full circle. (p.s. i'm going to south africa)

I leave for South Africa in nineteen hours.  I have wanted to go to Africa for nineteen years.  Excited?  Yes.  Nervous?  Not a bit.  (Well, maybe a little bit.)

But this is not a blog post about Africa.  (I hope to write one of those when I get back.)  This is a blog post about calling.

My freshman year of college, in a class called Honors Contemporary World, in the middle of a lecture about the root issues of third-world poverty, I first sensed God calling me to lifelong ministry.  There was no lightning bolt.  No bush on fire.  Just my heart.  Because of the context of that encounter, I assumed He’d send me overseas.  And like any untraveled Arkansas teenager, when I thought of poverty I thought of Africa.  I started looking for a missionary-to-be husband.

That same year, I went on my first mission trip to serve the homeless in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and there I met Dan.  To make a short story even shorter, we fell in love and in fifteen months were married.  To my surprise, God sent us into the world of the American church, (which was just as unfamiliar to me as Africa would’ve been, by the way, and less attractive, honestly).  He’s given me a passion, a vision, and a heart for His church here in this nation – even in my hometown.  When I see pictures of hungry, hurting children in Haiti or South Africa, my heart breaks… and it reminds me of the children I see in the grocery store being told to shut up, living their most formative years without love, without trust, without hope.  When I hear stories of women who are trafficked in Greece or India, my heart breaks… and I also think of girls in my daughters’ schools enduring unthinkable abuse tonight.  My heart is here, by God’s ordained design.

I guess that’s why I haven’t yet taken the time away from my ministry as a mom and as a pastor’s wife here to go on an international trip.  But I knew the Lord would send me.  I knew His timing would be perfect.  I knew He’d provide.  And I was right.  I knew it the second the trip was offered to me in Tropical Smoothie six weeks ago.

So today, I’m no longer slumping in a classroom desk with my feet propped up on the desk in front of me, staring at statistics on a chalkboard and listening to God speak directly to me through an innocent-bystander professor.  I’ve been walking in the calling I first received that day for nineteen years.  And now it’s time.  Isn’t that funny?  In a wonderful, laugh out loud, dance around the room kind of way???

Maybe God was afraid that if He sent me earlier, I wouldn’t come back.  (I’m just kidding.) 

Maybe what He has in store for me there is integral to the DNA of this new Journey we’re leading and the vision He’s giving for us to be a James 1:27 church.  (Not kidding.  That’s totally what I’m thinking.) 

And maybe He’s just ready for me to see the hungry, hurting faces in person, not on paper… and to see the faith and authenticity and power of the Holy Spirit moving through the local church there, so I can bring that back here, and equip the Journey family to heal the people in Jonesboro’s grocery stores and schools.

Maybe.

Whatever He has in store, I’m ready.  It’s time.  I’m going to South Africa.  Would you pray for me?

P.S.  Has God spoken something to you?  Has He placed a passion in your heart?  Do you think He might have called you, or may be even calling you now?  If so, I can only tell you one piece of wisdom about it… but this one thing I can assure you:  It will not look like what you think it will look like.

But its ok.  He’s got this.  Don’t waste time striving to make the calling happen.  Strive to know Him.  He’ll take you there.

“…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 1:6

“I want to know Christ…”

Philippians 3:10

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

James 1:27