Go

Pray...Pack...Go

We urge our missionaries to do this. We tell our seniors in our youth group to do this. We hope our military does this. Do we?

Wednesday nights are designated for missions emphasis in the Southern Baptist world. As a young girl, I was exposed regularly to heroes of faith. Each week we were taught about different missionaries and their callings to certain people groups across the globe. Each week we were challenged to pray for these people with great awareness of what they had sacrificed. Each week we were educated about the vast differences in our simple and yet posh culture and the minimalist and sometimes primitive culture of the targeted region.

Shhh, don't tell anybody, but I was the geeky kid even back then spinning the globe and trying to soak in all of the great differences in all of His creation both on a physical geographic standpoint and a political geographic standpoint. I LOVE SOCIAL STUDIES. There I said it. Yet, even greater than that, I am fascinated by history. I want to know how we got off of an ark and repopulated the earth not constantly looking over our shoulder at that big boat on the mountain and almost kinda shivering in our skin with the awareness that the same God that put that boat afloat and the ground my feet rest upon once under water is the same God I am daily in the presence of. What happened? Which generation dropped the ball? Which dispersement of children or grandchildren stopped placing emphasis on worship of the Creator of the world...the one who allowed them dry land again?

Nevertheless, it happened and the distance between reverential trust and healthy fear of God and the daily walk we trudge is greater than it has ever been. As a young girl, I knew that God was calling me to go and serve him, but that was my church thinking. As I was growing in my school (my career prep area), I was toying with all the different jobs I could do that would give me fulfillment. But let me tell you something super cool. God was at work when I was a child too. I remember very clearly as a second grader deciding that I wanted to be a teacher. I think all little girls sometimes toy with that career, but I was passionate about it. That remained my goal for the majority of my elementary days. Upon junior high, as classes started getting harder, I also fell in love with the idea of helping people through medicine. So I decided I wanted to be a doctor. This employment is also noteworthy, buth the two are different in many ways...yet similar too.

Well, Chemistry happened. My love of medicine turned to fear of medical school and I backed down. Now how can I help people. Psychology. A new class at my high school, but oh how I fell in love with the study of the human mind and how we actually work so differently. So this was my major upon entering undergrad. God, knew better. Even during my first semester of my freshman year at Samford, God was redirecting me. I was able to join a ministry that spent one night a week ministering to the youth in our juvenille detention center in the local city. It was there that I reignited my passion to teach. It was there that a fellow leader in this ministry gently reminded me of this gift. So I changed majors and returned to my second grade passion. It was not just a career change though. My calling had come full circle.

Through the weekly visits to the juvenille detention center, I was reminded that God gave me the passion to go. No, He commanded me to go. The previous 10 years of my life was my preparation for the path that he had lying before me. I loved medicine for many reasons. I didn't just love the study of the human body - though it is truly fascinating - I loved the idea of helping people find their strength and purpose and hope. I didn't just love the study of the human mind - though it is far more detailed than we can fathom - I loved the idea of helping people work through their problems and find a healty resolution and plan of attack for the challenges that will still come their way.

Through teaching, I not only explain the government, but I also help students find out who they are in our society. I counsel them to have ambition and to make our world better by being the best that they were destined to be. I listen when their home life does not promote their best interest. I love them when others do not. I explain to them things that they have never had truly explained in a fair and just way. I hold them accountable and let them know I believe they are capable when the world does not. So I use counseling in the classroom - A LOT.

My passion for medicine was met in a rather unique way. My soul mate that God aligned me with is a unusual medical case that is not as simple as some medical conditions. My prior knowledge of biology and human anatomy have been awakened in great ways as I have become an uncertified nurse on more than one occasion to my husband. God was so kind to allow me the attention to these subjects and the joy of this knowledge for it TRULY DID benefit me in my years to come.

Now back to the little missionary girl. She is now all grown up. God has equipped her to teach and to understand his creation both inside each human mind and body and inside each culture. He didn't just do that because learning is fun, though it is. God did that because he wanted her to be prepared for what lies ahead. You see, today I will begin to tell you the story of how our family is answering the call to go. Today, even to me. The past ** years of my life are now all beginning to make sense. What has God prepared you to do? What has He given you a passion for? What has He peaked your interest about? Have you ever sat down and began to connect the pieces?

Our family is going. I want to tell you why...