Almost perfect

I was joking with a visitor from the states recently that while no one was perfect, I was pretty close, and it got me to thinking.  When I was a kid I thought missionaries were perfect - or at least as close as any human could get.  They clearly were better Christians than the rest of us, and therefore were better in everything.  When they would visit our church, they would tell us about the wonderful things God did where they served, and I thought it was because they had such a close relationship with Him.

Back then I couldn't imagine that things were hard for them.  It wasn't possible that they struggled.  There was no chance that living so far from family and friends made their ugly self come out more often than ever before.  They were missionaries!  They were perfect! 

When we decided to jump head first into the full time missions life, I knew I wasn't perfect, but I still felt like somehow He would help us to be closer to perfect.  Or that at least he would make the hard stuff not so hard for us.  He would give us more strength, more energy, more patience. 

The reality of living in SE Asia has a tendency to be messy, ugly, hard.  The struggle of trying to give people what they really need is hard when they can't see past the poverty they are trapped in.  My ugly side comes out much more often than it did in the states.  My family suffers when I get like that.  The hard stuff is sometimes very hard. 

He didn't give me more strength, but He holds onto me when I give out.  I don't have more energy, but He gives me time to rest.  He hasn't given me more patience, but He gives me more mercy than I ever knew I needed. 

Psalm 18:2a  

    The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer,
     My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,


                   It turns out that missionaries are the same as everyone else, but just in a different place.  We all have to rely on Him to get us through the struggles we have, no matter where we live or what we do.