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.