Stable Beginnings

As a young girl, I had no desire to leave my home state of Texas, let alone live in China. My world was very small, and I liked it that way. I lived in a small town and graduated from high school with the same friends I had started first grade with. My family didn’t have much money, but we were stable. My mom and dad raised eight children in a country home with a garden and chickens. They took us to church three times a week and made sure we went to school and did our homework. My dad worked hard to support his family while my mother stayed home to take care of the house and children. It wasn’t perfect, but it was stable and that’s what I liked: stable. 

I started dating Allen* when I was 16 years old. He was the eldest son of the preacher where my family went to church. His family was also very stable. My dream was to marry him and settle down in that same little town. I did marry him, but I had no idea what kinds of adventures he would take me on. My life has turned out so differently than I ever imagined then that it would. When I was back home recently, I was talking with a friend of mine that I’d grown up with. She said, “Joanne*, how is it that YOU became the one who would travel the world and live in China? I never imagined you would live that kind of life.” No one expected it — least of all me. 

Allen, on the other hand, had always dreamed of being a missionary to foreign lands. He had had an adventurous spirit since he was a young boy, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what that could possibly look like. Adventure to me was when he asked me to transfer from my university in Texas to go with him to Tennessee to finish university there. As one who never imagined leaving Texas, that was crazy enough for me. We married in the summer of 1985, between my sophomore and junior year of college. By my senior year I was pregnant with our first baby. Before graduation, we were discussing our future and where we should go. I hoped we would move back to Texas, but Allen wanted to move to New Jersey to be part of the growing New York City Church of Christ and see what the “Boston Movement” was all about. New Jersey! Moving to Tennessee was hard enough, and now this! Could our daughter really be born there, so far from Texas? I was reluctant but followed. 

Unexpected Journeys

Our time in New Jersey was both amazing and terrible. We became true disciples of Jesus there, our two children were born there, and our marriage grew as we learned to have a healthier relationship with each other. But the new church environment was difficult to accept. It was much more demanding than the traditional church of Christ we had grown up in. Expectations were high and we did not feel competent to meet the challenges. After about two years there, we left the church and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where my twin sister and her husband (Allen’s classmate from university) lived and were attending a church that seemed more reasonable. It was not as traditional as the church we’d grown up in but also not as demanding as the church in New York. 

Of course, it wasn’t the ideal we had hoped for and eventually we were restored, but because there was no church in Memphis at the time, we had to attend church in Nashville, Tennessee. For three years, we commuted each Sunday from Memphis to Nashville – a six-hour round-trip drive. What an adventure already and I wasn’t even thirty years old. Shortly after we moved to Memphis, a couple from Boston also moved there and we started a little house church. It was there that we learned how to make house church work. We had no idea how valuable that training would be in preparing us for what we are doing now in China! 

In 1993, Allen decided he wanted to go back to school to get his MBA, so again we moved. This time we moved back to Texas. I was glad to be in Texas again and secretly thought we would finally settle there. Our children were starting school and we were close to family again. It all made perfect sense in my little world, but God had a different plan. Allen began studying Chinese. At first this was just for fun but then he really enjoyed it and thought it would be helpful in business. He made some friends from Taiwan and mainland China while he was getting his master’s degree and that encouraged him to continue his study of Chinese. 

All the time he was in school, I was homeschooling our two children and doing everything around the house that needed to be done – washing the car, mowing the grass, fixing things that needed fixing – besides just the regular stuff like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. I loved it! Allen was in school, I was doing the thing I loved: living a stable life. Everything was perfect for my little world. Then Allen graduated and was hired by large, prestigious management consulting firm. The first thing we had to do was move. We moved to Virginia where his client was headquartered. 

The disciples there were kind and it was a good time for us, but four months later we had to move again. This time Allen was doing an international project that required him to travel to several different countries and throughout the U.S. The children and I couldn’t travel with him, so we went back to Texas to live. It was hard, though, because Allen was gone almost every week and only home on the weekends. Allen didn’t like being away from home so much either so he took a leave of absence from his job so we could move to China to study Chinese. 

After ten years of marriage, one thing I learned about Allen was that he often had (at least what I thought were) crazy ideas, but that they never lasted very long. So when he wanted to move to Taipei I thought to myself, “I really don’t want to do such a nutty thing but it won’t last long and soon I’ll be back in Texas where I want to be.” Eight years later we did end up back in Texas, but by then it wasn’t where I wanted to be. 

Doing the Most with God’s Gifts

My first year in Taipei was difficult. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t see any point in trying to learn Chinese because I could not imagine staying longer than a year. I didn’t want to make friends with any of the sisters who couldn’t speak English. I busied myself with homeschooling the children and trying to figure out how to survive. After we’d been there for a year, as expected, we moved again. It wasn’t back to Texas, however. It was to Bangkok, Thailand. 

As we were getting ready to move from Taipei, the church graciously gave us a going away party. That day changed my life. I clearly remember sitting on the sofa in our Taipei apartment. All four of us: Amy, Austin, Allen, and I were sitting together. The living room was crowded with dear brothers and sisters who had come to say farewell. Everyone shared very nice things. They reminded Allen of something he had said that really helped or inspired them and they spoke of how loving and kind our children were, but when they tried to think of what to say about me it was always something like, “And Joanne... uhh... she makes very good cookies.” 

When all the goodbyes were said and everyone went home, I shared with Allen how I felt. I didn’t begrudge anyone. It was my own fault that no one had anything better to say about me than my cookies were good—that’s all I had given them, a few cookies. I had not given my heart to them, nor had I tried to learn their language so they could share their hearts with me. I hadn’t tried to love them.

Their sharing hit me especially hard because I remembered going to Allen’s great-grandmother’s funeral a few years back. She had lived a long, full life and her family shared about her then as she lay in the casket. They went on and on about what a wonderful cook she was and especially about her delicious fried chicken. They all thought she made the best chicken in Kansas. I thought to myself then that it was sweet that she showed her love to her family through cooking and although I never knew her personally, I thought to myself that she must have been a kind and loving woman. At the same time, however, I thought it was a little bit sad that chicken was the thing that everyone talked about. 

Suddenly, I found myself the one being remembered most for food I had made! It was the wake-up call I needed. I realized that I had wasted a precious year of life that God had given me and I vowed to never let that happen again. 

We moved to Bangkok and I tried to get involved right away with our Bible Talk and get to know the brothers and sisters deeply. I wanted to make good on my promise not to waste life that God granted. We lived there for a year and then Allen decided to quit his job so we could move back to Taipei. This time I was happy to go because I felt that God was giving me another chance. I had the opportunity to make up for my lost time there. I tried to learn Chinese and build deeper friendships with the sisters. 

Six years later we decided that we needed to move back to Texas for the sake of our children. They were in middle school and not doing well spiritually. As we were preparing to leave Taipei for the second time, the church once again generously gave us a going away party. I was so nervous! What were they going to say? Would it be the same old thing about cookies? Had I made any positive impact? 

The sisters in my Bible Talk and those that I had been especially close to took me out to dinner. There they shared many sweet, sincere, and loving things, and they gave me a beautiful pearl ring as a farewell gift. I wear it proudly to this day. As I look down at it now on my finger while I type these words, I remember those dear women who shared seven years of my life and my eyes fill with tears. That ring is my constant reminder not to waste even one day of life that God graciously gives.