Tonight we caught up with some old friends. Not your normal run of the mill friends…but a certain breed of friends…….ones that are very close to my heart and have been since I’ve been a teenager. Missionaries. When one hears that word several different ideas come to mind. Most people probably think of super holy people who float around doing wonderful deeds at every turn and live in the darkest parts of our world.

When I was thirteen years old I had the chance to experience first hand what missionaries were really like. My parents put me on a plane, and off I flew south of the border to the little country of Guatemala, where I spent three weeks with a missionary family learning all about the various aspects of missionary life. Not just their lives, but several different missionaries lives in that country. From front line church planters, to the behind the scenes skilled workers, from Bible college professors, to mothers, looking after the home. In three short weeks i managed to get a taste of several of the things missionaries find themselves “doing” but what made the biggest impression on me…was not what they were doing….but who they were…their “being” so to speak.

I remember sitting around the dinner table with two different missionary families one evening, and just listening to them easily chat about everything from the everyday, to the extra-ordinary. I realized that I was sat among normal everyday people…they were not super humans, they were not super spiritual…but they were living incredibly rich lives…lives that were emptied out…but yet..were so overflowing with the goodness of God.

There is this kind of life we all see glimpses of…in TV adverts, and films…the kind of life our soul longs for….that we are scared to hope for because it feels unrealistic and foolish to dream of……but I can honestly say I’ve been the closest I’ve ever been to that sort of life….when I’ve been among missionaries. It doesn’t make sense. The TV adverts and films are usually trying to sell us something….telling us we need to have more in order to achieve that feeling..but missionaries…they live by completely different rules…but their lives are so full…so rich…it’s almost unreal…but it’s the realest thing I’ve ever felt.

And it’s not that missionaries live in some sort of alternative reality with their heads in the clouds, out of touch with reality…in some ways they are more in touch with reality than many of us…it’s just…who they are. I suppose i’ve been striving to put my finger on that all my life. Because when I sat there as a 13 year old that evening…I knew my life would never be the same….I wanted to be one of them. I wanted that life.

So tonight we had some missionary friends over. They’re only in the UK for a short while and we were lucky enough to catch them for an evening. Their kids are growing up and areall nearly teenagers now. It struck me how easygoing they all were. As they are used to visiting lots of different people in many different places, they did not at all find it strange to be having dinner in a house they’d never been to with people they hadn’t seen in nearly three years. They chatted easily with us and offered to help out. They were still kids. Playing up, being loud, a little wild….but they were in this lovely middle ground where the life had not been beaten out of them….(over disciplined) yet they were not completely wild (under disciplined)

I hope to get that balance right in my own parenting. I don’t want to be constantly shouting at my kids and sitting on them so that they never ever embarrass me or make me  or themselves look bad, picking on them over every little thing…yet at the same time I don’t want to be so permissive that they are out of control and actually unpleasant to be around. Many times when I am so called “disciplining” I wonder what my motives are. Often, it’s my own irritation, my own impatience, and my own fear of how I’ll look, or how they’ll look. Am I really trying to teach a lesson or am I simply “reacting”. Then there is the side to me that lapses. When I’m too tired to be consistent, when I opt for an easy life….when I miss opportunities to really teach. What a complex maze we have to navigate through as parents. But anyway…this is all quite random but I suppose the connection I am making is that….I’ve always loved missionaries, missionary families, missionary kids….etc. I spent some time with some lovely people tonight, and it was enjoyable having their kids around…and it reminded me of the kind of person I want to be…and the kids of kids I hope to raise..and it’s challenged me to keep living in that way…working towards that…even though the details of my own life are not so cut and dry right now….I’m still going to live with the same attitudes and principles that I admired so much as a teenager.