Claire and I recorded a little Christmas CD for you! I meant to get hard copies of this finished and out in time for Christmas gifts, but I’m afraid it wasn’t done in time. Please feel free to go to this website and download the album for free. One of the tracks was recorded by Claire, and the others are from me. Merry Christmas! (If you’re technologically-challenged and need help, just let me know.) Download away!

SEE THE MOVIE!

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 felt compelled this morning that it was the right day to write the rest of that story. I’ve been praying for weeks that God would give me the right words. But when you open up your soul and show your scars to the whole wide world, it’s a little scary. I mean, my in-laws read this thing. But I want you all to really know me. Or no. Not me. I want you to know Him who could take what I was and change me the way He has, the way He’s still doing…

I want you to know how He loves us, and how that can change everything. EVERYTHING.

So with more than a little trepidation, I posted that blog this morning, and then went to church. I walked into a church with blaring music (that’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it), and I couldn’t find my place fast enough to start worshiping my heart out to this song that has literally been my personal anthem the last few years:

And then this one was next, another of the songs that has rocked my world the last couple years:

And then, finally, they finished me off with this one, and I just stood there trembling, sobbing, and laughing because I got the message loud and clear. He loves me. I mean, come on, Lord, could you BE more obvious? I love you, Abba Father.

So if you read my last blog, you know that I was fourteen when I got saved. My home life was pretty turbulent at that time, and I was in ninth grade, which just happened to be the year that all the “it” girls and guys started to drink. Shocking I know, but I was actually co-captain of our school’s cheer squad that year (probably more because I was a natural leader, not because I was the best cheerer. But I did have a pretty awesome toe-touch! Anyway…) In particular, most of the girls on the squad were going to these drinking/hook-up parties every weekend, and here I was a brand new Christian, and my conscience was screaming at me that I wasn’t to be any part of that. I had never quite fit in that crowd anyway; I didn’t know WHERE I belonged. That year was heaven and hell at the same time. I remember there was a rumor circulating around the school that I had an “A List” of people I would be friends with and I wouldn’t be friends with anyone who wasn’t on that list. It was completely untrue. On the contrary, I was reaching out to a lot of people in our school who were treated as outcasts, inviting them to church and telling them what God had done in my life. One day on my way to Science class, three boys knelt down and mocked me Wayne’s World-style, bowing to me and saying “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” (Funnily, two of those boys grew up and became pastors!) But I was so hurt by all the random lies being spread about me. It was my first taste of persecution, and I was SOOOOO lonely.

Starr, the girl who had led me to the Lord, went to the other junior high in town, and I didn’t know any other serious Christians at my school. But then something amazing started happening. Let’s see if I can get this order right: Allison led Starr to the Lord after she had gotten saved at church camp, Starr led me to the Lord, and then one of my closest friends, April became the first person that I ever led to the Lord. Almost immediately after that, April led Maria to the Lord. One by one we fell at His feet, and our lives were all changed by Christmas time. I’ll never forget it. And then we found Nadia, who was the most explosively joyful Christian any of us had ever met. (And she still is!) And a circle of friends was formed that still remains unbroken, even by years and distance and babies and marriages. All through high school, we leaned on each other, laughed together, cried together, worshiped together at Angus. We were tight. And when we are able to get back together, even after all these years, it’s always the most natural thing in the world to just pick up where we left off.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that this gift of godly girlfriends He had given me was quite an extraordinary thing. Most young, sold-out believers in Christ, it seems, walk the road without friends cheering them on, like I had. I am so grateful for these precious girls. I walked through more than a few fires in those years (we all did), but we didn’t do it alone. There was even a season when I secretly strayed far from the straight and narrow, near the end of high school, but those girls’ hands were the ones that pulled me through that dark tunnel, and they still loved me, even at my worst.

In a couple months, all but one of us (plus a couple other girls that joined our circle a little later) are having a reunion/retreat. Many of us haven’t seen each other in years, and we are going to worship together and do an in-house Beth Moore retreat together. I can’t wait!!!

Okay, so the next blog is going to be about that tunnel, and I’m kind of dreading writing about it, but I need to, because God did something amazing in me, after He crushed me. Just warning you. Heavy stuff coming right up.

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…..

Many of you know that we are in a very difficult situation right now. Keith and I are thousands of miles away from each other, and can hardly communicate because of the time difference. I am still reeling from the earthquakes that we experienced last month, and even more so reeling from the onslaught of attackers that have publicly taken issue(s) with our decisions/methods of evacuating Japan and from all the misinformation floating around, which I can really do nothing about. I am going through some things I have never experienced before: depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. etc… I have the kids enrolled in school because I need to at least learn how to deal with all my issues before we return to Japan, and I have doctor appointment and/or therapy of some kind almost every day that my kids are all in school.

So here I am, feeling like I’m about to be buried in that missionary graveyard any day now, and YET God has still been unreasonably good to me. He still has lavished his love upon me in a million different ways. He still has shown me grace upon grace upon grace, and has favored me. He has led me to exactly the right kind of therapy, exactly the right doctors, has given me an amazing support system in my mother and brother and sister-in-law and friends here, and has just shown me again and again that this is just a season. This is not forever. Again, I shall be glad in Him, and shall soon be able to say authentically, “Let the nations be glad!” Over the last few weeks, the cry of my heart has been, “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation, Lord please!”

The song on repeat on my playlist right now is from a CD from The Village Church. The song is called “To the Cross I Cling” and the chorus reminds me, “All things in me call for my rejection; All things in You pleads my acceptance.” Please listen to it down there at the bottom! It’s an amazing, affirming song.

One of the key things that is helping me immensely right now is called “Intensive Prayer Therapy.” And it IS intense!! The counselors (a married couple, former long-term missionaries in Thailand, and experienced in working with people with severe PTSD, i.e. women who have seen their pastor-husbands martyred before their eyes), rather than letting me blather on a nd on about my pain and then offering suggestions, they lead me through an intense two-hour process each week, in which I am learning to reconnect with my Heavenly Father and allow Him to be my true Counselor. They are guiding me in praying to the Father, to ask Him the hard questions about all that is happening and why I am feeling the way I am feeling, and asking Him to show me again who I am in Him. And truly He has been near to me in my broken-heartedness and contrition. He has spoken His Word to me, He has given me word-pictures and brought up things I haven’t thought of in years, all bringing healing to my soul, slowly but surely.

At the end of “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Aslan tells Lucy that this was her last time in Narnia, that she is no longer a child, but that He is in her world too, to look for Him by His other Name. I had a revelation that I too had been to Narnia (metaphorically, of course). God allowed me to ride His back through magical forests, clinging tight to his luscious mane. I had some seriously amazing, other-worldly adventures when I was a child in Him. In reading and in watching C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece of children’s literature, I have been so moved to realize that He chose me to enter into that magical world for a season in my life. For years, I’ve felt guilty that I couldn’t figure out how to get back there. But the truth is that now I’m a grown up, and I have been instructed to put away childish things. I have been called to relearn how to connect with him in a powerful, intimate way now that I’m all grown up.

In my prayer time today, He gave me a very specific instruction: The next step toward recovery for me is to tell my stories from Narnia. When I tell those stories, I light up, inside and out, and the joy of my salvation returns to me. Right now I am in the pit, and the only way to regain my joy and faith in this is to remember what He has done in my life. I don’t know what will come of this! I have no agenda of which stories to tell and when. But the Bible tells us over and over again to remember the things He has done. Exodus 16:32 says, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’”

So all that to announce that for the next several blogs, which I aim to write daily, as part of my worship to Him, I am going to tell my stories from Narnia. Will you go on this little journey with me? Will you rejoice with me in what He has done, and pray for me that He will indeed restore unto me the joy of my salvation? When I get back to Japan, I’ve GOT to be girded with the joy of the Lord as my strength, or I’m gonna get eaten alive. I need your prayers! I love you, dear family and friends.

Adam has been having trouble with his handwriting lately. He’s reading above level and in everything else he excels, but handwriting? He hates it. But yesterday after school, he said to me, so earnestly, “Mom, today when I was doing my handwriting, I felt like God was moving my pencil! Like His hand was helping me with my pencil!”

Ever since he said that, I just keep praying, “Lord, can you move my pencil too?” Because my handwriting sucks pretty bad lately too.

As you all know, we have had quite a week. At 2:45pm last Friday, I was 15 minutes from meeting a few missionary friends to travel to a women’s retreat, and Keith was about to take the kids to piano lessons. We were all upstairs, all together, when the shaking began. At first, it felt like an ordinary little earthquake–we get them all the time–but then it kept going. And then it got stronger and stronger, and the pictures on the walls started threatening to fall down, and the enormous antique Chinese cabinet was wavering forward as if it might thrust itself to the ground. We stayed as calm as could be expected, telling the kids to stand in the door frames by us. And we really didn’t know if that’s what we should do, keep everyone on the second floor like that. (It’s not.) But this thing just kept going and going. The quake lasted for about 2 and a half minutes, and it was strong. And it was scary. I have NEVER been scared during an earthquake. I’m not easily scared, I don’t think. But 8 year-old Claire started crying about a minute in and began to get hysterical, and sadly my initial maternal instincts started to melt into my own panic as I wondered if our house was about to come crumbling down on top of us. I actually had a moment where I thought, “Well, this is it, Lord.” And I started praying and peace returned just as quickly as it had fleeted.

Then it was over. The boys were laughing and saying how cool it was, and I was trying to crack jokes to help Claire (which worked). And we tried to go about our regular business. But something just felt off. The ladies started to arrive who were coming with me to the retreat, and they were also very shaken up. But our fourth lady, a pastor’s wife from Tokyo, we quickly realized must have been on the train when it happened. And sure enough, I got a Facebook post from her that she was stuck on a powered-down train who-knows-where and had no idea when she would be able to get off. We drove to the nearest train station, hoping the trains would start back up and she’d arrive eventually, but she never did. Two hours later, we got another message from her that she’d had to take an emergency exit off the train, walk down the tracks and climb the ladder from the tracks to the platform. And she was at a station which was only about a half mile away. But it took us nearly an hour to get there because of traffic. All the while, we’re still having little earthquakes, aftershocks, every few minutes, which was very unsettling. And I’m just wishing I had stayed home, but first, my friend needed rescuing. So we got her, and then I think we were all just in such shock that we didn’t even know how to discuss what to do next. I think probably I wasn’t the only one who was yearning just to go home to my family and curl up on the couch in my husband’s arms. But I couldn’t say it for some reason. I don’t know if it was my shock or just I was in survival mode or what, but I just kept going. And so did the rest of them. So we drove nearly 3 hours to the place where the retreat was to be held, arriving terribly late, and ate dinner at Chili’s, a strangely ordinary thing to do on such a day. It wasn’t until we checked into our hotel room after dinner that we turned on the news and saw the extent of devastation in Sendai. Now 3 of us are missionaries–our life’s work is here in Japan, our hearts are forever-binded to the hearts of our Japanese friends. But we were just in such shock–all we could do was watch the television and check our Facebook over and over again. I am ashamed to say that we four godly women failed to pray together that night. We should have, and I’m embarrassed that we (or at least I) just let the tsunami sweep right over us as well. We just went on with the retreat and it was well and fine as far as retreats go, but my heart was about to beat out of my chest I wanted to get out of there so bad.

But then I went home and I have prayed much since then, believe me.

My precious 8 year-old asked me so earnestly, “Mom, WHY would God let this happen? NOTHING good can come out of this!” Fortunately, I had been struggling with the same question (don’t we all?), and was greatly comforted by the words of John Piper HERE. I tenderly shared with Claire how God can use even the most horrific of circumstances to make the most beautiful things happen. I shared with her experiences from my own life where God used unspeakable pain to open my eyes and help me really see Him, and to cause me to sing His praises forevermore, which is simply the greatest joy of my life. Without all that pain and suffering, I am absolutely convinced that I never would have recognized the abysmal desperation in my soul for Him and Him alone.

And so that is my hope for the Japanese people: that one-by-one they will have similar epiphanies to the one He so graciously granted me at a ridiculously young age: that we are useless and empty and purposeless without Him. Here in Japan, they don’t know that! You have to understand, these are some of the most intelligent, affluent, kindhearted people you have ever met. They don’t FEEL their desperate need for God like a starving mother of 4 in Ethiopia might. And so they’re not crying out to Him. But the Word of God says that He is just waiting for them to cry out to pour His compassion upon them. Family, friends, whoever reads this–PRAY that God will make them desperate for HIM! Just a couple weeks ago, I was headed to Tokyo, and the train line I needed to be one was shut down because of a “human accident.” That’s their code for “someone jumped in front of a train.” I am so sick of hearing about the 100 suicides a day here in Japan, feeling so helpless to do anything. They’re hurting inside, but in this culture, they’re not allowed to feel, and they’re sure as heck not allowed to share how they feel. And so they don’t. And many of them can’t take it–they either just shut down emotionally or they jump in front of a train. And it’s TIME FOR US TO START PRAYING. Even more than they need for their devastated towns and villages to be rebuilt (and they do!), they need revelation of their need for the only Living God who can fill their souls! The Japanese people are considered to be the hardest people group in the whole world to minister the gospel to–missionaries call Japan “the missionary graveyard” because people don’t last here. It’s too hard to reach them, and people give up. You see, the Japanese people think/say they’re just fine, for the most part. But they’re not. Love them with me. Pray for them with me! Allow your heart to be moved by their apathy towards the Living God. He is just waiting for them to cry out to Him!

As you all know, for the safety of our children, I am trying to raise money to come back to the States for a little while, just until all this blows over. But Keith has to stay. And us not being here will free him up to do a lot of ministry, so please be in prayer for him that God will give him exactly the tasks that are right for him. He so wants to be of help to the Japanese people during this time, and our absence will actually make that easier for him.

I love you all, and I hope to see you very soon!

Choosing Joy,
Lisa