Tag: Global Missions

The Suit

This post was originally published November 14, 2014–just seven months after we moved our family from the USA to Germany to serve as full-time missionaries.

Have you ever seen The Abyss? It sounds like a horror movie, but it’s really just a sci-fi look at ocean exploration, with a little drama thrown in. I really love sci-fi movies and TV shows—I cut my teeth on Star Wars, and 38 years later still have a taste for the stuff. But anyway—The Abyss. There is a scene about halfway through the movie where one of the veteran explorers has to make a very dangerous descent into the deepest ocean trench there is…and the only way to get down there to complete a risky mission (which may or may not save the crew in the station on the ocean floor above) is to wear an untested prototype suit. The suit looks like a spacesuit for deep sea diving, but it has one über-creepy element involved: breathing liquid. The suit pumps oxygen-rich liquid (looks like clear, pink gel) through the suit, and the inhabitant has to let his lungs fill up with it. Basically, you have to go through drowning in this liquid in order to live and provide the proper resistance to the major PSI on your body so deep underwater.

So, we get to the scene where the explorer puts on his suit. He has his game face on. He knows he is the best one for the mission, and he realizes he might die in several different ways getting there, but game face, nevertheless. The crew help him into the bulky suit and finish by locking his helmet into place. And then they start filling him up with the pink liquid. He is bracing himself, telling himself he can do this. He is ready. He is strong. He feels the liquid pumping through the suit; then the liquid begins to fill his helmet. He holds his breath out of sheer instinct to live, and struggles, not able to let go of the fear of drowning inside a dive suit. He falls backward off his seat, flailing, feeling the fear take over. He fights for a few agonizing minutes against letting the liquid into his nose and mouth, but he is out of air and must inhale something… He is ready to die as he finally sucks in a huge wave of oxygen-rich liquid. But death is not to be found. He opens his eyes, looks around the room in shock that he is not dead, and gives the heartiest silent laugh he can muster through a helmet full of liquid! He made it! 

The movie goes on to show his mission to previously unreached depths and his amazing encounters. I won’t give away the ending because maybe you’ll go back and watch a sci-fi movie from 1989…

Why am I recounting this nonsense? Because I’m the guy in the suit. This is the best analogy I can find for how we are adjusting to life and ministry in a foreign place! We understood the gravity of the situation. We knew we were the ones for the job. We feel a sense of duty and the desire to make a sacrifice to save others. But the suit. Whew! Nothing can prepare you for the suit.

Locking your helmet into place, feeling the pink liquid rush in and fill up every space—the change in your hearing, your inability to speak, the adjustment to moving a little heavier. That is exactly what it’s like entering a new culture for the long haul. We still carry our sense of duty, and our passion to fulfill our mission. We are unwaveringly in love with Jesus, our Savior. But we are learning to breathe liquid. Each day it gets a little easier. We’re past the gasping panic phase, but we’re not agile in the suit yet.

We’ll get there. And as we feel more at ease in our new gear, we are encountering some amazing things along the way.

All for the Gospel,

Crista

Have you ever felt like you’re about to drown, only to find that the “drowning” was the doorway to your destiny? How do you handle your “drowning” moments?

Fly!

Hearts pounding, lungs burning, we inch backward toward the precipice. Senses are on high alert with our mounting awareness of the enemy closing in. Playing the long game, he has methodically driven us out toward the edge. We can hear the stones tripping and tumbling down the cliff as we try to hold our ground. With sweat rolling down our foreheads, we thrust our swords toward the source of the snarls advancing on us, over and over again. Why can’t we cut the head off this thing? Then we hear it—the voice of our Commander, clear as if He were in the battle: “Get down.”

Immediately we lie down flat on our faces, swords gripped tightly, wondering what was about to happen. Enter slow motion. Before we even hit the ground, the enemy lunges for us with outstretched claws, teeth bared. He misses us by a sheer millisecond. We turn to see his dark form hurl over the cliff with a haunting screech. Back to real time. We exhale, but momentary relief skitters away as we realize the ground beneath us is shifting and rumbling. We’re not out of danger yet! We catch each other’s wide eyes again, realizing we are about to fall. With a top-up of adrenaline, we grab hands and shut our eyes as the cliff crumbles. 

We are falling.

What do we do? What do we do? Surely this is the end. There is no way we can survive this. All of our training was in different terrain. We have no experience here.

Again, we hear the Commander’s voice: “Fly.”

Fly? You must be joking. How can we fly, Sir?

Instantly, the wind stops and the scenery stands still around us. Has someone caught us? Is this some sort of rescue?

Again we hear the command, “Fly.”

And I realize that we are being suspended in the air by giant, pulsing wings—on our own backs! Where had they come from? Had they been there all along and we didn’t know? Whatever their genesis, we were now in possession of wings. Talk about a game changer. The more we began to move them, the more we instinctively understood how to make them work. So we set our sights back on our target. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Imagination and allegory give a poignant glimpse into the hiddenness of the spiritual reality of daily life. Our past several months serving on the mission field have been intense, to say the least. Although the opening story is allegorical, it describes our experiences perfectly. We have been backed out on a precipice, fallen off a cliff as the ground gave way under us, and flailed in a freefall. We have stood our ground against the enemy with sweat rolling down our brows and we have eaten dirt as we hit the ground to avoid his full takedown. But we have also experienced our wings. 

We have never been in this exact situation before, and we have no training to tell us what to do, other than listen for the voice of the Lord. When He speaks, we live.  

This past week, we were blindsided by some trouble with our daughter’s school. The administration let us know that because she spent a semester in Texas in a ballet program the first semester, she could receive no credit for her ninth grade year—even for the semester she completed (with flying colors) here at the high school. Their only solution was for her to repeat ninth grade. She was devastated. She came back to Berlin in January and worked so hard to catch up in classes—she finished the second semester with A’s and B’s on her report card, too! Telling her that all her work was for nothing just about sent her over the edge. To make matters even worse, the school demanded we make a decision in less than 24 hours. 

We cried, we prayed, we talked. We cried some more. We stayed awake through the night asking the Lord what we should do. I had the fleeting thought to look up the graduation requirements for a Christian boarding school for missionary kids in southwestern Germany, so I started some research. Suffice it to say, this other school will accept all her credit from last semester, plus online credit recovery for the one class she would still be missing to meet their requirements! And they would be willing to enter her as a junior in the following school year (2020/2021)! 

This was not on our radar, nor would we have sought out a move like this during the remainder of her high school years—especially living as missionaries and dealing with a huge daily load of spiritual and cultural opposition to our mission. But the more we step into this, the more we see the Lord’s leading in it. He is moving her. She fell off a cliff, but she has (and so have we) discovered wings. 

What the enemy means for evil, the Lord means for good. Every time. (Genesis 50:20) 

When you are in a freefall, realize that the Lord empowers you to fly. (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Even when it feels like you are alone, you most certainly are not. (Exodus 33:14)

And the Lord is so good—especially in the middle of your battles. He is there. He is fighting for you. And He gives you everything you need at precisely the right moment. 

“I hear the Lord saying, ‘I will stay close to you, 

instructing and guiding you along the pathway for your life.

I will advise you along the way

And lead you forth with my eyes as your guide.

So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn

When I take you where you’ve not been before.

Don’t make me tug you and pull you along.

Just come with me!’”

Psalm 32:8-9 TPT