This summer, when I shared about our work at a couple of churches, I challenged people to consider writing up the story of God at work in their lives. I wanted to inspire people to think about the many different media that made it possible for them to hear the gospel. How did God use friends and family, pastors, strangers, books, music, or His voice to speak to you? I also mentioned that my pastor's wife, Marilyn Palumbo, had done an autobiographical talk at our retreat this past spring, and suggested her format of using decades. Weeks later, I'm getting around to writing mine. Here goes:
How was God at work in the first 10 years of my life?
Well, I was born into a family that were Easter and Christmas Christians (at the time). I have one older sister who is 18 months older than me and was adopted when my parents thought that they could not have children. I came along as a "surprise" later, and yes, this dynamic did affect how I turned out, although I wasn't aware of that until later. My parents were a little older when I was born, but they wouldn't be considered so now. We lived in a tiny town in Upstate New York where my father had lived all his life. Although we didn't go to church much, I knew all the stories and believed in God. After we moved to a new house outside the village, I spent a lot of time in the woods near our house by myself, and I would talk to God about things.
At the age of around 8 or 9 I began going to church, the United Methodist Church in our town where my parents were married and I was baptized. Part of the reason I asked to be taken was that my grandmother clearly really wanted us to go. I started reading the Bible from the beginning then, but I never got very far. Someone always drove me to church and left me for Sunday school, then came back for me later. Sometimes they went to the service. Even my grandmother didn't go all that often, because she was in a wheelchair by then. One thing I remember specifically about going to church with my grandmother was that she wouldn't let me take Communion. At the United Methodist Church, they never withhold Communion- it is up to individuals to decide whether they want it. Grandma's house-helper leaned over and told me, "She doesn't want you to take it until you know what it means." I am really grateful for that, because it showed me that religion isn't just about blank participation in a ritual, and that one should understand what they are doing.
As I got into sixth grade, my Dad ran for political office and started going to church again. My sister hated going, and at first I wasn't sure I wanted to go again either. The church had changed buildings and combined with another local church, and I didn't know anyone. But I went, was invited to youth group, and got involved. I sang in the choir, and again I am glad I did because I learned so much good theology from hymns and anthems we sang. I would say I was around 10 when I began asking myself whether I really believed in things like God, Creation and Jesus. One Christmas Eve, during services, I said to myself, "But for God to come to earth like that would have to be a miracle...." and I heard a low voice say, "It was." From that day on, I was in church on Sunday.
In my teenage years, I equated my relationship with God to taking part in church activities. I didn't just do youth group; I was a leader at both my local church and the district and conference-wide youth events. I helped plan and execute events for hundreds of teens. I brought my faith with me into school; everyone knew I was a Christian, and I didn't hesitate to write papers and do other projects from my faith perspective. In fact, the thesis paper I wrote for honors English on creation and evolution helped convert my Sunday School Superintendent's atheist husband into a church-goer. I'm glad God used me for that, but I also developed terrible habits of using the Bible to say what I wanted it to say, and I know I turned some people away from Christianity with my attitudes. I didn't have access to really good teaching, or even know about the great Christian music that was being produced. If I ever met a really conservative Christian, I wrote them off as a nut (even though others might have done the same for me).
I didn't party in high school, and I didn't drink much. I had some boyfriends, but I kept them at a distance. I had strong convictions about some things, though I don't know where I got them! My parents weren't particularly conservative, and I wouldn't even say my church taught those things. They accepted everyone. I think I used convictions as a way to keep people away from me, because I was, and am, really introverted. I also think that God was just protecting me, and set me apart, and I am glad. It wasn't much fun at the time though and I didn't have very many close friends other than at youth group. If you read my very first post on this blog, you know that I also dedicated myself to my husband at age 17, and I didn't have much temptation to chase boys after that.
After a trip to China at 16, I decided that I wanted to become a missionary. I lived traveling and learning languages (I was already learning Latin and Spanish) and I wanted to serve God, so being a missionary seemed like a natural next step. I was 17 when I went away to Brandeis University for college. Some thought of Brandeis as a strange choice; my English teacher (with whom I did not get along), asked whether I was aware that it is a Jewish school. Yes, I knew that, but I also knew they prided themselves on their liberality and would therefore, I reasoned, be bound to accept me as different! Truth be told, I got a lot of "Why did you come here?" from my classmates in the first weeks of Freshman year, but they got used to me.
At Brandeis I got involved with a branch of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I know God was in this one! I really thought that I would go into that club and become a leader, and own the place. And in truth all I envisioned was bake sales. I had no idea that my religion was only skin deep. It was there that I discovered that I didn't have the first clue who Jesus was. I had to ask myself whether I was still a Christian, since they turned my definition of it upside down. I studied the Bible for the first time with these people, people who loved on me at great personal expense, even when I tried very hard to drive them away! I will forever be grateful for Steve, Grace, Sean, Katie, Stanley, Chad, Lisa, Susanna and Kristen, among others. Some of these people are still my closest friends. I grew so much as a person through their persistent prayers and presence in my life for those four years. I studied Chinese at college and went on an InterVarsity Global Project mission trip to China after my Junior year.
And so I entered my twenties a different person! Todd and I married when he was 20 and I was 21. By then I had become bitter about all that I hadn't learned at the church where I grew up. I refused to be married in the United Methodist Church! We got married in a city park, by Todd's campus pastor. How optimistic and crazy we were! Within 6 weeks we were pregnant. Our first daughter was born in June, and in August of that year we moved to Wheaton, Illinois so that I could attend graduate school in Missions and Intercultural Studies. (My undergraduate degree was an Independent Major in International Politics and Sustainable Development, which I designed so that I could be prepared to go anywhere on the mission field). I dragged that poor, cranky, barfing 2-month old to classes with me, sometimes setting up a playpen at the back of a classroom if I couldn't get a babysitter. I graduated a year later in December, and our second daughter was born a week later.
One great thing that God worked while I was at Wheaton College was to help me reconcile my United Methodist roots with my now evangelical leanings; through a class about wholism, I realized that just as God is Father, Son and Spirit, He ministers to our physical, spiritual and emotional needs. Some churches reach physical needs, while others minister to the spiritual. I had become a snob, and this class helped me put things back into perspective. Now I can say it's the Methodism in us that makes us want to serve behind the scenes on the mission field, and the evangelical in us that wants to help preach the gospel.
While I was in school, Todd worked for Tyndale House Publishers, at the height of popularity because of the Left Behind Series. He worked so much overtime, so that I could go to school. It was difficult, but we also felt the nearness of God as every month our bills were paid. Strangers stopped me on the street and offered me baby clothes! We attended a great church and made some friends right away. Later we would say that we felt closer to God then than when things were going well. We had one paycheck for rent, and the other had to last all through the month for food, gas, car insurance, clothes and tithe. We never went hungry, but we didn't always have all the coffee and chocolate I wanted, either. For health care, I took the baby to immunization and weigh-in clinics, and no one ever got sick enough to need a doctor.
The rest of the decade wasn't as good. At the time it felt like a Decade of Disaster. As soon as I was done at school, we started making a series of bad decisions. No, strike that. We made one big bad decision. That was to try camping ministry. We thought that maybe we could use it as our skill in missions. It wasn't that camping ministry itself was a miscalculation, but our motives were wrong. We accepted jobs at a Christian camp near home in NY, and our decision was just as much about going back towards family as it was about following God. We walked into a bad situation at camp, one that I won't go into here. We were so young, and we had no people skills. I actually suspected it was bad from the beginning, so much so that I developed a little nervous tic in my eyebrow! But I knew how much Todd wanted to be near his family, and I wanted to bring the grandkids home to my parents, so I said nothing.
Our camping jobs lasted nine months; we left there devastated. Since the job included housing, we had to move suddenly and ended up in a space borrowed from my mom's church. We had to put all our belongings in storage and Todd had to take a sales job, and pull strings there to get cleared for an apartment. We ended up taking jobs we could get by on, but I was miserable. I realized that it was simply the first time I had failed at anything, and it was failure with a capital F to be left nearly homeless and as far away from foreign missions as I could be. We were so wounded by this experience that we put all of our dreams on hold. I worked part-time as a secretary and delivered newspapers; Todd eventually got a job at a warehouse.
We bought our house in 2002 and I hated every minute of it. The first time I wrote my return address on an envelope, I cried. What had I done, buying property when I was supposed to be living in some exotic location, sharing the gospel with natives? I had promised my husband a grass hut! When my Dad was unloading boxes and furniture into the new house, he complained about how many times he had done this for me (the camp, the borrowed parsonage, the apartment and now the house, in the space of 4 years), and I promised him a 5-year break. It was one of those things I just knew- that this would not be forever but that we needed to rest, heal and, I realized later, grow up.
As we approached our thirties, I was desolate. Many nights I cried, alone because Todd worked nights. Even though I wanted to believe that home ownership was a 5 year plan, I saw no light at the end of the tunnel. I kept asking Todd what he wanted to be when he grew up, so I could figure out how we could do that thing as missionaries. If I had learned one thing, it was that to be successful we could not squeeze ourselves into a mold, but that we would have to do ministry from wherever our hearts were. The trouble was, Todd said he wanted to be a sound man when he grew up! I was having some fun doing youth ministry, but that wasn't a great fit, either. Where in the world did God need a missionary sound man and an overqualified secretary?
In 2005 our youth work led us to the man who could answer that question, Derek Levendusky of Isaiah Six Ministries. We asked that question and he pointed us towards Turkey, where an organization needed us both. From that moment on, our journey had direction. We had another bad experience with a missions agency, and it almost knocked us back off track. But we did sell the house, almost 5 years to the day later. And we made a tidy profit, which paid off all my (weighty) student loans and paid for a year at Bible school for Todd. Thus began our thirties! God gave us a son in 2003 and another daughter in 2007. Off we went, all six, to an apartment while Todd studied, and we continued to see God healing and shedding new light on the bad experiences we'd had.
Finally, in 2008 we came to our current agency and were accepted. Todd has been overseas several times doing what he loves, and I have discovered the joys of homeschooling, among other things. That's a subject for another blog. Certainly it has been a journey that has changed me, and perhaps also changed the direction of our childrens' lives, and I couldn't begin to explain it now.
How has God been at work in my thirties? I have realized, from hearing his voice and from the counsel of both good friends and strangers, that my success doesn't lie in accomplishing missions, or achieving anything in this life. I have heard Him say that I'm already everything He wants me to be. Five years ago, even two years ago, I was sure that if I didn't manage to get to the mission field, I would be a Failure again. I was driven to become what I said that I would become. Today, although I desperately want to get to our chosen field, my success or failure in this adventure doesn't define me. I've learned that just walking with God is enough, even if we're not going where I think we are going. Even if I can't see 5 steps ahead of us. To paraphrase John Piper, "Missions isn't the main thing. Worship is." I won't be despised or neglected, for I am accepted. I only want to be what He wants me to be. A worshiper. I'll be that for as many decades as He gives me.
How is God at work in your life?
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