Banishing Missionary Guilt – July 2018

After lots of glorious weather, we’re finally getting a couple of days of rain – no heat waves, fires or lava flows here, thank God, and a good day to write a newsletter while the neighborhood streets go quiet to watch France in the World Cup quarter finals.

Backing up, the biggest event of May was David’s trip home to stay connected to family, while I stayed back to help host a team of 7 middle-schoolers and 3 adults from Bethel Redding Christian school for 10 days. My role with this team was to welcome them from the airport with refreshments, house a mother and daughter and manage the church work day. Because we didn’t have a lot for 14 yr olds to do at church, except pull out the ever-present Japanese knotweed in the parking lot, I came up with some other projects. One was to empty Ma Belle’s basement storage area and the other was to start attacking the ceiling of my living/dining room.

The new kitchen walls

I had spent the entire winter looking at Pinterest photos and imagining how I wanted to decorate our future apt., when suddenly the blackened wallpaper and outdated ceiling paper that I’d lived with for 14 years started screaming at me. At the same time, 2 of our neighbors renovated their facades, giving our corner a huge facelift. Then we got a letter from the mayor saying that our surrounding streets were all going to be repaved this summer - that’s like getting a free, new driveway, for us! God was obviously working hard to give us better street appeal and it upped my motivation to overcome inertia for the interior by updating the living/dining room and kitchen walls.

With my neck issues, ceiling work was out of the question, but I noticed that quarter round had been nailed on both sides of our 6 ceiling beams and that would have to come off first. So that’s what the director of the school and 2 boys did for me in under 2 hours. With that jumpstart, last month I hired the neighbor kids to help me rip the paper off the walls, and then Olivia spent a week scraping the ceiling and helping strip the kitchen paper. David followed by rewiring the room; it had only 2 ancient outlets with exposed wiring. Then when we decided to pull the wainscoting off one wall, we realized we were in over our heads, and we were all tired. I had also thought I was capable of working 3 afternoons stripping and repainting a quarter of the kitchen, after a retiree from church blessed us with a little finishing work. But I ended up in bed for three days with exhaustion and brain fog. It scared us enough to put a name to my gradually worsening symptoms and start treating it:

Chronic fatigue syndrome.

In the meantime, David called in a professional for advice, and miraculously he was able to estimate the work quickly and had men available this week, which allows it to be habitable before our guest arrives next week!

So right now I’m working on Step 1 of my cure from www.endfatigue.com: Get 9 hours of sleep every night. I also got another Sozo to deal with my missionary guilt, among other things. God showed me the smiling faces of some of the hundreds of people I have served over the last 19 years of ministry, whether through teaching, healing, counseling, housing, babysitting or cleaning. It is enough and at 56, I’ve earned a rest. Now I believe it.

So I’m feeling much lighter, giving myself permission to take a real sabbatical from meeting everyone else’s needs. We’ve never been able to take real 2-week vacations like the French do, but I’m hoping the money spent on a new, white living room will get me through this last year here in better shape, especially during the dark winter months. I expect my real renaissance will happen with the move, where we will be enjoying long summer evenings dining al fresco on our terrace instead of inhaling plaster dust behind closed windows to shut out the asphalt rollers and yelling neighbors. Happily, I am cat-sitting this month for friends in a quiet neighborhood with a garden, allowing us an escape and a taste of the future.

This spring we also hosted English prophet Anne Griffith and attended a prophetic arts weekend. The events confirmed that we had served well, but it was time to rest, and for me to start writing the book I’ve dreamed of that will bring about my healing, as well as healing for others, as a new ministry for me that will be life-giving instead of life-draining! Fortunately, our pastor and his wife are all about making sure that we find our God-ordained place now to thrive in this intense season that we are walking through.

So David is still applying for jobs, while mentally pulling back from future church leadership and I have just taught my last Sunday school class. A couple of young ladies agreed to replace me after my formal announcement, but they are looking for reinforcements so that no one has to miss more than 1 Sunday per month, something I was never able to achieve. It’s a struggle to leave a ministry position if we don’t see our replacement lined up, but we have both learned that if it’s time to move on, no one can take your place until you vacate it first! One of the young mothers (who gave me my Sozo session) thanked me for serving and sitting for her children these past 5 years with a couple of lovely outings recently. I’m thrilled that she lives in the village that we will be moving to so that our friendship can deepen.

Let the healing begin!

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