I’m going to take a minute to stop glorifying missions. All of my missed expectations for what the out-of-country mission field looks like came from social media, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

It’s month eight and I'm tired. The feeling of home sickness can’t be found in a caption or a blog. I probably haven’t showered in 5 days because really cold, community showers are not the most fun. I own maybe three shirts at this point, and last week one of them moulded because it was so humid outside. The phrase “living in community” for me entails sharing a room with 19 other girls, and that means giving up a lot more than I thought. Ministry most the time is something I’ve never done before or something I am not totally in love with. Lately, I have been watching other squads do my dream ministry while I am handed another hammer and nails and told to learn a lyrical dance. The frustration and comparison is so beyond real. Even ministry in general in a "covid conscious" world is so much less relational than I wanted or pictured, so I have to lay that expectation down. Sometimes daily. Reaching out to people from home is hard to navigate. And I am constantly trying to figure out what it means to be labeled as a “white missionary” in the country where colonialism and white saviourism started.  

Yet God is still so dang beyond good. Love is not God making our lives easier; love is God giving us more of Himself.   

Meaning that the lack of comfort, longing, physical tiredness, and frustration has brought me closer to The Comforter and The Provider and The Peace Giver and The Great Shepherd than I have ever been before. We can only receive more when our hands become empty again. Even if the taking away hurts. And it’s only when we pick up our cross in the hardest of circumstances that we find the emptiness and the worthlessness of everything else we were once seeking apart from God. 

So these unchosen circumstances in what I pictured as the “dreamy” mission field have actually become the means to die daily for Jesus’ glory. They have become the means to treasuring Him above all else. Some days it’s harder than others. A lot of days I have failed. And everyday it wouldn’t be worth it if I was doing it for my own glory. 

The cost or love is high, but at the end of the day we find that it has never been more than God has already paid for us.  

“I consider these present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

“Jesus said to His disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it'" (Matthew 16:24).

“And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).

“Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22).