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I’m still thinking about the whole missions thing and how all the pieces of my crazy life fit together. There are two things I know for certain. One is that I am called to missions. The other is that I am called to lead worship. It makes sense to me that those two things would be somehow linked.
One of the things I think I know is that God wires each of us differently. He gives you a set of gifts – some of which are overwhelmingly evident from the get-go, and some of which you grow into or trip over with surprise twenty years into the journey – and He puts in your heart a passion for things that you can do with those gifts. I think training is at least partially our responsibility – we have to do something with the gifts that we’ve got, and finding other people who have those gifts who can teach us how to use them is important – tho even in that I find that God is at work before I’ve even thought to ask Him. And I think aside from gift sets, He also creates in us personality quirks that make us perfectly suited to the things He’s calling us to.
I – tho none who know me will be surprised to learn this – have a bit of a schizoid personality quirk.
If I had to put a theme to my life it would be “longing for home.” This is expresses itself in so many ways, and home doesn’t always have to be a place; it can be a group of people, a person, a friendship, a house, a town, a state, a church, a country, a log on the side of a trail – but ultimately, it’s God. This sense of longing for home results in a part of my heart that would dearly love to have the American dream – a house, 2.5 kids and a cat (no dogs, thank you) – maybe a husband who is a pastor, to put a somewhat spiritual twist on it, and I’d be the ultimate soccer mom and entertain all our friends perfectly… it’s so Leave It To Beaver. Sorry.
But then there’s this other part of me – the part that wants to see the world. The part that can’t stay put for more that a couple of years, the part that has to travel to not feel claustrophobic. The part that needs to go back to Austria at least once, and Albania, the part that wants to see Australia, and Hawaii, South Africa, London, Italy… The part that would be so okay with it if I spent my entire life traveling around the world, writing about my experiences, and inspiring people to pursue this life of crazy abandonment – to follow God’s directive to get up, leave everything you know and love, and follow Him – to a land which, by the way, He’ll point out when you get there.
