Facebook lies and other truths {A Life Overseas}

June 7, 2016 / trotters41 / 1 Comment

Jonathan is over at A Life Overseas today . . .

Have you ever created a fake boyfriend? Yeah, me neither.

One woman did, though, and while she’s no Chewbacca Lady, I still think she’s pretty awesome. You can read Ms. Smothers’ story here. Apparently, “It only took one week and five easily stageable posts for Smothers to convince her followers that she had found love.”

Facebook, er, Instagram, lies. [And for the purists, Facebook owns Instagram, so the title of this post still fits.]

Ms. Smothers succeeded in convincing her followers that something amazing had happened: she had found love!

But it was all a ruse.

You can finish reading the article here.

When the lights go out {A Life Overseas}

May 23, 2016 / trotters41 / Leave a comment

Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today . . .

I want to do all the things. All the very good things there are to do in this world. So I overcommit myself. I don’t say “no.” I say “yes” instead, and spread myself too thin. Then my soul suffers. My work suffers. My sanity suffers. My family life suffers. My spiritual life suffers.

I suffer in silence, thinking I’m all alone. I’m the only one failing at everything. I’m the only one who can’t pull it together. I’m the only one who can’t catch my breath, who can’t catch up on work, who can’t catch up on school, who can’t catch up with friends, who can’t catch up with the God I say I love so very much.

And I, insecure missionary blogger that I am, am afraid to tell people.

To top all that off, the heat in Southeast Asia has been crushing me. The past two months have held record highs here, and we get a lot of power cuts. I echo Ramona Quimby in Ramona the Brave who shouted out “Guts! Guts guts guts!” when she wanted to say bad words. Instead, I yell “Cuts! Cuts cuts cuts!” and very nearly lose my mind.

After one particularly grueling 12-hour all-night power outage, something inside me broke — flat out broke. I lost my hope. I began to question everything. Why are we here? Why can’t we live in America? Why exactly do I serve this God of mine? And where the heck is He when I can barely sleep or even breathe in this heat?

I was struggling under the weight of all the expectations I had for myself: be a good mom, be a good wife, be a good home educator, be a good missionary, be a good team leader’s wife, be a good friend, be a good writer, be a good editor, be a good Christ-follower. And I couldn’t do any of it.

Finish reading this post here.

3 Ways to Care for the Heart of Your Wife {A Life Overseas}

May 4, 2016 / trotters41 / Leave a comment

by Jonathan

Marriage can really be a drain on missions. Marriage on the field can be a constant source of distraction, discouragement, and pain.

But I hope it’s not.

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I’ve written before about marriage and its purpose, but today I’d like to take a step back and speak directly to husbands: my brothers.

This advice is carefully given, and with no slight hesitation. After all, if you want people to argue with you (and I don’t particularly enjoy it), then write about marriage. Even so, I will write. Because it matters. And because I hope the men who marry my sisters will do these things. I hope the men who pursue my daughters (in the very far distant future) will do these things. I hope my sons will do these things. Because marriage is important. It’s also really complicated.

Marriage is a complex thing (2 into 1) entered into by complex people (humans) who have to do complex stuff (live).

And you all know this already, but missions is a hard gig for marriages. You’ve got sky-high stress levels, extreme temperatures, lots of broken things, financial tightness, the fishbowl of fundraising, and a rewarding but very hard job. Sounds like fun, right? Well, if you add all of that to an unhappy marriage, I can tell you the one thing you certainly won’t be having is fun.

So, onward! What are three things you can do to care for the heart of your wife?

Continue reading over at A Life Overseas…

Let me tell you about Kassiah Jones {A Life Overseas}

April 25, 2016 / trotters41 / 2 Comments

Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today, sharing a spiritual lesson she learned this month.

This month my husband and I took our kids to the local home school co-op’s spring performance. Some of our friends were in the play. It was called “The Race” and was an original play based loosely on the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

Every character in this play was modeled after an animal. There was a bear and a sparrow and a fennec fox (among others), but the character that most captured my attention was the character modeled after the ant. Her name was Kassiah Jones, and she never knew when to quit.

When it was time for the village inhabitants to prepare for the annual race, Kassiah trained harder than all the rest. She worked hard and never knew when to stop.

On race day Kassiah was in the lead, far ahead of the others, for the first three laps. But on the fourth lap she didn’t come back around the curtain with the rest of the runners. At the end of the race, after somebody else had won, the villagers went in search of her. They found her, collapsed from exhaustion, and had to carry her out on a stretcher.

Finish reading this post here.

The Gaping Hole in the Modern Missions Movement {A Life Overseas}

April 5, 2016 / trotters41 / Leave a comment

Jonathan is over at A Life Overseas today, sharing a two-part message about the need to integrate the Psalms into our missiology. Check out Part 1 here and then read Part 2.