You Lost Me At Missionary
For the whole of my adult life, I’ve been very proud of my various job titles. These titles seem to quickly place me in boxes I’m proud to be in. However, in my switch from self-employed photographer and designer to missionary, one of the biggest hurdles has been trying to be proud to own the box of weirdness I am now placed in when the job title Missionary comes up.
So, in an effort to bring you all along for the ride, I’m going to list some of the things you might find me doing in an introductory conversation to find comfort and ease before the M-word is inevitably bought up:
1. I’ll be talking about a bunch of other things first, in order to establish how normal of a human being I am.
Well, as normal as one can be when they were the oldest of seven, homeschooled, attended a hip-hop dance school, trained to be a pastor, and then studied photography. Oh, not helping? Well, I guess I don’t have a leg to stand on there, it’s going to be weird either way.
2. I’ll be secretly checking myself out, hoping that I had chosen to dress fashion-forward this morning and have applied at least a small amount of makeup, so as to show you that not all missionaries are conservative, dated, frumpy, middle-aged women.
On the off chance that I didn’t care when I left the house this morning/evening, and have dared to show my face in public with minimal amounts of effort/makeup/general feminine preening, you’re going to find yourself faced with a quirky, slightly frumpy confirmation of the missionary bias that we are indeed weird and out of date. But if it helps, I was like that before I fell into the puddle of missionary work. Still not helping? Let’s hope Number Three does the trick…
3. I may somehow find a way to whip out a picture of my cute baby girl, because cute kids can’t make things any worse in a stressful conversation environment!
Let’s be honest, she looks more normal than me in any given situation, so it can’t hurt. I’ve included a picture of her and her Papa so that you can tell from afar.
4. I’ll be hoping you aren’t a victim of a situation where missionaries did something dumb, careless, deeply emotionally traumatising, or generally just showed their flawed humanness for a bit.
This is never a fun time in a conversation. And I’ll be honest here, if anyone was to shove a foot in one’s mouth, it would be yours truly. So I’m hoping that by mentioning the ‘M’ word, I’m not accidentally aligning myself with someone who has hurt you deeply. The fact is that we are no better than anyone else, and so there are going to be mistakes and hurts. I’m just hoping I don’t accidentally add to that bias.
5. I’ll be aiming to be energetic and enthusiastic in my speech so that I don’t accidentally turn you off potentially choosing the most exciting, colourful, dynamic future you could possibly have the joy of experiencing.
Missionary work seems to have this bad rap for being boring, stressful, and jaded. I haven’t found this to be the case, yet. And as I am one of the few missionaries you might meet in your lifetime, I feel the pressure to assure you that I am living a life of adventure and excitement! We won’t be having conversations about the pressure of fundraising, the joys of sorting out visas all the time, the culture shock, or the team members I may be clashing with. But like any healthy job, the goods always outweigh the bads.
6. I will walk away from the conversation knowing that at least 75% of you may still see me at best as weird, and at worst as a modern coloniser, going out and emotionally bashing poor, vulnerable people over the head with my faith-based actions.
But to the 25% of you that manage to see underneath all this to the colourful, albeit quirky woman beneath the title of Missionary, can we please be friends?
