Looking back at 2022

The last three years I've used some interesting and challenging questions to write this last post of the year, so I'm going to do it again.

1. What makes this year unforgettable?

The context of the year (coming after nearly two years of a global pandemic) makes it both forgettable and unforgettable. Looking back even at this short distance at the pandemic and it's hard to remember what happened when, because we don't have big hooks to hang them on. There was a lot of "not doing" during 2020, 2021, and early 2022. However this year life began to change, moving closer to "normal", though masks are still a real part of our daily lives in Japan. We started the year not knowing when the borders would open again to tourists in Japan and end the year with our eldest son in our house (without a visa).

We will remember this year as the year we went to Australia in the middle of the year and did lots of fun stuff, as well as some hard stuff. August was a difficult month for me: I farewelled David and our youngest son at the start of the month, contracted COVID within a couple of days, and had some challenging times on my own with our middle son while living in someone else's house.

It was the year that our last son started his last year of high school. And we entered our last year of living in this house we've raised our family in since 2010.

2. What did I enjoy doing this year?

A sunset on a Queensland beach midyear.

A definite highlight was a week's holiday in June/July with two of my best friends and their families at a beach in Australia. Hours and hours to just talk and be together was like being in paradise. I also got to stay with one of them for ten days at the end of August, which was also precious. Plus I got one-on-one time with two other close friends, which I treasured.

Walking after dinner with David is occasionally a chore, but more often than not it's a joy, even when the temperatures aren't really hospitable. I really missed the regular catchup with him when we were in Australia.

We've enjoyed watching cricket again on TV, finally they've begun to provide ways for fans in Japan to subscribe.

3. What/who is one thing/person I'm grateful for?

David. I rely on him a lot, but he also leans on me. We make a good team and don't function as well when we're apart. This year marked our 25th wedding anniversary. I'm so thankful.

4. What did I read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year?

Again, I've really enjoyed listening to various episodes of the Undeceptions podcast.

I hit my target of 100 books read in 2022. But also discarded more than 20 books as "didn't finish", these were books that I'd invested time in (not just read a couple of pages). I'm getting more fussy about what I read, partly due to getting older, but also because I've got easy access to a whole library of ebooks. One of my loves is browsing in the library from the comfort of my own home (or, to be honest, bed...the place I do much of my reading).

Gentle and Lowly by Dane C. Orlund was a standout non-fiction book this year. I read it slowly over eight months (I usually read a couple of fiction books a week). I think I need to read it again. It's a balm to a weary soul. For example this sentence from Ch 4: "If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance."

Sacred Pathways by Gary L. Thomas was another really valuable book to read. I came across it through working on a magazine issue themed "Arts and Ministry". It showed me a few things about myself and my life experiences that I hadn't realised.

5. What did I worry about most and how did it turn out?

We had a prolonged passport/visa renewal situation that strung out over several months earlier in the year. In April we very nearly had an illegal immigrant in our household, but managed to dodge that by pleading with the embassy for an appointment. Flying to and from Australia is never fun, but it was pretty miserable this year. We had all our original flights to and from Australia cancelled by airlines. Our journey to Australia took 35 hours, which is more than three times the usual length. We also ended up paying more for peace of mind as we changed our return flights to ensure that we go there before our visas expired. Japan still required negative PCR tests and cancelled flights made that complicated. I worried a lot through all of this. I lost sleep, had headaches, reflux, and various bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, as well as asthma-complicated COVID.

I also worried about our eldest son's lack of employment. His savings ran very low this year before he finally found consistent work. This was very hard to watch. 

6. What is my biggest regret?

Hard question! The Merriam Webster dictionary gives two disparate definitions of regret. One is a verb: to be very sorry for (a mistake) and the other is a noun: sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair. 

There are things that happened that I regret, but I didn't have the power to change them. I regret that my family has sometimes caused pain for others, but much of that hasn't been within my power to change. I regret that others haven't understood us (sometimes because they don't have the life experience to help, or they have biases that mean they can't see the full picture), but again, while I may have tried to help others understand, their understanding is beyond my ability to change.

I regret some of the things I've said yes to and later ended up with too much on my plate, often because of things outside of my control or beyond my ability to anticipate what was coming in the future.

7. What's something that has changed about me?

I've begun to more strongly identify as a writer this year. When someone asks me what I do, I say "I'm a writer and an editor". That's an easy summary that doesn't overwhelm people. I haven't written a book, and don't (yet) have an ambition to, but that doesn't mean that I'm not a writer. Writing this post about life with mental illness was a bit of a turning point: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-truth-about-journeying-with-illness.html

A close friend wrote this to me in early November: "Have been observing a really positive shift in you Wendy, from anxiety and feeling isolated to coming to peace with what is and inviting others into a space of being honest and vulnerable...which alleviates isolation for yourself and them also. Just thought you might like to hear from the outsider's perspective. God is good!! He's been at work and continues to be so." She connected a few dots I was too close to see, God has been good to me in giving me friends who will do that!

8. What surprised me most this year?

Some of the change we longed for during the depth of the pandemic was actually harder to adjust to than we would have imagined. I struggled to interact socially in a group at times this year, even in groups that I previously was fine with.

I was also pleasantly surprised by an opportunity to do an interview (for an article) with four Japanese people in the one afternoon, some of that was in English and some in Japanese.

9. What Bible truths impacted me this year?

A verse that has stuck with me arrived in my mail box in January last year (see here). It's Deuteronomy 31:8 "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." This was a great comfort, though I admit that in the midst of my worrying, I should have clung to it more tightly at times!

10. What meta-themes have I thought about this year? (in no particular order)

Life with non-physical illnesses and neurodiversity

Being a parent to adult children when they're struggling

Families as a microcosm of culture

Maintaining margin

My work always provides me with lots to ponder. I've thought about (and worked with) themes like honour–shame culture, rest, arts and ministry, mobilisation, prayer, women, fear of failure, missionary partnership development, nature, aging society, and Japanese festivals and traditions.

Highlights

• As I've already stated above: the week's holiday with friends.
• Being able to see our eldest son again and spend significant time with him. 
• We only got one camping trip in this year, and it was a cold one marred by debilitating pain for one of our friends. But still it was a highlight.
• Seeing gradual improvement and growth in our boys. But it's been slow, small steps.

Lowlights

• This year I've only written 39 blog posts, the fewest in it's 13 ½ year existence. So it's ironic that I'm thinking of myself more as a writer than ever before!
• Watching my kids struggle in various realms and wondering about their futures.
• Feeling tired as a parent.
• The start of the year I was stretched way beyond what was healthy, partly by work, partly by responsibilities to my family, and partly with what had happened in 2020 and 2021.

Other thoughts

For much of this year "it's complicated" would probably have been a good response to people's questions to how I was at the time. I've lived more than half my life doing things in ways that most people don't understand. A call to overseas missions leads to a loss of friends and a loss of potential friends, I learned this early on. It turns out that walking with mental illness and neurodiversity is similar and leads to much misunderstanding, even amongst those you thought would "get it". You'd think I was used to this already, but it turns out I wasn't, and probably never will be. I'm ever so thankful to those who do "get me" and have stuck by through all the challenges this year, even when they didn't understand us or our decisions.

My first post of this year was remarkable in the lack of concrete thoughts I could muster for the coming year (or at least that I was willing to commit to a blog post). I think my first post in 2023 will be quite different to that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Life keeps me flexible

We're in the midst of wrestling again, after a hiatus of several years. Our last big year of wrestling was 2016-17. There have been bits and bobs of wrestling in the years since, but, for various reasons, neither of our younger two sons are as passionate about the sport as their big brother is. Plus there's been injury (and a pandemic!)—last season our youngest son only wrestled once before being sidelined by a concussion. This year he's a senior and has gone out for wrestling one last time. It's taken me a while to back into the roll of things. I've just looked back at some of the blog posts I wrote during our eldest son's high school wrestling career, and it was a very intense time. This doesn't feel as big, perhaps because wrestling isn't our youngest son's main sporting passion.

So tomorrow, for the first time in several years, I'm hopping on the team bus (before the sun comes up) and heading to a day-long wrestling meet at a US army base. The blog posts I read this morning reminded me of the friendships forged in the past at these meets, but sadly I don't think any of those people will be around tomorrow (at least none of the CAJ wrestling-parents from the past). We'll see what eventuates. At least David will be there!

Our son is the "heavy-weight" of the team, in the 215 lb (97 kg) weight class. He's been watching live wrestling since he was very young (he attended his first meet was when his big brother was in Grade 7 and he was in Grade 2). And he competed on and off since he was around 10, but never with such big guys! He's won twice this season already, so we'll see how he goes tomorrow, the last meet before Christmas.

Then on Sunday we've got a friend from my uni days coming to visit with her family. They are in church ministry in Australia, but they have a strong interest in mission. The weather is looking good, if a bit chilly, so, after church we're planning to head to my favourite big park (in our van) for a picnic. Monday is going to be a bear as we recover from all that! Tuesday and Wednesday next week are also big ones, with various meetings/responsibilities downtown.

In between all of that I've got some baking to do: fudge that people have ordered, snacks for Sunday and for the school's seniors (a once-a-month encouragement organised by the parents of the class), and a usual amount for our own family to snack on.

Holidays are coming up too: with some time in the mountains before Christmas, and then our eldest son is coming to visit for Christmas from Australia for the first time in 3 ½ years! I'm looking forward to the break, and have a few books lined up. I should probably pick up my cross-stitch again, I don't think I've touched it all year.

Meanwhile, I've got some editing to do before we go away, and some writing. I'm excited to have been asked to do a "small" writing project for our US office: a series of blog posts about preparing for home assignment. It's really helpful for me to have a background project like that to work on, one that doesn't have tight deadlines and multiple moving parts and people. Plus it's a project that engages my writing brain more than my editing brain—it's nice to be on the other side of the relationship sometimes, it keeps me limber.

Faulty thinking

Ah, how easily we fall into cause-and-effect thinking, you know, the kind of thinking that goes like: "If I do all the right things, it will turn out okay." It works for some things, but that kind of thinking gets to be very unhelpful when it overflows into things like illness, relationship breakdown, employment loss, and other aspects of our imperfect lives in this imperfect world. Of course you can cause breakdowns in these areas, but there is a surprising amount of stuff that you simply can't control by "being good". Yet we still act as though we can.

Getting some perspective

I've seen parents going out of their minds trying to do a perfect job of parenting. From prior to conception, potential parents are bombarded with "rules" as to how to be the perfect parent. I saw a reel the other day telling me that I should have played a special soothing song to my sons before they were born . . . that we would have had a better time with them as newborns! 

We're told that during the school years to make sure they have plenty of exercise, or to learn an instrument or a language, or to have lots of down time, or to read to them often. And it's implied that they should have perfect behaviour at school and excellent school results, that we need to make sure they've got all their homework done on time and ensure they have time with friends too, not to mention a perfect diet.

Parents are told to develop family traditions and give our kids the best examples. Christian families have a lot of expectations on them too, from family and personal devotions, to church and Youth Group attendance. And of course this isn't new.

Some of our motivation is most likely fuelled by the thought: I will be blessed if I do this. Such is the strength of the myth: "bad things don't happen to good people". And therefore I have to do all in my power to be the best person I can be. And when you're a parent, that puts an awful amount of pressure on you, especially if things go wrong. Sadly many Christian parenting books seem to champion this flawed thinking and seem to completely forget about God's grace. 

When bad things happen, the logical conclusion when you're thinking this way is that "it's my fault" or you start looking around for someone else to blame. But that isn't always the case. How often do we look at others struggling with their children in public and silently judge them, wondering what they did to deserve such misery. And how miserable people are when their kids go off in directions their parents don't want them to or don't take the "expected path". 

So many expectations and so much misery.

People in more prominent positions, like pastors and missionaries suffer too, and possibly more. The expectations seem higher when there are a lot of people watching you.

My husband and I are watching the fifth season of The Crown. It's a historical-fiction series about British royal family and they're currently covering the 1990s, when the family suffered a number of marriage breakdowns, as well as other hardships. The Queen actually publicly described 1992 as her "annus horribilis." We can barely imagine what it's like to live such a high profile life, but you can see the same pattern: perfection is aimed at, failed to be achieved, and people feel the need to blame. A cause-and-effect thought pattern that works well in some aspects of our world, but not so well in others.

Over the last few years we've personally been in a season of "walking beside" our older teens/young adults as they go through difficult times. It's been hard, and we've had to let go of our expectations (many we didn't realise we even had) and seek to find ways to love them unconditionally as well as encourage them.

Those of us who follow the God of the Bible need to be careful. We have a tendency to try to do deals with God: if I'm good, you have to bless me with a hardship-free life. Even if we don't think we think that way, it can so easily slip in. For example, thinking: if I pray hard about something God will have to do something good. If I get parenting right, then my kids will turn out right (turning Proverbs 22:6 into a promise instead of just wise advice: "Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.")

I was encouraged by a sermon I listened to the other day. The preacher, who has gone through plenty of hardship himself said: "The good news is that you cannot be bad enough to ensure God's condemnation of your family." And "the bad news is that you cannot be good enough to ensure God's blessing on your family . . . the future of your family, for good or ill, is in the hands of God." He finished by asking: What hope is there? Turn to the One who holds the future in his hands and ask him to honour himself through your family. God uses our messes: just look at Jesus' genealogy, it's full of broken families!

This is not an encouragement to be slack, but rather an encouragement to cut yourself some slack. Things will go wrong, when they do, it's not necessarily your fault. And the same for how you quietly think about those around you. 

I've struggled to get my thoughts down on this topic and press Publish. But I hope that it's as helpful to you as it's been to me to think about these things.

Unexpected story of an editor, a 12 y.o. boy, and Japan

A sermon I recently heard at our church introduced me to an editor-missionary who I'd never heard of before. But really, who knows the names of famous editors? It really isn't our thing; we generally prefer to remain in the background.

The man, Luís Fróis, was a Jesuit missionary from Portugal in the 1500s. He worked in Japan from 1563 until he died in 1597. Much of his ministry was as the clerk and editor of letters and periodicals that the missionaries sent to Rome about their work. A missionary who is an editor! (Not someone I come across every day; it's more common to come across missionaries who are writers.) I'm particularly amused by this quote: 

"[Father] Valignano had discovered that many of the letters and reports, especially those written by young missionaries not yet familiar with Japanese conditions, gave a false impression of the country to the readers. He therefore gave orders that the reports concerning the various missions should be collected by an experienced missionary and should be read and, if need be, corrected under the orders of the Provincial as an official Annual Report." (From here)

An editor's brief!

He was also commissioned to write a history of the Catholic church's work in Japan, but ended up writing a very large work that included much observation of Japan of the day, as well as some history of the country.

He was also a witness, in 1597, of the execution of the now famous 26 martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan. It is mostly because of Fróis that we know so much about this event. He wrote a detailed report of this event and sent it to his superiors, only months before he himself died.

But what especially caught my attention during the sermon is the connection that the preacher made between Fróis and a more recent missionary, who died a couple of years ago. Alfons Deeken, another Catholic missionary, was just 12 during WW2 in Germany when he was selected for the Nazi teacher training academy, a great honour at the time. However, he refused this opportunity because he disagreed with what the Nazis were doing because it went against his faith. This decision would have even been viewed by some as anti-German. Alfons had read Fróis' account of the 26 Martyrs. In that he read about another 12 year old boy called Luis Ibaraki, who was among those being marched to Nagasaki in 1597 for crucifixion. This boy's steadfast faith in the face of death inspired Alfons Deeken to go to Japan as a missionary. He's quoted as saying "I felt a great desire to visit the country that had produced such a courageous boy."

Neither Luis Ibaraki, nor Luís Fróis would have anticipated that their actions would inspire someone to do what Alfons did: reject the social pressures of the times and go even further to become a missionary in Japan.

I'm a writer and editor who works in mobilisation. My team and I work to produce social media content that will hopefully mobilise people around the world to be more involved in mission, however that looks. But we rarely hear how our work has directly influenced people to do what we're aiming for. This story excites me because it was a writer/editor who simply wrote what he saw, that ultimately was the vehicle to getting someone 400 years later to make a life-changing decision. He didn't plan to mobilise anyone by writing that report. There are actually a whole lot of unsung heroes here: this was originally a letter in Portuguese. Someone published it, someone translated it into German, and published it again. And someone got this book(let) into Alfons' hand.

This makes me excited about what I do. Writing down things, editing, and publishing them is a sacred task. You don't know where they will end up or what change they will cause in other people. Or even when that will occur. If something I do or write or edit makes a difference to someone in 400 year’s time I would be very surprised. However, I can hope that my words make a difference, even in the here-and-now.

Discovering I've got a skill I didn't realise I had

Me in my comfort zone

In the last week or so, I think I've done more writing than editing! It been an unusual period, but I'm not unhappy, I do enjoy writing. However, I did get pushed outside my comfort zone. In order to attempt to solve a lack of content problem with our magazine, I asked our Japanese pastor if he'd consent to an interview (in English). He agreed, and promptly found three other people I could also talk with about the topic at hand. So on Tuesday afternoon, I spent about two hours interviewing Japanese people. The second hour was mostly in Japanese and stretched me greatly. They had a lot to say, and I didn't catch all of it, but I have enough to write the needed article. [Ironically, I've ended up with the opposite problem—after I implemented a few other strategies to find more articles, we now have more than double the number of potential articles than we need.]

I've been working in publishing for over 10 years now, but I've always avoided doing interviews. I'm not sure why, but I thought it's something I'd probably not be good at. Maybe I'm thinking about the sort of journalism that is intrusive or controversial, or requiring the journalist to do "cold calls". I'm just not that sort of person.

However, I've discovered that I've had many years of learning to ask questions of others, of learning to draw people out. Not for the purpose of writing about them, but just getting to know them, or simply to enjoy their company when we've been together for some reason (like a car journey, or as volunteers, or eating together at a group meeting). 

I've also spent many years living with non-chatty introverts and have worked at facilitating conversation at home. These interviews, in comparison, was easy. My questions were welcomed, and the interviewees wanted to talk. It would have been a lot easier if my Japanese had been better, but I was with our bilingual pastor, so he's helped me a lot.

I'm happy that I discovered this and that I consented to be pushed beyond my comfort level. I'd hate to be starting to plateau in my middle age! I want to continue to grow as a person. I'd like to continue to find opportunities to practise this newly discovered skill (as well as figuring out how to write a 1,500 word article from an interview).

But, reflecting on the last few years, I've been continually pushed beyond my comfort level, but usually not by choice. Mental illness has become part of our everyday lives since before 2018 (we only got the diagnosis that year, so could see it for what it was)—that's definitely pushed us out of our comfort zones. I never anticipated that any of my boys would struggle to complete their studies, but we've had that experience now too. Watching our older two struggle to find their way into adult lives has been really hard, and we've needed a lot of grace to walk alongside them through this stage, and it's certainly not over yet. It's all left me feeling a bit vulnerable and shaky.

But, of course, missionary life is continually pushing us past what's comfortable, more so than perhaps might have happened if we'd never left our native land. But as I said to a newer missionary early last week—I think that this is a privileged life. Not that it isn't hard, but we keep encountering challenges as a result of what we do that push us to depend on God, and on others. Whereas otherwise we might have been much more self-reliant, we've been frequently cast upon resources that we couldn't conjure up ourselves. And experiences like that make you grow.

I was surprised to have a friend who knows more about me than most write to me that she has been observing "a positive shift in me from anxiety and feeling isolated to coming to peace with what is and inviting others into a space of being honest and vulnerable." I can't especially detect that myself, but am glad to hear that she senses this. Apparently God's been at work in me during the "grit your teeth and get through the day" times that I've had in the last few years and I'm glad.

I feel like we've hit a little bit of a breathing space, a bit of light in the tunnel. But the next big challenge is coming at us like a freight train: home assignment next year. Just the other day I wrote two emails one afternoon about pencilling in dates for later next year in Australia—that's a tiny bit scary. And we've already been working on downsizing, that's what the bazaar helped with last month, but since then we've given away more of our stuff too. 

But if I keep in mind that through it all God has never failed us, that he's always with us, and not only that, but he's growing us through the challenges. That as a result of all the "out of my comfort zone" we're going to be better people. When I remember this, then I'm calmer.

Here are a few Bible verses I've found to remind myself of (and maybe you too), that God is at work in us:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (Heb 12:11–13 NIV)

And this was in Paul's prayers for the believers in Philippi: 

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 1:4–6) 

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil. 2:13)

And Romans 8:28 of course: 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

And of course "for the good of those who love him" doesn't mean God's our genie in a bottle. It means that God is working to make us more like Jesus, more likely to do things that glorify him and achieve his purposes in this world.

That same passage in Romans goes on to say we can't be separated from God's love, nothing and no one can do that, not hardship or danger or distress or poverty or criticism or even death. So therefore, we should live as ones who have nothing to fear (preaching to myself again, for surely there is more fear in me than I'd like to admit).

Okay, I didn't expected to end up here when I started writing this blog post last week, but here we are. I need to get back to various other writing assignments and emails (and all those people I have to write "no-thanks" emails to for their magazine article proposals). Next blog post I want to write about an unsung hero I learnt about yesterday. A man after my own heart.

Margin: something I need, but also struggle with

Margin: it's something I've written about (e.g. https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2015/08/margin-in-life.html), but not always been good at doing. When I saw this blog post by Beth Bathelemy I was reminded again about margin. Not just how important it is, but why I struggle not just to keep it, but sometimes when I'm in that space of not-so-busy, I feel uncomfortable.

I ran into a quiet spot in my work on Friday
when I was basically waiting for other 
people to do stuff. Margin! So I rode to my
favourite local park for a couple of hours.

But first, what is margin? Beth shared this great quote by Richard Swenson:

“Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.”

When I find myself without much margin in my days, things in our lives get compromised that shouldn't be. That can be important work matters, or it can be family, or not being able to help someone else. Without much margin my health suffers: I don't get exercise, or my eating gets sporadic and unhealthy, and because I'm the manager of our larder and maker of our evening meal, if I don't have much margin that spills over to affect everyone else in the family too. If I've overcommitted, I'm often not sleeping well and responsibilities that I have aren't being attended to. I can't pay as much attention to the people in my life if I don't have good margin and I begin to suffocate and let others down.

I thought I had plenty of margin at the start of August in Australia when I'd planned to start back at work after six weeks off. However, in that first week we had family drama as we had flights cancelled, then rebooked, and then an emotional farewell as half our family flew back to Japan. My middle son and I cleaned and moved into new accommodation, and had to adapt to living with another family. Plus we received a new diagnosis to add to the others our son already has. In the middle of all that I sat back at my editor's desk where a large amount had piled up in my absence. Then my throat and head started hurting and I started coughing . . . and it was COVID. All my margin was gone and it took weeks to get back to a place where margin was again in place. I had miscalculated, but also run into some large, unexpected things. And that's really partly what margin is for: to give room for the unexpected. It's just that, in this case, I didn't allow enough (and of course, it is not always possible to allow enough margin).

As a writer and creator I find I also need margin to think, to ponder, to reflect, and to write. The extroverted part of me struggles with that sometimes, but I'm generally happier and more balanced if I've had time alone to think.

However, I also grew up with a strong work-ethic instilled in me. So these words of Beth's also spoke pointedly, they echo some of the struggles I have when I'm not-so-busy:

Recently, however, familiar doubts crept back into my heart and mind. Am I doing enough? Will this read impressively in my newsletter? Is our ministry fruitful enough? And from this lowly place of insecurity, doubt, and discouragement, I forfeited my margin.

I think it's something that people in ministry struggle with especially. Usually we have a lot of drive, are conscientious, and feel the pressure of the overwhelming needs around us. Consider that we ourselves work in a land where less than 1% of people know Jesus and not many more than that have even heard of him. Plus, we live a little bit in a glasshouse: writing prayer letters every month, and responding regularly to a variety of other requests for information about how our ministry is going. All these things can pressure us to increase the load of what we do until we have nothing spare.

But Beth concludes with thoughts like these:

What if we were to put aside our ill-conceived, worldly perspectives on success and productivity? What if we rejected the false narratives of self-importance and worth based on accomplishment? What if we, like Christ, “self-empty” ourselves unto God?

These are good thoughts. I'm full of pride, I know. I measure my days according to how many things I've knocked off my to-do list. I like to think of myself as productive and useful, skillful and clever. What would it look like to move further away from all that?

I'm reading a short book right now by Timothy Keller called The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness.
Where I left the bookmark last night it says:

"So Paul does not look to the Corinthians for his identity. He does not go to them for the verdict that he is a 'somebody'. He does not get that sense of identity from them. But he does not get it from himself either. He knows that trying to find self-esteem by living up to a certain set of standards is a trap " (p. 28).

Paul and Keller exhort us to let go of the idea that we can get our identity from what others think of us, and even from living up to our own standards. We are loved by God. Not because of what we've done for him, but because of what he's already done for us.

Another book I've finished recently called Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund says a similar thing. Christ loves us far more than we can comprehend, and our response should be to simply obey the invitation in Matthew 11:28: "Come to me."

But, on the other hand I've also realised that God has created us to both do and be. I'm still trying to balance that up, but I don't think this side of heaven I'll get it right. I can recount many times that I've been told or heard sermons or talks that said that we ought not to look at our schedules for our self-worth. But I also know that God tells us to do stuff. Yes, our primary worth is as a human being made by God, but we've been gifted with varying levels of strength and intellect, gifts and talents, wealth and opportunities. God calls us to DO stuff. Not because that's the way we earn his love, but because we love to serve him, but how easy it is to switch those two things!

So, how to live with these two things in balance? How can I be comfortable with "being", with dwelling in that space between my responsibilities and what my ultimate limit is? How can I fulfil my responsibilities without feeling that they add up to my worth, and therefore when I'm not "doing" I still have worth?

These are questions that I don't think I have an answer to yet. At the moment I'm being very careful about what I say yes to, beyond my usual responsibilities. I know that just under the surface lurk things that tap my energy, and often they are difficult to predict. Some days I just feel overwhelmingly tired by 8pm and struggle to get up in the morning, for no discernable reason. I also know, looking ahead, that we've got some big transitions next year that will take a lot of energy.

So, I'm moving ahead, walking tentatively and keeping my eyes on Jesus, rather on my own nervous, flaky self. And surrounding myself with people and habits that will correct my course when it goes astray.

Little exchanges add up to a lot

Have you ever thought about the little exchanges that make up the bulk of connection with others? Our lives aren’t generally full of D&Ms (deep and meaningful conversations). Though often I long for that deep connection with people, there is, actually, a limit on how much of that I can handle in any one day.

On Friday the school held the biggest school-community event it’s had in three years. It’s a descendent of the ginormous garage sale known as Thrift Shop. I’ve blogged about that event many times over the last 12 years (see some of those posts here). Now it is called the Fall Festival and Bazaar. The “bazaar” side of things is a scaled-down version of Thrift Shop, designed to cost less in terms of time-commitment for staff and volunteers. It also includes something new: a place where individuals or groups can rent a table to peddle their own wares. Because, of the last three years, we've been saving up stuff we want to get rid of (that isn't rubbish), we decided to rent a table.

Our table as it looked at the start of the day.

There were a few great things about having our own table: 

• I had a place to "be" all day. I didn't feel like I was loitering or wasting time. It was also a starting place for conversations that weren't uncomfortable, a here-and-present kind of thing that helped me stay away from topics that aren't so easy to talk about in a light way.
• We had a bucket of "free stuff" that the younger kids loved. It's such fun giving things away.
• I got to make and sell fudge (but I was disappointed with the packaging we managed, which made the fudge look decidedly dodgy).
• We did actually get rid of a fair bit of stuff to places that it will be used (rather than just sent to the rubbish). We were able to give two boxes of stuff to the Salvation Army who came at the end for stuff that hadn't been sold.

I went into Friday expecting lots of more conversations, and came away feeling a little dissatisfied with how insubstantial most of the exchanges were. But, as I've seen as I reflected over the weekend is that on Thursday and Friday I was part of the gentle web of connection that has begun forming again in the community that centres around the school. Looking back, I had short conversations about all the following things:

A future camping trip

Why I had a nearly 100-year-old hymn book for sale (yes, I sold it)

A recent 500 pound, 8-foot bear attack in the US (yes, there was)

How much my youngest son has grown and changed

How to say “poached egg” in Japanese (no, I can't remember now)

How to use a baccarat espresso maker

What Thrift Shop used to look like (for someone new in the community)

Where Kuranda is (inland from Cairns)

How much CAJ pays substitute teachers

The difference between chocolate and fudge (yes, we were confused by the question)

What it was like growing up a few blocks from the US on the Canadian side of the border and how I’ve never lived in a country that has international land borders (only sea borders, hence “going overseas” is synonymous with going to another country). 

Shopping habits: I prefer to be left alone to consider the option and very much dislike shopkeepers in my face.

How exhausting parenting is emotionally, and how ready I am to be moving on out of being the parent of a school-aged child (7 ½ months…but I’m not counting :D).

Fudge and how we’ve given this to our boys’ teachers for years. This is the last year that will happen.

How I got rejected by the blood bank on Friday at the school because my haemoglobin was a little bit low.

Plans for the next couple of years (moving out, home assignment from July 2023, moving back to Japan).

The big gaps that the pandemic has left us with in community: those whose kids started at the school during the pandemic don’t know the parents of their kids’ friends. I don’t know the faces of a bunch of new teachers (and their kids). That's something that rarely happened before the pandemic, due to staff-family gatherings that have usually been held through the year.

I met a lady who works for the same organisation that publishes the magazine. I’ve only really interacted with her over email, though perhaps we’ve met once, I can’t remember.

I got some hugs and got to see some people I haven’t seen in months or years.

And a thank you for my recent blog posts from someone who says she reads everything I write!

I'll stop there. When you add all that up, that's a lot of networking. And the sorts of stuff that doesn’t happen when you aren’t face-to-face with people. I was exhausted on Friday night (and Saturday). But also thankful.