priorities in life really ought to be. 

None of this is to say we should be lazy or live a life of constant leisure. There is plenty the Bible can teach us about that. But for a follower of Jesus, what should mark us out as different, what are the things that day by day should be core to our lives? Certainly we would want to serve him wholeheartedly and live our lives in a way that brings glory to his name. But while we might desire to be ‘about the Lord’s work’ to use an older phrase, that does not seem to me to mean that we should simply be dashing around in a constant blur of activity. As I have this time in the slow lane, I sometimes wonder whether as Christians, as churches, as mission organisations, we can easily get off track because we are so busy and active that we can actually no longer see the wood for the trees. And I know that as I say that, I am gradually needing to remove the plank from my own eye (if a tortoise can have a plank in its eye). Being forced to slow down is teaching me many things. I just hope I can apply these lessons well if I ever reach the point once again when I am healthy, energy-filled and able to be active. Help me God even then to be still and know that you are God.

The colleague who wrote that sadly never reached the point of being healthy and energy-filled, he transitioned to heaven about six weeks later.

A book on my shelf that I've picked up again recently, Heading Home by Naomi Reed, has some interesting thoughts about purpose too. The book is about the period in her family's life after they returned from several years of serving in Nepal as missionaries and were trying to figure out "what next". 

Lord, there are times in our lives when we feel purposeless. The dream is over. We don't even know what to do any more, or why. We keep coming up with new ideas but they don't really compare with the dream we used to have, or the life we used to live. . . But Lord, when we feel like this—lost and directionless and lonely—please remind us that we find our living in you; we find our focus in you. Remind us that being in you is enough and that you are our focus no matter what country we live in . . . for you discern our going out and our lying down, you hem us in behind and before. You're the reason we get out of bed. You're the reason  we make breakfast and stir the porridge . . . and every single day, as we settle here on the far side of the sea, your right hand will hold us fast. (p. 20)

A related question to "what is my purpose" is "what is my worth". I recently encountered this song by Keith and Kristyn Getty:

My Worth is Not In What I Own

My worth is not in what I own

Not in the strength of flesh and bone

But in the costly wounds of love

At the cross

My worth is not in skill or name

In win or lose, in pride or shame

But in the blood of Christ that flowed

At the cross

I rejoice in my Redeemer

Greatest treasure, wellspring of my soul

I will trust in Him, no other

My soul is satisfied in Him alone

As summer flowers, we fade and die

Fame, youth, and beauty hurry by

But life eternal calls to us

At the cross

I will not boast in wealth or might

Or human wisdom’s fleeting light

But I will boast in knowing Christ

At the cross

Two wonders here that I confess

My worth and my unworthiness

My value fixed, my ransom paid

At the cross

This stands out here: my value is fixed, therefore it won't be changed by whether not I am busy, whether or not I have people in my life who need me on a daily basis, by whether I am sick or energetic, by whether I think I'm doing something worthwhile, or by what other people think, whether I am youthful or old. My worth is in knowing Christ. I am unworthy of such an honour, but it secures my worth, and nothing changes that.

And so, my job is to remind myself of these truths regularly, and especially when I start feeling wobbly. To ask God to help me keep my eyes fixed on eternity, to find my confidence and refuge in Christ.

 

 

Weeks of contrasts

It's been been another couple of weeks full of contrast. (Sorry, this is a little bit long, nice photos and a bit of Japanese history and culture, though.)

Last week Monday: was CAJ’s winter break, which meant Monday and Tuesday off for teachers and students alike. The monthly Kanto gathering of people associated with our mission happened to fall on Monday, so David was able to join for the first time in 18 months (he’s usually working, and of course, we were out of the country for a year). It was a great day of catching up with friends and colleagues. But also it was loud because the room isn’t large for the 40 or 50 who gathered. To have conversations with someone in front of you, you practically had to shout at people. Sad, but true. And tiring. We stayed a little longer, not to watch a certain popular football match that was being shown, but to record a couple of videos with my short term worker.

Plum blossoms are one of the first 
to bloom in late winter, bringing the promise of
spring with them. The inside of this building is
shown in the next photo. It was built by an
architect in 1942 for himself.

Tuesday: we had various half-baked plans for the day, but these all got thrown out when we got an invitation to hang out at a park with colleagues. It’s not a great time of the year to go to a park (end of winter deadness plus cold), so we chose to go to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. It’s inside the large park I’ve often written about here. I’m the only one of the four of us who’d been inside, but that was for the purposes of a photography workshop, not actually reading the signs and learning about the many buildings that have been relocated to this spot. It was fascinating! 

I've included a few photos along with captions (the brochure they gave us in English was very helpful).

Inside the house shown above. The high ceiling is unusual and as it
faces south, the room was bright, even on a cold winter day.

This is a farmhouse, a fairly well-off farmer, I suspect. Part of the inside was 
an earthen floor. This is from the mid-Edo period (1680–1745).

The thatched roof of another farmhouse. This was a fairly prestigious upper-class farmhouse.
It's a little difficult to imagine how they lived because there was little furniture in these traditional-style homes. But these roofs are amazing. I can't image that there are too many people around these days who are skilled in the art of building and maintaining roofs like these.

I can't remember exactly which house this was in. There were two large
houses right next to one another. One of them was the home of Korekiyo Takahashi, who
played an important role in Japanese politics in the early 1900s. He was Prime Minister (1921–22) and, in 1936 he was the finance minister. This house has a couple of rooms upstairs that were Takahashi's study and bedroom and where he was assassinated in a coup in 1936, known as the "February 26 incident". We'd never heard of this incident. Several leaders were killed, but then 19 were executed and 40 imprisoned for their involvement.

This is in the commercial section of the museum, a little street full of former shops. This is 
a kitchenware store built in the late 1920s. The outside is covered by copper plates.

Oil-paper umbrella shop

And this beautiful public bathhouse. What was amazing about this is
how little Japanese bathhouses have changed in the last 100 years.

Outside of the bathhouse.. The features are similar to temples and shrines, with carvings of 
gods of good luck above the entrance.

There were lots of bilingual signs around with tonnes of information. I'd love to go back. One I sign took a photo of was in this bathhouse. I'll transcribe most of that here:

We can find a connection between the origin of the bathing in Japan and the custom in which human beings purify their mind and body with water. In Japan where rice has been cultivated with abundant water resources since BCE, water was a holy element that fosters life and washes away kegare [lit: uncleanness], a polluted and evil condition, and purge things.

In a part of the Account of the Easterners: Account of the Japanese people, which recorded the situation of Japan in the circa 3rd century in the Book of Wei of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the official history of China, described a custom in which a family who lost their members immersed themselves into water in a white costume after the funeral to purge kegare. The manner of purification of the mind and body with water was diversified into a variety of practices such as immersion into rivers and waterfalls and remains today. Apart from it, the manner of rinsing hands and mouth at chōzuya (fountain for purification) when the people visit shrines is another transformation of the custom that continued to exist.

Bathing, in which people artificially boil water and use the hot water and steam from it, was introduced to Japan around the 6th century with the arrival of Buddhism. The Buddhist temples were equipped with bathing facilities in which Buddhist monks cleanse their minds and bodies and heal their illness in steam which were required to accord with the teaching of Buddha. These facilities were later opened to the public . . . and spread widely over Japan along with having been associated with the propagation of Buddhism. 

Public bathing in Japan peaked in the 60s, I think, and then began to decline as people increasingly had bathrooms in their own homes. Most people these days indulge in public bathing as a relaxing pastime, something you might go out to do on a day off.

But back to Tuesday: by 3 the warmest part of the day was past and a cold wind had whipped up…and also whipped up the dust and lots of dead grass. It was nasty. Just outside the museum was a large Pottery Market. Massive, actually. All in well-secured, but open tents. We poked our noses in just for a short while, but refrained from buying anything. All the beautiful dishes were covered in dirt and grass from the wind! Needless to say, we hurried back to the car to get out of it all.

Wednesday to Friday: it was back to work at my desk at home. I had a lot of things waiting for my attention and really that’s what I did for the next three days. First day and a half I mainly focused on magazine matters and from Thursday afternoon I turned attention to OMF social media. It was satisfying.

Saturday: I went into our nearest big city centre for lunch with some other mums with kids who have significant special challenges. This loosely affiliated group gets together for lunch every other month, but I don't often make it. A very diverse group of women, and interesting conversation about our lives.

The adventure really began after I left them. I got back to the train station and found that half an hour earlier there'd been a fire near my home station and the line was closed for now. It was 3 pm and the day was already fading, I needed to decide how I was going to get home. Incidents like this quickly bring up feelings of insecurity and fragility in a foreign country. I'm very comfortable with trains in our part of Tokyo, but how easily that comfort can be disrupted!

I was 17 km from home, not far, but far enough. On a Saturday afternoon, in Tokyo, that is a 50–60 minute drive. Now I have some distance from the incident, I can see some other options, but in the heat of the moment my main thought was: can David drive and pick me up (he was at home with the car) and my second thought was: how far can I walk before he gets here? So that's what we did: I walked west and he drove east. We met up 50 minutes later, he'd driven 13 km and I'd walked 4. The walking was good and took me to a spot that was much easier for David to find me and drive around (less congested). In the end it took nearly 2 ½ hours to get home. The train would have taken about 20 minutes, plus the walk home. That's why we take the train!

Sunday: it was a pretty usual day. We rode to church mid-morning, bought lunch at a convenience store across the road, ate lunch with various others who stayed, then rode home. And then chatted and played online games with our kids for 90 minutes before having dinner.

Then back to Monday which was another people-intense day, the way all the weeks in February have started. Yesterday I spent time in the morning catching up with a colleague, and in the afternoon was back at my desk catching up with many things that had been waiting. I love both being with people and working at home at editing, writing, and admin tasks. And this month has had both in abundance and relatively well balanced. I'm thankful.

I'm still pondering my current responsibilities and wondering if I should seek to add anything else to them. In weeks like I've described above, I've had more than enough to keep me out of trouble ;-) and it makes me think that it would be foolish to eat up the margin that I do have by adding more. I have to remember these kinds of weeks when things get quieter for a time, remembering to savour the quiet times. 

It reminds me of a some Bible passages:

1There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

9What do workers gain from their toil? 10I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no-one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God. 14I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. (Ecclesiastes 3, NIV)

And also:

He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.’

11The Lord Almighty is with us;

the God of Jacob is our fortress. (Psalm 46, NIV)