The Long Journey

This is my desire: to know God and walk with him, to know His voice and His leading, to trust Him completely without question, and to allow Him to use me to show others who He really is.  However, I constantly fall short of this, getting caught up in the things of the world, in my fears and my worries, and my plans.  Ugh, MY plans.  The minute I thought I knew God's plan for me I took it and ran with it instead of staying close and surrendered to Him.  He has taken me through many painful years getting me to a place where I can let go of my plans or even what I think He wants for me and just live with Him as my greatest desire and hope day by day.  That's the key. Staying so close and surrendered to Him that He leads me down the right paths for me without my even knowing the plan.  Maybe someday He will give me a hint to his plan for me, but as for right now He continues to put me in places that require me to just follow and trust without being able to see.

The last several years have been a great struggle for me, much of which has come from job situations.  When I went to college, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had called me to worship him with my voice and my life.  I had an insatiable to desire to provide a place of honest desire and surrender in the presence of God, a place where there is freedom to truly cry out to God and seek him, a place where you all focus glory go to God and life is no longer about me.  This is where my life changed because my relationship with God became real.  It was not about rules, being good, or living up to the expectations of others.  I found freedom and joy in the presence of God.  That is  what I long to give others a chance to find.  To step outside of a religion and into a passionate relationship with the creator and lover of our souls.
This has been a burning desire in my heart that nothing has been able to dampen.  Even losing my voice and having to relearn everything that had always come naturally to me.  Two years of having to fight for what I knew God had called me to but at the same time, learning to completely surrender and trust this God that I had learned to love.  In that time, I learned that anything, even the things God calls you to, can get in the way of what He wants for you if He does not remain the highest and truest love of your heart.  It is when I finally surrendered and told God that I believed he had called me to worship him, so I would worship Him however I could, even if it meant I would never sing again.  In that moment, he became the love of my heart again, and He restored my voice to me and marked it with a change, a kind of strength and honesty it never had before. I have seen the goodness and faithfulness of God.
And yet.
I still manage to doubt Him and His love for me. He has been so good to me, allowing me to lead worship with a body of believers in New Braunfels.  I get to do what I love!  However it is only part time, requiring me to spend most of my time and energy at a full time job. This has been a great struggle for me because I long to focus all my energies on ministry, but I gotta pay the bills.  So I have gone from job to job over the past three years.  Most of which have been less than ideal in my mind.  I would cry out and ask God why He was having spend so much energy on all of these things I did not want to do, when I could do so much for Him if I could be in full time ministry!  I knew in theory that everything God brings into our lives has a purpose and is not an accident.  But I didn't want to believe there could be any purpose for me in sitting at a desk and typing all day long, or working at a psychiatric facility with emotionally disturbed children with extreme behavior issues.  I couldn't see this fitting into the plan I thought God had or me.  And so for a while, I was miserable.  I would pray and ask God to use me where I was, but there was a huge part of my heart that resented where He put me.  It felt like an accident.  Like I must have done something wrong along the way so this is where I have to be until God can get me and my life back together.

But God is so gracious, continually trying to turn my heart to Him.  Finally, I realized that I was the common denominator in these situations.  I knew I should be thankful for the paycheck and provision God was supplying through those jobs, but I refused to see that God wanted me in each of those places.  They were my ministry for the moment.  Not full time church ministry.  My daily life, with the regular routines and menial tasks lived out in the presence of others. Somehow God managed to use me in each of those places despite myself.  But right after Christmas this past year I finally got it.  I asked God to change my heart and help me to desire what He had given me.  The next day at work, my perspective completely changed.  He gave me so much love for those kids.  He gave me supernatural patience and peace in the midst of so much hurt and anger.  I became a completely different teacher and made relationships with those kids that have changed me and the way I view myself and others.  God changed my heart towards people and used me to provide a place of peace, safety, grace, and  respect.

And now He has given me a new job, again not full time ministry.  But I feel that He used my experiences over the past several years to make me ready for whatever He calls me to do.  And I know that right now, my job is to minister to the students, faculty, and parents and Freiheit Elementary.  I choose to trust that He has me here for a reason, and I am so thankful that now I have a job that requires less planning and paperwork so I can spend more time doing the things that I love.

Honestly, I still have no idea what the future holds for me.  I often beg God to give me just a little peek at the plans He has for me, but I know better.  I know that right now, He wants me to know Him.  And as I  follow Him daily, listening for his whispers and delighting in Him, He will lead me in the way He has for me.  I need to be content with that, with Him.  A point will come where as I live close to Him and know His voice, He will show me something or lay something on my heart that I am to do.  But it will not come without being close to Him.  It feels as if it has been a long journey and yet I know it has only just begun.  But this journey will lead me to my Savior, to greater purpose and joy than I could find on my own in anything this world has to offer.  I will follow.

Trust in the LORD and do good;
   dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD,
   and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the LORD;
   trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
   your vindication like the noonday sun.

Be still before the LORD
   and wait patiently for him; 

Psalm 37:3-7

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