“Do what, now?” is an expression I’d never heard until I moved to Georgia. It must be a Southern thing. For my fellow eyebrow-raising Northerners, this expression is often heard in response to a question or comment not completely or not correctly heard or understood. Where I come from, we prefer the blunt retort, “What?” without the cushiony, hospitable syllables. In my effort to appear less discernibly Yankee, I began using the phrase. More than ten years later, I am suddenly finding that this casually vocalized verse is not just a Southern thing. It’s an everyone thing.
~
“You want me to do what, now, Lord?”
Isn’t that always the way? You’re seeking God’s guidance, He speaks to your heart, and you do a double take. Maybe if you ask Him again, He’ll change His answer. Ahem.
In April of 2006, when God first called Alex and me to move to Peru as missionaries (in September 2007), we weren’t exactly racing to the airport. I had every reason I could imagine as to why it was possible that we hadn’t heard God correctly.
It’s not as if I’d had the best history with missions. Oh no. Quite the contrary. I don’t know anyone else who has had consistently worse experiences on the mission field.
On my first “mission trip” as a freshman in college (Spring 1997), I joined Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s “FLEP,” the “Florida Evangelism Project,” in Daytona Beach. The plan was to walk the beach and tell people about Jesus. The problem was, I was such a newborn Christian that I was ready to jump ship and join all the spring-break heathens in their sinful delights. One night I was so tempted to disappear, my friend, “C,” stayed up with me all night long to make sure I didn’t sneak out of our hotel room. It was a painful night, forcing myself to understand that I could no longer partake in such extreme lusts of the flesh if I was going to follow Jesus. Part of me had to die that night.
My second mission trip was actually my entire summer of 1998 with Campus Crusade for Christ’s “Summer in the City” project, two months in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was so excited to be going the farthest I’d ever been from home, for the longest amount of time and in such a beautiful city! We resided in the quiet Iona Building at Vancouver School of Theology, adjacent to the University of British Columbia and to Regent College, where both J.I. Packer (author of Knowing God) and Eugene Peterson (author of The Message Bible) were professors. Pure heaven. Well, outside of my person turmoil during those two months, anyway. Let’s see. While I was there, my parents finalized their divorced, sold the house I grew up in, and gave my dog of ten years up for adoption without warning. Oh, need I forget, I also sprained my right knee and left ankle, landing me in a wheelchair for half of the summer, where I was forced to do some “growing up” and gain real-life understanding of God’s Great Grace.
That wasn’t enough to deter me from the mission field, however. The following summer I joined Campus Crusade again for a summer in New York City. I signed up that February of 1999, ready and eager to conquer my fear of the “big city,” having grown up in the small suburban town of Townsend, Massachusetts (which finally built a McDonald’s just in time for my high school employment). But by the time June came around, the emotional and mental ramifications of my parents’ divorce had made themselves at home in me. And one thing I learned you don’t do when entering the mission field is start off at rock bottom yourself. It was hard to try to talk someone into choosing Jesus over suicide when I was ready to throw myself in front of the subway at any moment. Halfway through the summer when I confessed this to the leadership, they helped me arrange participation on a limited and supervised basis while residing with my aunt and uncle in Northern New Jersey. …Also, not the best summer of my life, but God did still do great things!
As there comes a time for everything, after that summer, I needed a time to heal. I put missions out of my mind. I tried to live as if I’d never been called to it in the first place (another story, another time). I always had plenty of excuses when opportunities would arise. After all, when I graduated from college in May 2000, I started working full-time with limited vacation. I had limited funds, started paying off college loans, got busy with a new church, got a boyfriend, decided to go back to school, yada yada yada…
But come October 6, 2003, my time would be up.
To be continued.
The Art of Choosing True Life 