Everything’s Coming Up Josey (6 page)

“I'll call you back when I know,” I say, all at once eager to explore this discovery.

“If you don't have one, will you be rejected?”

Rejected? Oh, ouch. They wouldn't, they couldn't…rejected? Who gets rejected as a missionary? “I gotta go, Jas. I'll call you later.”

I lay there a long time, staring at the ceiling, testing out the feeling in my chest. Yes, definitely something. But is it a calling? A passion to serve?

I'm suddenly struck with the idea that this trip is about more than a change of pace. More than doing a cool and exotic thing for a year. It's not about architecture, or culture, or even cafés. It's not even about forgetting Chase.

It's about…eternal significance.

The feeling in my chest grows and I am suddenly on my knees. I haven't spent a lot of time there since Jasmine's wedding, but maybe that's about to change. I bow my head, and in a voice that seems much smaller than I've ever heard it, I say, “Lord, I admit that I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but if You want me to go, I will.” Wow, that feels freeing. And the warmth inside starts to sizzle. So, just to get a fix on exactly what this means…

“However, if You
do
want me to go, would You give me a calling? Something really loud and plain, too, because I'm not very good at listening.” I take a deep breath, knowing there is more inside that needs to flush out if I want to do this missionary thing right. “And, while I'm down here, I might as well add that I'm sorry for being so angry at Chase. If he wants Buffy, well, just help me not to freak out. Help me to be happy for him. And most of all, Lord, do what it takes in his life to show him he needs You. Thanks and Amen.”

I feel better. Lots better. I get off my knees and for the first time in over a month my chest doesn't ache. In fact, I feel good. Energetic. Thin!

I stroll down the hall to the unused bedroom where the gang is gathered watching
Bride.
Only, the movie is off and instead they're watching a documentary about Russia. I lower myself to the floor and am sucked into the story of believers suffering for the sake of the gospel, of new Christians finding hope and peace. Of families restored, communities changed.

My old-time missionary stories in rich Technicolor and Dolby sound.

The simmer inside me bursts to full boil. And with a gasp I realize that I do have a calling! I do! In fact, I've had it since childhood. Only now, I'm finally listening.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I can't wait to tell Dwight.

July 23rd

 

I sneak into town after midnight. Okay, so it isn't really sneaking. I guess I'd define sneaking as something attached to trouble. Like, for example, when I hid behind the woodpile just a stone's throw from the Berglund house in tenth grade, waiting for Kip Minson's headlights to flash by on the service road that parallels our drive. The plan was for him to slide by, then circle around while I dashed out, Starsky-and-Hutch style, and dove for the car.

Who knew what would have happened after that? Kip wasn't only a senior, but a senior with a reputation embedded in his Metallica-shirt, black-boots, spiked-hair and chain-necklace persona. But he had a reputation for kissing well, and me, being the curious Berglund, had asked him for a ride to Lew Sulzbach's party.

I said curious, not smart.

The funny thing was, and I never really figured out how, Chase got the skinny from someone—maybe H—and guess who I found in the car when I flung open the door?

He could have knocked me over with a pine needle.

“Get in,” he'd said, and something in Chase's voice told me that he wasn't afraid of Kip, nor impressed by my shiny black silk camisole and green camo pants. I quickly weighed my options…and decided Chase was a pretty good alternative. Especially since he was just returning home from baseball practice and wore his cute little smashed hat and grime on his face. Maybe, deep inside, I heard a tiny voice cheering, but my curiosity meter was louder. Why would Chase care whom I tooled around town with? And, was there a free pizza in my near future?

As it turned out, the cops raided the party and I would have ended up in the clink. Two years too soon.

So, I guess I'm not really
sneaking,
but it feels that way as I roll past the dark library, the unlit Dairy Queen, the Red Rooster's dim night-lights on my way home from Iowa.

Maybe the sneaking part comes from the knowledge that I have a secret, one that I'm not quite ready to expose to Gull Lake. It felt weird enough telling Chase. On paper.

Or maybe I started with the hardest task first.

The Holiday station is open, and I debate cruising in, just for a current copy of
People,
but, since I'm going to have to learn to do without for the next year, I decide to bypass it. I'm fairly proud of my self-control. See, I can do this! I am a missionary!

There are going to be a plethora of changes over the next year. Evident from the fist-thick binder belted into the passenger seat. I step on the gas as I leave town and turn onto the gravel road that runs out to Berglund Acres. Rolling down the window, I let the air whip my hair. It smells of lake and pine and home.

The Conquering Hero(ine) returneth.

I have a certificate of acceptance in my bag in the trunk and about six more books, items of interest I picked up at the campus bookstore, all delving into the world of missions, from John Piper's
Let the Nations be Glad!
to
Bruchko
to
Operation World.
(Don't I sound prepared?) For some reason, receiving that eight-by-ten slip of paper felt better than when I got a callback for the senior play. As I shook Dwight's bony hand, then hugged all one hundred thirty pounds of him, I wanted to twirl in a circle like Julie Andrews and cry, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.”

They liked me, they really, really liked me!

I even made friends with Janice and Ken and learned our fighter verse faster than little Kenny. (It helped that he couldn't read, but I didn't let that stop me from gloating. The kid needs competition, right?)

I am a
missionary.
I roll that word around a few times, and make myself three promises.

1. I will not, ever, dress in missionary barrel dregs nor tape my glasses in the center with duct tape.

2. I will not let the inflection of my mother's voice in any way make me feel like I've parted with my sanity.

3. I will not, even if I am stationed in Siberia, become so out of touch with relevant culture that I resort to singing songs by KC and the Sunshine Band or Styx. (But I am allowing myself cuts from Karen Carpenter now and then. She'll always be in fashion.)

I pull up to the Berglund Acres house, and sit there as Steve the car ticks, reprimanding me for keeping him out so late. It's after 2:00 a.m., but I wanted to get home and begin packing for my new life.

The moon is full tonight and it turns the nearly still lake to sterling. I get out, let the cool summer air rake over my bare arms. I'm buzzing from the long drive and the hope inside me pushes me out to the lakeshore. I can feel change in the air, something fresh, something vibrant.

No, it's not the scent of fresh rolls from my mother's time-baked oven, it's my future. I can nearly taste it—full, sweet, quenching my hunger. It even slides into the empty crannies of my heart. I'm going to spend a year in Russia, teaching kids how to speak English, maybe even leading them to salvation.

Which means that my life matters, in the eternal scheme, right? I chew on that, let the flavors explode in my mouth. The wind rushes over me, a belated welcome that tangles my hair over my face and raises gooseflesh. Russia, it says.

I smile.

Oh, and the fighter verse that I slam dunked little Kenny on? Isaiah 43:18-19.
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Is that a sign or what?

I don't even look at the darkened windows in the apartment above the restaurant, or ponder the look on Chase's face when he gets my letter.

Because I am a missionary.

Three killed and thirteen injured in Moscow blast
MOSCOW, (Reuters)

I find this news article, a printout from www.theMoscowTimes.com, on my bed as I return home from a grueling day of reporting on produce supplies at the local farmer's market. It's the third such article I've received in the last three weeks since returning home from Camp Make-Me-A-Missionary.

I might have mentioned earlier that my mother would make an outstanding CIA interrogator. I can even picture her, dressed in black leather, her blond hair greased back, leaning close and whispering into a victim's ear with her flat Midwestern accent, “Give in, we're only trying to help.” I'm telling you, the woman has crafty down to a science. She's prowled through my past, found my Achilles heel and hauled out the heavy artillery.

The article is especially underhanded on account of Uncle Albert and his cat, Boots.

Uncle Albert, actually a great uncle, owns a farm outside Gull Lake. He's single, which is evident by the assorted farm machinery scattered around his property like lawn art (Myrtle would be so proud). Last fall he parked a manure spreader by the road. Sorta like a sign, just in case we're lost and need a pointer to the Berglund Farm. Just follow the John Deere.

Uncle Albert lives in a trailer awkwardly set up on four big blocks and shadowed by his 36-by-120-foot, four-story barn. I think he'd rather live in the barn, but since the trailer was a present from his parents (which makes it much older than me), he surrenders for the sake of good PR. He refuses, however, to give into the decorum of bathing.

But we won't go there. The important snippet in all this is Albert's mouser, Boots, a fluffy thing he found under his woodpile. Albert took a liking to Boots, maybe because it could live inside the trailer with him and still make him feel like he lived with the animals. I liked Boots, too, only for different reasons. He had four white paws and lots and lots and lots of fur. And he looked adorable in my pink crocheted baby bonnet.

Okay, I'm getting sniffly. See? My mother's evil worked. CIA, CIA.

In the summertime, when Albert gave into the desire to live in the barn (due to the cool recesses of the hay loft versus the relative furnace of his trailer), Boots lived under the trailer. On July 23, 1988, the day I got my headgear (another topic I don't want to discuss), Boots was curled up beneath the step, when the propane tank, probably leaking due to a rusty fitting, exploded.

My mother and I happened to be driving to Uncle Albert's place to deliver a box of yesterday's Bismarcks. I was suffering under heavy gloom over my impending iron mask, when the entire trailer went
Boom!

Fire shot into the sky, and Mom slammed on her brakes. My mother's arm caught me across the chest as I flew toward the windshield.

And then we saw it. A streak of fire, racing across the field.

Boots. I watched in throat-choking horror as the animal ran until it collapsed. And there it died. A black smudge of fur and flesh.

I hurled. Then, I wept for days. And to this day, the words gas and explosion in the same sentence bring hives.

See, my mother is diabolical.

Sighing, I crumple the news article and throw it into the corner, next to the other two—an article about the growing Russian hepatitis epidemic and one about the rise of the communist party under Zhirinovsky.

I'm ruing the day I taught my mother to use the Internet.

Okay, so honestly, I expected some resistance to my declaration of defection. I mean, my mother's feelings about Russia are woven with McCarthy hearings, air-raid sirens and taking shelter under her desk at school. (I would have raised my hand and asked the obvious—just what good was a desk going to do in the face of plutonium?) To an entire generation of people, the Cold War is still brewing and they're not buying this “democratic and free” Russia business. According to my mother, Russia is just waiting for a weak moment in our defense when they can inundate us with vodka and pickled herring. I told her that we could fight back with some all-butter
kringle.
Clog their arteries, raise their cholesterol.

She went back to kneading. And that's when things got really ugly.

She served lasagna.

I know it is a weakness to be enticed by food. Still, the smell blindsided me and drew me into its clutches.