Can you serve overseas when your family isn't 100% healthy?

Last year an article arrived in my inbox about thriving overseas when your child has special needs. We know missionaries with kids with special needs and, without invading my own family's privacy, there's been times that we've also had to access the care of professionals. 

I took this photo on our last camping trip in Japan: October 2017. It's
been too long! But we're going camping again next week for a couple
of nights. Stay tuned all you virtual campers :-)

The article above is about a family whose son was diagnosed with diabetes and has managed, nonetheless, to transition to life in Russia. That was a bit close to home when we saw a child in our boys' school here diagnosed with diabetes just last month.

The instant assumption you can make is that you need to be 100% healthy and have 0% special needs to serve overseas, but that is quite untrue. Of course it does depend on where you are working and what support you have around you. When we first came to Japan we met a couple who were going to Cambodia. The situation at the time was pretty much evacuation if you had anything barring a simple cold. Medical treatment was not available in-country. That's a completely different scenario to Japan and many other countries where missionaries serve.

We're thankful to be in the capital city of a country that has good medical care and to be a part of a large mission that provides a lot of support. Just in the last few weeks, two members of our family have had phone conversations with our in-country medical advisor and I emailed him this morning about a third matter. The two of these matters weren't large ones, but the third is going to have an impact on our lives in the years to come.

We're also thankful that our boys can be educated at a supportive Christian international school. I can't say enough about the way we've been supported through various struggles our boys have experienced.

Whether or not you can serve overseas does also depend on the nature of your ill health or special needs. For example, intellectual disability is something that is much more difficult to accommodate, though we have a couple of expat friends who have experienced good things with Japanese special education.

We've seen several colleagues and their kids treated for serious illnesses like cancer in Japan, and numerous other diseases and injuries. One of our boys was born here and two boys have been in hospital here for infections. I regularly see a doctor to treat my asthma.

In the above mentioned article, the author lists some important questions to ask, if you are heading overseas with special needs—but also points us to God, reminding us that he provides what we need. Sometimes the way he does that is in our home country, at other times it is in our country of service. 

She also has this advice: give your child and yourself grace. This is what I'm trying to do at the moment, give myself grace to relax a bit. Turns out what happened last Monday (see here) was more a stress reaction than just a headache. I've been keeping a lot of balls in the air and I need to give myself (and my family) grace.