Handling Criticism

Sometimes this is my worst enemy.  My own doubts I can shush, but the critical words of others are hard to quiet.

As a missionary, I often feel like I have a bulls eye painted on me. "Please, criticize me!  Tell me all that I am doing wrong!".

Some come as suggestions, "Wouldn't it be much more effective if you did it this way?"  I then spend the next hour explaining how we already tried that, or how we know that wouldn't work in our context, or would be culturally inapproriate.  I know the person meant well. Still, it feels like we have just been torn apart.

Sometimes it's on those days when we spent the morning running errands for our husband (with the kids along, on the bus), helped a friend with her upcoming wedding, tried to squeeze some home school in between, only to go and teach a Bible class all afternoon, and get a comment about the dirty dishes in our sink (did I mention that the water was off all day?).

On days like this part of me just wants to say, "It's not worth it! I am going to stop giving, stop caring, stop helping.  I can't do this."

Then the Bible class ends up being amazing, and one of the ladies there tells us that every time her in-laws visit from the village she shares everything she is learning, and that they always ask her for more.  And then they go home to the village and share with their neighbors there what they have learned.

I realize just how important it can be to give just a little time, and how far our influence can go. She smiles, gives me a hug and says thank you, and I know she means in.

On the inside I am crying, and I say, "Okay, I will try again."

I will get up another day, and deal with all those situations that nobody else knows about, and do the best I can even though it will never be "good enough".  I will try, because even in the midst of feeling inadequate, there is just enough of hope in me that it will be enough.