Put Me to Suffering: Reflections on my Missionary Experience

     Before I moved to Nome, my first mission trip had been with a group of people, and my second trip had been to visit missionaries who lived in a community of other missionaries. They were both very communal experiences throughout the whole process. After both of these trips, I had the opportunity to stand in front of a congregation of people and share my reflections. The beauty of these short term missions is that whatever struggles that come with them are brief, and everyone's excitement for you is still fresh when you return.
A two year mission term is not a trip, it is a life change. I moved across the country to a remote place in Alaska, and by the time my two years as a missionary concluded, people back home had moved on to new things and so had I. After a week long visit to see my family, I returned to continue my life in Nome.
     That week was full of much needed time with my family, but it also brought up some confusing emotions for me. I wondered if anyone really cared to hear about the kind of work I had been doing here, or if they would just prefer to hear exciting stories about living in a state most people have only seen on T.V.
     It was recently suggested to me by someone who had no idea that I like to write that maybe writing would be a good way to process my emotions about the two year mission experience that is now over. I did not tell that person that I have not written about those experiences because I have become doubtful that anyone truly wants to hear about them in detail. But, writing is what I do, and so here we are.
      I may have written this before, but there was a very poignant moment on the last day of training when we were practicing for the commissioning service. We were reciting the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer, which contains the line "put me to doing, put me to suffering.". We were made to recite that line several times until we said the words "doing" and "suffering" with equal enthusiasm. Throughout my two years, "put me to suffering" became the first phrase to enter my mind whenever something stressful happened at work. Whether I was asked to take on a weekend project on a week when I had already done at least 40 hours, or when I was trying to juggle multiple tasks and find solutions for constant crises while coworkers twiddled their thumbs, my internal sarcastic mantra was "put me to suffering." It eventually became a twisted joke between myself and my cohort of missionaries whenever one of us was given some extra task to add to the multiple projects we were already responsible for.
 When I said the words "put me to suffering", I was picturing occasional, intermittent suffering. I did not realize that for much of my time as a missionary, it would become part of my daily life. I imagined suffering because of the issues within the community, issues I believed I would work with my placement site to improve. It never crossed my mind that the majority of my suffering would be at the hands of the people who I thought wanted me here. I naively believed I was going to a placement site that had a genuine passion for the causes that the US-2 program is geared towards and I never suspected that young adults moving across the country to work with communities around social justice issues would be taken advantage of by being overworked. US-2 missionaries are on a stipend and therefore did not get paid overtime. From a financial standpoint, I guess it made sense to have us work as much as possible, but from a mental health standpoint it was a very difficult role to play.
     The realization that an apology for this treatment is never going to come is an difficult fact to live with. Learning how to forgive people who don't even understand why they should be sorry is a huge challenge for me. But for the sake of my own well-being, I'm trying.
     The missionary experience was not what I thought it was going to be. I was put to types of suffering that I never saw coming, and my inability to live up to the standards of what others thought a missionary should be caused me to doubt myself at times. But even with the struggles, I still believe the good outweighed the bad. I got to experience what it feels like to become a trusted adult for youth who have every reason not to trust anyone. I developed the kind of friendships that only form when you endure suffering together. And if I ever have to work 60 hour weeks in the future, I have lots of experience to draw from.

A Picture of God

Several years ago when I was in confirmation class before getting baptized, I remember one specific moment that really stuck with me. We were instructed to draw a picture of God, and I remember being completely dumbfounded by this assignment.

Up until that point, I had always pictured God as an old man with a beard wearing a white robe. But when faced with the task of committing the image to paper, my vision suddenly seemed childish. 

I think I ended up drawing some flowers and a sunrise, which still didn’t feel right, but it was the best I could do at the time.

I am a different person now than when I drew that picture. I have moved across the country from the place where my faith began, and I have begun to see that things are much more complex than I realized back then. I no longer believe that the image of God is always flowers and sunshine.

If I was given that assignment today, it is not a bearded old man that I would draw, but a series of moments when I saw God’s image reflected in the people around me.

I would draw a huddle of children from complicated backgrounds facing daily challenges, staring in wonderment at the biggest rainbow any of them had ever seen.

I would draw the Alaska Native elder who gave me, a white missionary, an Iñupiaq name.

I would illustrate the moment in which a teenager who refused to say one word to me for the first six months I was here ran to greet me with a hug when I walked in the door of the Boys and Girls Club to visit last week.

I would draw the moment when my fellow US-2 who moved here with me asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, when she will marry the guy who was my first real “non-missionary” friend in Nome.

We have experienced layers of emotions and stress together that I have never had to experience with another friend. I have not always reacted well to those emotions, and she has seen the worst parts of me. Because she possess enough grace to realize that the way I handle negative emotions is not who I really am, we have been able to forge a solid friendship, and that is something I can only describe as holy.

When I started my two year mission, I felt very confident about the state of my faith. After two years of challenges and experiences that were nothing short of life-changing, I realize that everything is far more complex than I realized back then. I am losing my black and white, good and bad, right and wrong view of the world. I am learning to explore the discomfort of the grey areas.

I may have come through this journey with more questions than answers, but there is one thing I know for sure; If someone asked me for a picture of God, I would know what to draw. 

What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?

When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club, one of the programs I was in charge of was the behavioral health curriculum. It was my job to occasionally plan activities about feelings and emotions, and the way our brains work, and I loved it. One of the things I implemented as part of the program was the “Today I am Feeling” board. Youth could come in and write their name by the emotion they were feeling, and sometimes it led to some really important discussions. I loved watching children of all ages pause in front of the board, and stand quietly for a minute as they examined their inner thoughts and identified how they were feeling. I have a theory that the world would be a better place if adults had a feelings board like that.

One of my favorite memories associated with that board is when a teen girl came in one day and without saying a word, grabbed a marker and wrote her name in bold letters beside “angry”. She then gave me one of those crushing glares that only teenage girls are capable of, as if she was daring me to challenge her. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it, and she said no. I then told her “Anger is a valid emotion, and you’re allowed to be angry, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else, or being destructive.” She seemed surprised by my response, and sat quietly be herself for a few minutes before joining her friends and moving on with the day.

That was the day I learned that something really significant happens when you give people, especially teenagers, permission to be angry. We are often taught to suppress our negative emotions, and be ashamed of them. I’ll never know what she was angry about that day, but I believe I gained a new level of respect when I validated that emotion that is so often viewed as an inherently bad thing.

As much as I loved that moment, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to my own anger. Out of all of the emotions, anger is the one I  am least comfortable with. Whenever I feel it, it is followed quickly by shame. I have been trying for so long to figure out how to write about the past two years without mentioning anger, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I just can’t get around it. Like I did for that teen that day, I have to give myself permission to be angry.

I couldn’t, and still can’t say much about my work experience during my time as a US-2, because I worked for a very prominent nonprofit in a very small town.

What I can say is that I experienced a lot of anger about the way I was often treated, and the fact that I felt like I was held to a completely different standard than other people simply because I was a missionary. I also watched the kindness of people I cared about be constantly taken advantage of, and that made me even more angry.

But as much as I could rant about the injustices I encountered in the workplace, I can’t deny the fact that the person I have become the most angry with is myself.

Because I couldn’t fix everything I wanted to fix in two years. Because even though I had the title of missionary, I was no holier than before. I still got cranky when I was overworked, hungry, or things just weren’t going my way. I still said things I regretted in moments of frustration, almost every day.

Because when people tell me about bad experiences they have had at a church and ask why they should go back, I do not have an answer. Because I go through phases where I ask myself that same question. Because even though I worked as hard as I could for two solid years, there are still countless insurmountable problems in this community that I now call home.

As I reflect on all of this, a quote comes to mind from my favorite philosopher, Mr Rogers. It’s actually a song that he sang, called “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?”

Since trying to ignore the anger that I felt and hoping it would just go away did not work, I now have to figure out what to do with it. I could use it to try to inspire change, but I have learned over the past two years that change is often a painfully slow process.

And so for now, I will start by simply acknowledging it. The thing about anger is that, at least in my experience, it starts to lose it’s power as soon as it is brought into the light. Even as I write about the work related trials I faced, I think of all of the children I worked with, and how much joy they brought me. And when I think of all of difficult things I went through, I know that it was worth it to get to know them. They are some of the best people I have ever met.

Lamentations

I recently completed my term as a US-2, and spent a week at home visiting my family and friends.

During that week, I was asked nearly ten times if I had "found" a boyfriend, as if people thought I had been commissioned by the church for the sole purpose of moving across the country and searching for someone to enter into a relationship with.

I was not asked about the children I have spent almost every weekday with for the past two years. I was not asked about the culture of this community that I have grown to love. I was not asked about the friends I have made, or the things I do for fun.

I was not asked about the state of my faith, about the ways in which it has been challenged and changed by this experience. I was not asked about the things that I have struggled with, the things I have seen that have broken my heart, the things that have made me angry.

When I returned home after spending two years of my life as a missionary for the church, I was not asked to share any of my experiences with the church I am a member of. I also did not volunteer to speak, so perhaps that one is on me.

I was told by several people that they could never move to Alaska because it's too cold, a backhanded way of saying that they don't understand why I would enjoy it. I resisted the urge to respond that nobody ever asked them to move here, and that I could never stay in Virginia because it's too hot.

Once during that week, a friend sat down beside me and said "tell me all about it," and then listened while I did. And then on the way to the airport to return here, in the midst of talking about farming equipment and boats and trucks, all of the things I grew up rolling my eyes about when they dominated family conversations, but are now oddly comforting when I hear about them, my brother asked the question that meant the most to me. "Are you happy to be going back to Nome?"

Over the past two years, it has often seemed as if my happiness is the last thing on anyone's mind. And I tried my best not to complain about it, because that's what I signed up for. But I have not yet reached a point of selflessness where I never have the urge to talk about myself sometimes, or just feel like someone cares enough to want to know how I feel.

During this experience, I found that it became difficult to write about situations as they were happening, and my demanding job never seemed to allow my mind to slow down and gather my thoughts together enough to write a decent blog post anyway. But now life has slowed down a little, and I'm ready to look back and remember, and to look forward to what's next.

Perhaps it is not in my best interest to return with such a brutally honest post, but if there's one thing that this experience has taught me, it's that sometimes a brutally honest conversation is the best way to move forward.