But let me tell you. They ought to be running missionaries-in-training through some kind of reality show training gauntlet before they ever send them wherever to help them recognize what a jack-of-all-trades this life is. I don't know if that would actually help them do better, or scare them away, or just help reality settle in early, but man alive.
There's a reason Papa Greg was always making me step away from picture taking and helping with teams and writing newsletters to learn how to fry bacon and make cookies. There's a reason that awful, blessed man always drug me away from emailing Matt when the generator conked or drug me out of the car when a tire went flat.
"It's not why I'm HERE!" I wailing more than once (and have wailed more than once many times since), as if HE was a missionary in Port-au-Prince to do all those things. "Let's go, kid" he must have said a million times, slapping that nasty bacon in my bare hand (I was still a vegetarian at the time) or handing me an oil covered wrench (less gross. still gross.)
Life with Greg (and the far more gentle Cathie who taught me an awful lot of cooking in Haiti the hard way :) was my reality show gauntlet, and all those lessons carry on, and I'm thankful.
You wouldn't think you need an 80's prom dress for all the weddings and a white outfit for all the funerals...BUT YOU DO. You wouldn't think there would be certain shoes everyone's mad you're wearing when you're pregnant, or that you'd absolutely need shoes for your four week old baby, but you DO. You wouldn't think you needed to know an awful lot about prescription meds and when to get what...BUT YOU DO. You have never even thought about how milk is pastuerized or how rolls are made and now you're supposed to be DOING it! You wouldn't think you'd need to know the difference between heat rash and ring worm, between battery problems or generator problems, between this word in Creole vs. that word in Creole which sound almost EXACTLY the same but have very different meaning...but you DO.
I found one shriveled three inch carrot, a limp length of celery, miraculously found a long-lost 8 chicken legs at the very bottom of my deep freezer and a can of corn and one tin of evaporated milk. I stole more carrots and onions out of Julie's fridge while she was still at work. Remind me to tell her.
Nora refused (slash was highly distracted by children playing outside of her window, depending on who you talk to) to take a nap today, so by 3, there were a l-o-t of two year old emotions. With girls on the trampoline and Nora on my leg, I was trying to whip that mess of ingredients into some kind of gourmet something (or just simply ENOUGH food) when Matt calls and Joyce's class ends in an hour and it would be really good to have a group photo. And a few smaller group photos of government officials also taking the class (including the director of the education in Northern Haiti!). And it kind of needs to be now-ish. And I'm up to my elbows in flour, trying to add dumplings to the pot I'm praying over and trying not to look around my kitchen.
So I stop. And I put wailing-for-no-reason Nora in her crib (after 2 books, of course and way later than you should ever put a toddler down if you want them to sleep tonight), go out in the misting rain to find a place on campus where I can take a good picture of 42 incredibly multi-tonal people, go recruit her class, and it wasn't until I was almost done taking the government official photo that I realized there was a huge line of flour caked across my navy shirt, my baby belly already bumping the counter tops.
A lot of it's just life with littles, a lot of it's being a part-time working mom, a lot of it is an almost unending, beautiful line of vital visitors, and a lot of it is just that there are no stinking stores and no frantic calls to order pizza.
I mean, I MAKE those frantic calls, but nobody seems to know what I'm talking about and the pizza never comes.
We're just here to share the Gospel, but on any given day it's a lot of ways you never imagined, and often all at once.
I get frustrated because so much of it is just life, and I want more of it to be MINISTRY. Life alone takes so much out of you, takes so much time, takes so much grace, and you want to save all that time and energy and grace for ministry.
And then He reminds me that there IS no life and ministry. It's seeing your life AS ministry, pouring out your life as ministry, or seeing it as your own. It is all both, or it can be, which means we can't turn on all the good stuff when it's evangelism time and kick back His graces the rest of the time.
It means that it all matters : How I talk to Sofie when she cannot keep her bony backside in her chair long enough to do single worksheet. How I talk to Lily when she's frustrated and unkind to her sisters. How I talk to Nora when she's weepy and 2 and bossy, how I work with students when I have flour all over my shirt and dinner to get on, how I serve visitors when I'm tired and have been serving all day. It matters how I talk to my husband, as MUCH as it matters how I talk to the man I'm sharing Jesus with. It matters what I choose a million times a day when it's between what I really want, what would be more fun or easy or enjoyable for me, vs. how I can pour out Christ on others, the oil that never runs dry when I'm choosing Him and choosing Him and choosing Him.
We have but one life to live, and what a gift we each have at our finger tips, to be able to burn ourselves out and down and tiny for the Gospel in dark, dark places, every one of us.
So I'm telling me and telling you : Don't be frustrated today with all the bacon grease pans and boogie noses and paperwork and flat tires of life...it is ministry opportunity at it's finest, and with His great help, only with His great help, it can be pleasing to Him.
"Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus." Acts 3:20
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