In recent weeks, I've shared bits about the current VRI being offered by the IMB, as well as our decision, made after much prayer, to decline the offer for retirement. We totally support what is happening and believe it will result in the IMB and Southern Baptist being stronger workers in our Father's Harvest Field as we reach and engage our lost world with the Gospel, yet it is still a painful time and one I've found difficult to put into words. Our youngest child, Jessie, is also grieving, but earlier this week she did a great job of sharing this adult Missionary Kid's view of what is happening. BERT YATES
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Missions is changing. It is changing to fit a world that recognizes the perils of a so-called higher civilization taking and pressing its customs and beliefs on the rest of the world. We live in a postcolonial and globalized world – one that focuses on the equality between differences – one that recognizes that everyone has their strengths and that every culture has its unique and beautiful way of doing things – one that is struggling to make right all of the cultural and ethnic injustices of the past. Missions desperately needs to change in order to fit into this world, continue to make a difference, and do the work the disciples set out to do all those years ago.
Which brings me to the topic at hand – family. I grew up on the mission field; my parents fit the almost extinct missionary mold of “give it all up, go, and make a new life.” There was never a temporary element in my parents’ life in East Africa. To this day, even though they claim they are thinking about retirement – I know it is the last thing they want to admit will eventually happen. This is because 35 years ago, when they packed up and moved to East Africa, they made a decision to move their life. Very few people understand what this entails. So let me try to do the impossible and boil down the missionary psyche and emotional mindset from the adult missionary kid perspective:
I believe that it is not possible to abandon your culture, but I think it is possible to step away from it – and when you do, you’ll never fit back into that culture.
Similarly, it is not possible to forget your home, but it is possible to move away from it – and when you do, you’ll never be able to go back to the same home.
Here’s the harsher truth: it is not possible to lose your family, but it is possible to live a life separate from them – and when you do, your relationships will forever be altered with the people you once called family.
It is the proverbial elephant herd in the sanctuary. It is hard to hear, and I’m afraid that I might be inadvertently offending a few devout missions minded and supporting Southern Baptists. But I know these things to be true because ten years ago I followed in my parent’s footsteps – albeit in the opposite direction from Kenya. I packed up my books, my memories, and a few salvageable clothes and moved my life to the United States. I have had to live my parents’ decision in reverse, but the lessons and outcomes have been the same.
These are the things that very few people talk about when they discuss missions. All the same, it is embedded in statements like “Oh I could never do what you do” or “wow! That life must be so different!” It is entrenched in the mission statement of committees who provide houses, cars, and temporary services to missionaries who are on leave. It is integral to the fascination of hearing a “real” missionary when they speak in the Wednesday night service. It is present in family holidays when the brother, daughter, or cousin is missed – they might even be Skyped - but the traditions continue without them. Missionaries are admired for what they do, and we’ll support them in their calling and pray for them, but the reality is: they left. They left, and now there is a physical void that will eventually be closed – but it has also created an irreversible emotional void.
That is why something incredibly amazing happens on the mission field: family. In a weird way, psychology texts compare it to the surrogate families that refugees make. I love my biological extended family with everything I have and I am incredibly proud to be a Yates, a Baggett, a Hardison, and a Fogle. I rejoice when my cousin posts pictures of her daughters’ achievements, I know that I can count on my aunts for support whenever I need it, and I grieve when my grandparents lose their siblings or are hospitalized. But, the unfortunate truth is that I am separated from all of them. I did not grow up around them – in fact, to make sure that my sister and I would know their names before we left on one of our stateside assignments, my mom once posted family pictures in our bedroom.
But that isn’t something to be pitied. When I was growing up, my family was my mission family. I had at least 20 sets of grandparents, hundreds of aunts and uncles, and countless cousins. I celebrated first steps and words, pulled teeth while carpooling, formed Christmas traditions, went on all sorts of mischievous adventures, dined family style at food courts, mourned at funerals, and sought out the hugs, guidance, laughter, pride, and support from my BMOK family. I never felt the absence of my American family because I had an amazing one that surrounded me all the time.
That family dynamic has changed because I did move away from it. In fact, if there was anything that was hard about my transition to the United States as a college student, it was the day I returned to Kenya and realized my family had continued and changed without me. Despite this realization, I know that I still have that family. My mission family was something that I never doubted, and to this day I know that I can tap into that family whenever I need to. Just last spring, I was visiting a church where the pastor was a returned missionary from Russia. When his wife found out I had no family to spend Easter Sunday with, she said “Well, we’re your family, so you’ll spend it with us.”
My mother wrote me a couple of weeks ago to tell me of the missionary units in East Africa that have decided to take the IMB’s Voluntary Retirement Incentive. I was in church and suddenly I was bawling. I don’t mean cute, silent, and holy tears – be sure: they were ugly tears. This is indicative of three things: yes – I’m a millennial who gets on her phone to check messages during church; there are saints in the world who don’t laugh or slide down the pew away from seemingly manic strangers; and the VRI is arguably the most emotionally disruptive thing to happen in my life in the past ten years since I left Kenya. It’s my family and that family is being threatened.
Missionaries and MKs live in a constant state of “what if”. In preparation for a counseling theory paper, I once learned that they are often diagnosed with something called “pre-traumatic stress disorder.” As a culture, we are infamous for preparing in advance for any possible scenario. My parents automatically pack their favourite Christmas ornaments and our family stockings every time they return to the States – even if it is only for a visit … in July. I started preparing myself for graduation when I was sixteen by repeating the words “it will be ok” every time I thought about the impending change. I once knew an MK who would cut a flower from the garden every time she moved into a new house and pressed it into a book – because she might not have a chance to before she left. Missionaries are the masters of change, yes, but even more telling: there is a small part of them that is always preparing for having to move lives again.
Which is why the VRI is so unsettling: because it isn’t the expected; it isn’t one of the planned “what-if’s?”; instead, it is the scenario no one ever admitted would or could happen.
They are having to come back.
And so, ~800 missionaries and their children have to move lives again – with little to no preparation.
They will have to return to a culture that they no longer fit into.
They will have to return to a home that they don’t recognize.
They will have to return to a family that they don’t know.
Here’s a picture of just a small part of what they will be facing: navigating the insane world of car dealerships and real estate agencies; deciphering school zoning and the new Common Core Math; writing hyperbolic resumes and effectively schmoozing in job interviews; signing their lives away with cell phone and cable contracts; driving on the opposite side of the road; converting metric to standard, Celsius to Fahrenheit, and international currencies to dollars; and remembering to write the date with the month first on their checks. This doesn’t include the commercial shock that they will face when they are given 20 choices when buying eggs, hundreds of choices when buying shampoo, and an ever-increasing amount of choices when buying Oreos and Pop-Tarts. It does not include the culture shock that they will face when church promptly ends on the hour and there is no dancing or whooping in the worship service. It does not include the unquenchable craving for proper international cuisine. It does not include the grief that they will feel when something as small as the way someone shakes their hand reminds them of the life they have lost.
When I broke down in church, it was because my mom had written to say that three of my kid cousins had been given the choice to leave with their parents in the middle of their senior year. If the mission family is strong, an MK relies just as heavily on the family that they have created at school - the choice that all three had to make, at 17 years old, was to leave not one, but both of those extended surrogate families or stay behind without their immediate family members. Two of them have decided to return to the States five months before they would have graduated. No amount of preparation can protect them from the emotional upheaval that is coming their way. As a teacher who knows just how fragile teenagers are - I find that devastating and worrisome. As their older cousin – I am mourning their loss because I’m all too aware of exactly what they are losing.
So here’s what I ask: obviously, give to Lottie Moon so that the IMB can afford to keep the remaining missionaries on the field while they deconstruct and then reconstruct their strategies to fit the 21st century. But also, support your missionaries who are returning. Not just in the first week or month – but for the next several years. Not just by asking them to preach when your pastor is on vacation, but by listening to their stories every time you talk to them. Not just by providing them with casseroles or houses, but by praying for their well being and transition.
They have had to move their life. Respect that decision. Appreciate that loss. Accept them into your life and community. Love them for their move. Support them in this new life they are living. Make them part of your family. They’ll need you.
JESSIE YATES
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