When my husband and I entered the room, the hands of nearly two hundred loved ones applauded us: the hands of family members, the hands of schoolmates, the hands of coworkers, the hands of church friends—all gathered here in the reception hall to celebrate the union of my husband and me through marriage in Christ Jesus.
The excitement was doubled by the fact that I was wearing the traditional wedding garb of my husband’s culture: the Japanese kimono. As it was the first time wearing a kimono, I was unaccustomed to the experience, and I half-walked, half-waddled out to the adoring audience. My husband and I paused in the center, bowed in unison, and straightened, and I beheld the room teeming with loved ones.
One hundred forty or so of the one hundred eighty guests were Japanese, and of those Japanese guests, well over half were neither Christians nor regular church attendees. The majority were my English students and their families, and I knew that for many of them, this was the first they had ever heard Christ-oriented marriage explained to them. I blinked tears away, barely holding them back from ruining my glitter and mascara, and I thought, This is part of my hundredfold.
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Leaving your home country for the sake of the Gospel without the blessing of your family is a heavy knot in your stomach, a tangle of heartache lodged in your throat. At twenty-four years old, I bade the well-worn roads and cozy family-owned coffee shops of Central Illinois goodbye. I arrived in Tokyo, Japan, right after the nearly unbearable tsuyu, or “rainy season,” which spans much of the summer. At the time, I had committed to three years of teaching English and Bible lessons at a small church, but, as I willingly proclaimed to anyone who asked, I intended to stay in Tokyo beyond the three-year contract. I intended to stay there forever.
Some of my family does not support transcultural ministry. Another member of my family initially withheld her blessing on the basis of Japan being too far from Central Illinois. Knowing that the majority of my family could not support me amplified the glorious implications of Mark 10:29-30 in my life:
“Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (RSV)
Upon my arrival in Japan, a family involved in the local ministry I was stepping into picked me up from the airport, and from that moment onward, they adopted me as one of their own. We made a tradition of sharing dinner in their home at least once a week, and we celebrated every holiday, birthday, and special occasion together. Another family delivered homemade meals to my apartment once or twice a week. I spent hours uncounted at their kitchen table, discussing the Bible with the wife of the household, who I eventually began referring to as both my mother and my sister.
And yet, I grieved the absence of my real siblings, my real parents, my real family. Christmas packages and birthday Zoom calls could not replace the hugs, homemade meals, or hours of board games that we had once shared regularly. Sequestered in my shoebox apartment in the outskirts of suburban Tokyo, I frequently ran my fingertips along the edge of my ratty fleece-lined blanket, the one my mother and middle sibling had helped me make, and wondered, Have I abandoned them? During holiday seasons especially, my longing for them grew, a keen gnawing at the edge of nearly every emotion I felt.
____
During late 2021, while Japan’s borders were still closed to non-residential foreigners, I made the mistake of sitting on a bus next to an older lady who, as it turned out, believed foreigners to be walking COVID-19 imports.
I took my seat in my usual spot on the bus, the third row of non-priority seats, my earphones plugged in. I was on my way to Japanese language school. As always, I had procrastinated heavily in studying and was reaching into my backpack to retrieve my textbooks for a quick last-minute verb conjugation review when the older woman’s voice, in rugged Japanese, stopped me.
“Did you take a PCR test?”
I ignored her, hoping against all odds that perhaps she wasn’t speaking to me. When she began nudging me and asking me repeatedly, “did you take a PCR test?”, however, I knew I could not pretend any longer that her words were not intended for me.
“I’m not sick; I’m okay,” I replied in my politest Japanese.
“Did you take a PCR test?” she asked me again, this time attaching a foreigner-oriented slur to the end of her sentence.
What will attract the least attention? I asked myself, and for better or worse, decided upon freezing in my seat, turning up my music, and ignoring her repeated discriminatory comments. When I had made it clear that I was not going to respond any longer, the woman made a show of standing up and running off the bus away from me.
This situation was far from the worst I experienced in the not-always-welcoming city of Tokyo. It ranked far below being yelled at to “GO HOME WHERE YOU BELONG, FOREIGNER” in public places and being repeatedly denied housing from landlords who openly admitted they wouldn’t rent to non-Japanese individuals, and yet, that bus ride was the incident that broke me. When the bus reached its final stop, I waited until all the other passengers—all Japanese—filed off the bus before making my exit. As though a cliched scene in some movie, the clouds were heavy with rain, and as I plodded towards my language school with my backpack half-heartedly hanging off my back, I hoped the raindrops would make my tears indistinguishable on my face.
By the time I entered my Japanese classroom, I had collected my emotions neatly, but the instant I laid eyes on my teacher’s smiling face, I broke down again. “I’m sorry,” I choked out in barely-intelligible Japanese, “I’m a little sad right now.”
____
One of my Japanese teachers sat in the audience of our reception hall, a woman who had attended a Christian kindergarten in her youth but had long since lost track of Christian beliefs. Her husband sat beside her, his hands joined, too, in applause.
“And now, it’s time for some of Rachel’s former students to sing a song they often sang in their English recitals,” announced our bilingual reception MC, and at his words, about twenty of my youngest students lined up in two not-quite-even rows, their eyes turned expectantly to me, waiting for their cue. I knelt before them, something warm and joyous spreading through my chest, and counted to three.
Hallelu
Hallelu
Hallelu
Hallelujah
Praise ye the Lord!
As the words wore on, I leaned back on my heels and admired each precious child, collected and entrusted to me during my years of Japanese missions. At the finish, many of the not-normally-huggy children wrapped their arms around me, accepting my affectionate little cheek-pecks. I remembered all the times leading up to moving to Tokyo that I doubted my calling, and I thought, How could I have ever considered missing out on this?
____
When I recall conversations I’ve had with people who explored the possibility of following God to foreign countries but ultimately decided not to, I find a common thread that I can trace through nearly all their reasonings: How could I leave my family? And that thread is found in the hearts of those of us who do find ourselves engaging in transcultural missions, an ache, a homesickness that eventually convinces many of us to return to our mother nation. I myself have felt the yearning for “home” when loved ones endure life-threatening illnesses, heart-wrenching ends to their relationships, or resentful questions of “how could you move so far away?” My arms have longed to hold the newborn babies of best friends or to grieve with the ones that are lost too early.
Ramen and oyakodon and chirashi sushi are delicious, but they are not my mother’s homemade cinnamon rolls. The traditional greeting of bowing is full of honor, respect, and sometimes even its own kind of warmth and familiarity, but it is not a tight hug to comfort my heavy heart. It is not home.
____
When N came through the line at the end of the reception, where my husband and I thanked each guest for attending and sent them home with a thank-you gift, her eyes were brimming with tears. Finally, the words bubbled forth from her like a spring she could no longer contain: “thank you for opening the door to faith for me so I could find God!”
Despite my attempts to deflect, to point her back to the truth that the Holy Spirit opens the doors, N kept insisting, “if you hadn’t come to Japan, I wouldn’t have found Jesus.” As we hugged—a Western custom N had come to appreciate, herself—I reminded her with a trembling voice of my own, “we’re sisters now, because of Jesus.”
This is my hundredfold. This is my hundredfold.
And oh, how I wish I could catch the look in Jesus’ eye as He uttered the words of Mark 10:29-30 and He looked out at His mumbling best friends. Were His words gentle, an empathetic reassurance? Were they an impassioned challenge or an invitation dripping with hope that they would join Him? Were they somehow all three at once?
“You will gain more family and fields (and—yes—persecutions!) than you can count if you follow Me! You will receive hundredfold—and even more in the life to come!”
My heart ached to read of your being rejected—and it reminded me of John 15:18-21: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me." It reminded me, too, of my in-laws' experience. Even (especially?) in England, some scorned them for being "colonials." And yet, ultimately forsaking father(s) and mother(s) and brothers and sisters on both sides of the family as they accepted the call to ministry in Ithaca, God blessed them with their "hundredfold" as they opened their home and hearts and lives—and, most important, the Word of God—to hundreds and thousands who, like and unlike them, had forsaken their families in pursuit of education and/or employment. How great the rejoicing and sweet the reunion this past weekend on this side of eternity as "sons" and "daughters" celebrated my father-in-law's Homegoing. How much greater the rejoicing and sweet the reunion on "that" side of eternity when God reunites the entirety of His adopted sons and daughters (us!)! What an eternity of rejoicing THAT will be!
Please tell us more about your time in Japan in future posts! It was very strengthening to my faith to hear about the hundredfold God has produced in your life after you took a risk for His name. I think it’s ND Wilson who says that the Christian life of faith is a constant adventure full of totally unpredictable twists and turns, and yours is a very good example of that so far.
This essay is also so appropriate for your birthday week 🎉 Heavenly Father, way to show us all up! Nothing we can give Rachel is a fraction as good Your gifts! 🎁