In the Ceasing: Letting Go of All the Striving

“Cease from striving.” 

‘I’m not striving, I’m working.’ 

“Cease from striving.” 

‘These are good things!’ 

“Cease from striving.”

‘What does that even mean? How do I cease from striving when I have so much on my plate?’ 

“Cease from striving.” 

This has been my dialogue with God over the last two years. A simple whisper. Almost audible. Three words: Cease from striving. 

And I’ve fought it with every ounce of my being. I have held tightly to my plans in such a clinched-fist way that my spiritual muscles cramp and yet still I have refused to admit: this is the life that God has given me and it is His to plan, not my own.

Two years ago when we made the cross-country, cross cultural trek to where we are now, no one told me how to go from the high-energy, high-need, triage of life in the Amazon to homeschool mom in the aisles of Walmart. 

My proverbial tool bag was full of machetes and stitches and tourniquets for the many crises of life overseas and now I found those completely useless in the decision making tasks of grocery shopping and picking homeschool curriculum. 

And no one understood me. Including me. 

There, our home was full of people day in and day out, friends and strangers, like-minded and nearly hostile. But we sat and we talked and we shared and we lived and it was hard but good. A rich life of relationships. 

Here, we lived an entire six months at an apartment where I never once so much as saw my immediate neighbors. (Though I know they existed because we once received a noise complaint.)

It’s taken me two whole years to decide that maybe God was not telling me to cease from working (how I had been interpreting it) but to really cease from... striving.

(Imagine that. God meaning what He said.)

But still I am left with the resounding question of, “What DOES that look like?”

I’m learning it looks like this:

If that relationship is meant to be reconciled, He will reconcile it. 

If that goal is to be attained, He will bring it to pass. 

If I am to do anything at all, He will guide me... one painstaking step at a time. 

My role is that of obedience in the humdrum, not-a-soul-knocking-at-my-door day to day. 

My role is a step of faith across the street last night to my neighbor’s house. The one I’ve chatted with across the fence line a handful of times since moving to this house a year and a half ago but never truly engaged with because I was so unsure in this culture of closed doors and busyness of how I could relate to her. 

Imagine my surprise when she pulled up a chair for me and we sat for an hour and a half in the light of the flood lamp her husband used to diligently repair his truck. The fire ants bit my leg as I strained to hear her share her story over the sound of the train in the background and the airplanes overhead. Perhaps for the very first time it felt like a taste of home in this desert land. 

And my heart nearly skipped a beat when she said she’d lived on this street for many years and still didn’t know her neighbors because it seems as though here in this culture people simply come home and shut their doors. 

“And the saddest part,” she said with earnest, “is that no one seems the least bit bothered by what they’re missing.” 

It took great restraint not to leap up and hug her in that very instant. Instead I simply stated, “YES! I’ve been saying this, too!” 

She shared of her father leaving her when she was six along with her mother and younger siblings. How she took on a mothering role and worked hard, but relationships were always of utmost importance. When they moved here to the US hoping for a better future, she discovered that there was a lot of.... striving here. But little in the realm of genuine relationships among neighbors. 

Be still my soul. 

We talked and we laughed until 10pm. 

And this beautiful conversation came hot on the heels of a day of striving. Dear Jesus, I strove that day with every ounce of human effort I could muster. And to no avail. And I’m convinced that Jesus meant for exactly that to happen. For me to strive, fail.... and then find Him in the simple obedience of one foot in front of the other across the street. No expectations or goals. Just obedience. 

I had still been rummaging through this old tool bag, the one I had lugged back with me from a life overseas, convincing myself that these tools were indeed useful for this season of life.  How could they not be? But it turns out that a tourniquet for a scraped knee was a bit excessive. And this machete was of little value in this desert terrain. 

No, I would need to trade these more primitive (though once appropriate) tools in for more suitable ones. Like maybe a pencil and a notebook to process the journey thus far. Maybe band-aids and long walks behind my kids riding freely on their bicycles. Perhaps quiet moments with Jesus without the world falling in around us. All tools that were not readily available before, in the hostile and demanding terrain of jungle life. 

I can stop all the striving now and live here. I can be present and it doesn’t negate the past. My life can not look like I ever thought it would and yet I can find Jesus here, too, patiently speaking to me. 

Two years of Him whispering. 

Not long after we moved here, He gave me a verse

“I labor for this, striving with His strength that works powerfully in me.” (Colossians 1.29)

I didn’t pay much attention to it, honestly. I read it and read it and knew it meant something for me, but I wasn’t ready yet to cease my striving so I wrote it on a chalk board and put it above the kitchen sink. I think only now it’s sinking in: 

It’s by His strength in me that anything is ever accomplished through me. 

How basic is that? (And how hardheaded must I be for it to take this long?) 

Oh, He’s a patient God. And from here on I choose to imperfectly cease from striving. To “let it be” as the Beatles so wisely admonished us. To take a step when I should and wait when I shouldn’t. Because one day I’ll need to trade out these tools for new ones as well. And He'll equip me anew. 

But for now, these are just the ones I need. 

Missionary Rehab

I sat alone in our new-to-us car and I banged my hands on the steering wheel and yelled at God that I was angry that this was happening. That I didn’t want this car or these plans or these good-byes.  I let Him know straight up that it was unfair because we had planned our life there in the Amazon. We sold all of our stuff four years ago, REMEMBER?! That was because the jungle was supposed to be our new forever home. Tears flowed to the point that my heart physically ached in my chest and my breath caught in my throat.

It was an ugly cry, y’all. I’m glad no one else was there because you can’t unsee that.

And I want to tell you that after that I was better. I really want to say that one good cry and BAM! the Holy Spirit washed me with a renewed confidence in His goodness and sovereignty and that I was suddenly a well-adapted protégé of our missionary forefathers, full of faith and trust in an all knowing, all sufficient God. {Insert Sunday morning fake smile here.}

Instead I’m in counseling because some days I. just. can’t.

It’s missionary rehab, if you will.

I sat in the parking lot before my first session and almost had a straight up panic attack. I was sniffing essential oils like an addict and texting Richard so that I didn’t talk myself out of it. “What kind of missionary needs counseling?” Right?

My first session was an hour and a half long. About an hour in, I paused after spilling the overview of our life for the last four years all over her in addition to filling a few tissues with snot and tears. I just sort of stared at her.

She calmly listened, handing me a new kleenex as needed. Bless her soul. She’s a good one.

Her words: “I think if I got down one of my books on traumatic life events from my shelf, you would be able to check nearly all of them off the list and then some. It’s a miracle of God that you and your family survived many of those situations independently, much less all of them. Rest in that truth that it’s ok to be in this place of fear, anxiety, and confusion. It’s not the end.”

My instinct was, “Don’t patronize me. You don’t know my life.”

Defensive.

But then I realized she wasn’t. (And I had in fact just shared with her much of my life... soooo she kinda did know my life...) The reason I was sitting in her office was because we’d gone through some legitimately traumatizing things and that was ok. There was healing and hope still.  Breath of fresh air.

I went back the following week and then the following three weeks and it’s been both painful and healing. Because something happens when we are honest about our pain and we talk through the trauma in light of Hope.

After the difficulties of our adoption and the isolation we experienced those first two years among other things, I developed an anxiety disorder that’s only increased in intensity since being Stateside. After all, you don’t get to leave the country for four years and maintain relationships the way they used to be, especially in a region with internet access comprable to that of 1999. Even more so relationships that were severed due to others’ lack of understanding of life there and differences in preference. Now I find myself in the city where I was born and raised with no close friendships.

It’s a very strange place to be.

The abrupt (to us) ending of our time overseas makes me feel much like Moses on the mountain staring at the Promised Land but not actually getting to enter it. We walked some deep, dark valleys and only in the last six months of our time there did we finally begin to see buds of fruit. A community of Believers uniting for the cause of Christ. Incredible, unexplicable things happening. Beautiful.

And then God said, “Move. You can’t stay here.”

And my heart feels the heaviness of leaving all that we have known and loved and pursued and sacrificed for, only to return to a wilderness of reverse culture shock and loneliness and not knowing even where to begin to share the incredible things that God has done and is doing there.

I went a solid two months without makeup because why? Tears are no respecters of mascara.

But there in that small room with the counselor who is an MK (missionary kid) herself, I can work through these emotions and she gives me perspective and hope.

My day to day is still very much a roller coaster of fear and anxiety. A simple decision at the grocery store can send me straight to the Cliff of Internal Meltdown (WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OPTIONS OF KETCHUP?!). Running into someone I knew in what feels like a previous life can make my heart pound so loud I can hear it louder than our conversation (WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT?!).

This is all new to me. But turns out that actually, it’s pretty standard if we read—truly read—through Scripture and even biographies of modern missions. Life is a series of planning our ways in faith and then holding them loosely. It’s a story of being human with all its inconsistencies and fears and doubts and short-sightedness and yet still trusting through it. And slowly but surely through each season that ultimately leads to surrender to Him in His perfect ways, we find ourselves more and more in His image. Our faith grows. Our trust in Him grows. We lose more of ourselves.

Elisabeth Elliot put it this way:

“There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of – if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory.”

So I figure if Elisabeth Elliot can say that, and she walked through some high flames, I can buckle down and trust that He really is that good and He is sovereign and I can throw to the wind like chaff from the wheat what others think and what fears may linger in my heart and I can lean hard into Him and trust that He’s never let us down and He sure isn’t going to start now. That His ways are truly higher than ours and I can not only rest in that but rejoice in that wholeheartedly as I look over the last four years and how it’s been proven true time and time again.

This process of letting go is so hard, but it’s also so. incredibly. beautiful.

Top Ten Highlights of 2013

I laid in bed this morning listening to the rain on the metal roof of our home, thinking about the past year and one thought kept resonating in my mind.

We are crazy.

Or at least this year almost made us that way. 

But by the grace of God, we are different people today that we were twelve short months ago—a little wiser, a little stronger, with a little more faith… and a little thinner.

Here are the top ten highlights of 2013, in no particular order:

1) Go West Young Man

Back in the spring we made the move from the east coast of Brazil (Recife) to the western border, where Colombia, Peru, and Brazil collide. We had every intention of moving into an Indian village, but literally two weeks before we moved, God slammed that door closed via the village chief changing his mind, leaving us with $3,500 worth of wood we had already purchased to build our home and 46 people with plane tickets ready to come help with the construction. You can read more about that and the details here.

Looking back, we see clearly how God orchestrated every detail to bring us right to the home we are in now. Thank you, Jesus.

2) Jungle Hosts

This year we had a total of 64 visitors from the US of A, from work teams to young couples exploring missions to friends wanting a good dose of Jungle life and lending a helping hand. Forty six of those were in a four week stretch! These teams were able to accomplish many work projects that we could not have finished on our own. They also provided spiritual encouragement… and a chance to speak English!!

Thank you to all who came and served. We hope that you left with more than just sunburns and worm meds ;)

3) A Teensy Tiny Dose of Aviation

We don’t yet have a helicopter down here (stay tuned for future plans!!), but Richard had the privilege to fly our partnering missionary’s airplane on two separate occasions. He very first jungle flight was to deliver water filters to a village in Peru. It “just so happened” that we had 17 filters to deliver and there were 17 families. (Pretty sure God had that planned out.)

The second was a medical flight for a woman who had had a c-section because her husband had kicked her in her belly, killing one of the twin babies inside. She was bleeding at the incision site. Richard was able to bring her to a hospital where she could receive treatment.

While it’s been challenging for Richard to be absent from aviation for this long, we know that God is cooking something up for the future. Doors are opening and we are praying for wisdom as we raise the necessary funds in 2014.

4) Putting That Medical Training to Good Use

We were blessed to be able to go through Equip International’s Missionary Medical Intensives course before we came here to the Jungle. The knowledge we gained from those twelve days has been invaluable during our time here. We have treated deep cuts, rashes, tropical ulcers, parasites, tropical diseases, whooping cough, monkey and spider bites, aided in the treatment of Tuberculosis and the list goes on. We have used countless band-aids and yards of coban wrap. We’ve had the opportunity to teach natural alternatives to medicine and health and hygiene for community health.

It’s been a humbling experience to be the hands and feet of the Great Physician, the only one who can truly heal. Amazing.

5) Disciples Making Disciples

Back in January, Richard met a young couple who welcomedtheir first child at the Indigenous Seminary. We had no idea at the time how God would weave this family into our own. 

In June, we received word that Alberto, the father, was nearly dead with TB. Prompted to action by the Holy Spirit, we paid to have him brought here to Benjamin to get treatment. We are friends with the owner of the hotel here in town and she allowed him to stay for three weeks where we used natural treatments to get his body in a state to undergo the antibiotic regime he needed.

Fast-forward to August and we felt God leading us to hostthem in our own home, to do life with them, teaching them, learning from them.

Five months later, we praise God as we see how we have all grown spiritually through this time together. We see how they have overcome cultural hurdles to show physical affection to their daughter. We have seen them open up to us as friends and fellow believers. They have watched us stumble and we have watched them fight against what the Holy Spirit is leading and we have seen how those experiences have been used to mold us more into the image of Christ.

It’s been hard. I won’t lie. You take two COMPLETELY different cultures and put them in the same house, you’re going to have struggles. But how amazing to watch as God conforms us more into His image through these trials and experiences. Only a God as big as ours could pull that one off.

6) House or Hotel?

There have been times throughout this year that we have asked ourselves, “Is this a house we live in or a hotel?” Between the teams, our discipleship family, and our Indian friends, we have had visitors all but about 4 weeks out of the entire almost ten months we have lived here.

Whoa. 

But we praise God that we have the capacity to host, especially to our Indian friends who need a safe place when they are passing through. What an INCREDIBLE opportunity we have had to sit on the floor and listen to the stories of our brothers and sisters in Christ from cultures so different from our own. From what we can count, we have had Indians from three countries and seven different tribes sit and share a meal and a story with us. Unbelievable.

It’s been a stretching experience, no doubt. There have been times I have thought I might lose my mind. God is constantly teaching us selflessness, to have a servant’s heart, and patience. Worth it, for sure.

7) Our Brown Eyed Daughter

We’ve always wanted to adopt. We’ve talked about it since we were teenagers.

But we sure didn’t expect to do it during our first year on the mission field!!

That’s how God works sometimes, though, and we are so thankful. When this little girl first showed up at our front door, I fell in love. Richard knew it and he too was soon smitten. Don’t ask me how a dirty, disobedient, smelly, nearly toothless little girl off the street with life experiences no one should have could capture our heart, but she did.

Through a series of events, this little girl took up residence in our home on August 23 and we began the process to give her our last name. It’s been, without a doubt, the most difficult months of our lives. There have been days that we have asked ourselves, “What have we done???”

But what a transformation we have seen!! That dirty little girl from the street is now a beautiful, loving child whose heart has beentransformed by the Holy Spirit. 

A beautiful picture of God’s redemption story in each of our lives.

Amazing.

8) In Our Spare Time, Let’s Start a Children’s Home

While we have had the privilege of making Mariclene our own, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other kids on the streets of this small town in need of a safe place. Not long after we moved here, we met our neighbor Rosa. She has been a GOD-SEND in our lives and we, quite frankly, probably wouldn’t have survived this long without her and her servant’s heart. True story. Anyway, she has a heart for children, so our wheels started turning.

For months we planned, prayed, schemed. Fast-forward and earlier this month God miraculously provided the funds to purchase a small home to start the first ever children’s home in Benjamin Constant. WOOHOO!!

We have a ways to go before it will be an operating home, taking in abused and abandoned children, but the work is underway. God is so good!!

9) A Trip to the States

In July we were able to go to the States for a 10 day visit. We are so thankful that God gave us this time with family and friends since our furlough that was planned form October was delayed due to the adoption.

God’s good to give us those little blessings.

10) We Survived

That’s sort of how we feel at this point.

They say your first year on the mission field is hard. They are just being nice. It’s harder.

But looking back at all that we have gone through, learned, experienced, we can truly say that we are thankful for the trials because without them there is no victory.

We’ve cried. We’ve been overwhelmed. We’ve been lonely. We’ve wanted to give up .

We’ve had people we thought were friends turn their backs on us. We’ve had things said about us that weren’t true. We’ve poured ourselves into others just to watch them go down the wrong path...

And it taught us to forgive. It taught us to love better. It taught us that we are sinners, too.

It taught us that it is God that sustains us.

Through the tears and laughter, trials and victories, ups and downs, God is good.

Thanks for walking this journey with us. 

Here's to another great year in 2014.

Out of Place, But In Place

I sat there watching Elliott as he slid down the slide, face first of course, and rolled off the end in a very dramatic barrel-roll kind of way. He got the biggest smile on his face and just laughed as he ran around to do it all over again for probably the twentieth time. He was in his own little world and only paused occasionally to wave at me, making sure I was just as impressed with him as he was. (I was, for the record :)

I admire his ability to adapt so quickly. He calls everyone his size a "friend" and doesn't think twice about those odd looks that children give each other as they observe other tiny people. He's wide-open and ambitious, and I love that.

Me, on the other hand, I felt very out of place in this little playground in the middle of the mall where moms were chatting and children screaming and babies nursing and pregnant bellies peeking out of jackets. I felt very out of place as I heard moms exchanging recipes and talking about the next play date or their most recent coupon deal. I can't remember the last time I went all-out grocery shopping, much less clipped a coupon and mom get-togethers are a rare occurrence for me.

My mind went back to last week when I had the same out-of-place feeling in a very different setting.

I was walking down the muddy embankment to wash my clothes in the Amazon river. I could hear the tall grass shaking as little lizards and, yes, snakes scurried away. I carefully eased onto the slippery "bolsa" (dock) and began rinsing my clothes in water that, when Stateside, I wouldn't even wash my dog in. As I leaned over to scoop up more water, I could feel the heat of the sun toasting my skin.

About that time a canoe full of Indians went past. I imagine that they weren't accustomed to seeing a pasty white woman scrubbing clothes on the bank of the river so they all stared, nudging one another to make sure that everyone got a good look. They literally didn't take their eyes off of me until I was out of sight. No one waved, no one smiled. They just stared. It's what Indians do.

And I felt very out of place.

I started talking to God about it.

"Um, You saw that, right God?" I asked Him. "I just want to be sure because sometimes I wonder why, if you knew that you were going to send me to the Amazon one day, that you would make me so different looking. Why would you give me light eyes and hair and skin? It's not that I'm upset about it, I just really do wonder why..."

He didn't really answer, in case you're wondering. And He didn't answer me at the playground yesterday when I asked why I felt so disconnected with other moms here in the States, even though I do look like them.

I know that part of it is due to the fact that we travel so much that I don't have a chance to connect on a deep level with other moms, here or in the Jung|e. That's a big part.

Richard says it's God's preparation for when we move deep into the Jung|e and I don't have access to constant communication and therefore I don't learn to depend on it. There's truth in that, too.

And maybe a little part of it is because God knows me really well and He knows that if I ever get too comfortable, it's hard for me to move. If I every really lock into a comfort zone, I don't make a lot of effort to go above and beyond for Him. It's just easier not to.

But whatever the reason, I know He has one. And even if I feel out of place physically, I know I'm ultimately in place in His plan. And even though it's a tough pill to swallow sometimes, His grace is sufficient.

He's just good like that.

Honestly...

Honestly, sometimes I would rather read a book about God than actually read God's book.

I struggle with this a lot. I know it's a heart issue and it doesn't make sense in the big picture. But right now it's true and it's what I must confess and intentionally allow the Holy Spirit to change in me.

I look back at times in my life when the Bible was my source of life and strength. I longed to read it and soaked it in like a sponge. But not right now.

God, help me.