I want to share something quite personal, that I alluded to a couple of posts ago, about why it was that I stopped doing 'mission'. But, by way of introduction...
At the moment, I'm living with a mission. No, not the Christian one... yes, all right, that one too... No, my mission is simple. It is to cycle to work and back. Am I getting fit you ask... well, that's a side effect... and thinner too, gradually. But the real motive is more mundane... with an unfettered addition for books threatening to bankrupt the Môme household, The Wife has imposed a rule... I'm not allowed to buy any books unless I can find extra money.
Goodbye comfortable daily 10 minute train journey... hello daily 6 mile cycle... and then again to get home.
That's how much I need to buy books...
To be fair, it's not all bad. I love cycling and used to do a lot more of it... something which, if you live in Bristol, necessarily involves a lot of up and down... In form, I actually used to enjoy the up; at least you can see what's causing the pain, and you know when it's going to go away. And then, being something of an adrenalin junkie, I used to also enjoy the down; at stupid speeds and often in heavy traffic. Most of all though, I used to enjoy the flat; churning away in a high gear just for the thrill of covering distance.
As a cyclist, I've had to make my peace with pretty much everything that fills the roads; buses, cars, roadworks... and I've learned to get on with the sun and the rain. There is one thing though that I hate though, and that's the wind. In the wet it lashes needles into your eyes, in the summer it fills them with dust and grit. It hides from you as you climb a hill and then throws itself at you as you crest, stealing your downhill reward by forcing you to pedal all the way. It drains your legs, tears your breath away from you, and - on the flat - leaves you crawling along cursing at the loss of the speed you yearn for.
There's only one thing more irritating than a solid head wind, and that's a gusting wind that keeps changing direction. Everything in cycling is about rhythm, and even with a head wind you can find one. But with a gusting wind, it's impossible. One minute you're a gear down on where you should be, and then the wind goes round behind you and gives you a shove... the gears(and your hope) climb; one, two, three, and you just notch four up when, smack, the wind's in front of you. It's like cycling into a brick wall... again, and again, and again... until all you want to do is get off and throw the bike in the river.
Often, it's a gusting wind that I find as I leave the house... 6 miles in, and 6 miles home... and as I huff my zig-zaggy way along, the wind reminds me of a pattern that built up in my experience of mission, until God finally got my attention and broke me out of it.
To appreciate what eventually happened, you have to go back to a point when I was about 13, to the moment that I felt God calling me into some kind of full-time Christian work... and understand that although I think there was something very authentic about that call, it landed at a time when I was in the middle of a long-standing and very difficult relationship with home and with church that had left me confused, angry and desperate for a way to find an identity and affirm myself.
That way, I thought, would be to pour myself into mission... and so I did, as soon as I could... through the CU at school, and through various Christian camps and then, when I was able, overseas.
1990-91, 93-4 found me in France and then in Quebec - the first with European Christian Mission, the second with Youth With A Mission... both of these were short-term years, with clear start and finish dates... between them, I was at university - also heavily involved in mission and the CU.
Then, from 1996, having finished university, I had the opportunity for open-ended mission... and that's where the trouble really began.
I had felt called to return to Quebec through the winter of 95-96. So, in the spring of 96 I started to make preparations... I don't know if you've ever felt a powerful affirmation to a sense of calling, but it's like cycling with a strong following wind... it's not just effortless, it's exhilarating. That's the way it was... all the preparations were trouble free, affirming what I felt... and this continued until I had settled in.
However, it wasn't long after I got there that I experienced a kind of 'cooling off'. My vision gradually crept out of line with the general vision of the YWAM base, and I started to resent having to knuckle under and support actions that I didn't really believe in. This grew through the spring of 97, ultimately ending up in some pretty frank discussions with the leadership and eventually, a rather frosty parting of the ways.
In the autumn of 97, I was back in the UK... grieving over both my perceived failure to live out the vision that God had given me... whilst also wading through the (little studied) experience of re-entry and wondering whether I'd forever poisoned my relationship with a group of people, and a country that I was deeply attached to... relieved to be home but intensely frustrated by turning of the wind... looking for another opportunity.
By the autumn of 98, I was off again... this time to France, again with YWAM... again full of enthusiasm... wind at my back...
This time, I lasted only 6 months...
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment