The Very Worst Missionary

by Jamie Wright

  I do believe that God can use anyone to do anything (that I am writing this book is a prime example), but I was beginning to see how that is a pretty weak standard by which to choose whom we send out into the world to “be the hands and feet of Jesus,” or whatever you want to call it. This isn’t about having unrealistic expectations of ordinary people, and it’s not about negating God’s ability to surprise us by doing amazing things. It’s about recognizing that we have a responsibility, as the church, to choose whom we send, so that we send the right people to do the right things in the right places—and to not send them when it’s not right.

  And therein lies the real problem: There’s really not much choosing going on. If you raise your hand (and have enough cash), someone will send you out. I like to call this the Butterfly Eater Effect.

  I’m gonna let you in on a little trade secret: Nobody wants to tell anyone they shouldn’t be a missionary—not even the butterfly eaters. It’s practically against the rules. In fact, if you even try to suggest that an aspiring missionary may not be a good fit for the work, the lifestyle, or the region he or she feels called to, you better be prepared for the spiritual flogging of a lifetime.

  Who are you to say what God can do through them?!

  God loves to use unlikely people to blah blah blah!

  Look at Moses! Look at Rahab! Look at Jesus! Look at that one guy with no arms and legs! Look at how God used them!

  Unfortunately, those who champion the current method do not want you to actually look at Moses. They’re not interested in discussing how Moses was especially groomed and prepared by his early life within the Egyptian royal court to be the one person in all the land who could successfully lead a stand against his adoptive bro, the pharaoh. They do not want to talk about how, in addition to being a successful prostitute, Rahab was a keen, self-sufficient businesswoman who was uniquely situated—not just because of her snazzy apartment but also because of her kick-ass personality—to be a hero. Oh, and Jesus? Literally born to do what he did for the world. Moreover, the Bible tells us that Jesus handpicked the first disciples and “selected” the seventy-some pairs of missionaries he sent out. Like, he chose them from among a larger group of people he’d been teaching for months.

  Unlike Jesus, I may not know what you were born to do, but if you’re a grown man who doesn’t make eye contact and picks his nose and eats it while using public transportation, I’m gonna go ahead and suggest that maybe you not go live overseas and call yourself a missionary. And I won’t even feel bad about it.

  * * *

  When I told Steve about the Butterfly Eater, we laughed and groaned and threw our hands up in the air. But it turns out, we’d both been mulling over similar concerns for the past few months, and I think it was Steve who finally said it out loud. “What if that guy’s not here because he was ‘called by God’? What if he’s here because the system is broken?”

  It was a frightening question, because if the Butterfly Eater had made it all the way to Costa Rica by slipping through the cracks, then maybe we had too. In the process that led us there, we had often been advised, “God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.” We had practically congratulated ourselves for being inexperienced and unqualified for the work ahead. But surrounded by a whole bunch of other unqualified/ill-equipped missionaries, I began to question this logic.

  Didn’t saying God doesn’t call the equipped but equips the called imply that equipping comes to us in a single, romantic instant in which we are suddenly transformed into someone more skilled and more capable than before? Because that didn’t seem to be happening for any of us. I wondered if, in clinging to the idea that God’s equipping follows God’s calling, we have flooded the planet with Christian do-gooders who may, for any number of reasons, be unfit, incompetent, or just plain unnecessary. And I wondered if I was one of them.

  But what if God has been preparing us—equipping us—since the day we were born? What if all of our experiences, good and bad, beautiful and terrible, Christian and not-so-Christian, have a role in preparing us for the next step in our journey? Like, what if our character traits, life skills, personality, and education are the equipping?

  In that first year in our tropical paradise, Steve and I would lie in bed in the dark, listening to the geckos above our heads chirp like smoke detectors in need of fresh batteries, talking about the broken system and butterfly eaters in hushed tones, as if we’d uncovered the kind of scandal that could get us killed in our sleep.

  To say that our second year in Costa Rica was the worst year of my life sounds so dramatic, and I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed when you hear that it was actually pretty boring. I’m not about to confess a sordid Latin love affair or detail a maiming accident or anything like that. No one died. No one lost a limb. No one got a divorce. The truth is, the things that happened in my very worst year aren’t even the worst things that have ever happened to me. But it wasn’t the actual events that made it so bad; it was the constant feeling of ineptitude and shame that swept over my head like a rogue wave that never receded.

  I’d come into this whole missionary gig with a comprehensive plan for guaranteed success:

  1. Show up.

  2. Learn Spanish.

  3. Kick ass.

  I really thought that if I went to all the trouble of becoming a missionary, those three things would come together as easily as mixing a cocktail. Dead serious. I believed in this magical three-part formula for a happy life overseas, and I assumed God would hand it over like a cosmic Moscow mule. After language school, it was time for me to finally get down to business making Costa Rican friends, settling my family into a home, and learning the pace of my new job. I was ready to drink deeply of God’s special blessing, ready to receive my prize for becoming a missionary.

  But then the funniest thing happened. Parts one, two, and three of my perfect plan for success sort of just fell apart…and I sort of fell apart too.

  I’m going tell you what happened, but be forewarned. This is a whiny story, and you’re probably going to think I’m a total wiener with no perspective, because my very worst year was, like, ten million times better than some people’s very best years. I know this. Bear with me, please, as I share how my expectations of awesomeness eroded, and try to remember that this all went down at the same time. It would be easy to say, “Our house was a disaster, friendship was scarce, and the job I’d come to do didn’t actually exist”—just, like, a checklist of huge bummers. But to do so fails to achieve the chronic sense of piling on. It fails to depict how some days were nearly slapstick in nature, with all of our problems crashing together, setting each other off, bouncing against one another, until our whole family fell into bed at night overwhelmed, undone, and miserable.

  * * *

  We started our second year by moving out of a tiny old house and into a big, fancy, new place in the suburbs of Heredia. We’d made arrangements to house-sit this really nice house for some other missionaries while they were in the United States for a year. I joked about how we’d given up everything we owned in exchange for a simple life as humble servants, only to be blessed by God with the nicest house we would ever live in. But secretly I kinda thought that was true. God was finally rewarding us for our sacrifice by making our new life a tiny bit luxurious, tossing in a dishwasher and maid’s quarters for good measure. A gourmet kitchen, three and a half bathrooms, and a full-size hot water tank were all just a little nod to us from the creator of the universe for a job well done.

  For the record, the Bible does make us promises about what happens when we get serious about following Jesus. It tells us it’s gonna suck. It will be difficult and uncomfortable and costly. But somehow I’d convinced myself that for me God would make an exception. So you can imagine my disappointment when the amazing house that I believed was the Lord’s special gift turned out to be a life-sucking vortex of despair.

&nb
sp; The odor was the first bad omen.

  Right after we moved in, we noticed that as you rounded the top of the stairs into the loft, you’d occasionally be hit in the face with what seemed like the stench of a dead body. The homeowners said they knew about the problem and had looked everywhere for a cause, even hiring someone to explore the nooks and crannies of the roof for animal remains, but they never found the culprit. I actually wish it had been a dead animal, because the smell of a rotting corpse would have eventually dissipated, but not this. The stench came and went a few times each week for the entire time we lived there, testing our gag reflexes and forcing us to reassure disgusted houseguests that, no, we were not making a massive batch of kimchi in the upstairs bathtub.

  Then the walls started to leak. Like, all of sudden, water would just start pouring out of a wall. The walls leaked steadily in the kitchen and in the kids’ bathroom. One night I woke up to find a pool of water creeping across our bedroom floor, because the wall behind the master bathroom vanity also decided to spring a leak. A puddle that appeared in the middle of the living room indicated yet another leak, this time conveniently located between the first and second floors.

  The house, like most in Costa Rica, was built from cinder blocks and rebar, which makes fixing plumbing problems a huge effing pain in the ass. You have to figure out exactly where the leak is (it may not be where the water is coming through), then hand-chisel through plaster and cement block, replace the pipe, and patch it all up again. This process required hours of hard labor and mental energy, and we were in short supply of both. By we I mean Steve. (Please. I don’t know how to, like, do things.) He did his best to keep the gushers plugged, but with Steve’s workload, we finally agreed that some of the smaller leaks just wouldn’t get fixed until the owners came back. We would have to live with them.

  So in that big, dreamy kitchen of black granite and stainless steel, the walls seeped in unreachable places and puddles collected beneath the built-in cupboards. The permanent musty smell of stagnant water combined on occasion with the wretched stink of decomposing flesh wafting down from the loft.

  Home, sweet home.

  As an additional kick to the nuts, on a sunny Sunday morning, while we were at church like a good missionary family, someone broke in and stole all of our stuff.

  We felt vulnerable and violated, but we were able to shrug off the loss of all the material things except a hard drive that held about two years’ worth of family photos. It was the burglary itself that was so deeply hurtful—as though the welcome mat to our new life had officially been pulled out from under us.

  It didn’t help that the people we believed responsible for the theft worked directly across the street and could watch us come and go. We got to see them nearly every single time we locked up and left the house, wondering if it would still be locked when we returned. The break-in made us all uneasy, insecure, and distrustful of the house where we so badly wanted to feel at home.

  Living in a foreign country is a hundred thousand times more draining than doing your regular life in your native country. At the end of those long days, my family needed a place of rest more than ever, but what we had was a stinky, leaky, distressing place to lay our heads at night. That stupid house may have been pretty, but it was never home.

  * * *

  After the burglary, I could feel myself slipping into a depression I’d been able to stave off for years through medication, exercise, and counseling. Still, in the same way I thought God had blessed me with that fancy house, I secretly expected God to protect me from mental illness. I assumed that because I’d just showed up, God would grant me immunity, even from my own self.

  Though I could scarcely drag myself out of bed in the morning and I dreaded the idea of going outside, I decided that all I really needed to do was get back into a good, solid exercise routine and eat healthy.

  I still don’t know why I thought this was a good idea.

  Running outdoors in Costa Rica came with a whole new set of challenges. The sidewalks are mossy and unpredictable, with deep holes (lovingly referred to as “gringo traps”) that appear out of nowhere. Stray dogs roam the streets, often in mangy gangs, dotting the terrain with a minefield of poop nuggets. But the worst part is the relentless stream of whistling, catcalls, and marriage proposals from grown men hanging halfway out of car windows to let you know how thrilled they are to see that you put on your stretchy pants and left the house that day. I was never quite sure if I was being genuinely hit on or openly mocked. I came home early from nearly every attempt at a run, embarrassed and wary and wishing I were invisible, and the idea of regular exercise quickly lost its appeal.

  Despite the abundance of cheap regional fruits and veggies, eating well proved just as challenging for me. I am sincerely the laziest person I’ve ever met, and aside from bananas, the tropics are not exactly overflowing with healthy food for lazy people. I don’t know if you know this, but tropical fruit is like super labor-intensive. Mango requires a knife, passion fruit a spoon, and if you want a coconut, you better have a machete handy. Through the lethargy of depression, cutting a pineapple seemed impossibly hard. And, yes, papaya is easy to prepare, but it tastes like a big toe and a butthole had a baby, so no thank you. It was much easier for me to keep reaching for prepackaged garbage food like cookies and chips and pastries. So while the plan had been to improve my physical health in order to improve my mental health, in the end it was like the two of them teamed up and decided to go down with the ship together.

  I grew more depressed. And also I grew a muffin top.

  In the middle of the day, you could usually find me at home in my pajamas eating queque seco with my fingers and drinking yesterday’s coffee while I surfed the Internet for recipes for comfort foods I could make from scratch; corn dogs, bagels, berry pie. I had a few good friends to hang out with—mostly other missionaries from our team—and there was a weekly women’s Bible study to attend, so it’s not like I was a complete shut-in. I had a social life and regular commitments, but if there was even a hint of a reason for me to skip out, I’d grab it. Staying in pajamas and sucking down stale coffee seemed so doable compared to the hard work of language learning and culture grasping and relationship building.

  A few of us put together a weekly kids’ club for the youngsters from one of the area’s most impoverished neighborhoods. We brought fresh bread and ripe bananas to fill their hungry bellies and a Bible lesson with a coloring page or some kind of messy craft for their busy little hands. One day I was standing in the pouring rain, trying to hail a taxi on my way out to the shantytown where we held the club. The rain got heavier, soaking my pants up to the knees, and still, no taxi. Finally my cell phone buzzed and, much to my relief, I learned the kids’ club had been called off because no one was likely to show up. I was so happy to turn around and head back to my warm, dry hiding place, so glad to avoid speaking Spanish, so thrilled to climb back into my PJs. I thanked God for a rainfall so heavy it kept the kids home. Yes. The underclothed, malnourished, needy kids I was supposed to love would be stuck in their shacks, with a bedsheet for a front door, a plastic bowl and cooking pot to catch the water drizzling in through holes in a rusty roof, and a handful of rice and beans for a meal, and I thanked God.

  Because clearly there was something very wrong with me. That’s what depression does. It clouds your vision, it turns you inward, and it makes it very hard for you to see beyond yourself.

  The thing is, whenever I bothered to shower and dress and get where I needed to be, I was always glad I did. I had some amazing people in my life, people I enjoyed and loved being with, people who encouraged me and laughed with me and made me feel less alone. I felt pleased with myself after I went around town paying bills and attending to business in Spanish like a real grown-up. And the truth is, I loved working with those kids every week. They were often grimy, bratty, and unappreciative—regular kids—but I sincerely loved t
hem and wanted to be with them. Whether it was to catch the bus heading up the mountain or a taxi into the city or simply to stroll to the corner store for milk, I felt better when I faced the day and made the walk up the hill from my house into society. That active, capable, confident woman was the woman I wanted to be!

  But depression is a sneaky son of a bitch. It creeps in behind your joy to convince you that to live a life you love isn’t worth the effort. It whispers and lies and manipulates, and pretty soon you’re certain that the hill from your house to the rest of the world is just too damn steep.

  * * *

  Trust me, I know how lame this sounds. You’re probably rolling your eyes so hard right now, like, Aw, Jamie, you poor thing. You had to smell a bad smell and cut a pineapple all by yourself? You had to walk up a hill? How did you ever survive such trials and tribulations???

  I know. I know. These were not exactly Job-level catastrophes. But the problem wasn’t that any of these things happened—it was that they were all happening at once. It could turn into a comedy of errors.

  Like this: When the paralysis of depression kept me from paying the bills on time, the power would inevitably get shut off on a day we were expecting a dozen visiting North Americans for dinner. I would lose three hours (which I’d planned to use cooking and cleaning) getting into town to pay the electric bill. On the way home from the bank, a toothless drunk on the street would grope me, and while trying to escape Mr. Grabby Hands, I’d slip in dog shit and stumble into a ditch full of refuse. While I was gone, Steve would come home for lunch to find the power out again and a new wall spring gushing into the dining room. Then I’d return, smelling like a turd rolled in trash, to find him elbows deep in plumbing repairs, on top of a pile of rubble, with a thin layer of cinder-block dust covering every surface in the house. It would take a herculean effort from both of us to get the power back on, the leak stopped, the house cleaned, and a decent meal prepared, which by some miracle we would get done five minutes before our company arrived.