A Really Bad Vibe
It is not a unique, unheard-of thing for the Devil to thump about and haunt houses. In our monastery in Wittenberg I heard him distinctly… I also heard him once over my chamber in the monastery. But when I realized that it was Satan, I rolled over and went back to sleep again.
Martin Luther
Sometimes demons came in my sleep.
I heard them first at my upstairs window.
It didn’t have glass and the shutter was cracked open; that’s how they got inside.
They clattered down the stairs, banging and stomping and making all kinds of unnecessary noise.
They rounded the corner into the kitchen, sniffing around for the ancestor altar that used to be above the sink. I had taken it down the day I moved in.
It seemed to unsettle them, like a pair of vultures with no place to roost and nothing dead to circle. They began to roam aimlessly.
I watched it all with open eyes, frozen with sleep paralysis—unable to move or speak or breath.
Jesus. I could only think the words in my head. The paralysis swallowed the words up before I could find my voice. Jesus, if I follow You then why does this still happen? I fought to say His name out loud, but fitful sleep took me instead.
Next I knew, Jesus was standing outside on my porch, grasping the handles of my glass double doors. He flung them open with laughter and confidence. The demons skittered a few steps back, avoiding His gaze. He sighed in annoyance and pointed directly at them.
“You guys are giving off a really bad vibe in here and I need you to get out.”
And just like that, they scampered out the door.
A few days later, I sat across from my local friend at a coffee shop. I asked her something I had wondered for a while.
“Can you tell me about the Mid-Autumn festival?”
She paused for a minute, searching for the right English words.
“Have you ever had some bad things in your house, maybe under the bed or in the corner or inside the kitchen cabinets? We know because something will happen when we’re sleeping. We will have bad dreams, and, when we wake up, we can’t move or speak or breathe. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I know it.” Better than you think, I finished in my head.
“For Mid-Autumn Festival, many people will dress up like a lion. Others will beat drums while the lion dances, and the lion scares the evil things out of our houses.”
I’d been told that every culture holds a story of Jesus if you pay attention long enough. This one seemed too easy. A bit of beginner’s luck.
“May I share with you why I like this story?”
She nodded eagerly, proud of her country’s holiday.
“Sometimes I have the kinds of dreams you talk about. I wake up and feel very scared and I can’t move or breathe or speak. But I’m a Christian, so I pray to Jesus when the bad dreams come. The Bible says Jesus is like a lion. When He comes, every bad thing runs away. I like this story because it reminds me of the way Jesus makes the bad things leave.”
I was hoping my little story would impact her more than it did. Instead, she listened politely and moved on to other conversation topics. I was the one who walked away changed—so very impressed by what her culture had shown me about Jesus.
Sometimes the students I mentored asked if I faced spiritual warfare as a missionary. I told them I faced spiritual warfare as a follower of Jesus, regardless of my profession. Sometimes they asked me what to do when demons came in their sleep, and I told them stories about the Lion who makes every bad thing leave. And with His authority and laughter and unshakable confidence, we all learned how to roll over and go back to sleep.
A Statement of Faith
“We murder to dissect.”
C.S. Lewis
When I interviewed for Southeast Asia, no one told me my team was planting a church.
Our city only had one expat church, and attending church with the locals made us look suspiciously like missionaries.
Most of my team barely considered it a church at all. My coworkers were bent out of shape about topical preaching and spiritual gifts and they threw out the word “heresy” more often than I was comfortable with. My team said the church had problems I hadn’t been around long enough to see. For the most part, they were right.
But there were also problems they’d been around too long to see. Namely, that our team lived in an echo chamber of our own ideologies. For me, it didn’t matter so much that the worship at church was mostly Hillsong, or that I disagreed with something in every sermon. I had the world wide web available to me. I could listen to any sermon I wanted. I had a house where I could worship to any song on Spotify. I had the whole Bible in my own language. And sure, it wasn’t my ideal church, but it was the one space in my life where my area leader didn’t have the final say, and it was good and right for it to be that way.
Other people saw it differently.
And so there was dreaming and scheming; there was talk of theology and Nine Marks; there were gatherings on Sunday that weren’t officially church, and I attended because I didn't want to distance myself from my team.
Months passed, and eventually there was a committee.
“We’re forming a committee to officially establish a church. We’ll meet over the next six months to discuss the church’s values, bylaws, and statement of faith. Raise your hand if you’d like to be on the committee.”
This was my chance to have a say in how the church turned out— my chance to do something rather than passively disliking it.
I raised my hand. So did my area leader, my teammate, and two other expats.
In retrospect, it was a tactical error—a decision I wished I could unmake. I thought that joining the committee would make me a valuable stakeholder in the decisions—that we would each bring an equal part to the table and build something together. More often, I felt like an obstacle to be overcome, like I was there to approve my area leader’s ideas rather than bring my own.
Quite honestly, I don’t know that he ever wanted me there. Maybe he saw me as a barrier to planting the kind of church he’d always dreamed about. Maybe he didn’t know how to tell me he wanted me off the committee—that I was cut from a different cloth. Maybe I was just too committed to making something fit when it didn’t. Maybe I wrongly assumed we could agree on the essentials and compromise on everything else.
So it began—nine months of committee meetings.
We prayed and we talked and we edited Google docs, and maybe that sounds innocent enough. But we argued about the strangest of things, like limited atonement and particular redemption and what it means to be “very God of very God.” This couldn’t possibly be what it meant to start a church.
I was glad for the days we drank bourbon— like all good theologians do— because it gave me the courage to say a fraction of what I was really thinking.
Like, for example, that we shouldn’t ask members to sign an exclusively Calvinist statement of faith, especially if we believed we were the only biblical church in town. Especially if we worked for a nondenominational organization. Especially if attendance was required for our students.
Or that we didn’t need to bicker about which Person of the Trinity saves us.
Or that it was wrong for us to spend more than six hours discussing church polity and only eight minutes discussing the role of women in our congregation.
Or that the locals (and my expat friends, and my teammates, and the students I mentored, and the visiting staff) whispered to me about how the church gave them a weird vibe.
Or that the Church was founded on the inspired Word of God, and that we were wasting our time trying to create another infallible document. That many before us had lived and died defending the creeds, and our five-person committee wouldn’t produce anything better.
Sometimes I voted to approve things I didn’t like because I was so exhausted by the conversation. Sometimes I voted a certain way because I knew it would affect the way people perceived me at work. And sometimes I voted to approve decisions because I actually agreed with them—because, somewhere in there, I saw an honest desire to establish a church that honored God in the best way we knew how.
After nine months, it was finished: our statement of faith. Yes, the wording was exactly right, and yes, every potential heresy had been considered. It seemed to me, however, more like a statement of faith in our own theology—faith in all the things we thought we knew. Faith in a document, faith in being right, faith in being better than them. Faith in a lot of things besides Jesus.
And then, the first sermon.
It was on church discipline.
They asked us to raise our hands if we wanted to become members. No heads bowed, no eyes closed. Hands slipped up around the room, committing to sign the document we wrote. My hand twitched in my lap. I can’t sign this knowing the manipulation I saw behind closed doors. My face burned with every eye on me. My missions pastor warned me not to give my area leader more control over my life. My heart raced. I’ll tell them I need more time to pray about it. I took a deep breath. But they’ll think I’m a traitor, undermining the work of the church. Unwilling to come under its authority. I had a decision to make.
In front of my whole community—in front of the precious few Christians involved in my life—I chose not raise my hand.
Because somewhere deep down, I knew something was wrong.
Knee Deep
“How do you typically handle team conflict?”
It was summer and all I could think about was how hot it was.
“I don’t usually generate much conflict. There’ve been a couple scuffles over the past few years, but nothing major. Actually—in the last couple months, two of my supervisors have told me I need to be more assertive and express my opinions with confidence, so I’ve been working on that with my counselor. I wanted to mention that up front because it’s something I’m trying to grow in.”
My team leaders were young and tired, but overall I really liked them. We’d worked together before and I had no doubt we’d get along. Our area leader rubbed me the wrong way sometimes, but I tried to remind myself that it takes a headstrong leader to build a team in an unreached people group. I hadn’t forgotten the day I lay on his family’s couch with a broken collarbone, and he offered me a shot of liquor when he saw the pain in my face. There was compassion and tenderness there, though he guarded it carefully with a tough exterior. I’d heard from a few former teammates that he could be hard to work with, but I was determined not to believe it until I saw it.
Every now and again, I did see it. We all saw it in each other. We saw it on the days when we were exhausted, the days we had food poisoning, the days we were homesick, the days we got on each other’s nerves. Some of us got mean and some of us got sad. Some of us got stubborn and some of us became fault-finding. But, for the most part, we all did the best we could.
For the most part.
It went downhill when we disagreed about the dress code. My team leader proposed that we let the women show their knees, and I thought someone would have an aneurysm.
It was a long-standing argument and people had vented to me about it for years because it was so disproportionately conservative. Maybe in the Muslim world it would have made sense, but we lived in a tourist town where the local women wore miniskirts to work and danced on tables when their teams won sporting events. There were summer days when the heat index was 120 and I had to concentrate on not scratching the heat rash on my legs. Former staff complained about it in their exit interviews, and all of us complained about it behind our area leader’s back.
Finally, the topic became so tense that my area leader and his wife called for an open discussion with our entire team. It happened on a Friday night and I was baffled as to why it couldn’t wait until Monday.
My area leader took the lead.
“I know we’re here to talk about the dress code issue, but I wanted to let everyone know—if you ever have a concern that you’re not comfortable bringing to me, you’re always free to bring it to the international director.”
That’s humble, I thought. This conversation is already going better than I expected.
“Now, let’s move on to the dress code discussion. First, I want to recognize that we’re asking our ladies to practice a level of modesty that isn’t necessary for the culture. As Christians, we’re called to stand out from the culture, not to blend in with it. So, my view is that nothing needs to change. In the past, we’ve only followed the dress code when students are in town, but, for integrity’s sake, we need to start abiding by it all the time.”
Never mind.
There was an unnaturally long silence. Maybe I’d been presumptuous, but I thought an open discussion would involve openness and a discussion.
Voices started chiming in, one cautious opinion after another. I was surprised by how timid my coworkers were, how different their comments were from our conversations behind closed doors.
I mustered my courage. “It makes sense to me that we would have a clear expectation for how we dress in a work context, but I think it’s important for our staff to have some flexibility when the students aren’t here. I think we can trust our team to abide by the spirit of the law without needing to impose a blanket rule in our time off.”
I was caught off guard by how fast my heart was beating, how risky it felt to express a reasonable opinion. Did I come on too strong? Was I assertive enough? Did I practice the confident humility my counselor and I had talked about in our last few sessions?
There were more comments and questions and rebuttals, but none of them were enough to change my area leader’s mind. It was a confusing feeling, watching someone else make such a heavy-handed decision about my body. Was this as outrageous as it felt? Or was this one of the rights I laid down when I became a missionary?
The official meeting ended and all the angsty after-conversations started. There were email threads and biting comments and venting sessions that went unchecked. But there were also legitimate questions—good reasons to ask, “Did that meeting seem off to you?” or “Am I missing something?” Sometimes the healthy and unhealthy talking was so intermingled that I didn’t know where one stopped and the other started, but it was clear that we were unresolved.
I might have been the most unresolved.
Because, no matter how spiritual we tried to make it, I couldn’t reconcile the inconsistencies.
Because, when it came to other gray areas, we all shrugged and tried to use our best judgment.
Because my area leader poured shots of bourbon for the locals at his birthday party, and he didn’t seem concerned about being above the cultural standard then.
Because they trusted me enough to send me through counter-interrogation training, but not enough to dress myself.
Because our team broke all the rules we gave our students, like not running air-conditioning and not shopping at the nice grocery stores and not using a washing machine, and we didn’t seem to care about integrity in those areas.
Because we didn’t even say the name of Jesus in public—we were trying so hard not to look like missionaries—but then we dressed so conservatively that we gave ourselves away.
I wasn’t all that concerned about getting to wear what I wanted, but I was concerned by the relational dynamics I saw.
Prayerfully, I took it to my missions pastor. With his encouragement, I took it to my area leader, because I preferred to talk about it directly than to whisper about it in angsty little groups.
It didn’t go well. In fact, it didn’t really go at all. I had to bring it up four times for us to start a conversation about it, and the conversation we finally had was so unproductive that I wished I hadn’t tried.
If he made an honest attempt to listen, it got drowned out with patronizing statements that I was being selfish, that I was in a state of culture shock, or that no one else on the team felt that way. There was profanity and pouting and even a comment that “it hurts my feelings when people wear shorts,” and—for goodness sake—I wished I had left well enough alone, because now it was out there, and somehow I was the child throwing the tantrum.
I knew better than to think that my own frustration didn’t show, or that I expressed my concerns with perfect clarity. I also knew something was wrong when open discussions became unilateral decisions, and legitimate questions became accusations of rebellion. I knew something was wrong when team members said one thing when a leader was listening and something else when he was away.
Most of all, I knew this sweet country was home—knew that I couldn’t imagine a happier station in life. I knew I was committed to this team for the long haul—committed to addressing conflict, committed to reconciliation, committed to not sweeping things under the rug.
That commitment got me knee-deep in a power struggle.
Towers to Heaven
“I can plod. That is my only genius.”
William Carey, when asked about the secret to missionary life
I started learning the language right away. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t have much by way of advice. Mostly, people said it was exhausting. A necessary evil. That I was learning one of the harder languages in the world, and people who’d studied for years were only conversational. That six hours of study a week was a realistic goal.
It took me a month before I could say a sentence with confidence.
During that month, I made a happy discovery—one that carried me through long hours and days of study.
God made language-learning hard on purpose.
It happened in Genesis 11, when humankind tried to build a tower to heaven. In one mighty, decisive swoop, God put a stop to our own self-destruction. And so began the first foreign language study.
Suddenly I knew why my brain was melting, why so few people stuck with it, why this was so unnaturally hard. Because I wasn’t parsing my way through a human invention. No, I was unraveling the secrets of God.
I understood then, that this language was a riddle of God’s love. A maze of His protection over humanity. This was the strength of His salvation—all layered with tones and characters, a labyrinth of power and kindness.
So I memorized this maze—wrote it out on flashcards and stammered through it in tutoring sessions and rehearsed it with silly vocal exercises. I watched YouTube videos and took online classes and read children’s books and chatted with every stranger who would pay attention to me. I wrote stories and watched cartoons and eavesdropped on conversations, and then I went to bed and dreamed about it all in my second language. I did it forty hours a week.
And every day I laughed. I laughed long and hard, sometimes loudly and sometimes in silent hysterics. I ordered meals I didn’t even like because I got the tones wrong. I acted out bodily functions at the pharmacy because I couldn’t remember the words I needed. I got lost because I mispronounced the road names to the taxi drivers. And once, I accidentally asked an elderly lady for cocaine.
At long last, the language started to come. Suddenly whole paragraphs poured out of my mouth, and they were as much a surprise to me as they were to everyone else around me. I made jokes and won arguments and called doctor’s offices and even had a laser hair removal consultation. My life became a rush of energy and confidence and resourcefulness, and I loved it.
Sure, it was hard, but my only regret was that no one told me how beautiful language learning could be, or how often I would sense the pleasure of God.
It struck me as such a sad way to live—with plodding as my only secret. Because with God on His throne and the Holy Spirit inside me and Jesus everywhere except the empty grave, maybe I was invited into something better than plodding.
That’s when I started to ask myself—what if more parts of missionary life were like that? Breathtaking, if you only knew where to look. What if I’d learned too much of my missiology from the weary and heavy-laden, and not enough from the One whose burden is light? What if He could give me laughter in exchange for plodding, playfulness instead of a suffering complex?
So I made a sort of covenant with wonder—vowed that it would be my missionary secret. I resolved that I would endure nothing, great or small, without asking God to show me its beauty.
By the end, I’d learned something of William Carey’s plodding, but mostly I’d learned how to stand in awe. Mostly I’d learned to bow low, to press my face to the dust of my tile floor and marvel over Jesus. Mostly I traced His miracles a hundred times over, spellbound by the way He came every time.
Because, despite all my rookie mistakes, I guessed one thing right on the first try.
All was beauty.
Do Not Hold Back
“What’s a queen without her king?”
I don’t know, but let’s ask
Cleopatra,
Nefertit,
Hatshepsut,
Victoria,
Elizabeth,
Amina,
Tzu-hsi and
the countless other kingless queens
who turned mere kingdoms into
the greatest of Empires.
Nikita Gill, Queens
I don’t remember how I got there—sitting cross-legged on my tile floor. Maybe because it was hot, or because my mattress was made of Styrofoam, or because I was air-drying my laundry on the couch.
I don’t remember how I got there—Isaiah 54. I don’t think I even had singleness on my mind. Maybe I was preparing to teach a class, or I was working on a newsletter, or I had slept through my morning quiet time every day that week.
What I remember is how my life changed:
“Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.
“Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,
and your offspring will possess the nations
and will people the desolate cities.”
Two lines leapt into my spirit, the tender whisper of God over my anxious single heart:
Sing, O barren one…
do not hold back;
Suddenly, I was unraveling.
For two years I had agonized over my singleness–so sure that I needed a husband and kids, so frantic about what could go wrong. Because what if I risked it all, what if I laid it all on the altar, and it turned out to be a disaster? What if I sacrificed everything and wound up back in the United States two years later, traumatized and right back where I started? What if I was a shell of a person for a long time afterward, and I lost valuable childbearing years?
Now here I was with my guard down, and God was doing exactly what I was afraid He would do. Here He was, loosening my grip on the thing I was so sure I needed, prying my fingers open to receive a better gift.
The gift came all at once—a dam of answered prayer burst open by one word from God. It came and it kept coming, gushing like a river that had long been held back.
I saw for the first time what God had seen all along—the lives of powerful women unfolding in all their beauty. I saw that He was inviting me to raise up laborers who didn’t cling so tightly to the dream of marriage and kids. He was inviting me to go first and see who came with me.
Esthers, risking their lives for the sake of a nation.
Rahabs, forsaking the familiar to follow the God of Israel.
Annas, making a home in the temple of God.
Marys, breaking open their alabaster boxes.
Joannas, exulting over the empty tomb. Among the first to tell of the resurrection.
There, in my little house on the unnamed road, I was persuaded that being a single missionary was the happiest station in life.
I don’t remember how I got here—35 and single and so perfectly happy about it. Because all my 29-year-old fears came true. I laid it all on the altar and it turned out to be a disaster. I sacrificed everything and wound up in the United States two years later, traumatized and right back where I started. I was a shell of a person for a long time afterward, and I lost valuable childbearing years.
But let me tell you what else happened: I embraced my life for the treasure it was.
I nurtured the little things God was birthing in the nations. I listened to the whispered dreams of people who thought they were too young to do anything for the Kingdom of God, and then I watched those whispers become battle cries.
My home spread out in every direction, in more cities and time zones than I could keep up with.
The hearts I shepherded began possessing nations. They dreamed of homes in desolate cities, and those dreams turned into action.
And I sang. I sang until I disrupted the neighbors, sang until my throat hurt, sang so loud I wondered if the police would come.
For once, I didn’t hold back. I stopped grieving the losses and ran headlong into the life I had.
When I moved overseas as a single woman, I thought for sure I was choosing to never get married or have a family—to never fall in love, to never feel a baby kick, to never hear the pitter-patter of little feet on Christmas morning. Maybe I was right—I still don’t know.
But let me tell you what I do know: If I was choosing, I am so, so happy with my choice.
Jericho
“I love to live on the brink of eternity.”
David Brainerd
“God, what are You doing in Bangkok?”
We always did orientation week in Bangkok, because the buildings in Thailand weren’t bugged by the police.
I watched our slow descent through the airplane window. I imagined I could see the heat waves rolling over the city—such a bustling, humid place. No matter where my travels took me, I’d learned to listen to God while the plane was landing.
I looked out the window again—this time with my spiritual eyes. I watched the traffic weave through every road and alleyway, through slums, businesses, palaces, and hotels. Slowly the roads became red ribbons, cords of redemption woven through every district, in through every doorway and out through every window, irreparably tangled with the city itself.
Then, a still, small voice.
“Everyone remembers the Battle of Jericho as the day the walls came down. But here’s what people never talk about: That was the day when I destroyed a system that kept a prostitute in bondage. I brought down the walls and she went free.”
Suddenly every scarlet cord was alive with the promise of redemption.
My team and I picked up fourteen Americans from the airport—all of them under the age of 25, all of them eager to be mentored through three months of missionary life. We covered more material that week than their jet-lagged minds could remember—from theology of missions to dress code to protocol for crossing into a closed country. They complained because they were hot and tired and constipated. But they were there, and they were saying yes to Jesus.
A few days later, we crossed the border together into my beloved new home.
I thought my heart might burst with hope during those early days in Southeast Asia. Sure, I couldn’t figure out how to turn on my stove, but I lived off raw pancake batter and the raw joy of following Jesus. I spent my days pouring into those fourteen wanna-be missionaries and my evenings motorbiking through the mountain roads, and I felt guilty for how thoroughly happy I was.
I made friends–true friends–more quickly and easily than I thought I would. I wasn’t as close with my team as I expected, but I was almost never lonely. Between the locals and the expat community, my life brimmed with coffee dates, long conversations, and laughter that made my sides hurt.
I rented a little house on an unnamed road, if it could be called a road at all. The neighbors peered in the windows while I unpacked my two suitcases. It was clear they’d never had an American neighbor before. I bought dishes, planted flowers, and took in a stray kitten, and I had never been more at home in my life.
That dusty little alleyway was a long way from Bangkok, but I thought often about the God who was always hanging scarlet cords out windows, always breaking open prisons, always surprising me with His redemption. And I was surprised–so very caught off guard by the joy He gave me as a new missionary. I suspected my happy song alone might bring down a few of those prison walls.
Try
I didn’t fall in love,
I rose in it.
I saw you and I made up my mind.
Toni Morrison
Six weeks after the bus incident, I cried uncontrollably watching my last Southeast Asian sunset through an airport window. I landed in America, got a new apartment, unpacked my suitcases, and sobbed my way through reverse culture shock.
For a year and a half, I wrestled with my desire to go back. There were meetings and coaching conversations, journal entries and counseling sessions, prayer and fasting, fear and longing.
All the while, my heart ached in a way I’d never felt before.
Maybe this was what Paul meant when he said he cared for the church like a mother cares for her child. Because somewhere so deep down—past my mind that knew the statistics, past my heart that loved the place—was a physical ache to pour my life out on Southeast Asian soil. Gone was the quest for adventure. Gone was the dream of seeing other parts of the world. Gone was the desire to keep my options open. Instead came waves of fervent prayer like I had never experienced before. Instead came fits of weeping over the unreached. Instead came dreams and visions and prophetic words over Southeast Asia. Instead came a plan to grow old there.
I cried a lot that year, and I was never entirely sure why. No doubt part of it was the adjustment back to the United States, and part of it was a God-given burden for the unreached. Part of it was head trauma from being hit by two buses, but if I was honest with myself, my tears were mostly grief.
When I felt the power of what was inside me—the longing to spend my life for the sake of one people group—I knew the other things I wanted wouldn’t survive. I knew I was looking in the face of the thing that would cost me my dreams of marriage and children. It would cost me access to corporate worship. It would cost me the joy of walking into a room full of friends who had known me for a long time. It would cost me birthdays and holidays and weddings and graduations. It would cost me all of that and more, yet the ache only grew more intense.
I cried that year because I understood what my love for Southeast Asia would cost me. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I knew it could all go wrong. I cried because I was going to do it anyway.
In the end, it came down to simple facts. God gave me a deep passion for the unreached. I worked for an organization I loved. My church and my supporters stood with me. I was willing. Jesus was worth it. And I was in turmoil.
So with the turn of a new year, I made a new, shaky decision. I would go. I would say yes to moving overseas long-term. It’s the kind of thing you want to have peace about before you say it out loud. If I had waited for that, I would have never gone.
A few nights later, under the 2:00 a.m. glow of my kindle, I noticed a word that changed everything.
Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:8b-10
Try. Try to discern. He didn’t ask me to do the impossible. He didn’t ask me to have perfect clarity or perfect peace or perfect intuition. He asked me to try.
It didn’t shift all at once, but something happened to my quivering “yes”—all riddled with anxiety and hinging on the affirmation of others. I stopped needing one more person to weigh the evidence and tell me the answer. I stopped obsessing over whether every detail was perfect. I put away my bulleted lists with point values for the pros and cons. And somewhere in the trying, God wrote my nervous whisper into a song I would fight to sing.
I told my supporters this:
Here’s the honest truth—I have confidence from the Lord about my decision to move, but there are plenty of ways it could go wrong. There are certain answers I won’t know until later. But I’ve traded my desperation to do the right thing for rest in the One who loves me even when I do the wrong thing, because there is so, so much grace to try.
So, for what it’s worth, I want to lay at the feet of King Jesus a bold and costly “try”—saturated in prayer, full of risk, and flawed with my own brokenness—and I want you to join me. Because even though it isn’t perfect, I believe it’s good and right and true, and I see the fruit of light shining through its cracks.
Its light is still shining.
Something Stronger Than Two Buses
I was called to Southeast Asia the day I was hit by two buses. You can imagine, then, how much it took for me to leave.
A year after it happened, I wrote the story like this:
When I was in Asia, I got hit by two buses.
The details are mostly irrelevant, though everyone wants to hear them. A careless bus driver and a poorly timed left-hand turn catapulted my motorbike into the front of an oncoming bus. For a terrifying moment, I was caught between two forces strong enough to crush me. Neither of them stopped.
I found myself sprawled on the pavement—tires spinning, arm oozing, shoulder aching. My survival instinct barked orders: “Get up. Get out of the street. More traffic is coming.”
I limped to the side of the road and found myself outside an open-air coffee shop— every local out of their seat, talking in strange, urgent tones. Someone offered me a cup of lukewarm green tea. My shaking hands fumbled a cheap Nokia phone, my only connection to an English speaker.
Before long, familiar faces appeared on the scene. Emergency vehicles are a first-world luxury, but a teammate helped me into a taxi. In a two-bed clinic, I ground my teeth and chewed my lip to keep from crying the name of Jesus with every movement of my arm. I hope I have freedom of speech when I break my next bone.
I lay awake that night—arm velcroed across my chest, ice pack wedged into my t-shirt collar, shoulder pounding with every heartbeat.
“God, where were you today while I was caught between two buses?”
The scene flashed into my mind like lightning—all blaring horns and white metal. I was between two buses again, but I wasn’t alone. This time I saw strong arms stretched wide, holding the buses apart, keeping me safe.
“I’m a Father and I love to protect. It’s who I am. Love always protects.”
My breaths grew deeper and I felt my heart unfold in the silence, soaking up love’s furious protection.
“But there was a day when mankind’s sin and the consequences of that sin were barreling toward each other, and my Only Begotten Son chose to put Himself in the middle. That day, I didn’t protect Him. I didn’t protect him! I did it for you and I did it for these people, and they’ve never had a chance to hear.”
I lay there for a long time, listening to the air condition drip. My heart was all surrender. My only answer was “yes.”
When I wake up on rainy mornings, my collarbone still aches with the truth I learned two summers ago between those buses in Asia. When I stretch, I can never straighten my right arm quite the way I could before. But I have stronger reminders of that hot day in my future home. They come when my prayers catch in my throat, because my ache for these people to know Jesus makes it hard to breathe. They come when I rearrange my future, because I long to nurture unreached people groups even more than I want a family of my own. They come every time I raise my hands in worship and feel the twinging reminder that 3 billion people can’t. These reminders come and they don’t stop, and I don’t want them to. Because there is another One who bears wounds of longing, holy injuries with scars that don’t fade. There is One who was crushed while they were protected, and there were no strong arms to fight for Him, no lifeline in His desperation, no friend when His courage failed, no Savior’s name to cry in His pain.
So come—come lace fingers with these nail-pierced hands and find they hold all you need. Follow His gaze to the ends of the earth and see how they take His breath away. Risk breaking your bones and your heart, and tell me if you regret it. Because every time something breaks, there are strong arms making a safe space, and there are Father-eyes that never look away.
Sometimes I look back on my younger self and think of all she didn’t know—all the slow and painful things she was about to learn. But when I read her words now, I see she was more of a prophet than she realized, not at all ignorant of what could go wrong.
If I could look her in the eyes, I’d tell her I don’t regret it. There were so many more broken things than she expected, but she made good on her promise that I would find a safe space—that I would see my Father’s unwavering gaze all over again.
When I ask Jesus what He sees, He shows me our hands still intertwined—both pierced by the nails of betrayal, both convinced that every risk was worthwhile.
Because there is something in me that is stronger than two buses. Someone, to be more precise. He raised up the broken body of a Man who was crushed between the world’s sin and its consequences. He was the voice that called Jesus out of the grave. He was the voice that told me to get up the day I lay sprawled and oozing on the pavement. He was the day I got back on my motorbike, testing my once-broken body to see if it could bear weight again.
He is the ache in my heart now that says to get up and do it again.
A Theology of Telling
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.”
Matthew 18:15-17
I have long misunderstood what the Bible says about my voice.
In fact, my theology has more closely resembled the children’s movie Bambi:.
“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”
But there is a terrible problem with saying nothing at all.
Too many times I’ve been told to be silent to protect the Kingdom of God. I wonder if we remember what the Kingdom of God is at all.
Because the Kingdom of God is a call to repentance–a story where every shameful thing comes out of hiding.
A place where only serpents ask, “Did he really say that?”
The Kingdom of God is every drop of Abel’s blood that cried out for justice.
It’s every Hagar who was seen by God.
It’s every Joseph who was vindicated after he was falsely accused.
It’s every Bathsheba whose story wasn’t struck from the record, not even for the sake of a king’s reputation.
It’s every raped concubine whose dead body calls forth an army.
It’s every Esther who risked her life speaking up against abuse.
It’s every Job who gave voice to his sorrow when he suffered as a righteous man.
It’s every psalmist who spelled out how his enemy was wrong.
It’s every prophet who confronted sin publicly and in detail.
It’s every virgin who told the truth when no one believed her.
It’s every good shepherd who could see a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
It’s every teacher who warned of whitewashed tombs, full of dead men’s bones.
It’s every apostle who called out religious leaders by name.
It’s every passage that decries gossip and slander, but never forbids a truthful story.
It’s every slain witness under the altar of God, crying out to be avenged.
And it is, most of all, the story of a Man who was murdered by religious leaders–His trauma hung up for all the world to see. It is every slap of His face, every sharp edge of betrayal that pierced His body and soul. It is the story of God Himself, rejected and spit on—weighed, measured, and found wanting. It is the story of a Man who told the truth and was crucified for it.
The Kingdom of God is the story of One who got up out of the grave, not a fiber of death clinging to His resurrected body.
And what does this Man do when He comes out of the grave? Does He grow quiet to protect the religious system? Does He speak about it in hushed tones, careful not to upset the balance?
No, with His last words He tells us not to be silent, insists that every tribe and tongue know His death and resurrection.
He is a God of telling, because the darkness and the light are both alike to Him. And He is making every injustice into good news, every survivor’s story a shadow of the gospel.
Here’s the thing—the wild, beautiful thing: this story doesn’t belong to me alone. I share it with the One who lives inside of me–the One who promised to be with me to the very end. My story is His story. My grief, His grief. Every good and perfect thing came from Him, and every evil thing was done against Him more than it was ever done against me.
And with that revelation, I found the courage to use my voice again.
Never Trade Your Voice
“A woman doesn't know how powerful her voice is until she has been silenced.”
Ursula, The Little Mermaid
“Jesus, would You give me a dream about moving to Southeast Asia?” It was my last thought before I drifted off to sleep that Saturday night.
Next I knew, I was walking up the stairs at the front of my church, microphone in hand. I drew a slow breath and looked out at a blurry audience.
“In the movie The Little Mermaid, Ariel makes a deal with the enemy where she trades her voice in exchange for something she really wants.”
I paused, my heart quivering under the urgency of the next part.
“Your voice is the most important thing you have. Your voice makes the heart of God beat faster. No matter what— no matter how hard it gets— you are never, never, never to trade your voice.”
My hands trembled. It was the fear of God, not man.
I grew loud and impassioned, shouting with authority that caught me off guard. I went on and on, preaching about the overwhelming value of a voice. I broke into bold, fervent prayer.
As I ended my prayer, I looked up at the audience. One by one, I locked eyes with the other missionaries I worked with, and a wave of shame and self-doubt nearly knocked me over. I was too loud, I was too female, I was out of line with my boldness. I hung my head in embarrassment, set my microphone down, and slipped out the side door.
I jolted awake in my bed. Immediately, I heard the nearly audible tune of The Little Mermaid getting her voice back. My head whirled, and I knew it was one of the most significant dreams I’d ever had.
That morning, I found myself on the front row of my Southern Baptist church. The pastor preached on the importance of prayer in light of the coming election. Then suddenly, this soft-spoken man began to shout:
“Use your voice! Church, use your voice! Use your words!”
The whole room went pin-drop quiet, except for the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.
My mind raced all afternoon, puzzling over my dream. I tried on the metaphor a hundred different ways, until finally I understood.
The Little Mermaid traded her voice for legs.
She swore herself to silence so she could go wherever she wanted to go.
“Does that mean I shouldn’t go, God?” But it seemed that staying in America would be trading my voice, too.
“Then what, God? What should I do?”
With time and prayer, I began to see it. There was a better way for this restless Disney princess– her heart tethered to a far-away land. The problem wasn’t that she wanted to go— the problem was that she bartered with the enemy for something her father could freely give her.
But there was another line from my dream that turned over and over again in my mind. A rock in a tumbler, slowly becoming beautiful.
“Never trade your voice.” Not “never have your voice stolen,” or “never give your voice away,” but never trade it. With trading came a choice, because not all things can be taken without permission.
Three years later, it all made perfect sense.
But in the meantime, I held space for a vague but serious urging not to trade my voice. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was one of the most profound things God had ever told me. I prayed often for insight, but God only gave me confirmation— so very many confirmations. And so it grew in a sort of savings account in my spirit, gaining interest and momentum, compounding over and over again, increasing exponentially for the day I would cash it in. And when the time to withdraw it came, I needed every penny.
Prologue
It all begins with an idea.
There was a window over the kitchen sink in the little three-bedroom house. A mother gathered up a little girl with blonde hair. She turned her daughter’s face to the night sky and asked:
“Do you think that’s heaven?”
The clouds shimmered of pink and purple and blue, shot through with moonbeams, alive with color and light.
The little girl nodded.
Maybe the memory was a dream, but the spark of wonder was real.
Before long, a sister came. Sometimes the blonde little girl and her father would sneak away from the baby’s cries and watch The Little Mermaid. They would share a bag of M&Ms, if the little girl was in a sharing mood.
The girl watched The Little Mermaid until she combed her hair with a fork, until she pretended to be a mermaid in the bathtub, until she could quote the movie without missing a word.
She could quote other things, too, like Dr. Suess books and Bible passages and her classmates’ lines from the Christmas play. She daydreamed too much to play sports and she cried because she never won a ribbon on field day, but she always got straight A’s in school.
She grew taller, though never very tall. She loved to ride bikes and read biographies and climb trees with her sister. She wanted very much to follow Jesus, and she tried too hard to be good. Most of the time she was quiet; but she was loud on the inside, and she never doubted that God knew her voice. And as far back as she could remember, she fell asleep praying to the Maker of Heaven.
Sometimes she wished she had more friends; sometimes she wished she was pretty like her sister. Always she was lost in thought, pondering theology or her own mood or the injustices of the world.
With time and prayer, she grew to care about one injustice most of all— the reality that one third of the world had never met anyone who could tell them about Jesus.
When the girl was nineteen, she had a radical encounter with Love.
She was different then. She sang and her eyes sparkled and she wept over God’s love for her, and she wanted nothing more than to spend her life telling the world.
Until one day, all was darkness. Unrelenting darkness.
The light crept in ever so slowly, a dawn so long it seemed light would never break the horizon. But when it did, she could never unsee it.
In the meantime, she finished college. She worked odd jobs—six months here, a year there—because she had not forgotten the only thing she could do with her life.
At long last, she found a place where she fit. Where the people she labored alongside lost sleep over those who had never heard. She wasn’t a very good evangelist, and not always as brave as she hoped. Her gift, instead, was drawing others out, unlocking the dark places and inviting the light. She flourished as a mentor, a coach for young missionaries exploring a life overseas.
She grew to love a far-away place in the East, where evangelism was illegal and the name of Jesus wasn’t spoken.
And, like the blonde little girl who combed her hair with a fork, she wanted to be part of that world.
One night, she prayed for a dream about moving there.
A Small Spark
If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.
How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!
James 3:3-5
To tell a story like mine is a serious thing.
Because the Judge of all the earth will try my words by fire, and He will have the final say.
But until then, a few disclaimers:
Throughout this blog, I’ve maintained a commitment to telling my story as I experienced it, without censoring events or emotion. I have done my best not to withhold the truth of my experience for the sake of any reputation, including my own. You may sometimes find the events triggering or the stories hard to process. (You can find a full list of trigger warnings here.) In these areas, my hope is to use my voice for the good of the Church, not to divulge every possible failure, dysfunction, or traumatic detail. As you read my story, with all its joys and sorrows, may you always find the worship true, the light dazzling, and the Person of Jesus alive. In all these areas, my hope is to use my voice for the good of the Church, to give every possible detail of God’s power and tenderness.
In writing my story, I’ve gone through calendars, emails, text messages, journals, HR reports, and extensive notes I kept on conversations. While I have confidence in my experiences, this blog is—as the title denotes—my voice. The thoughts and opinions expressed here belong solely to me, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other individual or organization. Occasionally, I have compressed conversations and events for the sake of brevity. In these cases, I have made every effort to preserve the tone and context of the situation.
The quotation marks I’ve used throughout this blog represent my best effort to recreate conversations as they happened. This includes my conversations with God. While I wholeheartedly affirm the voice of God, He is not contained by human language, and I sometimes find it difficult to convey what He says in exact words. I most often experience God’s voice as a flood of thoughts or mental pictures that can be paraphrased, but not quoted directly. I have done my best—with some fear and trembling—to accurately describe my experiences of God, but I recognize that my best efforts will fall short, and I pray you’ll extend grace when they do.
I’ve intentionally told this story without names. I would ask that my readers honor my intent by not publicly commenting with my own name or the names of the people or organizations described in this story. While I believe it's important for names to be named, I would prefer not to do so in the context of this blog.
For a long time, the fear of using my voice wrongly has haunted me—the specter of James 3 wrapped like a straitjacket around my spirit. I have read this passage over and over and over again, questioning the wisdom of telling my story, asking God to help me find the truth about my voice.
And finally, I see it.
Because the Bible calls my voice fire and water, poison and fruit. A bridle that can rein in things of great power, a rudder that can guide against strong winds. When I was defenseless, God gave me poison that could kill the Enemy’s systems. When all the light had gone out, He gave me a spark that could set a whole forest ablaze. When my life was lost at sea, He gave me power to turn great ships. And though my voice is small, God calls it mighty.
And so I offer you my voice, and I pray it will be a gift to the Kingdom.
Because some ships need to turn.
Some things need to burn.
But mostly the miracles need to be told.