We all have dreams; silly dreams, bad dreams, good dreams, vivid dreams.
I also believe we all have callings; there is a fine line between these dreams and callings to the naked eye, but such a thick and heavy divider in the heart.
There are also the shallow hintings of what we think is a calling, but is really just a flutter of the stomach at the thought of a greatness or goal we would love to achieve but are not actually meant to fulfill.
What IS a calling? Webster defines a "calling" a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence.
For a long time I had a specific calling on my life, but instead of doing what many individuals do, convincing themselves they've heard from God and are called to do a specific action...I ran from it.
I convinced myself that I wasn't called, I just was psyching myself up with butterflies and dreams too big for a small girl to wear. I have told very few, well one person about this experience that happened 5 years ago, almost 5 years ago to the date.
My youth group made a trip to Caracas, Venezuela and at night we would have a worship service outside with the orphan children and workers in the dirt. My heart was very empty and I wanted God to fill it up so much...I wanted God to tell me what He wanted from me. We sang songs, lifted hands, and during worship one of the church leaders in Caracas prophesied to my dearest friends on the left and right of me. When he looked into my big green eyes, music blaring all around me, all I could think and hope was, " This is it! God is going to reveal His plan to me! Finally! It's my TURN!" But, nothing of that nature happened. The man turned to me, looked in my eyes filling with alligator tears and bowed his head and turned away.
My heart immediately shattered into a million pieces. What? How could this be? Both my best friends were just told of all the amazing things God was going to do through them, how could I have nothing to offer? Why didn't I have a purpose, calling, prophesy?! My anxiousness and joy turned to extreme bitterness.
I became hard-hearted towards the mission field and everything that went with that night. How could God abandon me like that? How embarrassing...all my friends were going to do BIG, i mean BIG things for Christ...and what was left for me? Become a house wife with three screaming toddlers tugging at my oversized t-shirt? Picking up goldfish off my dining room floor after I worked my 8-5 desk job?
No, that couldn't be right. That was not for me. Sure, that life IS some people's calling, and they do much more beautifully at it then I ever could...but I knew, I've always known, settling down was NOT my calling. Fine, I'd do things on my own terms and make a big life for myself without God's input!
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
I ran from missions. I ran from God. I tried to fit my feet into the shoes of a school teacher like many of the wonderful women in my family...that shoe didn't fit.
I tried to fit my feet into the shoes of a creative artist/photographer! That has to be it!
Wrong, those shoes didn't fit either.
Finally, I stopped running from God and what He wanted to finally say.
I went on a week of just me and God. Journaling and praying were all I did all week.
I made my life so quiet all I could do was listen.
A fire was lit that week in my spirit, a fire for missions. The spark was already there from when I was younger. My mother had told me of how when I was younger I had tugged on her arm and told her I was going to be a missionary one day. I still have a wrinkled up photo of a visiting missionary that spoke to me in children's church when I was merely 5 years old.
God took that spark and made a firework show of it. I've never felt more passionate and alive than I did when God gripped my spirit and showed me the love I am capable of on the mission field.
....Me?
No way...I'm a 5'2 skinny wimp of a girl that has no connections, anxiety attacks and asthma. I'm a dorky and "safe" girl.
What the heck can I do over there with those children?
I am nothing.
I am unqualified.
I am fearful.
I am small.
My talent is of filthy rags.
There are far more qualified people to step foot on the mission field than me, but God called me anyway and He will qualify me with time.
It took five years for me to realize why that man walked away that night. I was not ready to know.
I thought I was ready to hear and know what calling God had placed on my life that night...hands sweating, feet tapping the dirt...just waiting to hear what great things I was going to do with my life!
Whoah....there was my problem.
I was wanting to hear what BRITNEY was going to do with BRITNEY'S life.
God knew I was not ready because I still was Britney-minded, not kingdom-minded.
I was too immature spiritually and in my heart for God to work in me.
God had to break my heart in order to put it back together the way He intended my heart to actually be.
God has called me to the mission field far from home. I am so very afraid of what is to come because I know it is so much bigger than what I could ever do...but God relentlessly and continuously covers me in His rest and peace that He is with me and that none of this has to do with MY capabilities but His.
God continues to send me confirmation of my calling over and over again. Just this week God used a dear friend to confirm the call again without her even knowing it...but I knew.
I am more afraid of staying here and in this sedentary life than I am any form of tragedy or death that comes with the call to missions.
When I talk to someone about what God is doing in my heart and the love I already have for the people I will encounter when I go in God's timing, my heart just bursts with joy! I am so overwhelmed with love for these people I can not help but cry tears of excitement.
I know to the outside world it might sound crazy that I don't even know the place God has called me to go to yet, but I love it and the people there already.
It all sounds a little crazy and a little impossible, but that's why it's a God thing and not a Britney thing.
My name is Britney and my calling is missions.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Seeing Through Eyes of Adulthood; Loving with a Child's Heart
Many of you know that I work with children 5 days a week.
3/4 of my jobs since I turned 16 have involved children. I've always found it funny that I haven't inherited the desire to bare a child of my own yet I am always tied to children in so many areas of my life. It's an ongoing joke between me and God I think...maybe He's just trying to make a point.
Through out life, I have lost the desire to be a child...and now I long to return to that part of my life that was so sweet, innocent and short-lived.
When I was young I always complained about being a kid, about how I could not wait to grow up! ( like many children do, I'm sure)
I often was told I was a 7 year old with a 37 year old attitude and mind; an "old soul."
I loved hanging out with people older than me.
Most of my friends were the age of my older sister.
It's ironic and cruel how much I once longed to be where I am in life now and how much I now long to go back to when I wanted to do nothing but speed up the process of growing older.
A few summers back I worked at a daycare. I became attached to a few kids, but I was a teenager and rarely paid any attention to the heart of the kids or anything that they said to me.
I was only concerned with the clock.
Now that I am older (the old age of 22 ;) ) I pay much more attention. I listen to them. I watch them. I hold them. I understand them as much as I can.
I've always been a quiet observer in life. The one group I love to observe the most is children.
The way they act.
React.
Children have so much to say that we often do not pay attention to and it is often when we become the most disconnected from our inner child that we finally notice the lessons their kindred spirits may teach us.
A child can be hit in the face with a block, crying their eyes out to me one second and best friends with the very child who hit them in the FACE 5 minutes later.
A child can complain about their mother/father/friend/sibling like they can't STAND them when they walk through my doors and run into their arms with tears of relief and joy within the hour.
A child can sulk in time out and stick their tongue out at me one day, and draw me an "I love Mrs. Britney!" picture the very next afternoon.
Now, to act this way in adulthood would be a little to the extreme, but think about these lessons.
Often as an adult we trust little, gossip much, get angry much, forgive little, forget rarely and remember all too easily.
The girl at the office that looked at us cross-eyed once without meaning to is on our "She can go die" list for months, or perhaps forever if you're a grudge holder.
A friend that forgot to call, write, or cancelled on us stops being a priority in our life.
As a "grown-up," when we are scorned once, we may as well been scorned for life by an individual.
Often we find it difficult to know when to see through the eyes of adulthood yet love with the heart of a child.
Whoah.
That hit me hard too.
When you watch the innocence of a child's heart, yours will break.
I'm not talking about watching them like we typically do, making sure they don't do anything to kill themselves or others...
I'm talking about REALLY watching a child move, share, love, forgive.
I don't think God put a period where we often do.
I don't think God meant "Have child-like faith," and that's all it was.
I think God meant, " Take on your old innocence, your old trusting spirit, your old easily forgiving heart, your old sense of wonder and adventure in your walk with Me. Be a child again in heart, but walk in the growth you've taken hold of spiritually."
Sure, may be a stretch to those who have read the verse and just take it for what the text reads, but for me, that's what that verse now SCREAMS at me.
Every time I see a child slip into a joyful and merciful spirit towards another child that has ridiculed, hit, hurt, damaged them...God places His hand on my heart and reminds me of the girl I used to be.
Trusting easily.
Loving loudly.
Forgiving.
Forgetting the bad.
Letting the good triumph.
To be a child again is to LET LOVE WIN!
3/4 of my jobs since I turned 16 have involved children. I've always found it funny that I haven't inherited the desire to bare a child of my own yet I am always tied to children in so many areas of my life. It's an ongoing joke between me and God I think...maybe He's just trying to make a point.
Through out life, I have lost the desire to be a child...and now I long to return to that part of my life that was so sweet, innocent and short-lived.
When I was young I always complained about being a kid, about how I could not wait to grow up! ( like many children do, I'm sure)
I often was told I was a 7 year old with a 37 year old attitude and mind; an "old soul."
I loved hanging out with people older than me.
Most of my friends were the age of my older sister.
It's ironic and cruel how much I once longed to be where I am in life now and how much I now long to go back to when I wanted to do nothing but speed up the process of growing older.
A few summers back I worked at a daycare. I became attached to a few kids, but I was a teenager and rarely paid any attention to the heart of the kids or anything that they said to me.
I was only concerned with the clock.
Now that I am older (the old age of 22 ;) ) I pay much more attention. I listen to them. I watch them. I hold them. I understand them as much as I can.
I've always been a quiet observer in life. The one group I love to observe the most is children.
The way they act.
React.
Children have so much to say that we often do not pay attention to and it is often when we become the most disconnected from our inner child that we finally notice the lessons their kindred spirits may teach us.
A child can be hit in the face with a block, crying their eyes out to me one second and best friends with the very child who hit them in the FACE 5 minutes later.
A child can complain about their mother/father/friend/sibling like they can't STAND them when they walk through my doors and run into their arms with tears of relief and joy within the hour.
A child can sulk in time out and stick their tongue out at me one day, and draw me an "I love Mrs. Britney!" picture the very next afternoon.
Now, to act this way in adulthood would be a little to the extreme, but think about these lessons.
Often as an adult we trust little, gossip much, get angry much, forgive little, forget rarely and remember all too easily.
The girl at the office that looked at us cross-eyed once without meaning to is on our "She can go die" list for months, or perhaps forever if you're a grudge holder.
A friend that forgot to call, write, or cancelled on us stops being a priority in our life.
As a "grown-up," when we are scorned once, we may as well been scorned for life by an individual.
Often we find it difficult to know when to see through the eyes of adulthood yet love with the heart of a child.
Whoah.
That hit me hard too.
When you watch the innocence of a child's heart, yours will break.
I'm not talking about watching them like we typically do, making sure they don't do anything to kill themselves or others...
I'm talking about REALLY watching a child move, share, love, forgive.
I don't think God put a period where we often do.
I don't think God meant "Have child-like faith," and that's all it was.
I think God meant, " Take on your old innocence, your old trusting spirit, your old easily forgiving heart, your old sense of wonder and adventure in your walk with Me. Be a child again in heart, but walk in the growth you've taken hold of spiritually."
Sure, may be a stretch to those who have read the verse and just take it for what the text reads, but for me, that's what that verse now SCREAMS at me.
Every time I see a child slip into a joyful and merciful spirit towards another child that has ridiculed, hit, hurt, damaged them...God places His hand on my heart and reminds me of the girl I used to be.
Trusting easily.
Loving loudly.
Forgiving.
Forgetting the bad.
Letting the good triumph.
To be a child again is to LET LOVE WIN!
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