Dreams to Dust

It was the very end of the process. I'd been working with an editor for a year, then passed on to another as the first editor moved on to a new job. In the last stages of adjusting the final draft, I received an email with my work rewritten out of my words. Through dialogue it became painfully clear, to get the piece published I would have to let go of my voice.

So I withdrew from being published.

You see, to take my story out of my words, takes me out of the dialogue.

So I withdrew from being published and in a sense, I watched my dreams crumble to dust.

I was twelve the day I decided I want to be a published author. It’s been twelve years since Robin McKinley and Gail Carson Levine drew me to imagine my own stories of princesses in tentative positions. Then my mother drilled me in the art of essay and I wrote stories with no plot, and then a novel that was never fully edited, and then more and more and more, until I found myself listening to my work critiqued by a classroom of college students.

But as poured my heart and soul into a degree to learn how to write, I learned something. Writing well is more important than industry opinions or standards. Maybe a poor book (or two) has been published.

Now, don't get me wrong: every author needs an editor. A damn good one.

But a good editor, takes your work to it's best, not takes it into a formula or specific needs. See the editor has the power to safe guard what gets a publisher’s name attached. But the author has the power to decide what and how she or he will say it. It's the way of life, differing opinions, differing goals.

For me, somewhere in the middle of my love affair with stories, I fell in love with the written word and the ability to create a spoken poetry on paper. I valued not just reputation, or fame from the word “published” but the art of painting words into stories. And the dream changed.

I swore any words that went out in my name would be high quality...but always in the back of my mind lingered the question, would I really, if I could be published? Would I really refuse to compromise “show don't tell,” or any other basic pillar of good, dynamic writing? You see, this looks like just a basic difference of values and it is. But it's also question of whether or not I will live by my convictions.

“Will I die for Jesus?” I asked myself over and over as a child. “Will I really give my life up for him?”

I've lived through the strongest desire to die out of loyalty to Him.

And when it comes to being published, it's been so strong a dream. You never quite know what you will compromise for those dreams that run as deep as your blood. This week I found my answer. You see, writing has become a part of me. A part of my worship.

To compromise on my story, my deep faith story, would be to compromise myself, a part of my soul.

It may be a different style, but I see it as less good. And just as I refuse to live my faith halfway, so too I refuse to use my gifts half way.

We were not made to save the world, but to share our stories. In each unique way.

So yes, my dreams turned into dust. I did the stupid move for a writer. I walked away from the dream. And today I am skittish to seek out any recognition of the writing industry. Self publishing no longer looks like the compromise I once saw, but a small way to share my deep love. Being a best seller is off the dream list, well almost. But after a year, I want to sit down with my novel again and just play with my stories. After a year, I've learned to write better… clearer, but still within the edges of my voice. I've learned, again, what I believe in. Because, I never really trust myself until I see what I do.


I lost deeply. But perhaps writing is turning again from task to an element of relationship. Most times I write to God. And if not to God, to people for Him. Writing is about us… not fame, fortune, or having my name on a book cover… even if I may still work towards someday seeing it, today I experience the difference. JJ Heller puts the sense of lost dreams for deeper hope so well.

MK...Not Missionary

I’m sitting across from my missionary brother. He tells me stories of his life balancing two worlds, a home that’s not quite home in either place—details of the other world lingering, from cars, to dog, to how to keep the house safe. This type of information isn’t new for me. I watched Dad deal with it all the time. A call from Alberto about the ministry. Me asking if my golden retriever lemon lover was being fed. But now, a new question lingered as I sat in American restaurant, middle class with a fireplace and view over a field or water that’s been covered in the blanket of snow, this is my world now. These stressors my brother describes are almost foreign to me, a memory of a child hood left behind.

And yet, middle class America isn’t my world. I am still the outsider, looking in. I am the one shaking my head at a culture of “busy is better” and rushing from sports to work to church…I am the one who feels like she almost belongs, but never quite will. Never will have that family of Mom and Dad to spend the weekend, type of world. That is not my story. My story is airplanes and long trips across the country. My story is watching my siblings follow in my parent’s footsteps, painfully aware that I was taken off the ministry playing field by force—I would have lost myself there, my stories gone to waste. I would have never made it on the field, I barely have energy to handle the American work day, never mind disinfecting every vegetable I eat, boiling the water to drink, washing laundry using a hose to fill the washer, boiling water as a constant just for daily cleaning needs. I would never have been the woman who could raise children away from friends, survive away from a community who understood her own culture. Not me. I want to be made that way, but I’m not.

I was taken off the playing field because I couldn’t handle it. In my teenage years I invested everything I had into my parent’s ministry. From doing kids ministry with a fellow church in Latacunga to Sunday school in a church plant that never made it. I worked in an orphanage and tasted ministry not theirs. I was often the one to climb in the car alone with Daddy, or with Daddy and Anita and ride up into the mountains…and yet….that life isn’t mine now.

I have looked poverty in the face, both financial and now spiritual.  And I do not belong. Still.

I had this odd idea that when I moved to the USA and stayed I’d be planting roots. But in a sense in that attempt, I left the roots I had.

I no longer belong to the missionary community and culture. But I don’t belong to USA, quite. I still have the foreign eyes looking in, a hidden immigrant with white skin, privileged because I have the ethnicity of respect with a knowledge to communicate out.  But I don’t belong, and in that I am not privileged. And though I’ve heard calls for Missionary Kids to become the next generatioin of Missionary, I can’t just go back, I don’t think. My mental health struggles won’t just pass like I want them to. If nothing else, I’m probably stuck with some kind of fatigue my whole life. I’ve tried taking the pills. I am excerising. I got a dog who helps so so much. But still my energy does not match my age.  

So I do what I can.

I’ve joined the other side of the missionary table. I’ll pay for the meals, listen to the stories, pray, help be the funding. I DO CARE.

But I can’t go.

Maybe some day I’ll figure out what it means to be the one that stayed in the home country, the one that’s not my passport I mean, not the one that has mountains reaching to the sky and settles me the minute I step into the thin air. To be missionary in the same place I’m paid. To love on the one percent, to see the needs and suffering hidden under social norms and knowledge without experience of relationship. It’s not the same. And we would be cruel to say it was. But for now, for now I will name what has eched a stress in me the minute I started adult life. My heart will never fully be home. Even not travelling, a piece of me was left somewhere else. Another taken by a brother to Costa Rica, a sister to the Chicago’s inner city. I am the missionary’s family. The child who did not play sports or learn to dance. The adult who will work a “paying” job and never raise support, never trek across the country for a livelihood, nor spend half of my work week on what it takes to live in a country “not your own.”

And yet, I stubbornly refuse to leave Grand Rapids. I WILL make a home here. Fight in a country that believes in dog coats and abortion. I will never belong to everyone. But to quote a wall decoration “To the world you may be just one person…but to that one person, you are the world.” I will never belong in a way some will never understand. But if nothing else, I get stories from that. Lots of novel inspiration and fodder for non-fiction. And my loved ones, that family spread across the world, well, maybe just maybe I’m starting to believe that the straggler Hunter is a needed piece of the picture. I have a sister who’s making my puppy mittens. A brother who wanted to have lunch. And parents who would do just about anything to know I’m safe.