Category: What I’m Learning Page 1 of 2

How Quickly We Forget

On April 18, 2024

For the past few years, my health hasn’t been great. I’ve had a lot of pain and not a lot of energy, a lot of the time. Sometimes it felt like my legs had 50-pound weights on them, walking up the stairs. I often had to consciously push myself to do what I needed to do.

Then, in December, I received surgery that made all this go away. I’ve felt back to my old self again. I’ve felt years younger.

But what astonishes me is how quickly I have forgotten this. There are days when not one memory of how I used to feel crosses my mind. I forget to be grateful that my health issues had a solution, unlike so many who don’t. I forget to be grateful that I have health at all, unlike some who have never had it.

This is not the only thing I have forgotten.

The World Was Not Worthy of Them

By Amy Medina

On January 20, 2024

In Living Like a Missionary, What I'm Learning

When I published my article yesterday (Luxury Cars and Walking Dusty Roads), I shared it with my friend Emmanuel, on whom that post was based (and the others on his ministry team).

This was his response (with minor grammatical edits):

Thank you for sharing this with me, sister. It’s really encouraging to hear this. When I was thinking about what you wrote, I realized that it’s easy to forget the purpose of the Gospel when we’re trying to live an amazing life in the fallen world (which it seems impossible to live an amazing life in this broken world).

One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:12. The Apostle Paul says, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

Too much stuff and all kinds of luxuries in life oftentimes leads to more discontent rather than contentment and when this happens is when we forget the purpose of the Gospel.”

I read this and sat speechless for several moments, tears in my eyes. How do I, as a privileged American, comprehend such humble faith, such focused vision? Gil may have been his teacher at the Bible school for a few years, but now, Emmanuel is truly our teacher.

I was so moved by his response that I asked Emmanuel’s permission to share both his name and what he wrote, and he agreed.

Join me in praying for Emmanuel’s ministry (called Stawi Ministries), and if you would like to make a financial gift towards his team’s ministry to Tanzanian public schools and prisons, please write to me at contactamy@amy-medina.com, and I’ll let you know donor options. The team could use funds for transportation, but also the gospel literature that they distribute.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them….the world was not worthy of them.” (Hebrews 11)

photos from Reach Tanzania Bible School, circa 2018

Way More Than a Blip

By Amy Medina

On October 30, 2023

In What I'm Learning

Last week, I noticed a verse I underlined 25 years ago – Psalm 139:10. Next to it, I had written “FCC membership 9/97.”

I paused for a few minutes and sat in that memory.

It was my senior year at college, my second year away from home, and Faith Community Church (FCC) quickly became my community. The Sunday night college group at Lance and Suzanne’s became my second home, and I spent my Wednesday nights as an Awana leader for 5th grade girls.

It was Awana that led to my “crisis.” About a year after I started attending FCC, the elders decided that anyone who volunteered in the children’s ministry needed to be a member of the church. This made sense, of course – goodness knows, children’s workers need to be kept accountable, and FCC was ahead of its time.

I couldn’t imagine my life without children’s ministry, especially Awana, as I had been a leader since 8th grade. But in my 20-year-old mind, becoming a member of FCC was out of the question. I felt an unswerving loyalty to the church I had grown up in in San Jose, and I planned to move back there as soon as I had my teaching credential the following year. Attending FCC was just a blip in the history of my life, so how could I take the weighty step of becoming a member?

This felt like a huge dilemma, so much so that I resonated with a Scripture passage about God’s presence in making my bed in the depths. So much of a quandary that I did the very scary and intimidating thing of scheduling a meeting with the children’s pastor. Pastor Jeff was the complete opposite of scary and intimidating, but still – doing a grown-up thing is terrifying when you are 20.

A Word to My Inner Perfectionist

By Amy Medina

On October 17, 2023

In What I'm Learning

It was a morning straight out of my nightmares: Fourth grade, and I arrived at school to see all my classmates carrying posterboards or shoeboxes. Adrenaline shot through me and landed in a pit of dread at the bottom of my stomach. That nutrition project: I had forgotten all about it. My hands suddenly felt extraordinarily empty.

I turned in the project the next day, and when my teacher returned it, the bright red “B” glared at me. Even worse, she had scrawled the mark of shame across the top: “LATE.” She might as well have written “FAILURE.” The mortification seared itself into my memory.

I berated myself for this lapse in responsibility. How could I have been so stupid? I prided myself on being an excellent student, and excellent students didn’t forget to do projects.

There is more than one kind of perfectionist in this world. Some want everything done perfectly; others, like me, want it done right. For this reason, I loved report cards. In tangible form, there was a black-and-white evaluation of how I measured up. I knew exactly where I stood.

Later seasons of life didn’t afford me such clarity. How could I know, really know, that I was parenting right? And when differing opinions on schooling or discipline gave me different definitions of what was right, this caused me great consternation. Please, someone, tell me the right thing to do, and I’ll do it.

Without an objective evaluation, I made myself my own mental report card. I will pack my children a healthy lunch every day. I will wash the towels on Mondays. I will water the houseplants on Sundays. I will schedule dentist appointments for everyone every six months. I am a success if I do these things; I am a failure if I don’t.

Enduring Death to Taste Resurrection

By Amy Medina

On May 27, 2023

In Re-Entry to America, What I'm Learning

What does it mean to live out the resurrection of Jesus every day?

In the spring of 2020, I stepped out every morning under the East African sun onto a piece of heaven called Haven of Peace Academy. Palm trees framed the sunrise over the Indian Ocean, as newly hatched white butterflies decorated the 17-acre campus that was my home for almost 20 years. As elementary principal, I was surrounded by children; everywhere I turned, there was someone to talk to – a parent, a teacher, a toothless, dancing first grader. I ate lunch with friends from Denmark, India and Zimbabwe; every conversation was alive with culture and rich diversity and perspective. My days were full of problems to solve, music, laughter and light.

Six months later, I woke up every morning in my small Southern California apartment with beige walls and beige carpet and drove the kids to school. Then I sat on the brown couch we bought for fifty dollars and was bombarded by silence. My new job was remote, so I faced the computer all day; my only interactions with other people were through that screen.

I sat at my tiny kitchen table and ate lunch with a magazine. I went to the grocery store, to church, to pick up my kids again and never recognized anyone. Six feet and masks barred me from getting acquainted. I was alone and I was unknown. 

A season of suffering and grief

The deaths in my life in 2020 lined up like tombstones. The death of my self-respect: being forced to leave Tanzania three months early engulfed my head in shame. The death of feeling competent, knowledgeable, relevant: starting a new job was like becoming a toddler again. The death of being known: the wealth of my relationships in Tanzania took 20 years to build.

Some of these losses would have come regardless of how we transitioned, but the pandemic compounded the grief. And inside was a yawning emptiness.

I was starting my life over from scratch. I lifted my weary eyes to climb that mountain again, and it felt insurmountable. I was restless, anxious to jump ahead, to skip the hard parts.

But it was there, in the emptiness, where a new facet flashed on the gospel’s diamond. In the descent into shame and loss, I found a deeper identification with Christ. 

Read the rest at the EFCA blog.