3 Ways Life Makes a Way for Missional Living

Does life get in the way of or make a way for missional living? Some questions feel like the elephant in the room. Unasked, they still lurk in the back of our minds. When life seems to get in the way at every opportunity, how can we invest in community-building and discipleship in our neighborhoods? Before you answer that question for yourself, please allow me to speak from my own experience how the things that make it difficult to live missionally are often powerful tools for living on mission.

Life feels heavy at times—and experience voices that if it’s sunny skies today it wasn’t yesterday or won’t be tomorrow. Anxiety riddles our peace, sticking like peanut butter to our thoughts. We are sludged down by artificially amplified expectations, stretched like a rubber-band between towering financial obligations, and mocked by injustices like cancer and mass-shootings, miscarriages and complications while adopting. It can feel like someone is juggling wretches in our life; what we struggle with may change, but the somersaulting wretches are rhythmic, cyclical, present.

I’ve felt this heaviness while standing with friends in their grief as well as when I faced my own tear-wet face. But I’ve felt a different sort of weight too in the mundane day that seems to slip silently away while I attend to the water bottles that need refilled; the potty-training reward candy that needs to be given; the meals that need cooked, set out, coaxed to be eaten, then cleared off the table; the thrice-reheated laundry in the dryer that needs to be folded so the load waiting doesn’t sour before it’s dried; the crumbs underfoot waiting to be swept; the whir of hair being pulled into ballet buns and piano scales being practiced and children being driven across town. Life is busy even when nothing out of the ordinary is wrong, and even the busyness feels weighty.

The things that let our joy and energy seep out are many—big things, small things, awful things, and ordinary things—and how can we even think about adding on one more thing? Our lives feel full—of busy feet, busy minds, busy hands. Have you ever been here, feeling that enough is enough—enough to plan for, budget for, schedule time for, sacrifice for, goodness, even dream for?

But is what we have filled our lives with truly filling us?

I think back to a season where we were trying to do all the things. Three mid-morning dances classes for our 4-year-old, four karate classes for our 6-year-old, a morning babysit-swap, and missional community which we co-led, all shoved into every week—and when we were home and the baby wasn’t crying, this homeschooling mama hit crunch-mode school time. We were squeezing the most out of the day, but at the end of the day I felt a little empty inside.

If all the busyness takes more out of us than it gives, of course, it makes no sense to keep adding on more.

But what I instead found when we shifted from missional community being something we did once a week to it becoming a lifestyle that invites our neighbors into our everyday life, was that it was life-giving. We were less busy because we made some schedule choices that allowed us to have more white space, and I guard that white space diligently because I know it is necessary for what we now prioritize—time spent in community with our neighbors. We were less busy, but more fulfilled, less scheduled, but more purposeful.

Life still happens for sure. The kids still argue and make messes and we get sick or tied up with house projects, and the bathrooms are not always clean and the dishes sometimes pile up in the sink—but the beauty of my imperfect little life is that it is relatable, not that it is perfect.

Here are three specific ways I believe life makes a way for missional living:

The hard things show us how much we need each other. They offer us opportunity to be vulnerable, to be deeply know, and to be lovingly cared for. These are things on which rock-solid friendships are built.
The imperfect things show us how much we are like each other. Our lives, our homes, our yards and garages—they don’t have to be perfect. Perfect feels fake; honesty we can appreciate.
The busy things are actually opportunities to do life together. Meals, yardwork, babysitting, house projects—these are things that we don’t have to always do alone. Shared burdens lighten the load and create space for conversations.

Yes, life can get in the way of missional living, but we can rewrite the script so those same things make a way for us to live on mission right in our own neighborhoods. We can let our stuff isolate or connect us, burden or bless us.

Let’s come before God together, friend, as we pray.

Father, You are a God who cares. You know every deep hurt, mundane struggle, and question on our lips. You know, and You care. Thank you for the hope that You birth as You invite new growth to come from the places I’ve been cracked and broken. Thank you that the messiness of my life doesn’t have to isolate me—that You have created me for community and connection, and You make a way for this in my life. Would You give me eyes to see that the things in my life don’t have to get in the way of living on mission, they can actually make a way for missional living? Amen.

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