Processing our weeks in Australia

My husband and I have both found ourselves continuing to process our weeks in Australia, but especially the last three crazy weeks of speaking and travelling. It's processing that's happening in the quiet moments between other things . . . and in our subconsciousness (i.e. dreams...last night I struggled to pack for a return journey from somewhere and had lost luggage and a lost toothbrush).

Since we returned to Japan life has been pretty busy, yet fairly routine, especially after David started back at school and I got back into my routine editing work. So we've now got the mental space to do the processing needed.

Yesterday I enjoyed an afternoon puttering 
around our local area: the city we've lived
since 2010. I volunteered at school, did a 
little bit of grocery shopping, and met a long-
time Japanese friend. This photo is of the 
front of the school. The gym is currently having
a maintenance facelift, hence all the scaffolding.

The other day I watched an interview of a good friend/author. Part of his story is that he was medically discharged from the military, but not due to physical injury. This I knew, but it was interesting to hear him (with a bit of space since it happened) tell about the process and the advice given to him at the time. One of the things he was advised to do was to minimise chaos in his life, to seek out something of a boring life!

That struck me in terms of my own life. Missionary life can be full of not-boring stuff and plenty of chaos, especially at transition times. The challenge of living (even thriving) in another country is often not boring. Certainly there's plenty of stress involved at times. The temptation that many of us deal with is to fill your schedule with so many things to keep things interesting and make you feel like you're achieving stuff that you can report in your regular letters to supporters. 

And then there's the strange thing called home assignment. That's full of decisions, upheaval, and adrenaline-filled periods.

Overall, I'm grateful to be back into my relatively boring daily life here in Japan. I'm thriving with the household tasks of simple menu planning, grocery shopping, and making our own food. (Not that I didn't appreciate others cooking for us for much of our time in Australia.) I love being back on a regular daily and weekly schedule that we've been working with over the last couple of years. Though I do need to get some vacuuming done soon!

So what is there to learn? I think that for us, we need more margin during home assignment than we need in our daily lives in Japan. To us that looks and feels like laziness, it's uncomfortable as we're generally conscientious people who work hard at the things we're given to do.

And then there's always the deadly comparison. It's easy to look at what other missionaries do, and think that we should be doing the same. In mission circles everyone's heard the crazy stories that people tell about home assignments: "Yeah, we spoke at 52 churches in 20 weeks, never staying in the same place for longer than a couple of days, often doing two or three services each Sunday..." I exaggerate, but it's no lie that some people do incredible feats of travel and speaking when they're visiting supporters. I think that it's become pretty clear to us that David and Wendy Marshall aren't among their number.

When I find myself working with a lack of sufficient margin I need to remind myself that I don't need to perform to any audience. I don't get extra points from anyone for being super busy. What I mostly get is physical signs that I'm too busy and stress. And, I need to let go of caring so much about what others think of me. The only one whose opinion matters is God...and I can't do anything that will make him love me less (or more). I'm saved by grace alone.