Mourning a path and gardening willingness

This is the week I was supposed to move to Papua New Guinea. ..Was supposed to get on a plane and leave everything behind but the relationships sending me, all my family and friends tethering me with love to this place. ..Was supposed to fly in multiple stages across datelines and timezones to a mountainous land throbbing from the ground with groans of longing for the Word in their languages...

I feel it pulse under my skin, everything put on hold, a twelve-year process prolonged into waiting once again.

And there is deep sadness in that, sorrow that some weakness in my physical body could explode into such severity now, and delay me from this work that I have felt my Lord tug at me about for more than half my years. Maybe it’s the steroids, but I find myself weeping often now, grasping to grieve for the scariness that November in the hospital was, for the confusion caused by getting so close to launching into Language Survey and then hearing God’s clear “No, still not yet.”

But that’s not quite it, maybe not quite true enough. I find myself grieving for the ifs. It’s too soon to know, but I find my soul reaching for answers about what things can be like once I’m in remission again——will it be possible to be a surveyor still, or will I need to do less physical roles in the Bible translation process? Will the Third World ever open up as an option again, or will these medicines (immuno-suppressants) be God’s tools of redirection, bringing me to work in a country I didn’t expect?  If it can no longer be Papua New Guinea, why did God spend all that time moving me in that direction, researching these people and their languages, investing in this Survey team, and creating a passion in me for the work He is doing there?——the questions can go on an on, but even they only scratch the surface, as it's more complicated than that. I can SEE God weaving together intricate stories that require more complexity, more ambiguity and waiting on Him than I'm comfortable with, but His results are always better than I can dream up, and the answers to those questions aren't the point..

Maybe more than this, then, I am grieving for how I can be so fully sold, so completely the property of my Jesus, and then still find willfulness in me that—in a tiny corner of my most honest and bare soul—hopes for my vision of things, my understanding, more than I fling myself at His feet to do whatever He pleases. Because He is most concerned with the conversation. There is no doubt that He will win. There is no doubt that all will hear, and He is mobilizing everyone who is willing to form the lines that will march forward with His healing, His breath, His salvation for every tribe and tongue. But more than just this end result, He uses every sorrow, every delay, every fog-enshrouded question mark, tear, and crumple to draw us and everyone around us into His lap, and to cultivate in us every good thing that cannot be there without whatever furnace He has brought us to. His sovereignty demands that I redefine everything—that if He allows it, that I should then call it Good, and open up my whole being to being drenched by that fire so we can continue on our way, refined and sharpened, and not consumed (Isaiah 43:2). He is fiercely committed to exacting every small rebirth of ferocious trust in us that will come from changing our plans, that will come from a million little deaths during our lifetimes, a million little lettings-go, even when He authored the direction of those plans in the first place (John 12:24). He loves me enough to forge an evermore iron-clad trust even when that process hurts.

So this week I grieve with my ribcage cracked open. I unlock that chamber so alter-flames can lick this heart with fiery tongues, can lap up disappointment and fear of loss, can dress every physical wound and every veins’ ache, can let in every EXTRAVAGANT joy that God has placed in my life in this season and every need that is before me right here, remembering that trusting Him is worth immeasurably more to Him than ministering for Him in any particular way. One will ALWAYS lead to the other (trust and love leading to ministry and worship), but He will zealously continue refining my trust until I am a closely-knit-to-Him shadow, turning on a dime, pouring Him out in the most unexpected ways and places, following His dancing Image more closely and with more abandon than I did before. Amen.

What I'm learning outside of class...

Okay. So here’s some straight-talk — the vulnerable, confessional kind that I’ll feel itchy about when I hit “post” :)…

I’ve been here for almost a month already! How very good these weeks have been, so full of joy, new ideas to consider, digest, and operate from, but whelming in task-volume, weighty in function, and wearying in sheer speed.

The first two weeks of classes found me ecstatic with learning but drowning in spite of my efforts to juggle everything… I’d underestimated the combination of these two dense courses, an on-campus job every evening, and my work with Wycliffe to be in touch with and update partners and generally prepare for my future work on the field in all the non-academic ways... My mind had been repeatedly boxing with the time-limitations I’d come crashing into, and the four hours of sleep a night were spiraling quickly into frazzlement (surely, this is a word!)!

By the end of the first week, God had my undivided attention, as I pushed to seek Him on “how to do all of this—how to prepare well, with devotion and gusto, and still be sane?!”  How odd that I wasn’t prepared for the answer, still…..

               —This missionary thing… my goodness, it takes so much getting used to, so much rewriting of our ingrained American culture and instincts. As I sought God’s wisdom in my frustration, He began to reiterate the shift He’s been executing in my life – absolute plate tectonics – voluntary No Man’s Land…  His whispered reply was:

“I brought you here to study, to learn from community and to prepare academically. You added work, dearone, you wanted to plan for every grocery and display financial wisdom in advance, but you are no longer living that life. This new life of yours involves trusting you will be fed, praying when you have a need, and learning to ask; not striving on the side in something I haven’t appointed for you to focus on right now… It is time, Little One.”

This correction is difficult.

It moves me from something I know to be good (working to provide for ourselves) to something unknown, invisible, something that feels dangling to us “responsible folk”… And I’ve been stepping into living on the support of the Church and the community, family, and friends that are permitting and enabling me to be one of their ambassadors of Christ, but with training wheels until now. I hadn’t even realized that I hadn’t fully let go; that I was clutching a little at my part-time work that made this “a little less scary”.

And then, Messiah turns up the heat of preparation, mercifully allows me to come to the place of abandon with my stubborn heart on its own, and in my shaky exertion, once again shows me where I’ve been holding on to things that are good, but are just not for now.

And the exceptional part is this——immediately after bringing me to this realization, and after I wrote to my supervisors to discuss stepping down from this job (though no one else was told of my need or struggle!), I received, in incremental notifications, the announcement that two of my current financial partners were increasing their support, and that there were two new one-time gifts coming in from others this month… This support equaled the amount of income needed for the rest of June that I would be walking away from by leaving the job!…  His goodness—ahh!!—how silly that we worry at all! But I am learning…

SO, if you think of it, keep praying for this journey for me, and I for you, that we might be so wrapped up in Him that what’s for now can be nimbly redirected at a moment as He keeps us engulfed in His voice, His presence, and His perfectly unhurried unfoldings, as we wait to see how He will provide each next time…

.

ROAD TRIP! - Part II

As I left our party for Oma that evening, my heart pulsed with the voices of my family——voices of energetic children, the sweet singing of my Oma's voice, as she metered-out the beat of a hymn with her dancing pointer-finger, and the kind, quivering voices that lifted me up in prayer at the end of the night to a Father that hears every quiet syllable...

I   will   never   forget   it.

Lately, in a serene, steady way, Luke 2:19 swirls in my mind: "But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart". I'm certainly not Mary, and not undertaking the weighty journey that she walked, but I find this progress towards the mission field is pregnant in it's own way; it is a season of waiting, planning, and dreaming, full of growth, growing pains, and a million little moments gathering up in my heart, and they are good.

The second leg of this trip was just as full of that... priceless togetherness, and my family members' intentionality, fleshed out in so many beautiful ways that will stick with me all the days of my life: my thoughtful Tante keeping me company on the route between Hamptonville and Garner, an impromptu Birthday party for Krissy and I, a Garner-Wondracek family dinner, blessed evening time with just Tante Eve and Onkel Mirvan, and a breakfast with my cousin Paul. I don't have words for these million moments, but hear me that they are so deeply, meticulously, lovingly stored up and treasured.

        

A spontaneous Birthday party thrown by my
thoughtful Tante for the 31 year old twins!

Cousins!

Passed by a street sign commemorating
one of my earliest missionary inspirations

When it was time to leave my family, I drove three hours to Charlotte for the last leg of my trip~

With the last destination, I got to meet a friend that I've known through Skype for almost a year! Diane is also a member of Wycliffe and worked with me through 2012 when I was in the membership application process. She interviewed me, answered my questions, and patiently walked me through narrowing down which country I would serve in.  It was delightful to meet for coffee, to talk face-to-face with my dear guide.

When I left the Starbucks, I got to meet up with precious nearly-family that I grew up with in NY for my last night in North Carolina. Pastor Prado is one of my spiritual fathers, and it was a keen joy to sit for a meal with the Prado family, chatting with grandchildren, and praying for one another. 

All of these moments gather with the others, a heart thrumming with a satchel of things to ponder.

ROAD TRIP! - Part I

January brought me the supreme treat of getting to hit the road to spend some time with family and friends in North Carolina! It had been a long time since I'd seen most of my extended family and some dear friends that live close, so I set out with the goal of making a huge arc, from Atlanta to Asheville, Asheville to Hamptonville, Hamtponville to Garner and Raleigh, and from there to Charlotte and home again~

The trip was fantastic, emotional, and filling. It was so good for my heart to have TIME—time to drive through icy mountains that looked like they were hemmed in only by snowy clouds on the right, time to listen to music and pray as I drove, time to hold an almost-six month Peter-baby and to catch up with one of my favorite families and closest friends since college—even time for us to curl up on couches with dogs and to learn to knit~  During this first leg of the trip, I took walks, bundling in borrowed hats and extra layers, found some Asheville barbecue, and just generally soaked in the presence of some of the Biards and Freels. Take a peak..

 

 

My borrowed tuque, colors, and coats~

Jacob getting a ride from Nona!

The next leg brought me to my Oma's house, where we were all planning to converge for her 94th Birthday! It was very nearly a surprise, but Oma is a clever woman, and sweetly, excitedly, silently waited for everyone that could to show up! I drove in the night before the party and got to spend some precious hours with just Oma, Tante Magie and Onkel Erlo, and then the next day the home swelled with almost twenty family members—kids, grandkids and greatgrandkids! It was the very best kind of ruckus that exists... bustling cooks, boisterous conversations, a beaming grandmother, and delighted second-cousins running about.

   

Repairing the ruin in the year of favor

I finally know “what this year is to be called”…
A beautiful friend of mine has been whispering for months, “ask God what this year is about for you… He will give you a word to focus it in, a name to call it. He wants to narrow in and teach you, show you something specific.”

Already, just the 2^nd month in, and this has been an incredible year of blessing, of vision being sharpened and light spilling all over it. I feel God undergirding it—undergirding me—with Isaiah 61, which my ESV titles “The Year of the Lord’s Favor”… and so it is.

I want to come in the next few days and fill you in on a whole bunch of monumental boulder-movings that have occurred in the last few weeks for me, but in case you read this blog and you aren’t at my church where this was already circulated, I wanted to post this initial update and then go from there:


Notes from a Glad Ledge

I can almost feel my toes curling tight over the edge of the precipice; a jumpy anticipation poised in my spirit’s heels, it’s tummy full of butterflies, and elation burst-fisting its way out of the fortress of waiting I’ve lived in for years… 

I wish I could show you the million little moments that have led to this cliff, but this is the story of some of them, so that you will understand the beauty behind it when you see me hurtle off its height—

Ten years ago I “accidentally” took a Linguistics class.
God had begun nipping and tugging at small fibers of my heart, telling me I wasn’t for this place and that he was fashioning my compassion and preparing it to pour out into other cultures all the days of the rest of my life. As I went through college I felt the conflict of “wisdom” to choose studies that would lead to a job, and a job that would be a livelihood, but as I kept trying to choose ways to do this, God would wreck my heart with images of orphans, cultures I’d learn of that were flanked by oppression, and blatant demonstrations of the fact that He’d wired me to find no joy in things but to hunger to reach into people’s stories and do life with them.

At the same time that He slowly revealed this burning call to missions, I stumbled into this most-odd class that had its students playing scrabble with the International Phonetic Alphabet and learning concepts about how languages all over the world work. Almost every student with me found it to be the most boring, absurd class they’d ever taken, but I was lit up and intrigued! Over the course of the next year, I began looking into ways to combine these passions, which eventually led me to Bible Translation… As I started to research how God could use something like linguistics on the mission field, I found out that there are still about 340 million people that have no portion of the Bible accessible to them in their mother tongue—that’s more than 2,000 possible languages left.

I found this utterly overwhelming.

I have since witnessed deep caverns of darkness in people’s lives, footholds, sorrows, staggering lack where God’s heart longs to fill in and heal—but to imagine these millions of people with no Living Word, with no access to the Words, Spirit, and Breath that swoop in to redeem all brokenness—this felt like too much. I knew that whatever manner of loneliness I have ever felt in this life, I have always had a book of shelter—Words that save me, have loved me, have torn me out of sorrow and into a Kingdom that seeks to rescue. But so many don’t have it. This knowledge licked at all the tugged fibers like whipping flames, and I felt God’s purpose in me solidify: you are to fight for Me this way.

So I set to it—I took a trip to Ghana in ’04 with Wycliffe Bible Translators, and spent a summer exploring how one approaches the idea of translating God’s Word and how many different roles there are in that process. I met the most incredible missionaries, witnessed moonlight literacy meetings in the mountain village of Gekrong, and watched God expand my heart and shatter my worldview. In the weeks that I spent observing the work and seeking God’s voice on these new hopes, Christ spoke such confirmation and assurance into my being that I came home fiercely excited. I thought that I would just quickly work off my undergrad school loans and then launch into the 1-2 years of Linguistic training I would need to be ready to head to the mission field—

Eight fascinating years have plodded past instead, though.
I look back on that time and the care God put into planting certainty into my heart and can’t help but laugh at how much He knew I’d need that! I tumbled into working several jobs, took certification classes and became a teacher, walked with my family through some heartbreaking crises, and wrestled through a long, sharp season of sickness. Journal after journal from the last few years were slowly filled with passionate out-cries, scribbled reminders of what God told me ‘on the mountain top’, and jotted down prophecies and prayers that I received from the Body and the people in my homegroups.

Each year I would ask and pray “is this the one?”, and always He would whisper that the Kingdom is here, and the Kingdom is coming—now/not yet, my love—You are already on the mission field, and every bit of now is the training. I, Myself, am cultivating in you what you will need for this task.

 As the years wore on, and especially inside the one of sickness, people began to suggest other goals, saying that I would need to stay where doctor’s were easily accessible, and that surely I would be happier accepting that circumstances were different now and that maybe I’d misunderstood God’s will. Medical bills were added onto the stack, and although the determined fire for what God had written on me wouldn’t wane, I shoved up my sleeves, understanding that it would be years more than the eight that have already passed before I would work the last of the debt down now.
Carefully, painstakingly, God ushered dependence into me, humility that has bent wide His vision for the impossible to be completed. Slowly I submitted my expectations and timeline and begged that God teach me to be where He has me well, and to trust that He would make it bullhorn-clear when it was time to move forward.

This past year, in August, the “Deeper into Community” series broke my heart again, and I found God stirring my waiting up with the “Your Calling Takes Us Deeper” sermon. In September, I sat in the sanctuary afterwards and shivered as I felt God whisper “it’s coming”, and then grabbed at my journal so I would keep that moment, writing it down as the physical goose-bumps dissolved back into normal skin.  In October God asked me to give up the sickened sorrow that I was carrying from my hope deferred, and November poked at my held-breath when we tumbled into speaking of Rescue each week and mingled our post-it notes together on the curved sanctuary wall—all our dreams stated beside one another, interconnected.

By the end of the year, I sent a long email to the Wycliffe recruiter that I’ve spoken with for years. I updated her on the debt again and explained that I was in another one of those weeks where my soul tingled and God was keeping me up at night with dreams—She sent a note back with a prayer and signed off with “LORD MOVE THE BLOCKADE”. Three days later I got a phone call.

One of my dearest friends was on the other end of the line saying, “Monica, are you sitting? We have something to tell you.”

And this brings me back to that cliff that I mentioned—

Through the obedience and sheer generosity of other believers, God is moving the blockade. With a single swipe—out of my hands, more than I could ask for, more than I can swallow without fits of joyful laughter—God has suddenly led a couple to completely wipe out the last of my school debt!
In quick gusts of the last month, so many miracle-nudges have been set in motion, and now it looks like I may be moving this summer to one of the three training-program locations to get equipped for this mission.

So I dance on this brink with you, beside you, sweetly terrified, our whole souls thrumming to the shift God’s calling our Body of believers to—church planting, adoption, foster care, feeding the poor—His fingers, His ears, His arms brought to His waiting people, and also His mouth in their language to feed their hearts. And as we all hurtle off these peaks, I hear Him comforting me… every one of these cliffs is in the vast Land called Married (Isaiah 62); none of you are hurtling alone, and whatever distance is coming, for a long or short time, you belong to one another—I am making you into each others’ netting.