I blogged at length on this site about the joys and adventures of being a missionary on the foreign field. I still get excited about the prospect, the challenge, the sheer bliss of leading someone to Christ. But along the way I found I wasn't happy. Not because missions wasn't my thing. It still very much is. I wasn't happy because I didn't have a purpose.
Other missionaries had job descriptions: things they would wake up to every day knowing they had to do. I had none. I woke up every day wondering what the day would hold. And in a way, that was very exciting. But when you are stationary, in one place for a long time, it gets old. It was much more fun (if I can use that word) when I was travelling short-term.
Since returning home, I have gotten married and gone back to school, all in the hope of finding … well, peace. I desperately needed to find my call, my purpose, my reason for being here. If being on the mission field was not it — and it wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination — then I had to find what was.
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Between mission trips I would often work whatever job I could find to raise money and also to pass the time. I routinely had long stretches at home (and that would put out any missionary's fire) and I had to find things to do in the mean time. On one such occasion, I found myself working at a law firm as their company network technician. I've loved computers all my life, but this was the fist time I was getting paid to love them. It was surreal, like I was living a dream. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. And little did I know at the time, but I even met my wife here.
I had never been so satisfied in my life. People needed me. I knew what I was doing. I had a job description … and it felt good! Unfortunately, that was 2009, and the economic downturn was just getting started. I actually landed that job in January of that year, in the depth of the funk. I would later be laid off in the middle of more funk, as my boss lost business and could no longer support me. It was no worry to me; I had already made plans to return to the mission field. However, that trip would prove life-changing.
I have never hurt so much in my life. And by people I loved! I have never felt so betrayed, never wanted so desperately to make the hurting stop. I frequently considered ending my life during that time. It is amazing the hurt you can feel by something as simple as your friend turning their back on you. I can only imagine how Jesus must have felt when Judas did the same thing. I'm no Savior, and I didn't handle my plight as gracefully as He (I also wasn't crucified.) But it hurt, nonetheless. It was months before I came out of it.
It was a miracle of God that I was healed. My heart has never felt better! And that healing had to come if I was to face what was ahead. I couldn't go headlong into marriage with my heart ripped to shreds. But more than that, I couldn't face life with my heart ripped to shreds. God never intended for me to get hurt on the field. That was not part of the plan. But getting me better was.
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Standing at the altar, crying harder than I've ever cried before, God knit my heart to my wife's. And he spoke to me there. He touched my heart, and all the wounds were gone. In fact, I can't even remember what I was so upset about. That's true healing! That's true forgiveness! Not because it's like it didn't happen; it did! But because it doesn't matter anymore. It can't hurt me anymore. And now I'm pursuing my true call at full-throttle.
In the middle of repurposing my life, I have had to repurpose this website. As it was the locus of my missionary tale, it had to change along with everything else. Not that the old stories were bad, but this site was like the digital face to my life, and that was no longer me. So I've deleted all the old files and stories, all the old photographs and memories … not in an attempt to cover up the past — that stuff really happened, and it matters — but to focus on the future, who I am now.
That is why you find yourself reading this page. You've requested a page that used to be on this site and no longer is, but don't fret. I've simply found a purpose, and I've never been happier!
~Jonathan