A little over a year and a half ago when Joa and I felt
prompted by God to move to Brazil, I knew immediately I had to be 100%
committed. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it – but I will anyway – I
normally like to stick one toe in to test the waters before diving in to something new. In fact,
I don’t ever dive in. I wade in slowly, ever ready to flee the water if I get
too uncomfortable.
Comfort. That was something we talked about often. As
another missionary had said, we repeated – we are choosing meaning over comfort.
That became our motto.
I love my comfort. Left to my own devices, I rarely go where
I am not comfortable. There is a lot of fear in leaving comfort. Will I try
something and fail? Will my inadequacies be revealed? Will I be judged as not
enough? Even in saying yes to God about Brazil, I spent the year before we left
walking around carrying my brokenness. It was as if I was carrying it in my
arms; it was that present and unavoidable to me. My inability to be exactly who I wanted, my
inability to make my inadequacies more acceptable, my inability to have more to
offer that people would value. These things are still tender spots in my heart,
but I ended that year finally understanding that my brokenness was actually
a gift. If I accepted it, my brokenness could become a gift to others as well.
I knew that if I was to take this leap of faith, I couldn’t
wade in. There would be no going back, no changing my mind, no matter how
uncomfortable. No matter how hard it would be, I was determined to adjust, to
adapt, to thrive or I would be unable to fulfill the specific purposes God had
for me in Brazil.
We have all been doing well – and yet, we are constantly thrown
off by how long things take, how no one seems to know the exact steps you need
to accomplish important federal tasks, how the bank has so many checks and balances in
place you almost can’t use your account, how brand new electric showers don't work, and instead become our kids' least favorite time of the day as we bribe or shove them quickly in the cold water. We needed to immediately and drastically increase our tolerance level for stress and chaos.
Suddenly the phrase of choosing meaning over comfort hit
home in a very different way. Not a warm cozy feeling way, but hitting an
invisible brick wall. That is a perfect descriptor. We are doing well in the
things we have control over, but multiple times a day we hit invisible brick
walls with no warning. Sometimes it takes the rest of the day to recover from
one brick wall, but on some days, we hit multiple brick walls and have no
recovery time.
Thinking about all these experiences on New Year’s Eve
brought me to my words for this year: courage and perseverance. God doesn’t
expect me to practice these two themes fearlessly – fear is almost always
involved! He just calls me to practice them faithfully, Spirit led. There is so
much He is already doing that I don’t see. There is so much I can’t do. But I
can be faithful to step into so many new situations with courage and with
perseverance. I’ll be writing more about that in the weeks and months to come
and hope you’ll join me.
