Why Support Raising Makes Me Cringe
This gem of a picture was taken on our honeymoon in Iceland. The majority of the trip I attempted to take cute pictures of us on a tripod with a remote. Jack so kindly went along with it. 😂
So if you read my last blog, you know the idea of serving internationally hasn’t been a new idea to Jack or I. We always thought that once he’d finish residency, he’d get a nice job and we’d live simply for 6 months in the States and save what we could to spend the rest of the year in a developing country. This way, we’d get the best of both worlds - half our time in the States with family, half our time serving globally.
Well, one simple Zoom call wrecked that plan.
We were chatting with a couple who had actually graduated from the same residency program (Med Peds) Jack was finishing at UCSD just years before. They were living in the Congo with their young children, serving at a mission hospital. We had SO many questions for them on how they actually made our dream their reality.
One of our many questions was, “How do you guys get paid for this?” Obviously, they were working long hours and serving incredibly needy people. If anyone deserved a paycheck - they did. As they shared how they raised support for all their finances, my mind took a sharp detour from the conversation.
Here was a doctor, who had just slaved his life away with four years of medical school, followed by four years of residency, with perhaps a huge chunk of debt on his hands. He’s got the option to go out and get a super lucrative job wherever he wants - and he has to go out and ask people for money?!
Immediately, my pride recoiled at the thought of it. Good for them, but definitely not for us. We’d do the whole six month plan, and fund ourselves thank-you-very-much.
We continued to chat with them about what it looked like to live in the Congo with young children. Our son, Micah, was only 8 months old at the time, so we were still (and are!) learning about what this vision meant for our children. They shared with us how their kids loved life in Africa and felt at home there.
I threw out our idea to them at one point, “What would you say to living half the time in the States and half the time overseas?” They shared how hard it is for young kids to live between two worlds with that much transition. Kids need to have stability and know where their home is. Flying back and forth between worlds that often very rarely works.
And just like that, my ideas of financial independence began to crumble. If we lived there, we probably wouldn’t make a salary we could live off of (especially with a faith-based organization).
It meant one thing: support raising. Which felt SO cringy.
Because support raising so easily reveals my pride. It asks me to need other people. In fact, not only need them - but depend on them for my provision day to day.
And of course, I know I’m not just depending on people. I know that God is the one working through people to bring them into this work. But even then - if I’m honest - I realize how little my heart wants to depend on God. I’ll take that nice fat paycheck instead.
The ironic part is, we need to be needy. It is actually good for us. The whole point of following Jesus is to become like him. And Jesus was needy. He was constantly going to God for direction, for provision. He said that he “could do nothing by Himself, but only what He saw his Father doing.”
So in this process of stepping out into this cringy endeavor, I can see my heart growing. I can see it getting out of the boat and into waters that don’t feel comfortable and controlled by my bank account. And I’m constantly reminded that the only way to do this impossible thing of following Jesus is to follow Peter’s example as he walked on water. He fixed his gaze on Jesus, who has walked this path of dependence before me.
I’m not there yet. But I’m grateful that moving to Kenya has given me the push to get out of my comfortable boat and into the waters of dependence and trust in my Father who gives us everything we need.