Wrong Kind of Oops

One night a man had a dream… oh wait… that’s already been used. Sorry.

I did have a dream the other night, one of those right-before-you-wake-up dreams. I was talking with three people about our Thailand plans. All I remember about the conversation was that one of them said, “That’s the wrong kind of oops”. Weird, huh? And all three of the people I was dream-talking with were folks that have pledged support.

When I was more awake (read: second cup of coffee), I began to ponder what “wrong kind of oops” meant. I don’t get the sense that I was being warned that we shouldn’t do this, or that we should somehow try to talk ourselves out of going overseas. I don’t think that’s what this is about at all. But I did come up with an idea for what “wrong kind of oops” is supposed to mean. 

Here in the States, if a job doesn’t fit right, you can very easily move on to something new. Chalk it up to being an “oops”. Learn from your mistakes. Even in ministry, you can move on to something new pretty quickly. But not when you go overseas. There is no room for oops. You can’t just pack up and move back. You’re there for a commitment of time. You have to figure out how to make things work. You live by creativity and flexibility and adaptability. 

Hopefully, in a little over nine months, we will be relocating to Southeast Asia. Physically and culturally, it’s on the other side of the world. We’re going to have a steep learning curve, and we’re going to make a lot of mistakes. We’re going to wonder if we’ve made the ultimate oops. But we have made a commitment, and we’re not expecting to break it. And here’s where we depend on our friends and family. We need to know you’re praying for us and thinking of us, because that’s what is going to get us through. 

You can feel free to begin now…