Far Away
Maggie
Young, the mother of Sarah who is a lay missionary in the Philippines,
shares
how she and her husband, Eric, cope with their daughter's absence.
Far
Away
by Maggie Young
Phone bills are suddenly much larger. Weighing scales which have done good service in the kitchen for years, are now found wanting because accuracy has suddenly become essential in determining the postage cost of parcels. Why? Because our daughter, Sarah, is thousands of miles away - and it is vital to keep in touch. This is the age of adventure, of freedom, of cheap travel. Youngsters take gap years, leave home with a rucksack and head off into the wide blue yonder. Anxious parents meet and swap notes and worries about their absent offspring and we have come to terms with the fact that we will not see our children until the gap year is ended.
As parents of a Columban lay missionary we are part of this club, but with a difference. We know that our daughter left home not for twelve month's adventure, not for the excitement of seeing the world or travelling as far as possible in the time allotted before settling down to university or work. Sarah left us to live a life which has called her to give up her work, her home, her friends and to commit herself to three years inlinen a foreign country. She and other lay missionaries have trusted the Columbans to show them the way to travel into a world very different to that which they have always known. I doubt if many know where the journey will eventually lead them but this is not the most important part.
We, parents left behind to wonder why and to worry, are also on a journey. We ask ourselves questions about their health and their strength. We who have nursed them through all their previous ailments, suddenly find ourselves reading up on tropical diseases. When we get the phone call asking whether we want the good news or the bad, filling us with dread - the good news being: ‘I'm out of hospital now', the bad news, ‘It was dengue fever' - we want to shout down the line, ‘Come home now' but we don't, we say, ‘Thank you, God'.
We sit alone, in our pleasant solitude, and think of our children feeling isolated from the life they have left, wondering how they can bear the loneliness which must be inevitable in the life they are living. We worry about how they will adapt to the weather, the food and customs and we pray, ‘Please God, give them strength and fortitude'.
We scan the papers daily and listen to the radio for details of the happenings wherever they may be. When something does occur, we are told when next we make contact ‘That was 1000 miles away', but we pore over the atlas to check and we pray, ‘Dear God, save them from harm'.
We receive their letters and read between the lines. The words on the page tell the everyday stories of their lives, but the form of the sentences, the slant of the pen, the actual choice of words that we are reading tell us much more. We pray ‘Please God, be near them'. xxx We get photographs and pore over them, he/she is getting fat, losing weight, looks happy/strained/fit/not fit. The photos show them living a life we do not know and at times cannot understand. We see them busy with strangers and sometimes we feel jealous that someone else has their attention and we pray, ‘Help us to understand'.
Trying to understand why our children have chosen this path takes up a lot of our energy. One direct result of their action is to make us, parents, into evangelists. When we are asked how our children are and what they are doing, we have the opportunity to spread the Good News to acquaintances with whom we have never spoken of matters of faith, and it is surprising how interested they are. God works in wonderful ways!
We have learned to pray as we have never prayed before and in talking over our fears and uncertainties with Our Lord we have come to know and love Him better. Our distant involvement with the lay missionary process has disturbed our comfortable small lives, made us aware of the world outside and we are humbly thankful to have been called to play a small part in the work of the Gospel.