Who Does He Say You Are?

I recently finished reading “Who Does He Say You Are?” by Colleen C. Mitchell. I started reading the book many months ago but put it down right before the chapter on Martha and Mary of Bethany. I rarely agree with people’s interpretations of them and decided to quit the book before being disappointed. Well, thank you Holy Spirit and my wrong judgement because I picked the book up again this week and finished it with great love for every page. It would not have had as great of an effect on me had I finished it before this very week. I have said many times on this journey that the Holy Spirit has worked hard on me through the different books I’ve read in this last year. Some I pick up and then put down only to finish it later at just the right timing.

I highly recommend this book to all women.

Colleen goes through different women of the Gospels and analyzes Jesus’ relationship with them and relates it back to us through her own personal stories. It’s a wonderful book. The morning after I finished it I was eager to tell Brooke Summers about it (Co-Director of FMC) because I was sure she would like it and imagine my surprise when she told me that the author, Colleen Mitchell, used to be an FMC missionary! Very neat.

I want to leave you with these excerpts on Mary Magdelene that made my heart sing. I have long had a great love for and connection to Mary Magdalene. I don’t know why but there’s something I find so powerful about her love for her teacher and I like to think of her whenever I’m having a harder time in my relationship with Jesus. When I think of her love and admiration for him, it’s hard to not have those feelings spill over to myself.

“Mary Magdalene bears the Good News to the Good News bearers. She is the first to know resurrection joy and the first to share it. […] We can feel the joy of his presence and recognize the sound of his voice, and whether or not we delve into the deepest theological mysteries, we know how to obey him. This is the call of an apostle of the heart. […] You proclaim just what he has asked you to proclaim, and you do it with great joy, because you know well what you have seen and heard. You know this Jesus, your “Rabbouni,” and there is no doubt that you “have seen the Lord.” […] Each step we take into deeper, more intimate friendship with Jesus leads us to a fuller knowledge of the joy that is ours in him. And each increase in joy overflows into a command to go out and proclaim the Good News. The world was changed because one woman did just that. Imagine what might happen if all of us followed in the footsteps of Mary Magdelene, charging out into the world as apostles of resurrection joy, proclaiming that we have seen the Lord.”

WOW! Oh how refreshing to read someone write something about Mary Magdalene that so beautifully expresses the love I feel for her and her joy.

I too have found that joy in Him.

Rabbouni, Lover of my Soul, friend, I am a new creation in you. Help me to always recognize your voice when you call my name. Fill my heart with such joy so that I must respond by proclaiming the Good News to all.

 

The Temptation to Diminish

There is a great temptation I feel—to not admit to my happiness, to self-deprecate, to not shout praise in how much I love our little (short-term) home, to not freely admit how good it feels to be here, to hold back my smile a little, to pretend I’m not bursting with joy.

I don’t want to do that anymore though.

So I’m going to lay it out in all of its complete truthfulness – I will miss home, Charleston, forever. I will never not want to cry when I think about the sadness I caused my mom. I will always wish I could make it not hurt for her. I will have massive moments of home sickness. I will even miss my job and “normal” life schedule at times. I will miss many things and my love for the things, places, and people I left is no less because of my decision to leave in following God’s call.

But.

I am full of joy. I am not just fine. I am GOOD. I am GREAT. I will have so many hard days in front of me and probably many hours and days that I’ll wish I could just crawl back home and take it all back. Or at least that thought may come to mind once or twice. Haha. But right now, I’m happy. I have a happiness and contentment I’m not sure I’ve ever felt.

There’s a very strong part of me that has felt awful to say that out loud. I’m so scared that it will hurt someone’s feelings as if my joy means I miss them any less. It doesn’t.

When you ask, I’m going to say it. When I write blog posts about what’s going on here, I’m not going to hold back. When I look in the mirror, I’m not going to think less of myself anymore.

I am happy.

I have for so long felt a discontent about many things in my life and have never been able to find an answer to fix the discontent or been able to be content despite many prayers and laments to God to help me just be and be happy.

When we went to General Cepeda, Mexico last year Kent and I were walking down the sidewalk one day and I just looked at him and said, “I’m so happy here. A happiness I’ve never known!” And he felt the same way. But I went home and I let fear and GUILT for that feeling take ahold of me and almost choke the life right out of me and our marriage.

Thank you, Lover of My Soul, for not giving up on me. For continuing to call me and push me and love me until I had the courage to say YES.

We went to Haiti this past July in part to see the Davis family, in part to have a new experience in a harder mission post to test us, and in part to test out whether the happiness we felt was that particular mission trip in Mexico (2 hour siestas everyday can definitely make anyone happy for a little while) or if just maybe the happiness we found was in being at the center of His will for us, even if that wasn’t how we had planned our lives and where we had hoped our happiness be.

My happiness is in Him. My happiness is in the freedom that comes with being directly in the center of His will. My happiness is in His presence, in His love, and in saying YES to His call. No matter the price, no matter the hardship, no matter the unnecessary self-imposed guilt, no matter the sacrifice that comes in leaving my friends, my parents, my job, and my home- these all add up to nothing compared to His sacrifice and love for me.

I’m walking away from my guilt. In fact, I think I’ve probably done a great disservice by expressing any guilt. How can anyone back home find peace and be happy for me if I’m too scared to even admit my happiness? It helps no one for me to walk shrunken like I’m not worthy to be happy.

So here I am. You know the funny thing about extreme happiness is that it can bring you to tears as easily as sadness. I have had many happy tears. Not because I left home or because I don’t have to work a “job” right now or because I love anyone less, but simply because I followed His will.

I hope you will pray with me that this happiness may stay with me and with Kent and with Jeremiah. That in the hard times we always remember where our happiness lies. That the joy of following Him will burst out of us as we go to proclaim Him wherever He leads us.

By His Wounds Ours Are Healed

In these first couple weeks of training we have been emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted.

Sometimes one at a time and sometimes all at once. We have been challenged in every aspect of our faith- how we live it, what we believe, how we pray, when we pray, what we pray, what we’re here for, how we accept God’s love, etc. It is a good and holy-challenged feeling.

We started off with a Healing Retreat. What do we need healing for in the first week? Well apparently, our whole life. Sounds kind of absurd and it seemed strange to be the first thing we’d do, but how quickly we learned the need for healing in our lives (for big and small things; past, present, and future).

I think there is a huge misconception amongst friends, family, and those we meet that we and other missionaries must have some crazy awesome relationship with God to have said yes to this. That we’ve figured it all out, we never miss a chance to pray or go to mass, and we’d go to the ends of the earth for Him if he’d ask. While the last thing in there is true, the preceding ones are not always as much.

In life I have learned to have a great hope in and yearning for God’s love as well as obedience to doing what He asks of me. My love and obedience has allowed me the courage to say yes to foreign missions. But we all get here differently and not always with rocking great prayer lives. Some of us (ahem, all of us) have views of our Father’s love that need to be challenged and revisited. Our views on what love is or isn’t are created young- primarily by our parents (their relationship to us and their relationship with each other), but it also includes friends and other family members. Our views on love are constantly changing. Thank God because many of us don’t start out with a perfectly well-rounded view of it! Probably most of us don’t. Your parents might be near-Saints but child rearing is hard, life is messy, and we rarely get out without a few wounds that need to be addressed.

I’m thankful FMC (Family Missions Company) has recognized that and taken the time to address this in the very first week.

As such the first week was a bit more relaxed in the evenings than future weeks will be. We had a Cajun Night (Cajun band and alligator dinner!), Splash Day at a local park, and a Pool Party at one of the local Board of Director’s homes, which I will share pictures and video of. It’s easy to take pictures of all the fun stuff so I hope you all understand that there were many hours in talks, prayer, and small group that week that I’m definitely not taking a camera into! 😊 The amount of emotional work we put in that first week was enough to make you beg for a naptime and we were all very thankful to have fun nighttime events to look forward to.

We certainly didn’t come to Intake expecting to deal with some of these things, nevertheless in the first few days, but WOW how amazing it was.

In recognizing and working through our individual woundedness, coming to grips with Jesus’ great love for us – his delight in us – and working on creating better prayer habits, we are able to more freely move forward with the rest of our missionary training in His presence and by His grace.