I finally made it! 25 months after I began praying for an opportunity to serve using my skills and gifts, 19 months after I learned about GoCorps and environmental/agricultural ministry opportunities and 11 months after I made ministry my full time job, I am in South Africa. Honestly, I wasn't always sure I was going to make it. This road has been a long and winding one, filled with highs and lows, curve balls and obstacles, and the journey has only just begun. But if I can be confident in anything, it's that the Lord is faithful, He works all things for good, and whatever I experience can be purposed and used.
I was talking with a great friend of mine the other day who is wrestling with some of the same feelings and struggles that I experienced throughout my process of support raising, and it's amazing. Not because she's having difficulty. No, I hurt with her in that. But there is something special and beautiful about being able to come alongside someone and actually understand what they are going through because you lived it yourself. Each person's experiences are different, with varying persepctives and differing circumstances. But when we go through the trials, the pain, the frustration, the tears...through all of it, God gives us a priceless gift. He enables us to share burdens, to be encouragers, and to truly live life with one another in understanding and love because of what He has done and allowed in our lives.
This experience, and all that has happened through it, has deepened my relationships and drawn me in to greater intimacy with others and with the Lord. I'm encouraged by what He has done and excited about what He is going to do. I can already see how He is preparing me for a stretching and strengthening unlike anything I've experienced. There will be pain and suffering in the trials, but I have confidence in that the Lord will use it all for His children and His glory, and that is worth it all.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comfots us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christs's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort." 2 Corinthians 1:3-7