| Being a missionary can be a really humbling job. In a cross-cultural situation, it is hard to hide our flaws from anyone. Our fellow missionaries know all the good and bad about us. They will inevitably witness us having a culture shock-induced breakdown or have to correct us on some egregious cultural error we’ve made or be way more aware of the status of our bowels than we ever wanted anyone to be.
The people to whom we came to minister also see our flaws in stark reality. We make so many mistakes in our interactions with them, and it can be hard to forgive ourselves for these blunders if we came here expecting to be heroes. We got into this job hoping to bless and give to others, but so often we turn out to be more of a burden than a help, and it is the nationals who end up ministering to us.
Culture stress and the deep self-examination that naturally occurs during a major life change can also bring out some ugly feelings and thoughts inside of us. Anger, doubt, and discouragement can cause any issue within us to surface. We sometimes feel that we are hopeless, making no significant progress in holiness, that perhaps we are disappointing God.
According to our fellow missionaries, all these thoughts are normal. But how do we deal with them? How do we handle our mistakes and our frequent setbacks?
As is often the case, grace is the answer. We must be ready to extend grace to those around us – to our missionary teammates and to the people of our host culture. And what is just as important – and probably even more difficult – we have to become proficient at accepting grace.
Acknowledging that we need grace from others is so counter to our American culture, which plants within us statements like “I won’t accept charity,” “I don’t need your pity”, and “I ain’t gonna be beholden to nobody!”
It is hard to accept grace because we would much rather just be perfect and not need grace in the first place. But while it might be possible in our home culture to pretend we can handle things on our own, here on the field, such pretensions quickly fall away. There is no point denying that we need grace – grace from our teammates, who love us despite our flaws – grace from the nationals, who don’t understand why we do what we do, but often decide to bear with us anyway – and grace from God, who has never expected us to be heroes. He knows that we are but dust, and He is not surprised when we stumble or fall or make only mediocre progress.
Sometimes we have to let go of the expectation that God will do great things through us and simply accept the work He is doing in us, molding us into people after His own heart.
It is breathing in His grace day after day that allows us to breathe it out to those around us, and to let them do the same for us. Whatever else may happen to or through or in spite of us, I believe that this is the life for which we were intended. |
