I Don't Have What It Takes

“I don’t think I have what it takes,” I thought to myself. My doubts became stronger with each turn of the page as I read the inspiring story about an adventurous, self-sacrificing missionary in Uganda. I picked up the book to encourage and excite myself about the calling I thought was mine (just as I had done with the handful of missionary books I’d read before), yet fear and doubt had been consuming me instead. For years now I had been convinced being a missionary overseas was my future, my purpose, but suddenly I wasn't so sure.

I've always thought of mission work with enthusiasm and passion, eagerly anticipating the places I could go, the places I could work, and the people I could serve. I fantasized about bringing the gospel into villages and remote areas, and dreamt about the transformation Jesus could bring. I suppose I always thought about the good things, the happy things- the things that I loved.

Though they sometimes crossed my mind, the difficult aspects never seemed to penetrate the idealistic picture of mission work I had in my head. Even when I went to the Dominican Republic for three weeks in June, I easily embraced what I assumed to be the most difficult part of living in a third-world country: showering with a bucket and hosting incessantly dirty feet. I didn't care that I slept on the floor or ate plantains for every meal or had electricity only a couple hours out of the day. Heck, I didn't even care that the toilet was many times just a hole in the ground. In my heart was the desire to be a missionary overseas, and I wanted everything that came with it.

I just didn't realize what “everything” is.

I didn't think about the loneliness in being unable to communicate in another language. I didn't think about simple comforts like having twenty different types of bread to choose from or “vegging” out on TV after an exhausting day. I didn't think about missing family holidays. I didn't think. I didn't think. I didn't think.

Now, all of this thinking (or lack thereof) has seemed to cement a single thought in my mind: I’m not so sure I have what it takes.

Now more than ever I understand what it is like to be apart from my family: excruciating. Or what it is like to be amongst entirely new people: lonely. Or what it is like to serve others when the only thing I really want to do is be left alone to read a book: incredibly challenging. I now understand these things that have broken and tested my heart, and I am afraid that I will break under greater pressure- a pressure that inevitably awaits me on the mission field.

As I ponder these things I question my ability to ever be a missionary, and I realize I simply will never have what it takes. But that’s okay. It’s freeing, actually. I will never have the grace, courage, or unconditional love for others that being a missionary requires. I just won’t, I’m certain, but I don’t think that means I’m not meant to be one- it means I need Jesus.

To think I’d ever have what it takes in my own strength is, I believe, to think much too highly of myself and of God much too little. If I truly believe God is my strength and my peace, my grace and my all, then I ought to readily admit without Him I’d be powerless, restless, and graceless. Without Him, I’d be a terrible missionary.

I do believe God has gifted me with character traits that would complement a missionary lifestyle (i.e. the fact that I don’t mind sleeping on the floor or that I enjoy physical labor), but I am certain I could not do it without Him. Why? Because it is only God that can comfort a lonely heart who is apart from everyone they've ever loved. It is only He who can give the strength to wake up and serve another day when it is the last thing you want to do. It is only He who can make the impossible possible.

So no, I don’t believe I’ll ever have what it takes to be a missionary, but I do know I will always have God, and God will always be enough.

“Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5 (emphasis added).