Am I doing Your will?
That is the question that I always am drawn back to over these past few days, weeks, months, years. To be honest I don't know the first time that question flashed through my mind in a desperate pleading prayer to God.
But before I get to that, some backstory:
I am a planner, and when I started down this road the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I had everything planned out. I would go to college to get a degree in education. I would use that degree to get a job teaching in the States until I paid off my student loans and then I would go overseas and teach as a means of building relationships, meeting a felt need in a community, and creating in-roads to sharing the gospel.
Sure, there are some finer details needing to be worked out but that was where God came in. In my mind, this plan was in obedience to God; checked all the boxes of practical, realistic, and logical; and was exactly what I was going to do.
God was kind enough to teach me otherwise.
Entering college, I knew I was very type A and a committed planner. I would often pray for God to teach me obedience and to break my plans so that they better aligned with his. I am not really sure what I thought he would do with such a prayer….BUT, be warned now: Be careful what you pray for. He will answer your prayers and give you all you need, but that won't always be what you thought you needed or wanted.
Throughout my years of college, I learned so many things and was stretched in so many ways. God slowly started showing me different options to my plan. However, nothing stretched me more than the last year and a half.
2020 and 2021 have been years for everyone. I mean, global pandemics can really put a damper on people's plans. It has been a year and a half of cancelled and rescheduled weddings, record numbers of home births, drive-through graduations, and people realizing the freedom of only having to wear make-up on half of their faces.
2020 was also the year my first short term missions trip was cancelled. I originally applied to go on this trip as part of a required "overseas internship" for my intercultural minor. But after I began to learn more about the country I would be serving in and the people I would be working with, I began to think this was where I would serve for my after-college, "forever" placement. I fell in love with the country. I did a thirty minute Powerpoint presentations and read at least twenty textbooks and research papers about the country. Yes, I am a nerd, but also I was so excited to see how I could be part of God's larger work that he had been doing in this country.
The day I found out the trip was cancelled for the year, I couldn't even cry. After months of delays and waiting for answers I probably should have expected it, but I had been praying for a miracle and really expected one. I just laid in my bed questioning how I could get it so wrong. Was I not following God's plan? Was I not obeying his will? A short term trip wasn't part of my original plan. I had no idea what I was doing fundraising or going on a short term trip but he had provided and opened all the doors, so surely, I thought, this is what he wanted. Now he slammed them all shut and I did not know what to do.
I found out later there was an option to delay the trip until the following year, 2021. Another opportunity came up where I could intern at my school with a missions organization during my senior year. This would cover the class requirements I needed to have to graduate on time and I could still serve overseas the following summer. Everything seemed to be back in alignment and so I continued forward, cautiously but prayerfully in obedience.
I finished support raising. I worked through my internship. I got the Duolingo app and started learning the language of the country. (I mean the highest level of dashboard, clocking up to 1000 points or a up to 3 hours in a day, studying the language.) I signed up to get my vaccines to travel abroad and made sure I got my covid vaccine to hopefully make travel easier.
Then came spring break. My trip was again cancelled. I was graduating in May and I had no more summers to delay the trip into. I found out Monday and could not bring myself to tell anyone until Thursday.
Oh God, I don't understand. I am trying to be obedient. I keep stepping out in faith and praying that you would move mountains. Is my faith not even the size of a mustard seed? Am I completely off track from what your will is for my life? I know your ways are higher than our ways. But I don't understand. Am I following your will? You called me to this but you keep closing doors!
What I did not see opening up in the background was an opportunity to serve for not a month in the summer but for two years. Teaching adults and children, which is closer to what I got my degree in, elementary education. In a country in Eastern Africa, a region of the world I felt called to before college and had already done some research about.
An opportunity that I never would have considered if the doors I was already walking through had not been closed.
Now I am not assuming to know God's will in what he did, but looking back, I can see so many things that have brought me to the point I am at now. Times of stretching that God used for his good and holy purposes. God used this time of saying, "No," to test me in my obedience. He knew how hardheaded and oblivious I can be. He continued to show me the path just one step ahead and let me step forwards. He took care of everything else. I am still not perfect at this but I am learning a whole-hearted obedience, evn when the full plan is not spelled out.
A liturgy I read the other day described it more perfectly than I could:
"…You are a rock, O Christ,…
That I might dash myself against
Until my strength is spent
And I collapse at last in despair
Only then to feel the tenderness of your embrace
As you scoop to gather me to yourself…"*
I strive and plan and cry out in despair when my human strivings come crumbling down around me. I question everything I know and wonder at my weaknesses. But one thing I cannot question is this. The good Father who has called you to himself and shaped you from before your birth for this time and this purpose will not leave you. His plan is sure, good, and perfect. We may fail but he won't and our failings cannot cause him to stumble.
In this time of stretching, God has blessed me with an opportunity to teach for two years in Eastern Africa at an English language school. It will be a time of learning and even more stretching, as I am now in the middle of support raising and will soon be learning a new language while at the same time be trying to buy groceries using that language. But I am once again eagerly looking forwards to the plans the Lord has laid before me. And I will continue forwards in obedience one step at a time.
*McKelvey, Douglas Kaine. Every Moment Holy, vol 1. Rabbit Room Press, Nashville, 2017.