In my previous post, I shared a little bit about myself for those of you who don't know me. Now in this post, I'd like to begin sharing with you my story of what has brought me to this desire to serve the Lord in Hawaii.
I've always had a tender heart and a strong gift of compassion and empathy. Missions work has always tugged on my heartstrings and stirred me. Growing up, even if it was only fifty cents from my small allowance, I would usually always give a portion of my money toward missions. When I was eighteen-years-old, my best friend and I, along with a contribution from my parents, pooled our money together that Christmas to donate to World Vision, using $75 to buy a goat for an impoverished family to support themselves with and donating $50 toward rescuing girls from the sex-trafficking industry.
I've always had a burden for helping people. I always supported missions and wished I could do more financially to contribute. But I never dreamed of serving in missions work myself. I have always had big dreams and I changed my ideas several times about what I wanted to do when I grew up. But missionary service was far from my mind.
Instead, I planned to spend my future pursuing a career as a published Christian novelist and as a certified horse trainer.
In the wake of a struggle with low self-esteem as a preteen, I began taking riding lessons at fourteen years old. Later I began learning to train horses, and in my teenage years, I began planning for my career. When I graduated high school, I would contact a literary agent I had selected about representing to a publisher a manuscript I had written and I would seek an internship with a professional horse trainer.
Sunday, September 9, 2012, I was baptized by my pastor in a privately-owned pond and made a public declaration of my faith in the witness of my Lord, my family, and my church family. Thursday morning, January 24, 2013, just four months later, I fully surrendered my plans, my will, my control of my life entirely to the Lord for the first time. I made the decision not only to love Him and obey His commandments but to follow His lead wherever He would take me and whatever He would call me to do.
At the time, I had no idea what that would really mean though and what it would cost me.
First, God called me to give up my plans to become a Christian novelist. The decision to obey wasn't a difficult one. It had been months already since I had been novel-writing, having already realized how my imaginary world of fiction was distracting me from my real-life relationships and my relationship with Him. But what's more, I knew that at some time in my life, He would call me to still use my gift of writing, just in a different way.
Two months later, at the close of March, the Lord asked me to surrender my plans dearest to me. To walk away from my ambition of horse training. It broke me. I had grown up and matured there among horseback riding and training. It was my life, my safe place. I tied it to my identity. But I surrendered the last of my future plans to Him. My work there on the farm with the horses had been for a mere season, not for forever. I cried bucketfuls over leaving the farm, the horses, the people, the memories behind, but I moved on as I knew it was what the Lord was calling me to.
But what was God calling me to instead? my riding instructor friend asked me. I asked myself the same question. And I didn't have an answer. I didn't have the faintest idea. I just knew that it was time to move on from my own dreams. I felt lost and directionless, but I would wait for the Lord's guidance. I would wait for Him to reveal my next steps in His plans for my life.
Shortly thereafter in that month of April, my attention was drawn to a place I had never given much thought to. Hawaii. It was not in a favorable light however. For personal reasons, as the month progressed, I grew to hate that place. I couldn't stand anything that reminded me of the place or of the people (which was quite a lot as summer with its tropical merchandise hit the stores). Anything remotely related to Hawaii, I came to resent. I would feel a pang of bitterness and coldness at any reminder of it. Hawaii was not very high in my favor.
I believe that when God removes something from our lives or asks us to surrender something, He always replaces it. As He did with Job in the Old Testament (Job 42), when something is lost, I believe He restores it. He never leaves our hands empty forever. He removes things or people from our lives to make room for the new things He has in store for us. Throughout the month of April, I was confident that the Lord had another plan and another dream for me to replace the emptiness left behind in my heart from surrendering to Him my own dreams.
And it was the morning of May 8, 2013, when the Lord awakened that new dream within my heart.
I was going about my morning, standing before the mirror in my bathroom putting on my makeup, when God whispered to my heart. I wasn't praying, but His still small voice came. It came and He asked me if I would go to Hawaii for missions work if He called me to someday. My initial reaction was anything but joyous. In the moment, it was one of the worst things I could imagine the Lord asking me to do.
My resentment and hatred toward the place and its people had dissipated. The Lord had removed my hardness toward Hawaii only days before. That wasn't the reason for my dismay.
My entire life though, I had planned to live in Georgia forever. I would stay close to my family. My mom and I used to talk about the fun we would have in the future, decorating my house together, going over to each other's houses for dinner, spending the days together throughout the week with each other and my future children- her grandchildren. I had never dreamed of ever not being near my family. I thought then of visiting once a year for Christmas. I thought if I moved there permanently someday of my children knowing their grandparents through Skype and FaceTime. I thought of having to send packages in the mail for birthdays. I couldn't imagine it. Hawaii was so far away.
But I couldn't ignore the Lord. If He ever called me someday to missions work in Hawaii, would I be willing to leave my family, my home, and all I had ever known to go to an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people? Before I answered God, I wanted to be sure of my answer. To me, when I give my word and make a promise to the Lord, I want to keep it. "When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it." (Ecclesiastes 5:4&5) I knew if I agreed to that idea then, should the Lord bring it to pass in the future, I would have to go.
I wrestled with what God had posed to me, but finally, reluctantly, I agreed. Yes. Yes, if He ever called me to move to Hawaii for missions work someday, I would go. It would be difficult I knew. I would cry a lot. I would get homesick for my family. But I knew that if the Lord called me there, it would be home.
That morning, as I resubmitted my life once again to whatever the Lord would call me to, I knew in that moment that I would spend a season of my life in Hawaii serving in missions to the people there.
