An Open Letter to My On-the-Field Sisters
Dear friends, Today I wore a fancy necklace. It’s just cheap costume jewelry, but it belongs to a heart sister who left it for me to wear while she’s in the States for a year, so I would think of her. That’s part of why I wore it, but also because it goes well with the flour under my fingernails and the dirt between my toes, and some days I just need to be reminded that I’m the King’s daughter. It glinted in the sunshine as I walked my youngest to school through rainy season puddles. It laid precious heavy against my chest as I chatted with some of you at the store’s meat counter and when I bought six guavas and a pile of lemons from the friendly old woman whose slurred words are hard to catch. My little one climbed up on a chair and played with it and leaned...
Read MoreThe Chronic Fixer
It started with a purple popsicle. At least that’s my first memory of something that would become one of my biggest life struggles. My sister Faith was five and I was eight, and our family had just moved to the Philippines. We were leaving church when a vendor pedaled up with his bike-mounted cooler and propped open the lid to show us his wares. Everything still felt unfamiliar, but this… This we knew. Popsicles are a universal language. I picked a bright orange one, melon-flavored I think, and Faith chose purple. We thought it was grape. It looked grape. But in this strange, new place it turned out to be a strange, new flavor. Purple sweet potato. Overwhelmed by too much new in one day, she dissolved into pitiful tears. And I got mad. I wanted to smack the...
Read MoreScars and Stories
The wooden floor in our dining room is scratched from years and years of chairs being pulled up to the table. It’s not pretty. The varnish is peeling, and the discolored planks are grooved deep. This floor has stories written across its grain, generations of stories of missionary families from all over the world who have lived here. Bare little feet running in at dinner time, conversations in Japanese and English and Tok Pisin, homework and letters home and family game nights. Every scar in the wood has history. Scars have always intrigued me. They speak of life lived and lessons hard learned. I have a shiny white one on my left foot from when I was eleven and thought mud sliding in the garbage dump sounded like a good idea. (Lessons learned: broken glass is...
Read MoreLullaby
I recently wrote a poem for a dear friend who was returning to the U.K. for a few months to have a baby. As I was writing, though, I realized it was just as much for me… Lullaby The sky lays down its golden head On weary mountain height, And emerald fields in shameless spread Roll intimate and wild. His song pours over, in, and through And pulls us to His side. The Love that calls us all by name Says, “Rest, come rest, my child.” This broken day has broken us And laid us open wide, And here we’re held in Broken Hands With nothing left to hide. The Love that sees us as we are Sings peace into the night And gently lifts our eyes to His. “Come rest, come rest, my child.” “Come rest and lay the struggle down. Don’t...
Read MoreThe Long Promise
Well, friends, this week marks one year since we left the U.S. for PNG. People told us that the first year on the field can be especially hard, and we definitely found that to be true. Months of transition, breath-stealing homesickness, feeling overwhelmed in new ministry roles, culture shock, and other unexpected difficulties came to a head for me in September. I was a mess. For a time, I wasn’t even sure we could continue here. Some parts of our stories aren’t pretty. Yeah, even missionaries. But those parts need to be told, too, because it’s there in the raw mess that the God who makes all things new gently, slowly picks up our scattered pieces and restores us and peels back the healing layers to show His glory… The Long Promise She was old and weary,...
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