Recently, while romping through a beautifully wild nature preserve in the heart of a suburb of Dallas, a friend challenged me without even realizing it as we trailed my god doggie (yes, you read that right) talking about whatever came to mind. He asked me (yes, he; but keep your knickers on as he's not that kind of a He) if there was anything I had wanted to be when I was younger.
I sort of sputtered out this, that and the other, but the other night while sitting at a stop light in North Dallas, I thought about that question and it hit me: The things I thought I wanted to be, or had strived for while in college and after college, and thought I had completely failed at, I had done either directly or indirectly.
When I was young, I thought I had wanted to be a wife and mother. Clearly, I am an early thirty something who is still single without children. However, I've been given many opportunities to babysit, nanny, teach, love and cherish many, many children over the years, including 8 amazing and wonderful and hilarious nieces and nephews. I am even honored with being the godmother of Lucy, my sweet, sweet niece who is living with Jesus now.
As I went through high school, sports is what got me through most of those trying years, and I wanted nothing more than to play volleyball in college and study to be a coach and teacher. It was my dream; it was my goal. I wasnt good enough to play in college, and I didn't end up studying education or sports management, but I ended up getting a job coaching a local high school girls' volleyball and basketball team for 2+ years roughly, and was a junior high basketball referee for one year through the WFISD. As to teaching, I spent 4 years teaching ESL in Europe to adults and children.
In 2000, the Lord kept putting missions on my mind and heart. In 2006, I packed up and moved to Slovakia, for what I thought would be a year, and for the next nearly seven, I spent time learning a culture, trying to learn a language, working with two sister churches, working with the Roma, Slovak youth and college age students, all manner of missionaries, and meeting all sorts of interesting people from all walks of life, and teaching, among other things. It wasn't always easy, but it was rewarding and humbling and I wouldn't have changed it for the world.
So as I sat at the red light, I started laughing at myself. I so often look at other people's lives and think, "They've got it all put together. They knew what they wanted to study, and they did it, and now they have these wonderful careers. And what do I have to show? I'm this discombobulated mess of things with seemingly no real direction."
And that's when it hit me. I did too! I hadn't "failed." And I did and do have direction. Everything I wanted to be, or thought I would do, I've done. Certainly not in the way I Imagined, but that's the beauty of how the Lord works. As I'm about to hit two years of having moved back to America, I no longer have to start looking at myself as a person trying to figure out what I'm doing in life; I can start focusing on how the Lord worked through me, allowing me to do all the things I wanted and thought I desired to do long term, and instead start looking ahead to the new beginning for which he's opening the door. What that is and what that will look like, I have no idea. And while it will be a little scary at first, as new beginnings tend to be, it's also exciting and something I'm looking forward to unfolding as God works and moves and directs.
