When we left the U.S, I never thought I’d be teaching again. I still remember almost five years ago when I turned off the lights to room 269 for the last time, walked down the steps, handed my keys in and hugged my principal. I still remember climbing into the driver’s seat of my car and tweeting …
Anxiety and Missions and Me
Recently, everyone just asks the same thing about our move to Papua New Guinea: "How are you feeling?" So I thought I’d write it all out: the long, politically incorrect version... the Baptist-uncomfortable version instead of the 15 second response. The truth is, I’m feeling all the …
I can’t.
Today’s been a really good day. Yesterday we spent a lot of time with family, and as we were driving home last night I started panicking, literally dripping sweat and my heart started racing. I thought to myself, I can’t do this. I can’t leave. I REALLY can’t. But as we kept driving home in …
How I’m Giving Up My White Privilege
Last week we had someone accuse us of forcing our white privilege and religion on “tribes who have been just fine and happy for thousands of years without you.” We were told we needed to educate ourselves. That’s fine; this has happened before. But I’d like to offer a little bit of education myself …
Missionary Fundraising Sucks
Candid camera moment. You can judge however you want to. When I was in high school, we had to do fundraising to earn money to go on our senior trip to Washington D.C. We did all the normal things: Krispy Kreme fundraisers, ordering food from catalogues etc. But the big thing with our school was …
Maybe spiritual growth is in the checklists after all
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that spontaneity isn’t extra spiritual. Why do we think that? Why do we think it’s more spiritual to say, “I’ll pray for you as God brings you to mind” instead of just saying "I'll pray for you," then setting reminders on our phone to pray for someone? We …
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I took xanax during pregnancy, and I’m ready to talk about it
It's been a while, but I’m ready to say it now: When I was pregnant with Erin, I took Xanax weekly for my anxiety. Sometimes multiple times a week. Before I got pregnant, though, I had made the decision that I would never take Xanax during pregnancy. It was super dangerous. I had been told …
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Old Blood
It’s so annoying that missionaries have lots of kids. How dare they. They’re living off other people’s income while they choose to have as many kids as they want. When we moved to Missouri 3 ½ years ago, one of the professors we first met was super excited to find out that neither Nate or I had …
You can’t be a missionary because you love people. You will hate the people.
I sat in a little conference room at 7:00 at night in Camdenton, Missouri. It was dark and cold outside. My thick gray coat was still buttoned. “You can’t be a missionary because you love people; you will hate the people.” The words pinged off my ears like the tiny metal ball in a pinball …
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Stay
I’ve heard of missionaries who literally built a high voltage fence around their house so that no tribal people could come bother them. I’ve heard of missionaries who spent DECADES of their lives translating the scripture into another language only to have the printed Bibles literally never read by …