Follow me!

Six months before we arrived in Japan, I seriously injured my right hand and had to have surgery on it. As I am right-handed, the next couple of months were challenging. Simple daily tasks either had to be done for me or required extra time for me to do them myself. Writing was out, as was doing up the top button of my shirt. Having to rely on others meant that in some ways I couldn’t be myself; little did I know that this small temporary loss of identity was preparing me for how I would feel after our arrival in Japan.

The injury came at a busy time—I was preparing to leave my current ministry and making arrangements to move overseas for an extended period to live and work. I remember thinking: This injury couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

There was so much to do and little time to do it, and yet during this busy time one of the prayer intercessors from my church invited me to consider what God might be teaching me through this experience.

I believe the physical recovery process was a spiritual precursor of what I experienced on my arrival in this beautiful, and in many ways, mysterious country.

Starting life in Japan

My wife Melissa had lived in Japan for a year as an exchange student after graduating from high school in Australia, so she had told me something of what life here was like. And yet the reality was really quite different from anything I had imagined.

For the first few weeks after we arrived in Japan, everything was new—the sights, sounds, and smells. Things I would have imagined to be the same wherever you went in the world, were not (even mic tests were conducted differently!). The vending machines, toilets, and elevators intrigued me, as did the jingles played before the train doors close and the sight of people politely queuing for ages outside restaurants. The Hello Kitty-themed road construction barriers revealed how deeply the Japanese appreciation for cuteness had reached the most practical of activities. In those first few weeks, we said to each other countless times, “Well, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!”

After a month or so, the reality that we were not on holiday began to set in as we got into the routine of attending language school, going to the supermarket, and trying to understand Japanese social etiquette.

Loss of identity

After I arrived in Japan, my sense of identity, self-estimation, and self-confidence were challenged in ways I had not encountered before as I realised that I was an unknown quantity to others. The identity and the credibility I had developed at home suddenly counted for little (in my mind at least) in my new environment. I felt as if I was starting all over again. Who I was, where I came from, my abilities and inadequacies, the life experiences I had had up until that point—all of these things were new to those I now lived and worked among. It felt strange not being known very well.

In his book Adam’s Return, Richard Rohr writes this about identity:

The essential religious question is the one God, in effect, asks Adam, “Who are you? And whose are you?” We like the first question because we think there is something we can do about it, and it gives us control. We fear the second question because only God can answer it, and his answer seems too good to be true.”¹

Even now, in our fifth year of service here, I sometimes feel like part of me is missing and that I can only communicate a shadow of what I really want to say. I sometimes say to Melissa, “I feel like I am not able to be who I truly am.”

Finding my identity in following Jesus in the here and now

And yet recently, I have come to the important realization that who I truly am is not necessarily who I was before I came to Japan. The “real” me is not someone I left behind in Australia and who is waiting for me to return one day in the future to simply pick up from where I left off. The life I live here and now and the people I live and work among are my world; the people in my life now are the people God has given to me. The “real” me is in fact the very person I am today, right now.

Rather than fear the sense that part of me is “missing”, I want to try to embrace this aspect of my identity as exactly that—my identity. In some way, an awareness of who I am not is an affirmation of who I am; the space that the missing part leaves allows something new to emerge.

Jesus’ words to Peter after his reinstatement pointed to the kind of death by which he would glorify God (John 21:19). It alluded to circumstances beyond his control. Jesus in effect said to Peter, “When you were young you made your own decisions, when you are old others will make decisions for you, but until that time comes—follow me!” When I think about the injury to my hand and the similar feelings I experienced after I arrived in Japan, I am reminded that there have been times when I too have found myself in circumstances that were beyond my control, where all I could do was rely on the help of others and simply trust that God knows what he is doing. I wonder whether in some way Peter felt like this.

It seems like an absolute dream to have the opportunity to live and minister in Japan. It’s a dream, not because life is easy, but because I know this is where I am meant to be. To know deep within that my identity is not entirely based on who I am or who I think I am; rather, my identity is found in who I belong to—God, who has chosen, called, and loved me. He simply says: “Follow me!”

1. Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (New York: Crossroad, 2004), 60.

New Voices is by missionaries who have been in Japan for less than five years. We welcome your submissions for future issues.