Going Home at the Right Time

Well we were planning on a 7 week trip for our first venture into the Mum area. But instead we ended up calling in a helicopter to pull us out at week 5.

To me this reeks of failure.

But that is untrue.

And furthermore, it's a lie.

It's a lie Satan uses to try to attack my marriage, my ministry, and my self-image.

And the only thing you can do with such a lie is name it thusly and speak truth.

1. Seven weeks was an arbitrary length of time.
   "How long do you want our first trip to be?"
   "Idk? Like 2 months?"
   Seven was a number chosen based on when our supervisor would be in country to meet with us before and after our trip.
   So shortening the trip just means we guessed wrong.
2. We're not headed out early because we can't handle village life.
   We LOVE village life. But the house we were living in wasn't IN the village. It's a 15 minute hike from one village and a 5 minute hike from another.
   So
   - We can't kick James out to go play and enjoy some free babysitting
   - In times of great sun or rain, we're pretty much stuck in the house.
   This aspect of living deserves its own blog post.

There is a certain amount of stress that one bears in settings like being a guest. Depending on who the host is, that stress level will vary but eventually, even with a very low stress level, you'll need to get home.

The stress of living in the village (or at least near the village) was very low. The stress of living in that particular house, higher.

But we reached a place where our stress cups were brimming and even on an otherwise amazing day, the littlest thing had us overflowing.

And we have a toddler.

So THAT’S not good.

(The overflowing stress, I mean, I'm pretty fond of the toddler most of the time.)

So when my husband said we needed to leave before seven weeks, I had to submit.

(which is weird, because usually we're totally on the same page or my husband is serving me sacrificially, so I don't oftentimes find myself needing to submit to his authority as the head of our household.)

But pride had me holding to this goal. And even after we called for the helicopter, pride still had me believing we could have made it seven weeks. Which is fine. Pride can exist in my person, but I don't need to make decisions by it. (And a good thing I didn't, because by the time the helicopter came, we needed it.)

The lie that going home "early" is failure, the pride that makes that an unentertainable concept… Not calling that spade a spade could have had me put stress on our marriage, threaten the longevity of our ministry by risking burnout, and risk hurting our kids emotionally because I overreacted to something stupid.

Lies are dangerous.

We (my husband) gauged our stress levels, observed how quickly we were to anger even on an awesome day, and decided that the best thing to do for our emotional and relationship health was to head home to rest and regroup.

That isn't failure!

That's a recipe for success!

The link above, and here again for your convenience, elaborates on that what was stressful.