As time wore on, my passion and my burden to serve in Hawaii grew stronger. The months of summer, fall, and winter of 2013 had passed and a new year was beginning.
It had been almost nine months since my passion for Hawaii had awakened and change was entering my life with the new year dawning. I expected my enthusiasm and interest in Hawaii to fade with that change. But to my surprise, it didn't.
Instead, it continued growing stronger.
It grew stronger than it had ever been before.
I was still unemployed, working part-time as a nanny and as an occasional babysitter for families in my church as needed. I didn't have my driver's license. I didn't have my own car. I didn't have a steady job. I didn't have any plans to go to college.
I had no idea what the Lord wanted me to do with my life. I was restless and I wanted to be busy with plans and pursuit of a career, but I knew that I hadn't heard any guidance and direction yet from God as to what He wanted me to do and I had made the mistake in the past of trying to control my own life and go my own way, moving before He had called me to. I wouldn't do that again. I heard so many times by people the analogy that "God can't turn a parked car." And I knew it was true. But I also knew in my spirit that I was supposed to be patient and simply wait in a season of trusting Him and His timing until I heard Him instructing me to move forward in a direction He called me.
So I waited. Patiently at times, impatiently at others. But I waited. And as I waited, I continued preparing for the time I would spend someday serving in Hawaii.
Like the year before, it was again an incredibly difficult and intense year for me spiritually, but Christmas was soon near approaching at the end of the year. 2014 was drawing quickly to a close.
Palm trees in Orlando, Florida
As usual, my family drove down to Florida the second weekend of December for our annual family Christmas gathering, and as I sat in the backseat of our rental car, I watched out the side window as dusk began settling outside. I watched palm trees silhouette darkened against the sunset hues at the horizon. And I felt homesick. Very very homesick. But not for Georgia. There was something about Florida that seemed more similar to Hawaii than Georgia was. It made me think of going to Hawaii. And I felt a terrible ache in the depths of somewhere within me. I needed to go there. I needed to go there badly. There was something burning inside of me, calling me there. A burning that I couldn't ignore or deny or satisfy and it almost brought me to tears. How was I to live with that inside of me being denied expression and fulfillment?
It was December 23rd, just over a week later. It was a Tuesday morning. I was alone in my bedroom fixing my bed after a night's sleep when suddenly, I heard what I had been waiting for for over a year to hear. After such a long season of waiting on Him and in the midst of His seeming silence, trying to hold onto faith and trust and belief that He would direct my path when the time was right, I finally heard the Lord's still small voice whisper again to my spirit. But I didn't want to hear what He had to say.
He was calling me forward. It was time to move again and become active. To begin pursuit. The waiting was over.
It was time to go to Hawaii.
I had expected it to be years before I would see the shores of the Hawaiian Islands. I had never expected to go alone. But the Lord was calling me to begin preparing to go there for a season in the coming year.
I wrote later that day my thoughts on the matter: "When God called me to missions work in Hawaii, I cried. I got a headache. I got really solemn and really down. I felt a huge weight suddenly on my mind realizing the magnitude of that decision of what I had to do. I sighed a lot. 'What am I gonna do? Oh, man. This is bad. This is really bad.' But I felt an incredible peace in my spirit and a release of all of that terrible pent-up and suppressed passion in my heart from the past year and a half."
I cried. I didn't want to go. My initial reaction wasn't joy and excitement. I was scared. So scared. And I didn't wanna leave my family and my friends and my home to go to a strange place by myself.
But at the same time, an indescribable peace swept over me as I chose to surrender my life and my own will once again to His will and I submitted myself to preparing to serve in Hawaii in the coming year. I cried again. Not from sorrow of everyone and everything I would be leaving behind, but instead from incredible relief as finally... finally that passion so intense and fiery within my heart could be released and pour forth as the love and light of God for the people in Hawaii for His glory.
In 2015, I was going to Hawaii.
