From Naivete to Growth
I remember sitting caffeinated, late at night, in the library with a friend in college, talking about foreign mission. One day, we could live in Africa, we said over our lattes and laptops.
It seemed a glorious thing to me, this missionary life in a foreign country. At the time, I wanted to travel. I did have a true and real desire to love and live among the poor, but the rest of it was a dream, built on nothing – I had barely left the country then. In fact, I don’t think I had ever met a real live missionary. I had heard about mission trips, but never been on a foreign one. My imaginary life was just that, imaginary.
A little more than a few years later, I was moving to Haiti to start a mission there with a few other people from an organization that I loved. I don’t think I could have admitted it then, but it definitely felt glorious. I had read a few books about missionaries, met some missionaries, been on mission trips, been inspired by the passion, zeal, and sacrifice of others. And if I’m honest, I wanted to save the world. I’ve since learned that that is a dangerous mindset, and not the reality of missions. But at the time, I honestly thought that I could be a mini Mother Teresa, or another version of the girl who wrote Kisses from Katie. I was super naïve. But I was also ready to suffer, wanted to learn a language, found parts of it to be an adventure . . . and also cried a lot. I remember crying in the corner of my room in Haiti while eating a bowl of donated tuna that a mission group had brought in a suitcase from America. I remember crying and yelling and even throwing my phone at one of my community members in a moment of frustration (I know, super immature). I remember walking away from a difficult conversation crying (see, I told you I cried a lot), only to have to get in a truck twenty minutes later with a jar of my own poop to go get tested for parasites (which I did, in fact, have). It was flipping hard.
More painful though, were probably the moments when I couldn’t cry. When three people in our neighborhood passed away within a couple of months, I couldn’t cry because I was too shocked and felt the guilt and shame that maybe I could’ve done more. When we walked into homes of people we knew and loved and saw their poverty face to face, I couldn’t cry because it wouldn’t have been appropriate. When women came to me and told me that they couldn’t feed their children or send them to school, I helped them look for solutions. I didn’t give them my tears.
The difficulty didn’t stop when I left Haiti after being there for three years. About six months into my time in America, I remember going on a silent retreat. I couldn’t handle the silence. In a moment that felt so unholy, I left the retreat and went home to watch Gilmore Girls on the couch in my apartment and open a bottle of wine. At the time, I was struggling with not hearing chickens, goats, the sounds of cooking and laundry being washed and children running around, laughter and life all around me. I couldn’t hear God in the silence because the silence was deafening and spoke to me about loss – the loss of a country and a people and a culture that I had come to love after struggling through the mess of it all. (And how did all that crying lead to love? That is the mystery.)
At the beginning of my time as a missionary, I couldn’t have imagined the emotion, the transition, the joys, the losses, the change and adaptation that would occur in my own self. I didn’t know that I would have to reach deep down into myself to find a resilience that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know that I would have to come back to the Lord over and over and over again and listen to His love. I didn’t know that I would be in situations where I called on the Holy Spirit with my whole self because I desperately felt that I didn’t know what to do . . . and I mean desperately.
When I joined a new mission organization a year and a half ago (about three years after leaving Haiti), I couldn’t have anticipated all the new things I would learn. I didn’t know that it would be so healing for me to hear other people talk about foreign mission – the gifts and joys as well as the struggles and losses. I didn’t know how freeing it would be to hear some of the most radical people I know talk about self-care and boundaries. The reality is, even after having been a missionary for a while now, I have so much still to learn and will hopefully spend the rest of my life learning.
I also think I learned something particular last year when I went to Asia for almost four months. I expected it to be a longer mission, but didn’t know I would encounter so much struggle both inside and outside of myself. I was humbled again on mission as I encountered my own weakness. And when I decided not to return to Asia, I had to wrestle with my own sense of failure.
In just a few days, I’ll be returning to the mission field, to Haiti. This feels like a real victory to me. But as I move forward to Haiti again, I want to do it in a new way. I want to live from a place of mercy and self-compassion. I want to walk in recognizing my humanness and not expecting perfection from myself. Instead, I want to receive the grace and mercy of the God who loves me, and just let that love overflow to the world. A more simple way, I hope.
What I keep learning over and over again in my life is that the Lord still wants me in all my weakness, mess, tears, sin – all of it. He’s not afraid of it. He’s bigger than it. He’s not waiting for me to be perfect so that He can love me. He can even use my weakness for His glory. He never expected me to be a superhero missionary because He knows that He made me a little bitty human missionary with faults, failings, emotions, needs, and strengths and weaknesses. When talking about God’s mercy, St. Therese says, “What a sweet joy it is to think that God is just, that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then?” So I don’t need to be this extraordinary human who loves transition, inculturates as well as Jesus, and learns languages in 3.5 seconds. (Thank God because then there would be exactly ZERO missionaries in the world.) Instead, just as God came into the poverty of that sweet (or just smelly) stable 2,000 years ago, He wants to come into the poverty of my own mess today.
If that’s the kind of missionary that I need to be – a messy, poor, incredibly ordinary, emotion-filled human in need of God’s grace and help – well, I guess I can do that. Pray for me.
It seemed a glorious thing to me, this missionary life in a foreign country. At the time, I wanted to travel. I did have a true and real desire to love and live among the poor, but the rest of it was a dream, built on nothing – I had barely left the country then. In fact, I don’t think I had ever met a real live missionary. I had heard about mission trips, but never been on a foreign one. My imaginary life was just that, imaginary.
A little more than a few years later, I was moving to Haiti to start a mission there with a few other people from an organization that I loved. I don’t think I could have admitted it then, but it definitely felt glorious. I had read a few books about missionaries, met some missionaries, been on mission trips, been inspired by the passion, zeal, and sacrifice of others. And if I’m honest, I wanted to save the world. I’ve since learned that that is a dangerous mindset, and not the reality of missions. But at the time, I honestly thought that I could be a mini Mother Teresa, or another version of the girl who wrote Kisses from Katie. I was super naïve. But I was also ready to suffer, wanted to learn a language, found parts of it to be an adventure . . . and also cried a lot. I remember crying in the corner of my room in Haiti while eating a bowl of donated tuna that a mission group had brought in a suitcase from America. I remember crying and yelling and even throwing my phone at one of my community members in a moment of frustration (I know, super immature). I remember walking away from a difficult conversation crying (see, I told you I cried a lot), only to have to get in a truck twenty minutes later with a jar of my own poop to go get tested for parasites (which I did, in fact, have). It was flipping hard.
More painful though, were probably the moments when I couldn’t cry. When three people in our neighborhood passed away within a couple of months, I couldn’t cry because I was too shocked and felt the guilt and shame that maybe I could’ve done more. When we walked into homes of people we knew and loved and saw their poverty face to face, I couldn’t cry because it wouldn’t have been appropriate. When women came to me and told me that they couldn’t feed their children or send them to school, I helped them look for solutions. I didn’t give them my tears.
The difficulty didn’t stop when I left Haiti after being there for three years. About six months into my time in America, I remember going on a silent retreat. I couldn’t handle the silence. In a moment that felt so unholy, I left the retreat and went home to watch Gilmore Girls on the couch in my apartment and open a bottle of wine. At the time, I was struggling with not hearing chickens, goats, the sounds of cooking and laundry being washed and children running around, laughter and life all around me. I couldn’t hear God in the silence because the silence was deafening and spoke to me about loss – the loss of a country and a people and a culture that I had come to love after struggling through the mess of it all. (And how did all that crying lead to love? That is the mystery.)
At the beginning of my time as a missionary, I couldn’t have imagined the emotion, the transition, the joys, the losses, the change and adaptation that would occur in my own self. I didn’t know that I would have to reach deep down into myself to find a resilience that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know that I would have to come back to the Lord over and over and over again and listen to His love. I didn’t know that I would be in situations where I called on the Holy Spirit with my whole self because I desperately felt that I didn’t know what to do . . . and I mean desperately.
When I joined a new mission organization a year and a half ago (about three years after leaving Haiti), I couldn’t have anticipated all the new things I would learn. I didn’t know that it would be so healing for me to hear other people talk about foreign mission – the gifts and joys as well as the struggles and losses. I didn’t know how freeing it would be to hear some of the most radical people I know talk about self-care and boundaries. The reality is, even after having been a missionary for a while now, I have so much still to learn and will hopefully spend the rest of my life learning.
I also think I learned something particular last year when I went to Asia for almost four months. I expected it to be a longer mission, but didn’t know I would encounter so much struggle both inside and outside of myself. I was humbled again on mission as I encountered my own weakness. And when I decided not to return to Asia, I had to wrestle with my own sense of failure.
In just a few days, I’ll be returning to the mission field, to Haiti. This feels like a real victory to me. But as I move forward to Haiti again, I want to do it in a new way. I want to live from a place of mercy and self-compassion. I want to walk in recognizing my humanness and not expecting perfection from myself. Instead, I want to receive the grace and mercy of the God who loves me, and just let that love overflow to the world. A more simple way, I hope.
What I keep learning over and over again in my life is that the Lord still wants me in all my weakness, mess, tears, sin – all of it. He’s not afraid of it. He’s bigger than it. He’s not waiting for me to be perfect so that He can love me. He can even use my weakness for His glory. He never expected me to be a superhero missionary because He knows that He made me a little bitty human missionary with faults, failings, emotions, needs, and strengths and weaknesses. When talking about God’s mercy, St. Therese says, “What a sweet joy it is to think that God is just, that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then?” So I don’t need to be this extraordinary human who loves transition, inculturates as well as Jesus, and learns languages in 3.5 seconds. (Thank God because then there would be exactly ZERO missionaries in the world.) Instead, just as God came into the poverty of that sweet (or just smelly) stable 2,000 years ago, He wants to come into the poverty of my own mess today.
If that’s the kind of missionary that I need to be – a messy, poor, incredibly ordinary, emotion-filled human in need of God’s grace and help – well, I guess I can do that. Pray for me.
Beautiful, Sara! You will be in my prayers as you return to Haiti. I'm excited to see how your missionary heart continues to grow.
ReplyDelete❤️Angela Hill