The "M" Word

Now that I am home in southern Mexico again after a summer of fund raising partnership development, I’d like to continue the discussion from last week on the shift in the English language and how some words are taboo and new ones are deemed appropriate.

We used to laugh at a notorious old linguist here in Oaxaca who would purposely cling to old vocabulary no longer in use.  He would talk about visiting “the tribe” (instead of the language group) and about working with his “informant” (instead of language associate). 

All the while I was snickering at him, some of you were maybe cringing to read all the posts where I continue using the outmoded term “missionary.”

After talking with some women who frankly don’t read this IRL blog, I concede that it’s time I change my vocabulary and clean up my act if I intend to be an encouragement to women of the harvest whose internet connections are not secure, and where eyes might be snooping to see what websites you are accessing.

More and more brave souls are now branching out to work among people whose lives would be in jeopardy if they associated with people known to be (whispered) missionaries.  That alone is reason to tread softly in identifying ourselves with that word.

Another thing is that on the field, the translated equivalent of the “M” word is associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, not necessarily with evangelical “C’s.”  It’s becoming necessary to clear up any confusion there.

This has been an eye-opener for me.  What I envision when I hear the “M” word is not at all what other people see in their minds.  When I was growing up, my heart was tugged to serve God in a radical way outside the U.S. because of stories I heard from missionaries who proudly wore the label missionary.

Nowadays younger recruits are shunning the “M” word in favor of other more relevant terms that are less obvious.  In order to attract these hip new global workers, we should tread softly over the “M” word and start using language that better reflects the work they will be doing overseas.

So, what is the word you prefer?

IRL:  I’m willing to join the young folks and drop the moniker of missionary if someone will just tell me what to call myself now.

Zest that Exudes

When I die, just put me in the box as is, or is it as am?  As I will be? 

Some women beg their friends to promise there will be no open casket when they die.  Why?  Mercy, they say, what if my hair isn’t done just so?  What if they put on the wrong color of lipstick?  Ew, what if I look gross?

As for me, I say put me on display for all to see.  Don’t bother with my hair or make-up.  Let everyone comment about how horrible I look.  Maybe people will finally appreciate all the effort I put into looking presentable at this season of life.

At the same time, tell everyone that for the first time ever, I do not care about my appearance.  Finally I will be free from my mortal body and sin nature that always cared too much how I looked and what people thought. 

Then I will be truly beautiful inside and out with no vanity or wrong motives.  Let my decaying body be a reminder to all who see it that I am not there!  Don’t waste money on embalming and beautifying my corpse.  Let my pale wrinkly old face serve as an object lesson.

I’ve shared before about my ongoing struggle against becoming a frumpy missionary, but as I grow older and wiser I wonder why on earth I fight the inevitable.  Money is precious, and worldly beauty is costly.  How can I rationalize the haircuts, the makeup, the clothing, and the shoes? 

Yet I look in the mirror, and I shudder to think what my family would be seeing all day if I didn’t touch up the results of a restless night’s sleep. Lord, help me to find balance!

This past week I met an exuberantly vivacious (is that redundant?) old woman who epitomizes true beauty.  I want to grow up to be her.  She radically changed my definition of loveliness.  True beauty has nothing to do with glamour, jewelry, clothing, hairstyles, or even teeth. 

If there were a missionary magazine looking for a centerfold of the most beautiful woman on earth, I would submit Valentina.  She has curiously split ear lobes, no teeth, failing eyesight, wrinkles galore, unruly gray hair, feet that shuffle, posture that stoops, and a voice quality that warbles and squeaks.

But you know what else she has?  Valentina possesses an inner glow, a zest that exudes joyfully from every pore of her being, even though she lives spitting distance from a cemetery and within sniffing range of the city dump. 

She is the me I want to be when they put me in that pine box someday. 

I want people to stand around and tell stories about my life, not about my decaying body.  I want people to smile and remember the real me, the radiant me who reflected God’s beauty and glory, just like Valentina.

What made me chuckle is that even my hero, Hermana Valentina herself, attempted to smooth down her long gray braids when she saw the camera, braids that were once carefully tied with red satin ribbons.  Vanity is an issue even among the world’s most astonishing beauties.

IRL* When I grow up, I want to be a Valentina who still acts young, not an old person trying to look young.

Missionary: Noun or Verb?

Is "missionary" a noun or a verb?

A friend on furlough in the U.S. told me this true story, which cracked me up. It’s a conversation between two MKs:

The second day we were here, an 8-year-old girl from that family (staying in a mission house right down the street) knocked on our door to introduce herself and see if my kids wanted to play. Her opening line was:

"Hey! My name is ________. We missionary in Armenia. Where do you missionary?"

It’s hilarious in its innocence, and we could have some serious fun using missionary as a verb, couldn’t we?

But it does make you pause and think. Is the term “missionary” who we are (noun) or what we do (verb)?

That’s one question for you.

Another question this raises is whether our children have any idea what a missionary is or does.

Once we were on furlough, and when I went to check on the children in new Sunday School classes with complete strangers, I found my five-year-old in front of the class answering the teacher’s questions about “being a missionary in Guatemala.” Those are the moments when I forget to breathe. (Being the first-born, I’m sure he rose to the occasion and did just fine. I have no memory of his answer.)

Another trip, a nursery worker was trying to figure out where my daughter (a first-time visitor in my home church in Dallas) was from. She had no idea how to answer that. Then they said, “Where do you live?” No answer. “Honey, where do you sleep?” Ah, that one she knew! “In the van,” she responded, thus painting the image of a homeless family under a bridge somewhere.

“What does your father do?” the persistent teacher asked.

“He fixes the van,” she replied.

Obviously it was one of “those” trips when we must have broken down a time or two between Oaxaca and Dallas.

IRL*Where do you missionary?

Ask Jamie Jo: Reverse-Reverse Culture Shocker

Earlier this month a reader sent an email that deserves a serious and thoughtful response. I have written three entire posts attempting to address the issue of reverse culture shock in reverse--I kept starting over, feeling each time that it wasn't adequate. None of the three did it justice. I am counting on you to flesh it out with personal experiences in the comment section.

Nicolette spent the summer in the States after her first three years on the field. She had been warned to expect reverse culture shock back in the home country, and wasn’t surprised when it happened. What she wasn’t expecting was the wave of culture shock that hit when she returned to the field.

You can read her blog post “The Culture Shock that No One Tells You About” here. Basically she poses more questions than I can answer in one short post, but I will say truthfully that, yes, I still go through that shock of re-entry both coming and going. It does get easier, and the transition happens more quickly each time around, but muddling through the discomfort of a major change is inevitable.

My first random thought is that flying has a lot to do with it. In the early years we used to drive back and forth from Guatemala to the States. In that way, we could ease ourselves in and out of cultures gradually. Flying makes the re-entry so abrupt at both ends of the trip. That could be a factor. Think of the old-time missionaries literally taking the slow boat to China. By the time they got there, they were ready to be there. This isn’t necessarily true with air travel.

Secondly, I think we tend to idolize our adopted country while we are stateside. We paint such a rosy portrait of life overseas that we start to believe it ourselves. Returning to the nitty gritty of reality can be a bit of a shock and disappointment just as intense as the disgruntled feelings we experience in the U.S. Neither place seems quite right any more.

I could hang my head in shame having to admit that I haven’t arrived, but the truth is that I am not home yet. It is only natural that I will feel out of place both here and in the U.S. Neither place is my home. The unsettling discomfort of homesickness and culture shock is a wonderful reminder that I will always be in transition until the day I land in heaven. That’s the good news, my friends.

Meanwhile, culture and language learning is a lifelong process. It’s never finished.

And lastly, may we never be so naïve as to forget that there is still a villain in our story who wants to rob us of our joy and replace it with confusion and misunderstanding. Keeping a journal is a wonderful way to document and analyze the wild swings of emotion we experience on the field. I mention it often, but a great tool and weapon is to make a list of things that make you thankful.

IRL* I am thankful most of all that this is not my home!

Too many friends?

The day my first friend from prison was released, I realized something.  I hate losing friends.  Even though I was thrilled for Rosa to return to her family in Guatemala, I knew I would miss seeing her at our Friday Bible study together.  Worse, I knew I would not likely ever see her again this side of heaven.

For those of you who grew up as global nomads, you may think it absurd to waste such needless tears over a prisoner getting released, but I grew up in a Texas neighborhood where people were not transient.  In fact, I vividly recall the shock and disappointment when Susie Darby moved away after the third grade. (I still remember her name.)  Good-byes were simply not part of my childhood.  Even my grandparents lived locally.

At this point I have a long list of coworkers who have come and gone, first in Guatemala and later in Mexico.  Many of them I have dredged back up via Facebook, not just for curiosity, but because I genuinely care what is happening in their lives.  Same thing with really old-time friends from high school.

For many years I wondered whatever happened to a couple of boys who used to tease me mercilessly in Spanish class, thinking how they would laugh to imagine me living in a Spanish speaking country for the past 25 years.  Now they are friends on Facebook.  I love that.  They were just silly classmates who made my life interesting for one hour a day for a single year in high school, but they left their mark.  

My list is long.  People whose lives have touched mine and then moved on.  Last week we hosted a short-term team with four members who were here a couple of years ago.  The one was amazed that I remembered him giving me some reading glasses.  The other was impressed that I remembered she preferred tea to coffee.  Is that really so odd?  I just like people.

You might even say I collect friends.  It's true.  I am blessed with a rich, priceless collection of fascinating, unique friends.  Each one has left a mark on my life, and I love each and every one.

Once the WOTH forums become a reality, I will add many of you to my list, sharing your joys and sorrows, praying for you, and honestly loving you without ever meeting in person.

Last Friday I attended a going-away party for a Dutch couple who are in their 80's.  Each time they come to volunteer in Mexico, I am sad to see them leave, knowing that someday they will not return.  I hate permanent good-byes most of all.  Swapping stories and laughing together that night, I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude to God for this precious gift of friendship.  Earlier in the day I had experienced the same feeling with the local ladies at Bible study.  Finally they, too, are truly becoming my friends.

Some would counsel me to let the past go and just enjoy the people right in front of me.  I certainly have plenty of friends close by.  But I never can seem to do that.  My earlier friends are all part of the "me" I have become.  I cherish each and every one.

Back to the question in the title, is it possible to have too many friends?

IRL*  If keeping friends is a spiritual gift, maybe that’s mine.

Am I lost?

How do you keep from losing “you”?

This isn’t technically an “Ask Jamie Jo” question, but since no questions were submitted before our editor retreated to Dubai, I will address this very complicated issue that I’ve been mulling over for several months. An e-maginary * (refer to Jamie-Jo Speak in sidebar) friend in Africa asked this on a different online forum, but I’d like to open the discussion here as well.

Obviously many of us were formerly identified with certain occupations, roles, hobbies, and personality traits that have shifted or become hidden on the mission field. In one of my very first posts on this blog I shared about my 20-plus years of living in obscurity. Back then I did feel that the very essence of who I am had been completely stripped away.  Even my southern drawl was becoming less pronounced as I mingled with a wider sampling of English speakers.

I guess what I’m saying first is that yes, it is a process of dying to self and becoming almost invisible. For years I was Jim’s wife, missionary, and “mother to many” without much of a profile to call my own. During that season, though, I was changing into a new me. Hopefully it is an improved, upgraded version, fading on the outside, but subtly shining from the inside out, with or without my old panache.

Rather than giving you a bunch of tips for how to keep from “losing yourself” (which might include helpful suggestions like digital scrapbooking, journaling, and using the creative gifts God has given you), I’d rather add a question of my own.

If you do happen to lose a bit of yourself in ministry to others, would that be such a bad thing?

It’s like when a friend helps you during a major move to another house or location. While you carefully pack the senseless junk that is neither useful nor particularly lovely, your friend - who has no sentimental attachment to your clutter - gently rebukes you: “Why would you want to keep that?”

Yes indeed. Why would you want to keep that?

Maybe it’s time to let go of who we think we are, and let the Master Potter have a go at remaking us more into His image. As my WOTH writer friend Shelley pointed out, we are actually blessed in losing ourselves. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

IRL* Reminded again that my real life is hidden with Christ

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Join me today in lifting up those attending the conference in Dubai, that they would be particularly encouraged as they serve under the radar, purposely hidden.  We won't likely see a slide show with photos of these dear women, but let's keep them in our prayers.

Paranoids are People, Too

Exactly one day after sitting serenely in cap and gown with thousands of other identical Baylor graduates, I traveled to Thailand, thus beginning a career of being “different.” From the early days as a single teacher in an Asian culture where my height, skin, hair, and eye color were a novelty—to later years in Guatemala as a mother with a string of blonde children attached to me, I was destined to stand out in any crowd.

For two or more years at a time, I used to long for a brief respite in my home country of Texas where I could finally become invisible again, blending effortlessly with the culture. At one point, I confessed to a friend that I was becoming paranoid. Even in America, people seemed to be staring at me as some kind of oddity. My friend tried to conceal her amusement as she gently suggested that maybe the stares might have something to do with the now-seven children tagging along wherever we traveled, when 2.3 was the average number in a “normal” family.

By the time the kids had finally grown responsible enough to occasionally stay home and babysit the younger siblings so that I could freely roam public places, I still was not inauspicious, even in the U.S. Rather than keeping a low profile, as I had always dreamed, I was recognized as “that missionary with the big family” who had spoken here or there, particularly in Northern Ohio.

I’ll never forget one incident at a thrift store in Cleveland. After an episode of hollering at the younger ones to stay corralled in a general location and then arguing with an older child about a heavily worn item that was not a good value, a woman approached me with wonder in her eyes, exclaiming, “Why, you were the speaker at our Ladies’ Tea back when…!” I have no idea how much of my tirade she had witnessed, but I was mortified. That was just one of many times God did not vaporize me on the spot as I had wished.

During one of our summer mini-furloughs, I was tired of being recognized wherever I went and a bit weary of people in general. One of our last stops was Orlando, where our home office is located. Back then I only knew a handful of people outside of Missionary Ventures in that part of Florida. Jim graciously agreed to stay at the mission house and watch the children so I could go to the mall and “be invisible” for the evening. Coming out of a lingerie store, I heard my name being called. I couldn’t believe it! Of the six or eight people I knew in the city, one was there at the Orlando Mall, and it was none other than Steve Beam, the founder of our mission.

My lot in life is to stand out and be different. Like it or not, I must guard my words, actions, and attitudes because others are noticing. Maybe it’s just as well. Whether I am a “farang” (foreigner) in Thailand, a “gringa” in Guatemala, or now a “güera” in Oaxaca (pronounced “weda in wah-HAH-kah”), I am bound to be watched by those who know I am attempting to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

IRL* Aiming to be a good ambassador for Christ whether I’m invisible or infamous.