A Conversation with Anna Long
Anna Long is a missionary based in Budapest, Hungary who works as a speech therapist at the International Christian School of Budapest. Over the past few years, Anna has been on an inspiringly open journey, learning how to trust God even with the most personal of desires. We sat down to discuss more.
Naomi Johnston: How long have you been a missionary and what age were you when you came here to the field?
Anna Long: I have been a missionary for about 4 1/2 years and I was almost 31 when I first got here.
NJ: How long was the process in preparing and planning to get to the field?
AL: It was fast for me. I applied and interviewed with the school in May 2017 and by the next April, I was in Hungary. My process with OMS was a little bit flipped. I had the privilege of them already knowing who I was, due to my parents being OMS missionaries. I applied, and that same summer I did Cross-training, and then funding training. It was almost the exact opposite of what it should be. By the time I was doing orientation, I was getting funded to go.
NJ: Is this what you expected to be doing at the age of 31? Had you always wanted to be a missionary, or was this a relatively new and crazy idea?
AL: For me, it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. I'm a missionary kid, so that was already in my blood. I went to Asbury College, now Asbury University, to become a teacher so that I could move to Cambodia as a missionary teacher. But God called me into speech therapy, and that felt like a closed door to missions. I really had to grapple with that. I felt that if that was something God had for me, he would open that door again because I didn't know how a speech therapist could be a missionary.
“I felt that if Missions was something God had for me, he would open that door again because I didn’t know how a speech therapist could be a missionary.”
I waited almost 10 years for God to open that door again. And what he did was perfect. It wasn't what I thought it would look like, but it was fast. He opened the door and he provided and I was in Hungary working as a speech therapist at an international school. It was the fulfillment of a dream—but in God’s perfect timing and perfect way.
NJ: And so now you're here in Hungary, in your mid-30s, and you get to flat with a bunch of really cool girls. Most of us have ideas about what we want to do, and you obviously had dreams of being a missionary. Is this what you thought your life would look like at this age?
AL: I thought I would follow in my mom's footsteps and be married by 23, done having kids by now. So no, this isn't what I expected at this point.
NJ: Did that make it easier or harder to come to the mission field? Was that even factored in at all?
AL: I think maybe that was part of the 10-year process with God. My vision for missions was to go already married and with my family established. In that time, God was preparing me to go to a place I hadn't imagined in a way that I hadn't imagined. He was teaching me that you don't have to be married to go to the mission field.
NJ: That's interesting, because in missions, single people make up quite a large percentage of the people working on the field. Do you have an understanding of where the idea came from that you would have to be married to do this?
AL: I don't know if it was a feeling that I had to be married to do it, or if that was just my desire. I wanted to have that checked off before coming to the mission field, and maybe I knew—and this is true—that it’s harder to get married once you are on the mission field.
NJ: That is quite a challenge for a lot of people who come to the field unmarried, especially women who choose to leave behind their home culture and invest themselves into a new culture. It's harder to get married on the field—probably for a number of complex reasons. We mentioned before starting the interview that if a single male comes to the field and marries someone local, he will probably still have ties to his sending mission organization and still be able to continue his work. But as a single woman coming to the field there's a slightly different understanding of what might happen if they were to get married to a local. Would you be able to expand on that a little?
AL: It's just really tricky and it could look so different in different situations. As a female missionary, if you marry a local man who isn't involved in missions, but your heart is to stay in missions, and also be a wife and mother, it just gets really complicated. If my heart is to stay in missions then I almost need to marry an expat or another missionary. There are so many unknowns to attaching yourself to someone in the context of missions.
NJ: It seemed less complicated to have it all sorted back in your home country.
AL: Right. Because then you have that same heart and goal and you have a little more flexibility because your husband is also a missionary. For example, I might take time off to raise the babies, but if I’ve married a missionary, we're still missionaries, so there's still a reason for us to take that support. But if my husband is a local and is supporting the family with his income, people start to question why you’re taking support and a salary if you're just a mom. I think it would be simpler to find a guy who is missional and who has a heart for ministry, but if he's a local guy that just looks really different.
NJ: How are you holding the tension of life maybe not looking the way that you thought?
AL: I think what I'm trying to do more as I get older is to embrace that tension rather than trying to sort everything into neat little boxes. I'm in my dream job right now, and the Lord opened a miraculous door for me to be here. But the tension is that I am getting older, I am still single and that desire for marriage isn't going away. And so instead of acting like it's fine and no big deal, I'm trying to kind of hold that before God in a bit more of a raw way. I have gratitude for all that God's done while holding the tension of these strong desires that have yet to be fulfilled. But also, what gives me hope is that I can look back and see that I'm here as a result of God moving powerfully in my life. I can trust Him to move powerfully again. The way that he moved in my life did not at all look the way I expected it to, and yet it has been perfect. I think I'm able to hold that desire before God and acknowledge that what he's going to do with that may not look how I expected it to, but it will be perfect. Which makes me tearful.
NJ: You're basically relinquishing control, because God doesn't always work it the way we want him to.
AL: Yeah, I really know how I want him to work in my life, so yes, I’m having to let go.
NJ: That is very tricky, but I think that's a very beautiful pattern that God has worked out in you. You see the pattern on the job front, and you get to see it in hindsight while working on the next challenge, which is something a little more poignant.
“What gives me hope is that I can look back and see that I’m here as a result of God moving powerfully in my life. I can trust Him to move powerfully again.”
AL: Yes, and something I've seen recently that's brought me comfort in this time of wanting and waiting, is that even though this extended singleness isn't what I wanted, I so strongly see God's grace in it. What I wanted was to hitch my wagon to someone and coast. But what God has done in my life in the past 15 years, in singleness, I don't think could have grown in marriage. I hear all the time that marriage is so refining and I don’t doubt that. But, for me, I think singleness has been really refining, and so I'm able to look back and see God caring for me, in growing me into someone who is maybe stronger and more independent and bolder than I even wanted to be.
NJ: We think of marriages as refining because you're in such close proximity with people, but I think there is a grittiness to having to force yourself to be in close proximity and in community with people who you haven't attached to, and these people are constantly choosing whether to stay or go. For married couples, I think this is its own sort of painful refinement, but for single people I think it's extra challenging because these are the people you've chosen to add to your community in a way that maybe married people don't have to. And this is a continuous choice.
AL: All of the time. Even aside from the community aspect, just making those big decisions knowing that you don't have your partner to fall back on and walk through that with you. There has to be a toughness of having to go it alone sometimes.
NJ: What sort of big decisions do you mean?
AL: Like moving to another country. I knew people on the field by name, but I didn't know what kind of community I was stepping into. I didn't know what kind of safety net I might have. It was going it alone.
NJ: Man, that looks very different from what I experienced. This is not to say that either way is easier or harder. It's just it's so interesting to hear you say the same words and express the feelings that I had, even though I am doing it from the perspective of a married woman.
AL: But I'm not carrying another person’s transition, right? There is that give and take where I'm having to go it alone and power on through, but if that was hard for my spouse, I'd have to adjust and carry that. It's so hard and yet I see how not having a spouse in some ways is easier. I go at my own pace.
NJ: What are some of the strengths you see about being in this pattern of life?
AL: I wonder how much I won't see as a strength until I get to marriage and realize all that I had. I do know that I have so much more independence, freedom, and flexibility than someone who is married or has kids. So that's a strength. Like so many of these things, it can be a strength or it can be a weakness. I feel like I can do too much and then get burnt out. I do feel like I've got the time to invest more in ways that I couldn't as a married woman or as a mom. I'm able to invest in a middle school girls’ Bible study. I’m able to help out at church in the children’s ministry and in worship—things that take a lot of my weekend time that wouldn't be as free if I had family to consider.
NJ: I would say a married person could probably commit the same amount, but the speed at which they can choose to commit that length of time would take longer. It would have to be a negotiation, and there's a tradeoff. If I wanted to get involved at the same depth as you in a church, I'm sure I could, but the negotiation of how to work that into our lives has to happen with my husband. Your negotiations are with yourself, assessing free time, asking, “Do I invest it in friendships or do I volunteer here?” I think there's an extra level of negotiating for a married person. It just requires a lot more shifting of priorities.
AL: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
NJ: What are some of the struggles about being in this pattern of life?
AL: Well, there's holding that tension of doing my job and ministry while desiring to be married, and the unknown of where this desire could take me. If this desire were to be fulfilled, what does that look like? If I get married someday, does that completely uproot my life and take me somewhere else? Does it keep me in the ministry that I'm in now? Does it keep me here but take me out of ministry? And then honestly, dating while on the field is so hard. This comes with a layer of accountability I would never have while dating in the States. There are more people involved in my relationship than just me and the guy. There's an immediate assumption with whoever you choose to date of what your future will look like, and some of that can only be figured out with time. Having a lot of extra opinions and input makes it harder to allow for time to figure it out. But that's also part of my personality—I put a lot of pressure on myself and I don't allow for a lot of time. It's just all really complicated and interwoven.
NJ: Yes, that interwoven nature of missions is a common challenge on the field. In the meantime, what had God been saying to you, particularly about becoming a missionary, being single, and things looking different from how you had imagined?
AL: I don't feel like I have any clear idea of what the Lord is saying to me in this season. What's clear is what He’s not promising me. He's not telling me that that singleness is going to end, but he is continuing to grow me, and my hope is that he’s growing and preparing me for a marriage. I think my job right now is to trust that he has a plan. The thing that I've been telling myself lately is that I will not miss out on God's best for me. Rather than God revealing something to me or speaking to me, it's more of a reframing and submitting my expectations of God and my hopes for how he will work and surrendering that. And to trust, knowing that I won't miss his best for me.
NJ: What are some of the most precious parts of the relationships you have been able to lean into during this pattern of life?
“I have struggled with this singleness and desire to be married. But in that time, God has brought me so much growth and precious friendship, and he’s blessed me in other ways. If you come to the mission field still desiring that, beauty can come from that struggle. ”
AL: I know this isn't the case for everyone, so I feel really blessed, but just because I'm single has not meant that I'm lonely. God has provided me with excellent friendships, whether that's other singles or married couples or families, just as in Psalm 68:6 it says that the lonely will be placed in families. I don't feel like I've ever even had to feel loneliness because I've had such a great network and support. I've had single friends that can commiserate with the longing and I've been really blessed to have married friends who haven't sugarcoated marriage; they've shared the beauty of marriage while also sharing the hardship of it. They haven’t glorified it to this thing where I feel like if this is a desire that never gets fulfilled, I'm missing out on something. In the church marriage is sometimes put on such a pedestal, and it has felt like the only way to arrive, or to be fully mature, was to get married. But through a lot of these relationships with married couples, I’ve been comforted to know that while that is still a desire, I am whole as myself. I can serve God in a different way, but just as well as a single woman as I could as a married woman. It's just really sweet because I've had some dear married friends who are in the life stage that I long to be in who wrestle with me in prayer for that, while also helping me not feel less-than because I don't have that. And that's a real gift for me.
NJ: Finally, what advice would you give to people who are in the same pattern of life, be it in their early 20s or their early 40s, who are also feeling this call to missions? What's some advice that you would give them if they have any concerns about their future?
AL: I think it is all so different. I have friends who have experienced loneliness, being on the mission field as a single person desiring marriage. I feel really blessed that I haven't had to feel that deep loneliness others experience, so I can't say it'll all be rainbows and butterflies. But, again, if you are stepping into God's calling and listening to his voice, you won't miss His best for you. That doesn't mean there won't be struggle. A lot of times, God's best for me has been born out of struggle! I have struggled with this singleness and desire to be married. But in that time, God has brought me so much growth and precious friendship, and he’s blessed me in other ways. If you come to the mission field still desiring that, beauty can come from that struggle.
