“Happiness, not in another place but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.”

  

A sense of “place is significant—significant physically, emotionally, and spiritually,’ writes Marilyn Gardner at A Life Overseas.

 

“As humans, at our core is a need for ‘place.’ Call it ‘belonging,’ call it ‘home,’ call it anything you like. But all of us are integrally connected to place,” she says.

During my first months in Lomalinda, I often found myself picturing what would have been happening at my “place” back home in Seattle. I compared Seattle’s weather to Lomalinda’s weather. The tastes of Seattle’s food to Lomalinda’s. The way Seattle’s smells compared to Lomalinda’s. Seattle’s ease of living compared to Lomalinda’s.

 

I wrote in my memoir that Lomalinda’s odors made me long for familiar smells—the perfume of fir trees in the rain, the aromas of Puget Sound and seaweed drying on the beach.

 

I wrote: “I compared Lomalinda to everything back home—red-orange soil instead of my dark foresty earth in Seattle; heavy, humid air and triple-digit temperatures pressing down on us instead of cool, fresh Pacific Northwest air.

 

“I wished for a North American grocery store, well-known flavors, paved roads, and a warm shower. While our temps soared, I missed the anticipation of autumn’s chilly, crisp days back in Seattle. Folks back home would soon pull out wool sweaters and scarves and socks but, in Lomalinda, we were shedding shoes and as many clothes as was decent. (From Chapter 9, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Later, I wrote:

 

“September turned to October. Back in Seattle, people would be inhaling familiar scents of gold-emblazoned maple leaves and hints of smoke from fireplace fires, and they’d be bundling up in sweaters and jackets to ward off autumn’s cool temperatures.

 

“But in Lomalinda, summer didn’t turn into fall into winter into spring. We had only two seasons, hot and humid, and hotter and arid.

 

“And so it was that in October, the annual five-month rainy season ended after dumping a hundred and fifty inches. Temperatures rose and muddy roads dried. (From Chapter 14, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

I wrote this about turning the next calendar page:

 

“November turned to December. Back home, Seattle would be a place of swollen clouds and rain, and frost once in a while. People would be wearing rain boots and raincoats and stocking caps and gloves.

 

“Family and friends would have recently gathered for Thanksgiving, a squally season when tempests stirred up wild seas and sent ferry boats bobbing and careening, when wind storms downed trees throughout the Puget Sound region, caused widespread power outages, left half-baked turkeys and pumpkin pies in cold ovens, and drew people together around fireplaces in homes perfumed by wood smoke.

 

“But Lomalinda was into the dry season with clean cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures rose to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering.

 

“The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving grasslands stiff and simmering under unrelenting sun.

 

“Muddy paths and single-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too.

 

“From sunrise to sundown, a strong wind blew across the llanos, a gift from God because it offered a little relief from the heat. On the other hand, we had to use rocks and paperweights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away.

 

“Dust blew through slatted windows and into homes and offices and settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses.  (From Chapter 16, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Yes, for the first few months, I compared my Seattle home with my new home in Lomalinda.

 

Looking back on that time,

I feel guilt over my too-slow struggle

to transition out of my Seattle life

and into my Lomalinda life.

 

But, given what Marilyn Gardner says next,

maybe I should extend a bit of grace to myself.

 

“When those places are taken away, we suffer from a ‘disruption’ of place,” Marilyn continues.

 

She gave words to what I was going through—

a ‘disruption’ of place. My battle had a name.

 

“The late Paul Tournier, a gifted Swiss psychologist . . . says that to be human is to need a place, to be rooted and attached to that place,” Marilyn says. “Many of us downplay this connection to place by over spiritualizing it or underestimating its importance.

 

“We need not dismiss it,” Marilyn says, “we need not idolize it; we must only acknowledge it and recognize it as valid.”

 

Oh, how I appreciate Marilyn’s perspective.

 

 

If you plan to move to the mission field,

read Marilyn’s words again.

I hope and pray her message

and what you find here at my blog

will prepare you for a good experience.

 

I wish my family and I had had a better pre-field orientation than we did, and I wish we’d had a better orientation than we did upon arriving in Lomalinda.

 

As a newcomer, I wish I’d known it was okay to still feel an attachment to my Seattle home. I wish I’d known it was a valid feeling and experience.

 

But since I didn’t, I felt guilty and defective, and I blindly stumbled through culture shock and transition out of it.

 

Reading Marilyn’s words lifts a burden. It sets me free.

 

And now, looking back, I recognize

God was literally doing what

Romans 8:28 says He does:

“God is able to orchestrate everything

to work toward something good and beautiful

when we love Him and accept His invitation

to live according to His plan” (The Voice).

 

He was helping me survive the ‘disruption’ of place—helping me gently separate from my most significant ‘place,’ my Seattle home—and He was making a way for me to find that sense of ‘belonging’ in Lomalinda.

 

Though hardly perceptible at the time, God was helping me become “rooted and attached” to Lomalinda.

 

He was helping me feel more comfortable in my new home.

 

God was leading me into new opportunities, offering me new perspectives, helping me grasp that there were other ways to do Life than I thought. He was offering me a new attitude. New goals, new joys.

 

God was gently, subtly doing a remarkable work

within and around me

during my initial weeks on the mission field.

A lot of good things were happening

that would eventually help me discover

Lomalinda was a good place to live.

 

God was helping me find “Happiness, not in another place but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.” (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass)

 

Noticing the good stuff, finding the joy

I began to notice more good stuff going on in Lomalinda.  

 

God was offering me new opportunities. He was offering me a new perspective, a new way to do Life. A new attitude. New goals.

It took me a few weeks to figure that out, but God patiently waited for me to notice. 

 

As Rachel Marie Martin said:

 

“Sometimes you have to let go of the picture

of what you thought life would be like

and learn to find joy in the story you are actually living.”

 

Rachel nailed it.

 

Finding the joy: During our first few days, I had longed for familiar faces, familiar voices, and especially familiar smells. But instead, only a strange odor had wafted through our windows—a thick, pungent, sweet, moist stink. Was it decay?

 

That sticky, moldering smell radiated out of the earth and crawled in the air and forced its way into our house and our noses and clung to our clothes and bedding and furniture. For days it had made my stomach sick and left me light-headed.

 

The dense, damp reeking of the place threatened to overpower me.

 

But then, a few weeks later, my nose adjusted—odors smelled less offensive. Hooray! (See my earlier post, I could only gasp, “Please, God, get me out of here!”)

 

Finding the joy: One of the blessings I noticed right away was that carrots and tomatoes tasted like real carrots and tomatoes, genuine flavors I recalled from childhood when people grew their own produce. What a welcome contrast they were compared to the carrots and tomatoes from grocery stores back in the States, which had little taste.

 

Finding the joy: Lomalinda was a place of brilliant flowers, shrubs, and trees. In our yard, we had a papaya tree, an avocado tree, a mango tree, and a lemon tree. Growing such trees back home in Seattle was unheard of. (Don’t miss my earlier post, Blooming where you’re planted.)

 

Finding the joy: Our first-grader, Matt, and our Kindergartener, Karen, loved school—their teachers and their classmates—and were excelling in their studies.

 

Finding the joy: Soon the teens (missionaries’ kids) got acquainted with Dave and his goofy humor. He taught them English, Psychology, History, and P.E.

 

But his most welcome contribution for the forty-two junior high and senior high students was new programs: drama, student newspaper, student council, and yearbook. Students and parents were delighted.

 

Right away Dave started work on three one-act plays and, after he gave out parts, the cast’s excitement was palpable.

 

By the middle of September, the school’s newspaper staff published their first issue. We weren’t sure what to expect but it turned out better than we imagined, and everyone’s pleasure showed.

 

Dave played soccer and softball with the teens on weekends, and they and their parents appreciated the energy and humor he brought to academics and athletics.

 

Still today, his former students reminisce about his teaching style and the way he related with them.

 

Yes, good stuff was happening in Lomalinda.

I was finding the joy.

What a welcome change that was for me.

 

Feeling like a big baby

 

Looking back now, I feel overwhelming gratitude for the people who helped my family and me settle in Lomalinda—people like David Hockett, our neighbor Ruth, Karen Mac, and Lois Metzger. And today I’m going to tell you about Linda Lackey.

 

Each person gently oriented me, offered valuable and practical how-to information, and modeled for me how to live in that foreign place.

 

My days and duties were getting less unfamiliar. Chaos was calming down (emotional, mental, spiritual, and literal) and my homemaking efforts were slowly making a big difference. Each day my young family and I were making progress.

 

But then. . . . But then. . . Rufina began working for us. Dear Rufina.

 

There was nothing wrong with Rufina. But there was something wrong with me.

 

You see, a Lomalinda lady named Dorothy had arranged for a pleasant older woman, Rufina, to work at our house one day a week.

 

I’d never imagined a person like me would have a maid, but in Lomalinda it was the thing to do for several reasons.

 

First, local people needed jobs and, second, because of the intense heat, we all worked at a slower pace than we did in cooler regions of the northern hemisphere—it was a health issue—and that meant we had a hard time getting household chores done.

 

Third, having a maid freed mothers, like me, to fill jobs that contributed to the task of Bible translation, the reason we all lived there.

 

And fourth, it cost little to hire a maid.

 

A few years earlier, Rufina’s husband, a church pastor, had been gunned down by someone waiting for him to step off a bus. She’d worked for several other Lomalinda families and had never stolen from them, which was not the case with some maids.

 

And so, a week before school began, at seven o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Rufina arrived at our door. She stood only two inches taller than our first-grader, Matt. (See photo, below.)

 

Dorothy had given me a mimeographed sheet in Spanish listing common household chores—Rufina spoke no English—and I had made a list and rehearsed it several times. When she arrived, I read her my instructions and let out a big sigh—I was finished! I turned to go—but she had questions. I hadn’t anticipated that.

 

I couldn’t make sense of anything she said so I took a deep breath and told her I didn’t understand. “Yo no comprendo.” Then I asked her to say it again. “Repite usted, por favor.”

 

She did, but she talked twice as fast and twice as long. She was a soft-spoken, gentle lady with a sweet smile that lit up her face, but that didn’t help me understand her. I hoped to catch a few words and look them up in my Spanish dictionary, but I didn’t understand even one.

 

She waited for my answer. I trembled. What was I to do? I felt a panic coming over me. I fought tears.

 

But then I remembered—oh, yes, then I remembered!—that on another day of the week, Rufina worked for the Lackey family. God did that for me—He helped me remember how I could find practical help.

 

I looked up the Lackeys’ number and dialed.

 

Linda Lackey answered. Struggling to steady my voice, I asked if she would talk to Rufina and help me figure out what she was saying.

 

“Oh, of course.” Linda spoke so kindly. “Rufina is hard to understand because she’s missing so many teeth.”

 

I handed the phone to Rufina, and, after a long conversation with Linda, she handed it back to me, smiling.

 

Linda, bless her heart, had helped Rufina understand me

and helped me understand Rufina.

 

A huge relief washed over me as Rufina turned and got to work.

 

Local maids believed it was bad luck to finish the day’s work by doing anything other than ironing so, late that afternoon, Rufina ironed the laundry she had washed that morning. She did an exquisite job. She even ironed things I would never have ironed myself. And best of all, she sang while she worked. That in itself was a lovely blessing.

 

Dorothy had told me to pay Rufina at the end of each day, putting her pesos in an envelope, and to have her sign a notebook in which I recorded the date and amount I paid her. She wrote slowly, the letters large and childlike. It struck me that she probably couldn’t read or write anything more than her own name.

 

The memory of that day still stands out. I hadn’t recognized anything Rufina said after the call to Linda Lackey.

 

Each time I had asked her to repeat herself, she did the same thing she’d done in the morning, telling a story twice as long and twice as fast, with lots of hand gestures and arm-waving. I lost track of how many times I snuck into my bedroom to dry my tears.

 

After Rufina left the phone rang, and Linda Lackey asked how Rufina did the rest of the day.

 

By then I was a big bundle of nerves—

I’d never had a stranger in my house all day

—in my home, my refuge—a stranger!

And I burst out sobbing.

 

I apologized,

but Linda interrupted with comforting words

and a promise to pray for me.

 

Afterward, I felt like a big baby. I reminded myself that Rufina was a lovely lady—sweet, hard-working, and always smiling.

 

Rufina didn’t do anything to make you cry, I told myself. You simply need time to get accustomed to her.

 

Nevertheless, I was giddy with relief

because I had an entire week to pull myself together

before she returned.

(From Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Karen second from left; Matt far right; with Rufina

“Every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there”

 

I had engaged in fierce battles with myself, Lomalinda, and God, so it took me a while to recognize it, but finally it sunk in: If I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well at Lomalinda, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

I’d have to notice the good that was going on around me and my family.

 

The kids, Matt and Karen, had met friends and enjoyed playing with them. Matt was especially enjoying adventures the neighbor boy, Glenny, was taking him on—like throwing rocks at bulls wandering through the neighborhood and fishing for piranhas and chasing giant cockroaches. And playing with boa constrictors.

 

Lomalinda’s birdsongs sounded different from the ones I’d enjoyed back home, but I decided to find the beauty in them. And my kids had parrots living in their yard! Parrots! That would never have happened back home in Seattle.

 

On one of our first days in Lomalinda, Ron and Lois Metzger introduced themselves and invited us to dinner. Their yard teemed with tropical plants and flowers, including orchids. Orchids! And Glenny’s big brother Tommy grew orchids in a special shed he rigged up. Dozens of other brightly colored flowers grew all around Lomalinda. Even though they weren’t familiar to me—like bougainvillea—I began to notice their intense beauty.

 

During our first two weeks, we received a dozen dinner invitations from our new colleagues. They lavished their welcomes on us.

 

We soon learned that hosting friends for meals was the most common way people entertained themselves. We had no televisions or movie theater, and the world then knew nothing of videos, VCRs, the Internet, PCs, laptops, iPads, or cell phones. Many folks played table games and read books in the evenings, but the most popular social pastime was enjoying dinner with other families.

 

Long before we landed in Lomalinda, her people figured out the importance of connecting. “Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst,” Henri Nouwen wrote. “Around the table we become family, friends, and community, yes, a body.” (Bread for the Journey)

 

Lomalinda’s people got it—we needed each other. Though I didn’t yet recognize it, I had arrived at a God-scheduled appointment. He wanted me to see the community as His hands and feet. He wanted me to look into their eyes and see His. When a family invited us to join them at their dinner table, He wanted me to see them feeding His lambs.

 

God and Lomalinda’s people heaped upon us one blessing after another after another. Life was going to be good there.

 

I would have to extend grace to myself, though, because I would make progress in fits and starts. Some days I took one step forward and two steps back.

 

But like Barbara Johnson said, “If things are tough, remember that every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there.” 

 

Yes, I’d have to go through a lot of “dirt”—doubts, difficult transitions, tears, homesickness, despair—before I could bloom where I was planted.

 

But I did bloom, eventually. 

I did bloom where I was planted!

 

Barbara continues:

 

“The Almighty Father will use life’s reverses to move you forward.”

 

And He did.

What seemed like reverses turned out to be tools God used to move me forward and upward.

 

 

A big, no-turning-back decision

 

Transitioning to life on the mission field can be a slow process—stumbling through unknowns, waiting for elusive answers, and figuring out new identities.

 

It’s an offbeat experience because people lose their bearings, they live in an in-between state—awkward, incomplete.

 

Transition is stretching, re-thinking, expanding. It’s a vulnerable time, a time of letting go of the old even before figuring out the new.

 

In Lomalinda, I had finally turned a corner, and with God’s help, I would have to let go of old dreams and instead, dream new dreams.

 

Letting go of old dreams and embracing new ones is uncomfortable. So uncertain.

 

But on the other hand, since my plans and dreams had been too small, too tame, what did God’s ongoing plans for me look like?

 

I needed to make a big, no-turning-back decision: Would I embrace God’s plans? Could I do that with joy?

 

After all I’d gone through, my answer had to be “Yes.”

 

That meant I had to figure out what to do with culture shock.

 

Culture shock had left me stymied and disoriented, baffled, bamboozled, and befuddled. It was mysterious, maddening, tear-inducing, annoying, humiliating, and terrifying. And sometimes amusing.

 

Transitioning through culture shock is a time of upheaval, of loneliness. It had been robbing me of my energy and shaking up my sanity. It inflicted chaos upon me—emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual.

 

It hurt.

 

Culture shock for me was an aversion to anything different from my home and people and food and geography, the prickly awareness that strangers surrounded me, and some spoke a foreign language and had different ways of doing things. But if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

Strange odors made me long for familiar smells—the perfume of fir trees in the rain, the aromas of Puget Sound and seaweed drying on the beach. I compared Lomalinda to everything back home—red-orange soil instead of my dark foresty earth in Seattle. But if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

Heavy, humid air and triple-digit temperatures pressed down on us instead of cool, fresh Pacific Northwest air. While our temps soared, I missed the anticipation of autumn’s chilly, crisp days back in Seattle. Folks back home would soon pull out wool sweaters and scarves and socks but, in Lomalinda, we were shedding shoes and as many clothes as was decent. So if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

I wished for a North American grocery store, well-known flavors, paved roads, and a warm shower. But if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

At six in the evening, blazing sunsets filled the enormous sky, silhouetting the Macarenas, a low mountain range in the distance. I recall catching my breath at the splendor of the scene—but then a steely grip hardened my heart, and I said to myself, “But they are not my mountains.” The Macarenas looked wimpy compared to the jagged, snowcapped mountains in my Seattle backyard. I grew up between two mountain ranges—the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west—and they offered dazzling sunrise and sunset views. They were my mountains and my sunsets. But if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

I would have to reorient my thinking about what a home was or where home was. I would have to leave behind the feeling that we were not at home and instead, transition into feeling we were at home. That was a big deal because I was (and still am) fiercely attached to everything that “home” means. I had strong opinions about where “home” was, and which people lived near that home. If I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

At that time, I assumed any culture and place unlike mine was second-rate. I suppose we all wrestle with that. It’s called ethnocentrism—the assumption that our flowers are prettier than their flowers and our meat tastes better than their meat. It’s the belief that we do things the right way and they do them the wrong way, that we are superior while they are inferior—traditions, values, music, race, appearance, language, smells, religious practices, humor, marriage, child-rearing, medicine, and food, to name a few. And often our assumptions are incorrect. That’s ethnocentrism, and it was part of my culture shock. If I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

My heart, my mind, my compass—all were oriented to the life I’d lived in Seattle. But if I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

God had already caught my attention and started me toward those changes. Continuing that new direction seemed daunting, especially since I had little trust in myself to pull it off. Yet God . . . .

 

Yet God . . . .

 

If you could have overheard my conversation with God that afternoon, it might have sounded something like this:

 

“Have mercy upon me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of Your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins, according to the multitude of Your tender mercies. . . . Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. . . . Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous spirit. Keep me strong by giving me a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:1, 10, 12).

 

And you’d have heard God reply something along these lines: “I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

 

My answer would have sounded like this: “The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down, bent beneath their loads” (Psalm 145:14).

 

And I would have continued: “I think how much you have helped me. Because of that, I sing for joy in the shadow of your protective wings. My soul follows close behind You. Your right hand upholds me. Your strong right hand holds me securely” (Psalm 63:7-8).

 

I can tell you this: God stuck by me, gently sustaining me moment by moment, doing things that would amaze me, things I wouldn’t have believed even if He had told me right then (Habakkuk 1:5).

 

Though I couldn’t see into the future, He was turning my life upside down and inside out and it was going to be so good!

 

“Growth suffering”

I recall that day with deep regret. And pain.

 

You, too, have regrets. You remember suffering the pain of them.

 

But did you know there’s good pain and bad pain? Did you know suffering the good kind can be helpful?    

 

Dr. Henry Cloud explains the difference between bad and good pain—between destructive and valuable pain.

 

We can suffer bad pain for various reasons. One is the pain someone else inflicts upon us.

 

But there’s another pain that we bring upon ourselves because of our own “character faults,” Dr. Cloud says, the pain that comes from “repeating old patterns and avoiding the pain it would take to change them.”

 

Dr. Cloud says we need to recognize the pain we bring upon ourselves is “a wake-up call,” otherwise we are wasting that pain.

 

Wasting our pain. Think about that. Are we wasting our pain?

 

For several decades now, I’ve cherished five little words Chuck Swindoll spoke on his radio program. The words changed me. He said, “GOD DOES NOT WASTE YOUR SUFFERING.”

 

So, if God doesn’t want to waste our pain and suffering, we’d better not fight against Him by choosing to waste our pain!

 

Dr. Cloud says that wasted pain “is the pain we go through to avoid the good pain of growth that comes from pushing through. It is the wasted pain we encounter as we try to avoid grief and the true hurt that needs to be worked through.”

 

With God’s help, our job is to “face the growth steps [we] need to keep from repeating [our] mistakes.” This is how good pain can help us mature.

 

“We all have coping mechanisms that cover up pain, help us deal with fear . . . and help us hold it all together,” writes Dr. Cloud. “Trials and suffering push those mechanisms past the breaking point so we find out where we need to grow. Then true spiritual growth begins at deeper levels. . . . Righteousness and character take the place of coping.

 

“This kind of suffering is good,” he continues. “It breaks down the ‘weak muscle’ of the soul and replaces it with stronger muscle. In this suffering, the prize we win is character—a very valuable prize indeed.

 

“Suffering is the path Jesus modeled for us, and he modeled how to do it right. He went through it all with obedience and without sin. This is the difference between those who suffer to a good end and those who suffer to no good at all.” (Click on Dr. Cloud’s article, “When Suffering Helps and When Suffering Hurts.”)

 

The good kinds of pain and suffering lead us to ask ourselves (a) what is God trying to teach me, (b) what God is trying to help me do now, and (c) will I cooperate with Him?

 

James 1:5 says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

 

The Nelson Study Bible (NKJV Version) says this about James 1:5 “The wisdom God gives is not necessarily information on how to get out of trouble but rather insight on how to learn from one’s difficulties. . . . It is not more information about how to avoid times of testing but instead a new perspective on trials.”

 

So there I stood on that blistering hot afternoon in the middle of nowhere in South America, feeling like an utter failure as a wife, mother, and child of God.

 

And I had choices to make.

• Would I recognize this as a wake-up call?
• Would I embrace the pain and regret and suffering and would I learn from the experience?
• Would I push through? Would I climb up out of this low point with a change of character? And a deeper, more mature faith?
• Were the battle and perseverance part of the training for what God planned for my future?
• Would I choose to mature as a person?
• Would I let the experience bring me into a more intimate relationship with God?

Often it’s difficult to see any good in our failures and suffering, but God asks us to not waste those times. He holds out His hand and says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

 

Today He’s offering His hand to you. 

It’s a strong yet gentle hand. 

Go ahead. Grab ahold of it.

 

Longing to get over the bad stuff

 

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going,” wrote Thomas Merton. “I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.” 

Merton’s words sum up my state of mind that afternoon at Lomalinda, our out-of-the-way mission center. I’d been fighting to survive the next few minutes, and then the next few minutes. 

“Nor do I really know myself,” continued Merton, “and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

"I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

“Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost. . . . I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone." (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude) 

Merton penned such encouraging, hope-filled words for desperate times.  I didn’t know him or his words back then but reading them now offers me comfort. 

Back on that unforgettable afternoon in Lomalinda, in my distress—flustered, discouraged, troubled, lost—somehow God impressed upon me what Elisabeth Elliot discovered and then shared with the rest of us: “Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing. Whatever that is just do the next thing. God will meet you there.” 

So I kept doing the next thing, one baby step at a time—unpacking, arranging, cleaning, caring for the kids, and planning what I’d cook for dinner that evening.

And just as Elisabeth said, God did meet me there. Sometimes He remains very quiet, settled calmly in the background. He was on that day—but He was there. Oh, yes, He was there with me that afternoon. 

He was not angry with me. He would not reject me. I was His child in need of comfort and grace. A weary child of His in need of a new perspective that would lead to hope. 

To arrive at that new perspective and grab hold of that hope, perhaps I needed to grieve—grieve my loss of home and family and country, grieve my inability to properly, healthily carry out my responsibilities in my new house and to nurture my husband and young ones. And to grieve my meltdown and angry outburst at my husband. 

Even grieve the loss of who I had thought myself to be. “Nor do I really know myself,” Merton wrote. 

Dr.Henry Cloud says when we voluntarily enter into grief, it can lead to resolution. 

He says grief “is the most important pain there is. . . .  It heals. It restores. It changes things that have gone bad. Moreover, it is the only place where we get comforted when things have gone wrong.

 

“. . . Grief is the way of our getting finished with the bad stuff in life. It is the process by which we ‘get over it,’ by which we ‘let it go.’ . . .

 

“. . . It is the process by which we can be available for new things. The soul is freed from painful experience and released for new, good experience.” (Dr. Henry Cloud, “Why Grief is Different from Other Kinds of Suffering”)

 

Yes, looking back now, I believe I needed to grieve. Though I couldn’t have put it into words, I longed to move on, ready for new, good experiences in Lomalinda. I longed to be a happy wife, mother, and missionary. 

I think again of Thomas Merton’s heart-wrenching cry and how it captured my state of mind that afternoon: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.”

But that’s not the end of the story. 

When we are disoriented, unable to look to the future, when we flounder, fail, and fall apart, we have many promises of God’s unfailing love and patience with us. One of them is this: “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8).

With the Lord going before me, I just kept taking one little step after one little step, doing the next thing.