No matter what part of the world you find yourself in, I’m willing to bet these past few weeks have looked different than you thought they would. For all of us, it seems, our lives have changed so drastically in such a short amount of time. It’s hard to wrap our minds around it.
Imagine this - you get sick with COVID-19. But you are poor. seriously poor.
You make about $10/day. And that’s only when you can go out and work - cleaning someone’s house, selling food or second-hand clothes on the street, or driving through a ride-sharing app. If you don’t go out, you don’t make money to feed your family. So, you’ve been going out. You’ve had no choice. That’s why you’re sick.
I have tried probably 30 different times to resurrect this blog. To post something meaningful. To share where I’m at and to use this space as a place to process our life and all that goes on over here. But nothing has ever hit the page. Nothing.
Until now.
The first time I moved I was too young to remember much of anything. It was an in-town move, just a few miles from one house to the next. From a small home where we all lived on the same level with a real wood-burning fireplace and a sandbox in the back to a tri-level home that allowed us to spread out a bit, grow strawberries in the back and get our first family dog.
I sort of feel like we’re standing on the edge of a dock right now, about to jump into unknown waters. With our kids.
They can’t swim.
What’s going to happen to them? What’s going to happen to us? Will we survive this jump? Will we actually be ok?
Jordan and I are right smack in the middle of the most challenging time of our lives. No joke.
This whole process of inviting others into our call and preparing to move our entire family to the other side of the globe is bringing us to the end of ourselves (and if you know my story with birthing and then trying to breastfeed Moses, and the postpartum depression that followed, you know that’s really saying something). This is the hardest thing we’ve ever done. Hands down.
I think sometimes in our self-sufficient, independent culture we really struggle with the idea of missionaries raising support.
“Why can’t they work?” we ask.
“I work. Why should I give my hard-earned money so they don’t have to work?”
Genesis 12:1-3 says “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
Have you ever really thought about the sacrifice God asked Abraham to make when He commanded him to give his son Isaac on the altar? Isaac was probably the most treasured thing in Abraham’s life. He had waited 100 years for this promised child to arrive, and he loved him with all his heart. Then, not too many years later, God asked Abraham to give him up. And not only to give him up, but to be the one who would take his life from him. Can you even imagine that? Really. Think about it for a minute.
Sacrificial giving is the kind of giving that is done at great personal cost to the giver.
“The act or process of restoring or returning someone or something to the country of origin, allegiance or citizenship.”
A word that wasn’t even in our vocabulary a few months ago; and yet, it has now become a part of our story forever.
We’ve officially been repatriated.