First of all, disclaimer: I am not quitting YoungLife haha. The beginning of this blog post kind of makes it sound like I am, but I assure you I'm not going anywhere!
My YoungLife journey hasn't been as long as some, but it's been a crazy ride just in this past year
-- more than most would probably say for their experience.
I haven't even technically been a leader for even a year, yet I'm already going through a transition. After being placed at Wimberley High School, I was set. I loved everyone, I mean EVERYONE on my team. All of our personalities fit so well together, we fed off of each other's high energy and it just felt so right. I was comfortable. The thought of ever leaving these people was nowhere close to ever crossing my mind, after all .. I had just gotten placed, which means our journey together as teammates was just beginning.
June 25th is when things started shifting. I remember the day, which is weird because at the time all of this didn't seem like stuff I really needed to think about. I was about to get on the tram to my summer school class and I got a text from my area director which was then followed by a phone call. After telling him I was on my way to school he quickly filled my brain with some ideas and threw out that he was starting a new YoungLife group at a school that wasn't in the plans during placement and he was picking three people from our county to take a position at San Marcos Baptist Academy and be paid to be a YoungLife leader. I'm sitting on the bus and all of these people are watching me as I'm trying to make sense through the loud noises of the tram engine and the occasional squeak of the tires of what the person on the other end is saying to me. Our conversation was very brief and vague, I just ended the conversation with "I have time to think and pray about this..right?" I didn't even know if I had to make this decision on the spot. Luckily, I didn't.
At that point in time, I was still holding on fairly tight to my title as a Wimberley leader. Why would I ever give up something that only gave me feelings that were associated with goodness?
Maybe the thought that I didn't know if I would work well with these new people had crossed my mind. What if we weren't alike? Almost all of my friends from CollegeLife and leadership training were placed on my team with me, why would I leave that? I already had what I wanted.
I let it go for most of the summer and didn't even think about it, then I buckled down and knew I really needed to pray about this. I think that's when God started softening my heart. I spent one Sunday by the pool and I looked up and let the Lord dream for me. He gave me dreams in cloud shapes, specifically the shapes of continents. (Africa was one!). Just two days after that happened I went in for my meeting with SMA, they handed me some papers that told me about the school and I look down and see "Mission Field: Our student body represents countries such as Angola, Cameroon, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. Our domestic student population represents five different states outside of Texas and 45 cities within our state" -- some come from Austin, San Marcos, Wimberley, Buda, Kyle, etc.
-- Not only is that impressive but the vision of continents and countries in the clouds was for this, and I believe that vision is going to go far beyond the walls of this school for me. "Why do you want to be here?" they asked. My first thought was uh.. I was kind of picked, I didn't have much of a choice on that one. But then words came out of my mouth so naturally, and they were truthful, which was the big thing. "I haven't stepped foot outside of this country [except for Mexico], but I can tell you the Lord gave me a heart for mission related work and people of the nations." and I then proceeded to tell them about my love for Africa and her people. Lucky me, there's some of those people attending this school. If you haven't gathered this by the extreme amount of diversity, SMA is a boarding school and, as you can tell by the name, a private school. For those of you in YoungLife you know that this isn't the norm for outreach schools for YoungLife, so that's going to be another adjustment for me. But this is good, it's really good.
My emotions are still undecided on how I feel right now, but I know this is where I'm being led, and that's all that really matters.
One of my devotionals recently that comforted and confirmed my feelings says it best,
"Saying yes to the Lord goes far beyond logistics.
It goes beyond a block in our schedules, a note in our planners.
It reaches beyond the gifts we feel comfortable using,
beyond the box that our status and culture and insecurities
would like us to live within.
A yes to the Lord is impossible to qualify on earth because it is a Kingdom business.
It has eternal repercussions, soul-changing ripples that reach all the way to Heaven's shore."
I know that I'm about to be made uncomfortable. There's only three of us on a team, which means we're doing work for all of the other teammates that are non existent. We're starting from the ground up, but it's going to be great because I'm starting to see that the moments of being uncomfortable are what draws me closer to the Father's heart, and that... that is so worth it.
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