I had always known that no matter what, I could always go home. But where was home if my parents were in Africa?

 

Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Karen. If you’ve read Grandma’s Letters from Africa, you know her as my precious daughter. (See the photo below of Karen, her husband Brian, and their three terrific young men.)

 

Brian had not entered Karen’s life when my husband and I left for Africa. She was all alone. Moving half a world away from her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve told you about that in recent posts.

 

Because some of you have young adult kids

and you’re wrestling with whether to move

in a direction God’s pointing you,

I asked Karen to jot down her recollections

of the months surrounding her parents’ departure

for the mission field.

 

Our hope and prayer is that

God will use her story to help you discern

His unique plans for you and your family.

  

Welcome, Karen!

 

“I don’t remember when, exactly, my parents told me they were moving to Africa. It was during my senior year of college and I remember the very beige apartment I was living in and the hill across the street that I used to run.

 

“It was in those places that I tried to come to grips with their move and what felt to me like my loss of them. I was probably a bit melodramatic, 21 years old, finishing college, and figuring Africa might as well have been the moon.

 

“I was terribly sad but in tune with God enough to know that much of my sadness was selfish and self-absorbed, which only complicated my emotions.

 

“Regardless, as I look back now, I agree with my mom in her book, Grandma’s Letters from Africa, when she talks about grieving and mourning.

 

“You might have to know my parents to really understand why it was such a big deal, although reading my mom’s book gives you a good glimpse into the woman she genuinely is, the woman I’d always had as my mom, my fall-back. My parents had been my rocks. They had been my inspirations. They had been my examples and my guides. They showed me Jesus.

 

“My dad and I would go on walks together and talk about Jesus and life, and he showed me that they are inseparable, that life is ministry. He lived a life that trusted God idealistically, steadfastly, and creatively, and he gave me that same view as my paradigm.

 

“My mom had made our house a home and left no doubt in me or my brother of her love for us and for God. My mom was my example of integrity, hard work, selflessness, and the courage to tangibly trust God completely and utterly.

 

“As I look back now on my youth and specifically those days before my parents left for Africa, I understand that it was the unconditional love my parents showed me, showed each other, and showed God, that had defined my life.

 

I had always known that no matter what,

I could always go home.

 

But where was home if my parents were in Africa?”

 

Come back next week for Part 2 from Karen. You don’t want to miss it!

 

When facing the terrifying unknown: “The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing”

 

What will happen during 2021?

 

“Today dear friends,

we stand upon the verge of the unknown.

Who can tell what we shall find?

What new experiences,

what challenges shall come;

what new needs shall arise?

(L.B. Cowman, Streams in the Desert)

 

You don’t know what 2021 holds for you. I don’t know what the year holds for me, either. We face the unknown.

 

“The unknown.” What do those words do to you?

 

“The unknown” creates strong emotions for me when those two words inflict themselves on my life, my future, my family.

When I come face-to-face with “the unknown,” my stomach knots. My knees wobble.

 

I don’t know what I’ll find but I know I’ll face challenges, and I want to know:

• Just how challenging will the challenges be?
• Just how serious will the needs be?
• Will I come out okay on the other side?

 

Over and under and around it all, I wonder if I will handle them well.

 

What about you?

 

What if, in 2021, you learn that “the unknown” turns out to be God asking you to do something that seems too hard?

 

What if “the unknown,” once known, is something that breaks your heart?

Or something that means the end of life-long dreams?

Or what if you suddenly have a crucial need?

What if the challenges of 2021 threaten to overwhelm you?

 

What if God asks you to give your “utmost” for Him?

 

At such moments, we stand at a turning point. We are at a defining moment.

 

We can say yes to God, take hold of His hand, and step into that potentially painful, frightful “unknown.”

 

Or we can tell God no, turn away, and try to slog through life on our own terms.

 

The choice is ours.

 

“Before we choose to follow God’s will,

a crisis must develop in our lives. . . .

He brings us to the place where He asks us

to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate.

 

He then providentially produces a crisis

where we have to decide—for or against.

 

That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives.”

Oswald Chambers

 

As you know, Abraham has been a special hero to me for years now. Let me explain why:

 

God made a staggering request of him: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” (Sounds like what missionaries do, doesn’t it?)

 

God didn’t tell Abraham where he was supposed to go—only that he was to go (Genesis 12:1). He was asking Abraham to give his utmost for Him.

 

So there he stood, at a critical turning point in his life.

 

Who knows how long

Abraham debated with himself

and with God

as he stood at his crossroads?

He must have agonized.

 

But, bless his heart, at his defining moment, Abraham agreed to go where God sent him even though he did not know where he was going.

 

The book of Hebrews summed up Abraham’s pivotal moment this way:

 

“Abraham, by faith, obeyed and went out,

even though he did not know where he was going”

(Hebrews 11:8).

 

He set out, simply trusting God. Talk about a blind leap of faith!

 

Perhaps today you stand at a crossroads and you’re debating whether to say “yes” or “no” to God. If not today, maybe a week from now, or ten months from now.

 

During 2021,

when you face as-yet-unknown challenges and needs,

when your stomach knots and your knees wobble,

when you don’t know where God is leading you,

may the following words encourage you: 

 

“The only thing you know

is that God knows what He is doing.

Continually examine your attitude toward God

to see if you are willing to ‘go out’

in every area of your life,

trusting in God entirely. . . .

You don’t know what God is going to do next.

Each morning . . . is a new opportunity

to ‘go out’ building your confidence in God.”

(Oswald Chambers)

 

An opportunity?

Yes, an opportunity!

An opportunity to trust God,

an opportunity to grow in faith.

 

For the Lord your God

takes hold of your hand and says to you:

“Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”

(Isaiah 41:13)

When God asks your children to make a heart-wrenching sacrifice

 July 11, 1993, at seven minutes after five in the morning, Dave and I backed out of the driveway in Port Angeles. My mother stood beside our car with her arm around Karen, only twenty-one years of age and newly graduated from college, and together they waved goodbye. Tears streaked down their faces.

 

I choked on my own sobs. How could I survive four years without seeing them?

I then entered into another type of grief. Before, I only imagined walking away from the altars. (Don’t miss I could say “yes” to  God, or I could say “no”). (See also Still wrestling down that elephant in the room and Assuming our love for God is enough and our grip on family and dreams is loose enough.) 

 

The time had come to live out the reality of it. I felt almost dead inside but, at the same time, something in me whispered to God, I lift up this offering to You. Please find it an acceptable sacrifice. Find in it a sweet aroma. (See Philippians 4:18 and Exodus 29:18.)

 

We were heading toward Dallas for pre-field meetings. That first morning in the car, after the sun rose, I opened my favorite devotional book. To my surprise, my precious Karen had lettered several Bible verses and slipped them into the book on special dates.

 

For August 11, the date of our flight out of the States, she wrote in her graceful script, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:37–39). (See photo below.)

 

On the date of her birthday, she had written, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).

 

Inserted at her brother Matt’s birthday, she’d written, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:24–26).

 

When I read those words in Karen’s handwriting, I sensed that she had placed her parents upon the altar, lifted us up before God, had gone through her own grieving, and in the process had come to some understanding of those verses’ meanings. (from Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters From Africa)

 

Words can’t capture the utter rawness, 

the unspeakable ravages of dying to oneself 

in order to walk away from one’s children, 

even when we do it because God is asking that of us.

 

Words can’t capture the utter rawness, 

the unspeakable ravages of what Karen 

and her brother Matt experienced 

in order to let go of their parents and, instead, 

to offer only their benedictions and love.

 

Christmas greetings from Africa

 

“Krismasi Njema” and “Heri ya mwaka mpya” 

("Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year!" in Swahili).

 

I’ll be taking a break until January. 

Have a special Christmas season, 

and may God tenderly bless you and yours now and in the New Year.

When God asks you to give Him those you most cherish

 

July 11, 1993, at seven minutes after five in the morning, Dave and I drove out of Port Angeles. My mother stood beside our car with her arm around Karen, only twenty-one years of age, and together they waved goodbye. Tears streaked down their faces. I choked on my own sobs. How could I survive four years without seeing them? (from Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)

Recently I told you about my mother’s strong—even desperate—objection to Dave and me leaving our kids and our home and moving to Africa. (Click on You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field.)

 

During the application process for working with Wycliffe Bible Translators, my mother went through an intense time of wrestling with her own will, her daughter and son-in-law’s will, and God’s will.

 

Somehow, within the months of wrestling and begging and weeping and soul-searching, my mother recognized she had to let God have her daughter.

 

You see, when she was pregnant with me, her doctor feared she’d miscarry so for months she prayed, “Lord, if You let my baby live, I’ll dedicate her to You.”

 

And He let me live.

 

And later He would ask my mother to follow up on her promise to Him about me.

 

That time had come.

 

That was in 1993. Fast-forward to 2014 when, after my mother died, I found the following in her Bible: a photo of the driveway scene I wrote about in Chapter 2, above, and paper-clipped to it was this William Cowper poem in her own handwriting. (See photo below.)

 

O Lord, my best desire fulfill

And help me to resign

Life, health, and comfort to Thy will.

And make Thy pleasure mine.

 

Why should I shrink at Thy command

Whose love forbids my fears?

Or tremble at the gracious hand

That wipes away my tears?

 

No, rather let me freely yield

What most I prize to Thee

Who never has a good withheld

Or wilt withhold from me. (William Cowper)

 

My heart broke and bled when I grasped the message—my mother was offering me up to God so that Dave and I could serve Him, despite the severe pain she and Matt and Karen had already suffered—and would suffer even more in the coming years. “Let me freely yield what most I prize to Thee,” she had written. Discovering that in her Bible after she died was a very emotional experience for me.

 

And I was puzzled by her handwriting—it had gotten sloppy toward the end. That surprised me because her handwriting had always been so perfect. It took me a couple of years to realize why her handwriting got shaky: It was because she was crying when she wrote. No doubt tears streamed down her cheeks and her hand trembled.

 

I’ll never know the magnitude of my mother’s heartaches and the costs she paid. But God bless her for the sacrifices she made—for me throughout my life, and for Him. I choose to believe that He also brought her blessings and joys as a result of her sacrifices, her yielding to His will.

 

P.S. You really don’t want to miss You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field.)

 

Reaching out to grab the impossible

 

Moving to Africa and leaving my kids, Matt and Karen, hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced.

 

Everything within me cried out that my children still needed their parents. I recognized they didn’t need us the way they did when they were little, but I believed they needed our behind-the-scenes support to transition out of the world of college and into the world of professionals.

 

However, my husband, Dave, didn’t understand my thinking. He pointed out that by the time we’d leave, Matt and Karen would have graduated from college, and that Matt didn’t need us because he had already married Jill.

 

Yes, Matt and Jill had each other, their own support system, but Karen was alone, and by the time we’d leave for Africa, she’d be only weeks out of college and transitioning into her professional career. It would be a crucial time in her life. My heart cried out: “We need to help her settle into a new job in a different town and a different state!”

 

I also knew that if joining Wycliffe was not God’s plan for us, He had power enough to prevent it. I gave Him every opportunity to show us green lights and send us to Africa or red lights and keep us home. In the meantime, I kept taking the next step, and the next, all the while watching for God’s answer.

 

He gave us only green lights. He gave us only open doors.

 

I had my answer.

 

I could almost hear God whisper, “Now, about your children—don’t you know I love them even more than you do? You can trust Me with them.”

 

Knowing God’s answer didn’t take away the pain, but my heart melted when He asked me to believe He loved Matt and Karen even more than I loved them.

 

I could do only two things: trust Him to manage their consequences because of our move to Africa, and then turn and take an extreme, and blind, leap of faith.

 

"Christ wants not nibblers of the possible,” wrote C.T. Studd, “but grabbers of the impossible."

 

God was asking me to be a grabber

of what seemed utterly impossible.

Unthinkable.

 

And so it was that on July 3, 1993, we moved out of our home of fourteen years. We could call no other place “home” as much as that one. Karen and I shed tears when we pulled the door closed for the last time on our empty house.

 

Dave and I were on our way to Nairobi, Kenya.

 

When you have to do it afraid

 

Maybe you have prayed, “Thy will be done,” and really meant it.

 

Or maybe you’ve prayed, “Lord, send me.”

 

Or maybe, like Moses, you’ve wailed, “Oh, Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13).

 

If you’re like me, you jot down important thoughts—sermon notes, quotations, Bible verses, big questions, big answers, the stuff you want to long remember—and tuck them into your Bible.

 

Two old Bibles I’ve been using since the mid-1980s are so full of such notes that neither one can come even close to closing flat (see the picture below).

 

If you and I take time to look over those old notes, sometimes they can be life-changing. They can make a profound difference in the direction our lives take.

 

For example, last week I told you that not long after I published Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I was thumbing through the Bible I used during the era my husband and I were applying to Wycliffe Bible Translators.  

 

In that Bible, I found an old yellow sticky-note with questions I’d asked myself about the radical demands of discipleship Jesus spoke of in Matthew 8:22. I’d written, “Do you consider yourself a disciple? What radical demands is God making of you? Are you carrying them out? Are you willing to meet His radical demands?”

 

Let me introduce you to Leanna, a dear young lady I met in August 1995. She’s one of those rare, choice saints who take such questions seriously.

 

She was (and still is) beautiful inside and out—a gentle soul. Shy. Soft-spoken.

 

My husband, Dave, and I visited with Leanna while the three of us ate together around an office lunch table in Nairobi, Kenya. To my surprise, she was on her way to Zaire (now called Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC) to teach at a school for missionaries’ kids (MKs).

 

People had been talking a lot about Zaire. It no longer qualified as a “developing country.” It was an un-developing country. 

 

Currency was devaluing at an alarming rate. People piled stacks of paper money on a counter to pay for a restaurant meal. It took a wheel barrel to transport monthly rent to the landlord.

 

Decreasing numbers of telephone lines worked. Hundreds—even thousands—of kilometers of road surfaces were turning into bumpy, dusty tracks (or muddy, depending on the season).

 

Teachers and law enforcement personnel hadn’t received paychecks for months on end.

 

Zaire was not a stable country in which to live and work. (And little did we know then that conditions would worsen, many thousands of people would die, and Leanna and colleagues would have to be evacuated.)

 

I thought of all those things, and more, while I watched Leanna across the lunch table on that day in Nairobi. “She must be one strong young lady,” I said to myself.

 

I couldn’t imagine what kind of faith she had—faith to leave her home in Oregon, leave friends, family, and her country, and travel all alone to a mission school in a remote, challenging place, where she knew no one.

 

I told myself Leanna must have embraced a passion, a faith so intense that it dimmed any thoughts of fear, that it wiped out the pain of leaving home.

 

But I was wrong. 

 

Leanna knew fear. She felt pain. But she left home and moved to Zaire anyway. 

 

And I was right. Leanna was and is one strong lady, a lady with the kind of faith I can barely imagine.

 

Elizabeth Elliot spoke of a person like Leanna when she said, 

 

"Sometimes when we are called to obey, 

the fear does not subside 

and we are expected to move against fear. 

One must choose to do it afraid."

 

Looking across the lunch table at Leanna that day, I never could have guessed she’d looked for a closed door to keep her at home in Oregon.

 

Come back next week 

so I can introduce you to this amazing woman.

 

It seemed all wrong

God was asking me to die to the dreams I’d always embraced—dreams of living close to my kids. 

He was asking me to move half a world away from my daughter, Karen, immediately after she graduated from college. 

He was asking me to move half a world away from my son, Matt, a year out of college, and his wife, Jill, and the grandchild they would surely give Dave and me soon. 

In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I wrote that leaving Matt and Karen hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced. 

A couple of years before we moved to Africa, Dave asked me each day, “Have you filled it out yet?” 

“It” was my application for Wycliffe Bible Translators. I knew Dave wanted a different job. Maybe his current one lacked purpose. Or perhaps he suffered from a mid-life crisis. All his life, he yearned to avoid mediocrity, to break out of the status quo. Probably all those factors led to  his urgent need to serve God in Wycliffe. 

For some reason, though, I couldn’t fill out the application. I tried several times. I placed my pen on the application, but I couldn’t fill in the blanks. 

Finally, I figured out my problem. I didn’t want to apply to Wycliffe. I didn’t want to get rid of our furniture, our treasures, our possessions. 

I didn’t want to dismantle our home. The house I could leave—it needed repairs—but I didn’t want to tear apart what it symbolized—“home.” We had raised our children in it, we had made memories in it. 

I didn’t want to live far away from my mother or Dave’s parents. I didn’t want to say goodbye to friends. 

I didn’t want to leave Port Angeles, with its forests, mountains, and sea. 

I didn’t want to give up the security of employment, income, and health insurance. 

But mostly I didn’t want to leave my children. 

Everything within me cried out that they still needed their parents. I recognized they didn’t need us the way they did when they were little, but I believed they needed our behind-the-scenes support to transition out of college and into the world of professionals. 

Dave didn’t understand my thinking. 

But how could he not feel what I felt? 

Matt and Jill would have each other, but our Karen would be all alone. That just didn’t seem right. In fact, it seemed all wrong. 

But sometimes God works in mysterious ways. Here’s what was going on—dear Chuck Swindoll nailed it: 

“Sometimes people and things can become too important to us. We grip them with closed fists and white knuckles, and God has to pry open our fingers to loosen our hold.” (Abraham: The Friend of God) 

That’s what was going on. And it hurt. Oh, yes, it hurt!

 

Waiting patiently for the Lord

 

My health has hindered me from blogging lately, but I want to say “Hi” anyway.

Psalm 27:4 cheers me on. It gives me HOPE: “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” I know He is good, He is with me, and He has good plans for me.

I’m deeply thankful that I have God’s word in my own language, especially at times like this.

I can’t imagine what life must be like for those who don’t have Scriptures in their own languages. They must feel so cut off from God. Maybe they wonder if He even knows them or knows of their needs.

That’s why Dave and I moved to Africa—so those without the Bible could eventually have it—possess it, cherish it, live by it—in their heart languages, the languages they understand best.

I hope to be back soon. If you think of me, please pray for my health. Thank you.

 

P.S. Please tell your friends about Grandma’sLetters from Africa. Buy two copies for your church—one for the missions committee and the other for your church library.

 

Do you need to stare down that elephant in your room?

For some time now, I’ve been blogging about our arrival in Kenya—our three-month orientation course in the bush, living alongside lions and baboons and hippos, sampling new foods, singing worship songs in Swahili, and other adventures from Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa—but I still have not blogged about that elephant in the room.

(The Oxford English Dictionary says we’ve used the term “elephant in the room” since 1959. Did you know it does not mean the same as “the 800-pound gorilla in the room”?)

I’ve done a pretty good job of crouching in one corner or another and avoiding eye contact with that elephant. 

So far, stepping closer to it has been more than I can handle.

That’s why I keep circling that elephant at a distance.

But believe it or not, with several recent blog posts I’ve been circumnavigating nearer and I know that one of these days I’ll have to stand up close and lean in and look that elephant in the eye.

What am I talking about? What’s the elephant in the room?

Do you know? Or can you guess?

Leave a comment below or on the Facebook Page for Grandma’s Letters from Africa.

Come back next week and I’ll share more of my story.

But for now, LET ME ASK YOU:

What elephant in the room do you keep circling

from a distance?

Do you need to lean in and look squarely in the eye of

YOUR elephant in the room?

Perhaps my story will encourage you

to stare down your own elephant.

See you next week.