I saw somebody this weekend that I hadn't seen for a long time; just ran into him at Starbucks. I won't bore you with all the details but it rattled me somehow, made me look back at the last five or six years and I suddenly got scared. This guy is in his first year at Harvard med school. He was wearing the Harvard t-shirt and everything--the whole 9 yards. :-) We were old school rivals in a way, back in the day, and we've taken such different paths since then. It was weird to see somebody 'grown up' after several years, yes, but something more than that shook me up inside and I couldn't shake it...
It's not that I'm ashamed of the path God's taken me on since high school. Working for Wycliffe in Canada and the U.S., traveling North America and Europe, Bible school at Capernwray in England, time in the Philippines with God and my grandfather, precious time with my family, cementing my best-friendship with my brother, counseling at Handi*Camp and now going to Ghana for a few weeks to minister to kids with disabilities there, my job here working with kids I love profoundly... there are so many things I wouldn't have missed for the world, and some very, very precious people that I would never have given up meeting. And I'm happy with the distance-ed program I'm doing now to get the infamous degree.
I used to struggle with feeling inferior because I didn't take the "normal" path. But now I think of who I would have been if I had kept my nose in the textbooks and gone straight from academic pressure in high school to academic pressure in college for four incubatorial years (is that a word?)... and I know it wasn't the right place for me. It wasn't God's place for me. And it wouldn't have made me more like Him or showed me what I was supposed to see of Him. Which is all that matters.
Back to the guy. Running into this guy scared me not because I'm really ashamed of the last five or six years, but because I am aware (and ashamed) that I have not been living up to those years recently. It took me some serious reflection to figure this out.
I don't have a 'field' yet. I'm not three years from becoming a surgeon. I'm not sure what I'm here for specificially. But I know WHO I am here for, and I have not been living up to that with all my heart and soul and passion. I was unsettled by this encounter because I suddenly felt unambitious and sedentary. I have been passionless and robotic lately. Meeting up with this guy and looking back on my past five years helped me to realize once again that I am excited about God, and that is who I am. That is who He has made me through the odd variety of things He's taken me through. And I need to express my gratitude for the gifts of the past five years by being unashamed and living out the lessons with joy. With all the energy and excitement and strength that other people pour into their goals.
Just because I don't have a specific earthly goal of my own to be ambitious about doesn't mean that I can't be just as alive, passionate and confident as superstudents...I can be MORE so, because I get to be passionate about the Living God who is worthy of receiving ALL the combined weight, color and noise of ALL the earth's passions.
I'm not sure why I'm writing about this here, really; it's kind of personal and I'm still in prayer and thought about it. But for whatever reason, here it is. I guess I just want to shout that I'm AWAKE again (!) because God is worth shouting about!...God has given me some amazing lessons and experiences and people and places and trials and joys over the last few years, and I want to live up to them, seize them and share them and live out what I DO know, even though there is so very, very much that I DON'T know. It's time to stop focusing on my weakness, real and true though it may be, and begin focusing on His strength again. It's a fine balance, isn't it, remaining aware of your own weakness yet not wallowing helplessly in it? The strength of Jesus Christ is in me, and I am proud of that. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses...I think I ignore the words "boast" and "gladly" there too often.
So running into this very nice future surgeon helped to shake me awake from a stupor I've been in for weeks...God has some amazing and unexpected ways of working. I can be excited about and proud of what He's done in my life and where He's taken me.
This is long. And wordy. Shall I toss it out into the great unknown? Sure, why not.
God is so good. He is so forgiving and so beautiful and He is love and He is mystery and He is justice. I will live in the bright orange joy of that forever.
in celebration of the completely undeserved grace of God to me over the past five years; a quick fly-over...(with way too few pictures of important people and places...I don't have a lot on my computer :-) ):
