Some of you may recall that a little over four years ago I began my doctoral journey at Fuller. I remember the joy I felt when I was accepted into the program, standing in a long line of mission thinkers who had gone before me. Just weeks later however, it became apparent that the mission team I was leading was imploding. In 17 years of mission work and leadership (at that time) I had been fortunate enough to always see community, hospitality, and team life just sort of. . .. I don’t know. . . just sort of work. We had always gone all in, taken crazy risks, and seen intimate relationship and incarnational living work well. This time around though the wires had gotten crossed so severely that it just wasn’t able to be repaired. All involved lost. There were no winners. Things came to a halt.
We spent the next year to decompress and try to figure out what to do with our lives and in the process I delayed the start of my doctorate. At the time I wasn’t sure if I would be able to pick it up and sort of wondered if it was another loss that I would face in the whole firestorm that I walked through. Fortunately however, we took a new post that was less intense and enabled me to start the doctorate the following year. It has been incredibly challenging and hectic but the Lord knew what He was doing in terms of giving the kind of space needed to complete the research.
It is funny how things change you. When I first started at Fuller I assumed that I would write on a topic involving refugee ministry or something unique to Nepali diaspora themes. I think though the difficult events and losses that I had endured in the year off gave me time and space to reflect on my own losses and what it meant to be blind. I began to write more on the topic and it was from that place that my voice began to be amplified. Midway through my first year at Fuller I had found my voice. I knew at that time it was going to be disability and missiology (missions) where I would focus. I never dreamed this choice would change me so dramatically. Not only would it become area of focus but an area that I am likely to engage with far beyond the doctoral journey.
Looking back now I can see that the doctoral journey was a real gift. A year of space was hardly enough time needed to recover from the implosion. As these things go you begin to see how things are tied together, how that experience was connected to that experience. . . and just in general, how interconnected it all is. Going through the mission training program here as a student was a real gift as well, providing even more space. Throwing myself completely into the research and doctoral journey gave me something to focus on other than the losses. I have seen again and again that students who come to our mission training program often come out of a place of loss or difficult transition. It is often from that very place when a student really doesn’t know what to do that the Lord begins to reshape, remold, and refine His good work. I was no different than the 20 year olds who come through our program. God has used Fuller and this journey as a gift to renew vision and perspective, and along the way I have become a pretty decent researcher.
Another cool thing that happened along the way is that God took the passions of working with those on the margins and pioneering, smashing them together as I engaged in a pretty well untouched area of study. Few have written on disability and missions and it just sort of feels natural to be plowing new ground. I am not bouncing around the community trying to meet people this time or trying to bring people together with loads of community meetings. My work has been in laying the foundation for much of those other things to occur. Maybe the bouncing around will happen post-doctorate in some form as I apply this stuff but the pioneering has come from behind a computer screen this time. We can’t limit the space and place from which God will spring forth new paths of imagination.
I am just a couple weeks away from completing my third year with just one year left. The rough draft of my dissertation is complete and I plan to take a solid three months off this summer. This semester has been quite intense, writing 75 pages or so since November. Once I pick up things again in September I am probably looking at three-five months before I plan for the defense of the dissertation. I am really looking forward to the time away this summer and want to do all I can to rest well. I am tired.
I am holding the future with an open hand in terms of where this disability missiology journey will lead. I do believe training and leading others through the same kind of crossroads I have faced will undoubtedly be part of the unfolding. There are so many ministries and leaders all around the world who are stuck. Some of them don’t believe they can do this stuff as a person with a disability. Some ministries operate out of fear or over-protection as they serve those with disabilities. There are so many funky scenarios in which we find ourselves. I know that this formation has not been in vain and the Lord will direct the next leg of the journey as it relates to disability and missions. There are a lot of people at a crossroads in so many areas of life and ministry. The kinds of honest reflection and soul searching I have had to do over these last several years will no doubt resurface.
This blog has taken a pretty significant silence during the doctoral journey. For the few of you who still read, you are loyal. 😊 If anyone reading feels stuck, lost, or like the journey you are on is wasted, know that the journey is not linear. It spins, unravels, winds back up again and the helix spins again and again towards the reforming that only God can do. With you on the journey.
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