I recently read two awesome books written by a woman, Kim Abernethy, who has been a missionary for her entire adult life (nearly 30 years). The books are called In This Place and In Every Place and they are both about her and her family’s experiences as career missionaries. While I love her humorous stories of bugs, cultural miscommunications, and other cross-cultural mishaps, what really sucked me in (and prompted me to buy the second book immediately upon finishing the first one) is how raw and honestly she writes. She not only tells the good, lighthearted, inspiring side of missions, but also the difficult, dark, and ugly sides as well. She includes excerpts from her meticulously kept journals into the books, and really writes from the heart.
Honestly, it was refreshing. I needed to hear another missionary talk about how incredibly difficult it is, how the enemy plays on every fear, every emotion, and every weakness, and how rewarding it is to keep being faithful to the Lord’s leading. At this particular point in our journey, I needed her honesty.
That also made me start to think about my own writing here on this little bloggity of mine. Am I honest enough? Am I raw? Or do I edit some things out because I’m afraid of how it will sound, what people will think? Perhaps I’m a little of both depending on my moods or on what I have to say. When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be real…to be a reflection of the truths of this journey. It’s not all pretty stuff, but over the last few months, as the things I’ve been going through has gotten uglier and uglier, I’ve edited more and more out. Not so much when I write, but simply by not writing.
Well, those days are over! If you are on this journey with us–as friends, as supporters, as people who really enjoy hopping on and reading–prepare for this journey to get a lot more honest. I don’t want to leave out the tough stuff just because I’m afraid of what people think; I want to share the tough stuff, because that’s where God has been doing the most important work in our lives and where the most change is happening.
Stick with me. I’m not promising that it will always be pretty, because I’m flawed and in need of God’s saving grace just as much as everyone else, but I am promising that it will always be real.
Are you ready?