on being a missionary wife.

On being a missionary wife/to be called.

"I don’t expect to be a bride myself, I’m so homely, nobody will ever want to marry me- unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign missionary mightn’t be very particular. But I do hope that someday I shall have a white dress.” 

 Anne of Green Gables-1896

A missionary wife is not usually just the wife of a missionary. Most of the time she is also a missionary on her own call with her own calling. There are those who would go, submitting to a husband without their own calling but I bet it doesn’t work out all that well. It certainly didn’t work out too well for Orleanna Price in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible. I like to romanticize a bit and think that I could be that kind of wife, have that kind of resolve to follow my man to the ends of the earth and be just this amazing helpmate but in the real world, I’m not that wife.

I am thankful that God was gracious and called me personally, to be a missionary. I needed that call in order to survive this missionary status and I recommend it for others.

Being sure of one's calling makes one strong when things get tough.  It is easier to trust what you’re doing if you have been told to do it by the God of the universe. There are moments of doubt. That happens. When I doubt I know to either hold onto faith and walk boldly, or accept that I am nuts.

I can’t explain this call except to say that it is something that I know.  On my very first visit to Bangkok, regardless of fishy smells, crowded streets and damp eyelids I got to see with God’s eyes. I’d just be walking along probably complaining inside and I'd look up and see a particular tall building among them all and I'd imagine all the people inside. Buildings full of people who don't know Jesus. This happened to me many times, a sense that I was seeing something that God is looking at. These views put a  boldness inside me. I love adventure already, but there was something bigger than that, an abandon that I am sure was part of this call. So there I was, a called person with God present. Married to another called person which makes me a missionary wife.