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).