Missionary Kid

Was it Gods plan for the children of missionaries to be cast aside, abused and abandoned for the sake of seeking and saving the lost? Or was that mans faulty interpretation of a calling. How can one present the glorious, loving gospel of Christ if they first are incapable of loving and caring for the ones that came from their very flesh and blood. I see it day in and day out as missionary kids broken and wounded returning from fields afar, lost and forgotten in a hurried desire for parents to be back at the "Lords work." Aren't our children, our beloved offspring, the treasures bestowed upon us from the Lord our first and most important calling. Don't we shape the future leaders? Isn't it our calling to mold and teach the least of these. To show them what loving Christ with an unquenchable passion looks like. Then when we have purposed in our hearts to mold and love and teach them then might we go to work intermingling teaching and loving others as our children walk with us, pray with us, and learn with us.

I grew up in a generation of forgotten children you might call it. I was loved. I was blessed to have parents who loved me, cared for me, and taught me about Jesus. I really was blessed. But there came a point in my life where their work, their ministry took preeminence over my needs and my emotional well being. I do understand the rigors of raising children, and I look up to my parents for taking 4 small lively children to a foreign country. I really don't know how they did it. So I feel selfish saying I didn't get what I really deserved or needed half the time. We got the used up side of our parents. The tired, discouraged, and impatience. There was no 9/5 job. It was the 24/7, 365 job. So to make life easier I guess they as many did without question placed us in assumable able hands to care for and educate us many many miles away. 6-8 weeks away at school 1 week home.

One week home went like this

Monday- Hello again. How do I figure out how to be a daughter and sister again after pretending for 8 weeks my parents and family don't exist so I can avoid being laughed at and experiencing sever bouts of homesickness. The loneliness ate a big hole in my heart. My brother sleeps on the couch because I'm home since he usually sleeps in my bed when I'm away.

Tuesday- I catch up on what I've missed being away, try to unpack, figure out how normal life works at home. Whatever normal is.

Wednesday- Start feeling like I'm part of the family again, I think.

Thursday- Really getting comfortable, loving being hugged again after 8 weeks of no personal affection.

Friday- The dread starts creeping back in. I start to remembering I have to go back. I'm on the down side of the week. I mentally start packing my bags. Closing my heart back up, backing away from personal touch, and stepping out of the family circle. It's less painful I think.

Saturday- I feel sick, don't feel like eating, start packing my bags, rattling off what I will need when I get back to the dorm. New flip-flops, more batteries for my flashlight, my stuffed bear Bubu who has been with me through every long night and every long day.

Sunday- The day I leave. Panic rises in my throat, all day I'm on the edge of a panic attack. Cold hands, sweaty palms. Empty feeling in my stomach. I feel like a hollow shell. Loading up the car, saying goodbye. Trying to be a brave girl, a good little soldier for Christ, whatever that means as a child I don't know. We leave. As we round the bend in the road I see the big tree I hate, I despise. It just grew there, no reason to be hated, but I, I hated that tree. It meant that the airport was near. I was powerless and my parents would once again hand me over to people I neither wanted to be with nor loved. Sundays for many many years were days I hated, I loathed. It signified the day I crumbled into a thousand pieces, was given away, and had no power or word in the matter. I went no matter what. I broke my arm one year a day before school and I still went, after I had it set.

Did I mention I was 8,9, 10, 11. At that age moms worry about their babies going to sleep overs. I was actually almost old when I went, other friends went when they were just tender ages of 6 and 7.

So my question again to you is God's plan for children of missionaries to be cast aside, abused or abandoned? When I tell people I went to boarding school when I was 8 for 6-8 weeks at a time they look at me like I'm crazy. Part of me wonders what the big deal is, while the other part agrees with them. It was crazy and it still is. The part of me that thinks it is no big deal is the part of me that was told that that behavior was normal, acceptable and good for children. The other part of me understands now why I dealt with sever anxiety as a child, almost had panic attacks regularly, had sever bouts of crying spells and later learned to pretend like I had no family made it easier to be away since I had no say in the matter anyway. And God, who wanted to follow a God that commanded such awful things to be done to children. And we won't even get into the sexual abuse that happened to so many.

But you know what I don't follow that God. That is a poor representation of who God is and I think it breaks his heart. I have learned to love and passionately follow a God who loves the little children and says "let them come to me." I love a God who created me to be a masterpiece. Who waits for me, and who holds me in His arms of love when my heart breaks. I serve a God who today, this very day went to the cross and shed his blood so I might live every day, wake up every morning with hope and restitution. I serve a God who empowers me to be a good mother to my 2 little treasures from above, and a good wife to one of the greatest blessings I've ever had.

It was very hard growing up under that way of life, very hard. But in some regards I wouldn't know God the way I know Him today without that broken childhood. I certainly wouldn't see my deep need for His healing and salvation. So today I praise Him for what He is, and what He has done for me, and in me. Thank you Jesus for living and dying for a desperate sinful child in need. Desperately in need of you. Amen.