Waiting expectantly

"Be still and know that I am God" is a Bible phrase that's been known to me since I was a child. It's taken on new significance in the past two years.

At the end of 2019 I wrote here:

That verse was given to me on a little card at the spiritual retreat I went to in May. It's a verse I've known since childhood, but only recently have I realised the deeper meaning of it: God is way above my ability to understand him, I need to continually relax my desire to control things and people around me and let God be God. I need to continually remember that worry doesn't help and God actually tells us not to be anxious (Philippians 4:6). I can walk away from my work and leave anything unresolved in God's hand. I can go to sleep at night and leave all my concerns with him.

Then in November last year I wrote here about my frustration at not being able to make plans. In that post I wrote, "Right now, for us, it’s time to wait, and trust in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on our own understanding and God will direct our paths (paraphrase from Proverbs 3:5-6)." 

Sadly, things seems even more uncertain now than they did five months ago. Every time we make a longer-range plan, it seems to be dashed.

On Friday this Scripture verse came up on my daily desk calendar:

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly. (Ps. 5:3 NIV)

Oh, we've been waiting expectantly, for what feels like a long time! I like that phrase, though, it turns "waiting" into something that's more active. It appears in Luke also (3:15), when the Jews were wondering if John the Baptist was possibly the Messiah. Japanese has a great phrase for this: 待ち望む (machi nozomu) literally "wait" and "hope". In other places the English uses phrases like "wait in hope" (see Ps. 33:20, Isaiah 51:5, and Micah 7:7). Psalm 130:5 puts it even strongly: "my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope".

And I then this morning I read this article that uses the metaphor of jellyfish and how they go with the sea current. The author writes:

I think at times God just wants us to wait, too. Could we surrender our agenda or our anxiety about the next? Could we stop striving and just “go with Him”? If we could learn to float like jelly and go with His flow, we may just reach the destination in a more peaceful and enjoyable way. 

And she finishes with this prayer:

Father, You are so creative. . . Help us to stop striving and be at peace in the process. Remind us to relax and wait. Help us to not be in a hurry for Your answer but to soak in the time of waiting. Amen.

I know we're not alone at the frustration of this period. Many of us are waiting, and the waiting is wearying. But can we stop our striving? Can we be still and know God at this time? I know it's my daily challenge right now, and probably for some time to come. How about you?

Come, follow me

I've started three blog posts in the last week or so, and they're all circling around the same theme: letting go and trusting God, not just at a head level, but at a heart level. So, I've decided the best thing is to do the work to combine them.

It's been a challenge to trust God with everything in recent weeks and months. Wow, what a confession to make! To trust him with everything we hold dear, though we don't know what he's doing and why; to trust him, though we can't make the plans we wish we could make. I guess that's always a challenge for us humans. And this pandemic hasn't helped. 

This post I wrote only ten weeks ago shows me that our plans, that I admitted were foggy, have become even foggier.

The struggles I've had this year have been mostly circling my kids, my nearly-grown boys. Who thought that parenting could be so hard? (I've been saying that for over 20 years now!) They are no longer my little boys, who were "relatively" easy to keep corralled; whose pain was easier to fix.

If you've got younger kids, you probably don't want to hear me say that the problems get bigger and harder to "fix" as they get older. I'm under no illusions that parenting my little boys was easy. No, I found that really challenging too. So this isn't a "better-worse" thing here. Just saying that parenting older kids has been throwing us some major "googlies" recently (this is a cricket metaphor, others would say "curve ball"). But the problems are such that I can't reveal them to you in the public space of my blog. So I have to settle for metaphors and generalisations, so read between the lines, if you dare!

Mark records Jesus meeting a rich man who had run up to him and asked what he must "do to inherit eternal life?" (10:17 ESV). "And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, '. . . come, follow me'" (v. 21). The story shows the man to be someone who would have been considered good: a rule-keeper. But he gave up his quest for eternal life when Jesus said he should sell everything he had (and give it to the poor) in order to follow Jesus.

One thing it seems we can plan 
is a camping trip...so bring it on 
(in 10 days time)!

In her book Come Closer, Jane Rubietta wrote: "To be really rich, we unclench our fists, open our hands, and reach for Jesus. He promised us life, abundant life, and we create room for that life when we let go. Whatever is in your grip, recognize it. Notice why you hold that person, that role, that ambition, so tightly . . . let [Christ] have you, all of you—your hopes for the future, your pain from the past, your roles and rules and relationships" (p.44).

I certainly recognise some of these things in my own life. My desire to hold onto plans for the future, to keep control over how things pan out. To hold onto how I'd like my sons to live their lives. I like to be in control of some things. Most of us do.

It's not a bad thing to control when you go to bed, or when you get up. Or to seek to control whether you are a responsible employee or student. It's not a bad thing to be passionate about your job. Neither is it a bad thing to strive for a balance of work and rest, or to make plans for when you'll next see your family. But sometimes these things can trip us up, and can hinder us from following Jesus. Sometimes you simply can't control the things you want to, what then? Jesus' statement was to one man, but is also to us. Will we "follow him" wherever he leads us? Though whatever he brings our way?

Last week I read this in Joshua 10: "And the LORD said to Joshua, 'Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands" (v. 8). Note the verb: "given". It's already happened and they hadn't even gone into battle yet!

"We trust in his future plans and purposes through Christ because we know that he has already achieved them, eternally". (A Time to Hope, Naomi Reed)

During prayer and conversations with my husband in the last month, we've pretty much given over to God a number of things that I couldn't have imagined only a few months ago. It's like God has drilled down on us, hemming us in, and been teaching us—"You can't assume anything about the future."

So I'm really fighting to stay in the here-and-now, and as one who likes to plan and dream about the future, it's tough. But I know that the God who already knew the outcome of Joshua's battle with the kings of the Amorites, is the same God who knows the outcome of the various battles we're facing today. What a comfort that it!

If I'm going to be hemmed in, then the safest place to be is with the Lord, after all "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe" (Prov. 18:10 ESV).

This is part three of my series based "15 invitations by Jesus to come" as written about in Jane Rubietta's book Come Closer.

Fences can make me scream

Here's a post I read several months ago that I wanted to share with you sometimes. It's called "Don't Fence Me In" and it strikes a chord with me, especially to this comment:

No one wants to feel like they’re being controlled, especially me. The moment I feel that someone is trying to master me, I check out of the relationship. If I’m unable to flee, I sit on the urge to scream, “I’m pretty sure I got up this morning and put on my big girl panties, so why are you always telling me what to do???”

The article begins from a parenting perspective where it talks about how we try to control our kids and how impossible a goal it is. It's a short article, more expressing a struggle in this area than anything, but finishes with some noteworthy thoughts.

Maybe you don’t have children and maybe you don’t feel the need to control others. However, you may be dealing with anger over the feeling of being controlled. In overseas living, we’re all asked to submit to something—whether it’s your organization that tells you which beverages you can and can’t sip or slurp, your host country that runs you through a medical test like an animal so you can get a residence permit, your supporters telling you how you can and can’t spend your money, or your husband who doesn’t think visiting your home country for Christmas is a good idea.

Issues like this can so easily creep up on us, and if we’re not careful we let bitterness surround us like barbed wire. It’s hard to get out . Even though submission to God-given authority is good and right, it can be painful at times. 

Yes, to serve God in Japan we have to submit to our organisation and their rules (for example home assignments that disrupt our lives considerably), submit to visa restrictions, submit to living in a country where we don't speak the language well or understand the culture, submit to living in a city that is way larger than we're comfortable with. 

I guess I haven't thought about it much in those terms, but sometimes it does irritate.  What helps is remembering the goal—why are we doing this "hard thing"?

Trust and Control, are they opposites?*

Three days ago I lay face-down on the masseur's table thinking about trust. What does it mean to trust God? Especially, what does it mean to trust God with my kids?

Trust . . . I trust a chair when I sit on it. I don't usually check the joints before I sit on it. I trust the electricity and the gas. I just switch the switches or turn the taps and expect that they'll work. When they don't, I'm surprised. (I do live in Japan.)

As the masseur stretched out the sore muscles in my shoulders I pondered how trusting God is different to the trust I place in objects and services around me.

The difference is that a chair has no will, nothing changes about a chair. There is a simplicity about it that makes it relatively easy to trust.

That's different when it comes to trusting people . . . or God. 

Trusting people is hard because they aren't perfect, and they live in a world that isn't perfect. I trust my husband will wash up the dishes after dinner, but sometimes he's too busy, or too distracted, or even not present because of work. Occasionally he's too sick. But I do trust him more than I trust my kids. He's proven he is trustworthy.

My boys are 10, 13, and 16. They are more inconsistent than my husband. I still need to check up on them, to remind them, and direct them.

But God. Trusting God is really hard. That's not because he's inconsistent, like my kids, but because he's intangible. And he's not predictable.

The masseur moved on to my tight lower back and I remembered Aslan from Narnia. That famous quote: 

[Susan said:]"Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

Trusting God is hard because he isn't safe. We don't know what he will do. But we do have his reassurance that he loves us and will not allow us to be separated from him.

Romans 8: 31b-32, 38-39 "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? . . . For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,  neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

My dilemma with trusting God with my kids is all tied up with control. What I want is control. My thinking has been going along these lines: If I can "make them" do their assignments, to study, to fulfil their responsibilities at school I am doing all I can to make sure they have a chance to reach their potential.

The problem is that not only is it impossible to control my kids, it is impossible to make them do exactly what I want them to do, it is impossible. But I don't want to admit that. 

I was always a conscientious student (to the point of my report card comments being boringly repetitive). Now I am a conscientious parent. Not only do I hate to see my kids being less than conscientious but I hate feel that I've not done enough. I can't give up thinking that if only I'd done this or that they may have succeeded.

So where do I draw the line between trusting God for my kids and their future and seeking to be true to my conscientious nature? Where is the line when my conscientiousness becomes controlling?

I'm still learning and growing. But I think that trust is the opposite to control. If I trust my chair I don't feel the need to control it while it's doing its job. If I trust my husband I feel no need to control what he does. Then . . . if I trust God I need to release my struggle to control him. If I trust God to look after my kids then I need to walk away from seeking to control them.

Hudson Taylor's son Howard once commented on his dad, 

“He prayed about things as if everything depended upon the praying . . . but he worked also, as if everything depended on his working.” http://omf.org/us/about/our-story/quotes/#sthash.8nJZv8sr.dpuf 

This year we celebrated 150 years since beginning of our mission. Hudson Taylor was our founder. He said this on the day he decided to start the mission that is now OMF: 

Brighton, 25 June 1865: “All at once came the thought – If you are simply obeying the LORD, all the responsibility will rest on Him, not on you! What a relief!! Well, I cried to God –You shall be responsible for them, and for me too!”#

He was speaking about China, but the same applies to our kids. Simply obey the Lord. He bears the responsibility. It is very different to trusting the masseur table I lay on earlier this week. But the same principle applies. Don't be always wondering if that chair, table, or switch will work. Simply sit, lie, or turn it on. 

Don't always be wondering if God's got the situation under his control. Pray and tell him about it and about your concerns. Then trust and do what you've got to do—being mindful of what he's quietly saying to you while you're doing it.



*This is in response to a writing theme prompt for this week on Velvet Ashes' The Grove, an online community of Christian women serving overseas.

#A.J. Broomhall.Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Three: If I Had a Thousand Lives. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 454.

Mixing up role and identity

I wonder if being too attached to our roles
 means it's hard to temporarily hang up
those hats and take a break, or a holiday?

It is so easy to get role and identity mixed up. All those labels we like to use:

I'm a SAHM, I'm a working mum, I'm single, I'm a writer, I'm a house-owner, I'm a runner, I'm a carer, I'm in full-time ministry . . . I'm a missionary.

I think about it every now and then. What would I do if this role "missionary" was taken away from me? It would be a big adjustment, that's for sure. I think part of that would be because part of my identity is in the role. 

I feel this if I'm in an unfamiliar group without my kids or husband. My roles as "wife" and "mum of three boys" isn't written on my shirt. They help define me, they shape my days, weeks, and years.

So does being a missionary. Try describing our lives without including the M word. It's hard. 

I tried on Monday night. I was talking to the mum of some new boys at wrestling. I managed to keep the M word out of the conversation for some time. Japan came in pretty early, because she wanted to know how our kids first got interested in wrestling. I kept missionary out of it until she asked if my husband had a job while we were in Australia (I'd already told her he is a teacher in an international school in Japan). Fluffing around trying to explain what we do for a job while we're in Australia just didn't work until I explained that we're missionaries and part of our job in Australia is to visit groups like churches who support us.

It's not that I'm avoiding describing myself as a missionary, I've just learned that it isn't the best word to use in early conversation with strangers.

However, back to role. Our missionary role is more life-encompassing than, say, if I were an Occupational Therapist and my husband was a teacher here in Australia. Those roles wouldn't involve bringing up our family in a different country, changing countries periodically, and doing a job in Australia that involves the whole family on weekends.

But an article I read recently cautioned that if your identity is too tied up in your role and performance, it can lead to ineffectiveness and ill-health. It can lead to a lot of energy being expended to defend, keep, protect our role. If a role is removed from us, we can feel it is personal attack. We can spend a lot of energy trying to prove ourselves, try to demand that others see our value.

Of course, it requires a very high self-awareness to see this about ourselves. For most it is a blindspot – not seen by us, but clearly experienced by others.

Unfortunately this is a common problem in people in full-time ministry.

The solution is to fix our eyes back on God. To remember that ultimately we are his children.

Yes, we can take our current roles and responsibilities seriously. Yet, as we mature, we will not be so white-knuckled with them. We can be much more open-handed, not worrying what others think of us. If we are removed from our current position, we can remind ourself that the position was given to us from a caring Father in the first place. We can look to him to provide whatever will be needed next. There is no need for clamoring or demanding. Yes, there is a season of disorienting change. But in the end, he will provide all for his children.

The article concludes with this:

You are much more than what you do. You are how God sees you. You are His own child. 

Four random thoughts

I've reflected before that often when I have more time to think, I have less time or no opportunity to post here! That's what last week was like. Lots of time, little opportunity. 

The place we camped had almost no mobile access and certainly no internet. It was tucked away in the hills, far enough from any town that we saw no lights at night except the bright moon in the clear night sky.

But here are some random thoughts that I did remember and write down when we got back:

• We're a camping family. All boys loved the camping trip. They grumbled as we packed to leave, but all enjoyed. It's five years since our first camping trip and we've truly become a camping family. Five years of camping. In five years we've erected our tent 16 times in Japan, a couple of campsites we've been to two or three times. Seven of those times happened during our two-week camping tour of Hokkaido. We've camped four times in Australia (not counting our Uluru trip, which was like luxurious camping, in a motorhome). That makes twenty camps in five years over 13 camping trips. Not bad! Averaging two or three trips a year is a pretty good rate.

This was the start of our 2 x 5km paddle. Tempers were
already flaring as we struggled to direct these superb
canoes out of the inlet.

• Canoeing is about control. We had fun in the canoes, but we also had struggles and fights. In the end, canoeing is about control and how much you're willing to let others control your direction will determine how comfortable a ride you have. Some of our children coped better than others, but all three struggled with distrust. And once you're out in the water, you can't run away and hid somewhere, somehow, if you are to get to land, you have to forge a working relationship, no matter how mad you are at the other person.

• Grief. Our youngest son was upset on the first night after camp. As I talked with him I realised he'd really enjoyed camping with extended family . . . and felt the grief of not being able to do that in Japan.

• It's hard to settle back in your home country after being a missionary. We're "scarred" for life. We visited a family, with similar aged children to our own, who we met in Japan. They spent two terms there, but have been back in Australia for about 10 years now. There is still a part of them left in Japan, that will always be a part of them and make them always feel on the edge of ordinary in Australia.