[This article also exists in audio form. You can listen to it on The Pondering Purple Podcast available on most platforms or by clicking HERE.]
Dear Missionary parents,
I honor you and affirm you.
You are raising families in complicated cross-cultural settings that are at once exhilarating and exhausting. You’re managing so much: the pressures of work and language-learning and support-raising and communicating with your ministry partners and learning the intricacies of assimilating to new places and reinventing the wheel every day while maintaining your core values and sense of purpose.
You’re constantly evaluating and redirecting, finessing, pushing through, and educating yourselves—all while striving to be present and engaged parents to your children, who themselves are going through a “purple” version of what you’re experiencing, without the clarity of having been grounded in one culture during their formative years. (See this post for an explanation of that “purple” reference.)
I want you to know that your courage and commitment, your juggling and rejiggering, your galvanizing and growth are seen and celebrated! Your effort and stick-to-itiveness are beautiful.
At the same time, I want to draw your attention to something you may not be fully aware of—not as a parenting lesson (not my intent!), but as a glimpse into something that may be happening in your MKs without your knowledge.
This cautionary message was brought into focus for me as I watched the recent Summer Olympics. Like millions of spectators, I was glued to the coverage of the US Women’s Gymnastics team’s comeback in Paris.
Between footage of soaring, twisting, and miraculously landing athletes, the channel I was following showed just a few seconds of the watch party taking place in Texas, at the World Champions Center, where Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles have perfected their trade.
The brief clip pulled me up short. I wound it back a couple times, enchanted by the pint-sized gymnasts sitting on the floor in front of the TV, mimicking every pose and facial expression of the heroes competing on the big screen.
The announcer explained that both the children and the superstars train together, and almost by osmosis, the younger athletes end up learning the entire routines—move for move—of the women they hold in such high esteem.
Like those tumbling tykes at the World Champions Center, the children observing ministry’s pommel horse and uneven bars are learning about life by observing and, even unconsciously, internalizing the “routine” they see you performing.
This can particularly be true when it comes to faith—and the domino effect of what they witness can run the gamut from elevated spiritual awareness to diminished spiritual interest.
I had a Zoom conversation a while ago with an adult MK. Her name is Laura, and I share this part of her personal journey with her permission. Laura is twenty-six. She has a great job in the medical field. She’s in a stable relationship and loves her nieces and nephew. She gives back by working for a local charity that provides groceries and fuel to families living in underserved communities.
Laura is well-spoken, insightful, kind, welcoming, and generous—everything you’d expect her to be, having grown up multi-culturally, steeped in the values of a family devoted to serving.
But she doesn’t want anything to do with God. And an uncomfortable, pained expression crosses her face when the topic of ministry comes up.
Laura finds God neither appealing nor necessary.
She laughed when I asked her to explain how she got there. The problem, she said, wasn’t a dearth of information. God had saturated her life from earliest memory. Even her bedroom wallpaper, before her family headed to South Central Asia, depicted scenes from Noah’s Ark and Eden.
Laura knows all the stories, but as she grew up observing the missionary world, the character of God became confusing to her.
On a good day, God was the “boss” who gave her parents their assignment—tasks to complete and events to plan. Jesus seemed to her to be her parents’ job. The name they tried to slip into conversations with the butcher at the market and the carpet salesman at their front door. The same name they uttered in perfunctory pre-meal family prayers that seemed more habit than gratitude—except when others were watching and the prayers morphed in Psalm’esque poetry.
On not-so-good days, God’s persona felt like something ominous to Laura. The identities she described were so painfully real to her, but stood in stark contrast to the God I know.
God the dictator—he made her family move six times in seven years, twice to a place her parents didn’t want to move but did, only because they were the only solution to an urgent need.
God the miser—the family prayed and prayed for better income, and still support flagged. There was one particularly memorable evening when their Home Group spent time interceding for their financial needs, and while they were praying an email came through finalizing the discontinuation of support from one of their main partner churches. The irony of the timing was not lost on Laura.
God the taskmaster—rest was slothful in Laura’s family and community. The God she was shown despised leisure and immobility. Laura witnessed her parents so fixated on endless ministry demands that their ability to be present with their children—aware of their needs and engaged in their growth—was limited.
God the exploiter—Laura’s father had to seek medical help for work-related exhaustion. Twice. He was hospitalized for a few days the second time, and Laura feared she’d lose him to heart issues that hadn’t existed prior to the stress of ministry. His chief concern while lying in bed hooked up to monitors? The tasks adding up while he waited for tests to be run.
God the isolator—whether it was entertainment, friendships, or aspirations, everything in Laura and her two sisters’ lives had to be overtly spiritual in order to be approved of. If it wasn’t, there would be no participation allowed for them. Birthday parties, school outings, even reading—it had to be God-centered or it would be parent-denied. God’s grip over their lives eventually caused what Laura called “religious isolation” or the inability to exist in external community.
There were equal parts sadness and anger in Laura’s voice as she recited her litany of dark God-images.
What she had learned about God, she’d learned from observing her parents. And her parents may not have realized what she was witnessing in them.
What they’d unwittingly taught her was that the One they served was a tyrant who required malignant levels of output from a family he failed to protect and provide for.
He seemed to Laura to be all disinterest and demand.
I tried to keep my voice neutral as I asked Laura a series of questions. Her answers were shrugs, head shakes, and the same one syllable word.
- Did you ever see your parents resting in God’s love and provision?
- Did you see your parents finding comfort in him?
- Did you witness your parents wanting to spend unstructured time with him?
- Did they ever articulate or demonstrate an intimate, life-giving relationship with him—beyond the toll of tasks and obligations?
No. On all counts—no.
I’ve had the same conversation with other MKs, and Laura’s response is sadly too common.
“But…they’re missionaries!” the idealist might say. Yes—and this is one of the grave dangers of God being a career choice. I know that terminology sounds cynical, but when ministry work overwhelm personal relationship with Jesus, faith can so easily cede to a form of mere religious employment.
C.S. Lewis wrote:
“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
As an MK who has worked with MKs for more than three decades, I can attest to the faith-preserving importance of that statement. The difference I see between children who were a demonstrable priority and those who were not is vivid.
Missionary parents, you are so commendable for following a calling into a life that is as unusual as it is unpredictable. An important life too—in eternal ways that are hard to measure from the present vantage point. I admire you so much! I also want you to know that your relationship with—not employment by—Jesus will inform your children’s faith in powerful and indelible ways.
The work you do and the sacrifices you make—your public sermons, service, and courage as you endure the desert-lands—they’ll certainly contribute to what your children learn about God.
But, like those young gymnasts following Simone Biles’ routine, they’re watching everything you do—perhaps especially outside of official obligations—and it’s in your abiding with Jesus (not performing, doing, or accomplishing) that they’ll catch a glimpse of what true faith is.
Have you talked with your children about conversations you’ve had with Jesus lately?
Have you mentioned in casual interaction that you’re seeking his guidance on difficult decisions?
Have they seen you reduce some of your work load because it was getting in the way of quality time with him—and with them?
MKs need to learn by observing you about the benevolent goodness of God.
They need to glimpse his heart for them in the way you rest—truly rest—in his heart for you.
They need to understand his nearness and kindness by witnessing your vulnerability as you look to him for comfort, restoration, and inspiration.
God’s primary calling on our lives is not that we overachieve for him, but rather that we live in intimate relationship with him. (Read more on with-ness here.) Those children watching faith’s “gymnastic routine” from the edge of your life’s tumbling mat are internalizing what they see and will likely repeat it. They’re learning who God is by observing your faith—and they’ll grow up to reflect what they’ve seen as they make their faith their own.
Dictator, miser, taskmaster, exploiter, isolator… These are nearly sacrilegious characteristics often unwittingly conveyed by grown-ups who don’t realize young souls are paying attention.
For the sake of Laura and others like her, I urge you to let your love for God, your enjoyment of his presence, and your dependence on his goodness shine more brightly than the list of obligations that metronome your days.
⇒ Treasure him above all else.
⇒ Bask in his kindness.
⇒ Recuperate in his fullness.
⇒ Rely on his strength.
⇒ Display his love by finding fulfillment and satisfaction in your relationship with him, though tasks will always await and trials will always lurk.
⇒ Demonstrate that he wants you to pause and refresh by doing exactly that—by stopping long enough to renew your strength and connect with your children.
⇒ Reveal his compassion for them and his attention to their needs by regularly considering the impact of your ministry on your own kids—debriefing honestly and regularly, individually and as a family, so you know where they stand and they know that you care.
Missionary parents, your children are watching. They’re seeing the miraculous, the life-changing, and the life-sapping.
I know you’re weary—I can’t imagine the balancing act of raising children while involved in taxing ministry
I know your spirit often seems to bow under the weight of your responsibilities and burdens.
I know the life you’ve chosen can be depleting in every. imaginable. way.
But that God you’re so frantically serving? You define him with every choice you make.
May his true heart be able to shine through the lived expression of your faith. And may your children hunger for what they see in you—the comfort and fulfillment of living in relationship with a mighty, close, and attentive God.
[Don’t miss this companion article: Top Ten Practices for Parenting MKs.]
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