I hope you’re enjoying these Missionary Monday posts as much as I am! Maridith is sharing her heart with us today from South Sudan and you are in for a treat. I had the pleasure of meeting and knowing Maridith’s family when her dad became my college pastor way back when. Maridith and I have both married since and started our own families (well, mine is finished until my kids start marrying!) but I enjoy keeping in touch through social media. She is hilarious and I always look forward to her stories!

Welcome to The Farm Wyfe blog, Maridith!

By Maridith Lane

This blog came to me last night as I was cooling off–literally AND figuratively–in the wide-open AC of our truck. My husband and I had just been cleaning up from our taco salad dinner, we bathed the kids, and I was nursing the baby while he tucked away the toddler in bed. It gets noisy around here at bedtime (we’ve coined it the “psycho seven o’clock hour”) and I wearily get less and less gracious towards the constant sound as the day grows late. Somewhere between the lettuce leftovers and the bath water, I lost my temper–at no particular person or event–but I was just done.  At 8pm, it was still nearly 100 degrees in our house and I just could. Not. Handle. Any. More. Is anybody with me here?

I do have a point and here it is–missionaries are much more like you than you realize. We run late. We argue with our spouses. We yell at our kids. We lose patience with our teammates. We get overstimulated. We say yes when we should say no. We operate on too little rest. The heat, the languages, the culture and the constant demands wear us thin. We lose focus. We stress eat and struggle with weight gain. We procrastinate. We let our emotions overwhelm us. We lose sight of the gift that is our calling and it squelches our joy. We stay up way too late downloading American TV shows. We’re always looking for some sense of balance and a new normal. 

I had a certain mental picture of what a missionary woman did when I first arrived in Africa in 2012. It looked a lot more like a well rested, 1950’s woman wearing an apron, gleefully bending over her freshly weeded garden, digging up carrots and picking fresh rosemary, all while she simultaneously homeschooled her children and mended the tears in their well-worn clothes–and A LOT LESS LIKE ME.

Me, who (usually) sleeps enough but fails to rest in my Savior. Me, who always forgets an apron and has countless stains on every article of clothing I own. Me, whose garden needs some pretty dedicated  attention (hello, basil BUSH). Me, who hopes my two boys will miraculously teach themselves when the time for kindergarten rolls around. Me, who can’t even sew on a button.

Be encouraged wives, mamas, college students. Life comes with innumerable built-in challenges no matter your age, location, marital status, number of children, or occupation. Sanctification is no joke! So as you impatiently wait in the car line at your daughter’s school, pray that missionaries would have the humility to bear one another’s burdens. When they mess up your order at Chick-fil-A (as if that ever happened!), pray that missionaries would find deep contentment in their calling. When your husband gets laid off, pray that missionaries would count it all joy. When that lady in your Bible study class is being needy, pray that missionaries would find satisfaction in ministering to those who don’t know about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Sure, our struggles don’t quite look the same but somewhere close at their roots, they are.

We’re the same, you and me. You’re there and I’m here, but we’re together on this bumpy road to holiness.

Author Bio

  Maridith and her husband, Robert, are church planters in South Sudan. They have 2 boys, Shepherd (almost 3 years old) and Roscoe (almost 6 months). Maridith and Robert were married in 2008, after they both returned from having served as single missionaries (her, Honduras and him, Peru). Maridith is originally from Georgia and Robert is from Tennessee. To follow their work in Africa, check out their team website or stay connected with their team on Twitter. You can follow Maridith on Instagram or on her personal blog.