Cash Clan Japan

If ever there has been a year that I sang out of tune, it has been this one. If ever there’s been a year when I lost my voice, it has been this one. If ever there’s been a year that I’ve seriously considered giving up on singing altogether, it has been this one.

In March, my world shifted on its axis. But really it started before that. I haven’t known how to write about all of this with grace and integrity. So I’ve been silent. That’s how you know I’m not quite right, by the way–when I’m quiet for too long. I mean, if you don’t have something nice to say, just shut up, right? But after several months here, waiting for Godot, I must start writing again, even if it’s not shiny and tidy. There will be no bright red bows, be warned.

Living overseas is hard. Living overseas as a missionary is even harder, I gather. But living overseas as a sort-of-missionary/sort-of-regular-person/what-the-crud-am-I-really-doing-here-person? Maybe it’s that word I have been fighting for so long: impossible. Impossible? After several months of trying to triumph over this wall of a word, we’re still here really, on the same side we were on when we first arrived in this country. For a spot there, we kind of thought we had stumbled upon our “mission” here, but then it slowly fell away. Certainty is the annoying little bastard of Pride. And what do you do with yourself when you don’t know what to do with yourself? Well, we’re still not sure. Move to Europe maybe?

I’m sorry. Are you surprised by my melancholy? It’s my own fault for fooling you into thinking everything was just fine the last few years. I mean, it is fine. We’re fine. It’s really not as depressing as my tone is coming across. But for a while now, we’ve been just barely surviving, certainly not thriving. I’m not going to lie to you now and tell you our hearts are humming “Victory in Jesus” these days. But they are still humming. More like “Blessed Be The Name of the Lord.” Don’t fret too much. We just have a lot of questions, but we seem to have been put on need-to-know status for the time being, somehow graciously benched for this quarter.

For the past few years, we felt like we had found our place in Japan, namely a church to serve alongside Japanese Christians whom we loved with all our hearts. After 5 years of striving to figure out how to best serve the Lord here in Japan, we finally found a match. Our first year there was a honeymoon–worshiping in Japanese among Japanese believers, mutually and joyfully gathering all of each others’ stories into our hearts, reveling in how even our differences complimented each others’, collaborating in fruitfulness, and seeing the church multiply very quickly.

But then somewhere along the way, we lost it. As in a marriage, how can you pinpoint that moment when things moved from challenging to “irreconcilable”? We were going through culture shock all over again, except it was “church culture” shock. Suddenly the honeymoon was over. I don’t know if I should give examples. Probably not. But the challenges went both ways: we struggled to reconcile the teachings and policies of the church with our own beliefs, and they struggled to accept us, aliens that we are here. The cultural challenges snowballed for two years, but we never considered them to be insurmountable. Until March.

When I left Japan with the kids in March after the earthquake, everything went to hell. We became deserters, traitors, outsiders never to be welcomed back. I’m actually not exaggerating. Those things were all spoken over us by strangers and friends alike. But it hurt the most coming from the church. It nearly tore me apart, personally. I won’t go into details now (you’ll have to buy the book), but I came closer this year to walking over the edge than I ever have in my life. I camped for months in emotional sadomasochism: torturing myself over every mistake, every misstep, every flat note; reading over and over again the emails from strangers who hated me and church members who were sorely disappointed in me, breathing in the words, even the lies; allowing depression and anxiety to swallow and chew me up, back and forth, back and forth. Keith was still in Japan, trying so hard to mend what had been broken. I was just trying to get myself back together again–it was all I could do to get through the day. But there were too many pieces. We couldn’t put it back together again, on either end. But we tried. And to be fair, so did they, for a very long time. We all tried so hard and we all loved like it was never gonna hurt. But in the end, we weren’t good for each other after all.

No wonder I’ve been so prophetically obsessed the last few years with the song “The Scientist”:

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
I’m goin’ back to the start

So that’s all I’ve got for you today. That’s all we know for now. We’re going back to the start.

And for those of you who didn’t stand up and walk out on me (when I sang out of tune), thank you.

I was fourteen years old when I met her at Tulsa Summer Arts. She went to the junior high school “across the river” in Sand Springs, and there was a certain rivalry between kids from opposite sides of the river. But we made fast friends and ate lunch together every day all summer long, laughing and talking about boys. We were a good match for each other, both with quick wits and maturity beyond our years–because we had both grown up fatherless and both had born the weight of being the “strong one” in the family. We had both seen and experienced things that quickly steal a child’s innocence. We just clicked effortlessly. But neither of us were Christians at that time.

During that summer art program, I fell in what-I-thought-was-love for the first time with (GASP!) a boy from the other side of the river. He was quarterback of the junior varsity football team, President of the Student Council, Captain of the Debate Team, and extremely charming. He swept me off my feet in a single all-nighter phone conversation, and I was a goner. I was captivated, and it seemed to be mutual. He was extremely intelligent and he made me think about things I’d never considered before. I was challenged by him and intrigued and just completely enraptured. But he was also more “experienced” than I was. He had lost his virginity in 6th grade, and I had done nothing but kiss up to that point. My hormones had totally not kicked in yet, and I was not interested at all in doing the things he wanted to do with me. But he was the first person to ever make me feel that I was understood, seen, loved, and so I did some things (not sex!) that made me feel incredibly dirty and guilty, which was strange to me because I had never been taught that I shouldn’t do those things. So a few days later, I worked up the courage to tell him that I didn’t want to do that stuff anymore; I wanted to stick to kissing. And things suddenly got really awkward, and I didn’t understand at all what was happening. And then a few days later, after a magical summer, and on the first day of 9th grade, he called me in the early morning, and he dumped me. I was CRUSHED.

Actually, I think it was the first time in my life I had been crushed. Of course, I should have been crushed when my father gave my mom a black eye or when he kicked my 6 year-old brother over and over again because he didn’t close the refrigerator door all the way, or when my parents finally divorced, or when my dad broke into our house that first Christmas after they split up and stole our tree and all our presents on Christmas Eve. You would think those things would crush a girl. But instead, I had put on this armor that was way too big for me, and determined that I was the strong one. My poor brother was repeatedly trying to inflict harm upon himself and my mother was just a nervous wreck at that time, understandably. So I just kind of decided that I had to be strong for them. And for everybody else. It became my identity. I was impenetrable. And I was for several years. I rarely cried, I was mean to anyone who got in my way, I was the “it” girl in elementary school because I had such a strong personality perhaps. And that was who I was and I took great pride in it: I WAS STRONG. I COULD HANDLE ANYTHING.

But at age 14, just a few weeks shy of 15, I discovered that I actually couldn’t depend on myself. As I sank deeper and deeper into depression, it became harder and harder for me to put on the pep as co-captain of the cheerleading squad for the JV team on which HE was the quarterback. I was just demolished. And I couldn’t hide it, and I couldn’t make it go away. Even then, I was as transparent as a piece of glass. Most of my friends just kind of abandoned me because I was obviously not much fun to be around, lamenting over some boy all the time.

But one fall Friday night at one of those dreaded football games, a girl came up to me. She was the one who I’d had all those lunches with that past summer. As we small-talked a bit, I could sense that there was something different about her that I hadn’t perceived just a few months ago at arts camp. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. I remember feeling really uncomfortable when she brought up the breakup, and she asked me so earnestly if I was doing okay. I put on a chipper face and insisted that I was just fine (even though the truth was that I was crying myself to sleep every night and not eating and feeling just completely lost). She looked me in the eyes in a way I’d never been looked at before, like she could see right through the the shattered piece of glass that I had become, and she told me that she could see I was hurting and that she’d really like for me to call her sometime and we could talk about it. I kind of blew her off, tucked her phone number into my cheerleading jacket, and got away from her as fast as I could, feeling extremely uncomfortable by her empathy. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I was supposed to be the strong girl, not some weakling that people pitied. I was irritated that she had seen through me so easily.

But that night, as I began to cry myself to sleep yet again, I had this thought that maybe talking to her might help. I didn’t have anyone else I could talk to about it, and I was even starting to have suicidal thoughts at that point. It was worth a shot. So I dug her phone number out of my jacket pocket at midnight or so, and I called her. (She had her own private line.) She answered, she listened to me for a long time, and then she told me that after summer arts camp, something extraordinary had happened to her. She had met Christ and had become a born-again Christian, and she proceeded to tell me some of the things He was doing in her life, and how He was healing her of old wounds. I had never heard anyone my age talk about God this way. I was curious, even intrigued, and so I agreed to go to church with her that next Sunday morning, just two days away. I went to Angus Acres Baptist Church, and I heard worship music for the first time in my life, and as I sang to God, something within me awakened. Something within me filled up as I sang praises to God and cried and asked Him to help me. I do not remember what Pastor Rick preached on that morning, but the Holy Spirit was moving inside my heart so pointedly that I don’t think it would have mattered. When he gave an altar call at the end of his sermon, I practically jumped out of my seat and ran down the aisle and got on my face before the Lord for the first time in my life. That girl followed me and led me to the Lord that Sunday morning. And from that day on, everything started to change.

The pain that had been crippling me subsided, my personality began to take on a new shape somehow, and I had this light and hope in me that brought me something I had never experienced before: JOY. And people noticed, just like I had noticed in her that night at the football game. How courageous she was, a baby Christian, to come to me and offer me Living Water. She was my Starr of Bethlehem, leading me to the place where I could meet my Savior King.

For 19 years, she has remained my best friend forever, though time and distance are against us. She is the first friend I called all 5 times I got pregnant, she is the one I call when I need godly counsel, or just a good laugh. Sometimes I miss her so bad that it puts me in a funk for a bit, like she’s part of my family. In fact, we send those videos to each other that normally only grandparents would care to watch. We were each others’ maids of honor, and somehow we have remained as close as sisters sharing a bedroom, even after all these years. We have sharpened each other over the years, as iron sharpens iron. She was my 30th birthday gift from my husband–he flew her to Japan for a week and I got to show her the land and people that I have come to love so much. And I am so grateful to God for putting her in my life.

She opened the door for me to enter into Narnia. Thank you, Starr. I love you beyond words.

But you see, that encounter was just the beginning. There is so much more to tell…..