In fourteen days, I leave for Uganda. It is a little curious to post about it here, where I have no readership, but perhaps that’s why it feels right.
At age 19, God called me to ministry.
I pursued that call by leading discipleships groups and by going on summer missions (spending two summers away from home).
I didn’t change my major. I stayed in engineering and just hoped that it would lead me toward my missions/ministry goal.
Upon graduating, I got an engineering job in order to save money for seminary.
That graduation from college led to a job, which led to depression and a dark night of the soul, which eventually led to soul searching and trying to find a way to seminary. My bff and I road tripped to New Orleans and Dallas.
I took one online seminary class at the precipice of online classes being a thing. But that was the extent of my seminary career.
And missions and ministry? No one would think of me for either.
And then in the middle of my lost, chaotic confusion, I got married. I became a wife.
But my dream and my call to ministry never died.
After my first anniversary, I decided to resign from my engineering job to work at my church. I was excited. I was going to be in ministry. Finally! And at night, I was going to go to bible college.
Side note, I was one semester away from getting that bible college degree.
But then as I resigned, as I interviewed for a job that sounded absolutely perfect for the ministry I wanted to be in, I found out I was pregnant.
So what was the perfect opportunity was given up to a part-time position only for the summer, so I could stay at home with my baby.
And that 28-year-old girl who was still just a big baby herself became a mom.
For many years, she felt the silence from God and felt abandoned by Him. She didn’t do any ministry work. She thought she had sorely missed everything, and her hope died.
Motherhood was hard, but God used it to spur her on toward Him. She started leading women’s bible studies again, just because there was a need. Mostly, she just attended.
Don’t get me wrong. Marriage and children are answers to dreams in and of themselves. But that desire in me has only grown and not all of my team feels exactly the same way about my dream. The weight of it can be crushing if and when I don’t let Christ lead the hope of a dream unfulfilled.
Baby 1. Baby 2. Baby 3. Three babies in four years and a rush of grace poured out onto the girl who looked like an adult on the outside.
Yet, the Spirit of God awakened in her. He poured out in ways that she could not guess. She feared His discipline and the silence and resolved to do nothing but always obey.
The dream of missions and ministry though?
It caused a lot of doubt and confusion and walking down weird paths. Long-suffering has become my friend.
However, during that outpouring of nothing but grace, for some reason, I got to write and lead a women’s retreat.
When it was done, the hope and thought of Uganda flooded in.
I sought to go time and time again, and nothing happened. So I put it in my back pocket. For 6 years the thought of Uganda remained, just like the hope of missions and ministry remained for 22.
Instead, I took to Central Asia for my first overseas trip.
The following year, this year, when a local friend said she was going to Uganda, I asked if I could go too. She said sure.
But I secretly felt like it would fall through.
I have a big dream. And I don’t know if I will ever see it to completion. But going to Uganda feels like some kinda step toward seeing it through. Even considering that there are really giant obstacles.
So why I haven’t really said a thing? I am afraid of it all crumbling to the ground. I am afraid of nothing happening. I had to get a vaccine before I could enter the country and that vaccine? It made me so sick I thought I would never get up again. This only fed my fear that I would not really go. I haven’t talked about it because it feels so precious to me that I would even be allowed to go.
I don’t really know – it may be just a small thing, a blip in my story that seems bigger somehow than it really is.
And also, there is always this strange thing about dreams and family and how people think you are selfish to pursue dreams. Maybe I am. But maybe I am just trying to obey the only way I know how.
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