Reflections

Life has been crazy lately!  I officially began fall classes with an interim government class that is every night from 5-10 pm for two weeks.  I am thoroughly enjoying the class and thoroughly NOT enjoying being absent from home during the time of day that we all get to be together.  However the long traffic-filled drives to school have given me a lot of time to think...which I don't do enough.  I have plenty to think about but lately my mind has been swirling around the ultimate purpose of my life and what does that really look like?

For a long time I have wanted to serve in missions.  As I became an adult the ultimate purpose for my life became an ever present question.  It's true that Aldo and I really felt called to missions as individuals and that shared calling is probably one of the biggest reasons we ultimately pursued a relationship to one another.  As life happened, we drifted in and out of commitment to that calling.  Early this year, while we ate out for our SIXTH anniversary we had a very gritty conversation about where we were going to let life take us.  And, as it has happened many time before, we came back to the same conclusion that God was calling us to be missional.  Now I understand that being missional really should be incorporated into the daily life of every Christian, but just as some are called as teachers, or pastors, or worshippers, there is a more specific element to a missional calling as well.

As we prepare for Aldo's graduation in December we suddenly are being jilted out of the complacency that has accompanied the predictability of a school schedule.  We are also faced with the decision of how to take the opportunities in front of us, and live on purpose towards our calling.  Today in particular I have felt cloaked in normalcy.  Hear me right on this because I am not talking about there being anything wrong with living normally.

I often wonder what happens next, and although I have much improved my ability to focus on living in the present, there are days that I sit around and feel as though I am pulling on God's sleeve like a little child asking "Are we there yet?"  I thoroughly enjoy living in my day to day and pursuing being the mother and wife that God is molding me to, but then there are those days....

I sometimes imagine being in Africa among trees and wildlife, watching my children play with their african friends, but what strikes me about these fantasies is that I am never doing anything.  It is then that I jump on the computer and devour college websites trying to think of how best to educate myself so that at the right moment I have something to "do" that will change someone's life and then all of a sudden... like today....

I realize that the only thing that I will "do" that will change anyone's life, including my own, is to do nothing.  I have to be that person who is willing to be molded and shaped into someone who will truly let God "do".  I cannot do anything outside of what He has planned for my life that will make me more effective as an image bearer of Christ.  So tonight, I am just sitting here, hoping that I am not "doing" anything, so that I can soak up what God is whispering to my heart...so that I know His heart, so that I reflect it.