Tag: calling

Waiting in the Wings

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Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

David wrote those words in the midst of a cry to God about how the wicked succeeded all around him. He was agonizingly frustrated because, even though he had the desire to do good, he seemed to fail more often than those who worked wicked deeds. His godly desires did not match up with reality—yet. This passage comes from Psalm 37, which is one of my favorites because I can identify with David. I have prayed that scripture many times before, because the more time I spend with the Lord, the more I grow closer to him, and my desires conform to his. As my desires have changed, my heart has grown to seek God’s glory among the nations. Yet I am continually frustrated in my works of righteousness. As much as I desire to be overseas, God has planted me here, in the States. David wrote these words after learning from experience that, in time, godly desires will prosper. The thing is, God fulfills those promises because they glorify him, not because they are my desires. He cares about me, yes, but he wants me to be content in him and with his timing. In the end he will let my righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of my cause will be undeniable to all those who care to look because of his Name’s sake.

I know analogies from the theater are often overused and abused, but sometimes they are the clearest way to communicate a point, so here goes. Most of my theater experience came from musical theater productions in grade school. I know it’s difficult to imagine, but I was a very dramatic child. 😉 I always loved the part of the play when I was on stage. I got to perform and play my part to help tell a story. I was always anxious when my cue was near because I had to wait in the wings, paying close attention and waiting for my moment to shine. If I did the waiting and listening part right, I would walk in on cue and everything went off smoothly. I am beginning to realize that there are times in my life when it’s my lot to wait in the wings. I am called to pay attention to what’s going on around me and to be prepared for the action after my cue. I am learning that, in fact, without the waiting in the wings, I might usher myself on too early and mess things up. I might come onstage ill-prepared.

In my times in the wings as a child I sometimes got frustrated with the long wait. I remember wondering if I would have time to leave and come back or to begin a conversation with a friend waiting alongside me. I think I do this in my walk too. As strong as my desire to serve and love overseas is, sometimes I get frustrated with the in between times when I feel unused and not a part of God’s global work. And instead of waiting on the Lord to see what he has planned for my waiting periods, I try to leave and forget about my calling. Instead of following the lamp for my feet and the light for my path that is God’s Word, I try to stumble around in the dark, bumping into things in my blind rush to find something else to do.

In times like these I find myself identifying with Jeremiah, my favorite prophet. After continual frustration about his reception, Jeremiah tries to shut up God’s Words inside of him and not let them out. He tries to move on from what he perceived as a lost cause:

But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. 

Jeremiah simply could not leave his calling. He couldn’t forget about it. He couldn’t hold it in. He couldn’t refuse his life’s calling without feeling the pain of his unfinished mission. Like Jeremiah, I too have tried to keep it in and go on with my life. But by God’s mercy, I was chivvied onstage for a minor scene again before I exited once more to await my next cue in the wings.

Like Jeremiah, too, I have also tried ignoring my calling. After being deeply wounded by the sins of his people and feeling unbearable pain because he knew of their judgment and coming destruction, he could not keep quiet. He knew of the disaster coming, and he spoke of it in spite of the agony it caused him. Just as Jeremiah, I cannot escape the reality of my calling because I am sometimes crushed with the weight of God’s grief for the condemnation of his people.

Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry. 

I’m coming to realize that I am part of the story even while I’m waiting in the wings—a part God is using and preparing. He wrote the play, and he knows every little thing that will happen before he draws the curtain. He knows when each actor comes and goes, and he know just how long it should be before each character walks onstage to shine like the noonday sun to play their part in telling HIS story. So for now, I am content to wait in the wings. I can watch the story close by and prepare myself to fully understand the part I will play when I hear my cue.

Waiting for the Romanian Month

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Here in my journey with God, and at this moment in my life, I feel like I’m standing on the brink of something unimaginable — on the cusp of two different lives. I don’t only feel this way in this exact moment; I’ve felt it for a while. It’s like a chapter in my life is ending, as hackneyed as that may sound. I feel like I’ve been reading this chapter for about a year now, and while the plot wasn’t moving very quickly at the beginning, I’ve flipped the page and read down to the last couple of lines, afraid to flick my eyes across the spine to the last page. I’m afraid to know how many lines are left in the chapter. Once I know that, I have to read on, and afterwards the book closes and I have to open a new one. This book has lasted for twenty years, and it’s been my constant companion. It has held my stories and my interpretations and my prayers. Once it’s over I’ll hardly know where to begin again. The anxious thought playing in a loop in my brain is that I do  know how many lines are left — 2 months and 29 days. In two months and twenty-nine days I’ll board a plane in Bucharest, Romania after an anxious, sad, and numb ride to the airport and the mechanical routine of going through security. When I board that plane I’ll fly to Amsterdam and distractedly catch a flight to Dallas while trying to tame the raging sea of thoughts and emotions and fears. I’ll have just experienced a month in Romania, and I can’t shake the feeling that that experience, more than just about any other in my life, will shape its direction. Boarding that plane I’ll jump off the brink and fall and fall until something catches.

God called me to vocational service to him as a ten-year-old. I don’t really remember all of the particulars, I just knew at that point that I couldn’t imagine a life spent doing anything else but sharing the gospel and loving people far from my own home. God has refined that call through the years, sometimes gently and sometimes painfully. Some days I’ve had the prophet Jeremiah’s case of incurable ‘heartburn’ and some days I caught Jesus’ leaky eyes from standing too long and looking out over Jerusalem. More often than not those ‘inconveniences’ have been so uncomfortable I’ve buried them under a schedule, hard work, and not enough sleep. But there have been those times when I spent a whole summer serving food and clothes and Stories to Hispanic people like Jésus in inner-city Houston. And those times when I fingered the curls of a Pott-Lincoln county DHS girl whose face was covered in spaghetti and told her with all of my heart and a lot of Someone Else’s that she was beautiful. And those times when I told Stories — to children in Sunday School, kids I babysit, five-year-olds from Houston who could barely understand my English, and DHS kids from Shawnee. All of those times I saw light streaming in from a button-hole in the tent I’d put up around myself to ‘protect’ me from my calling. That chink of light fell on me each time and reminded me that this was my calling, and no matter how much I wanted to hide from it and hide from the times when the little girl with the curls started to cry, and the teen wouldn’t listen to the story, and Jésus took his food and clothes and disappeared into the crowd — no matter how uncomfortable those times made me, I couldn’t hide inside a big fish like Jonah forever.

A year and a half ago I spent about a month in a remote part of the Amazon Jungle in Peru, living and loving and sharing my faith with a native jungle tribe. It was a journey of faith, but while I was living in probably one of the most isolated places on the planet I felt more deeply connected than I ever have. I was with a handful of people who could speak my language, loving a village of people who couldn’t, and serving a God who understood the words in the villager’s hearts and in my own better than I will ever be able to. Far from feeling isolated I felt deeply connected. I allowed that chink of light coming through my tent to come in through the tent flaps and bathe me in the light of my calling and living in God’s will.

As meaningful as all of those experiences have been, I still feel like my trip to Romania will carry so much more meaning. I told a dear friend at one point that I had an idea of what falling in love felt like, because I couldn’t think of anything else but the trip and the people and God’s work. I was giddy with excitement. Even still that giddiness hasn’t worn off. After praying hours and hours of prayers and sending out what felt like a  million letters and speaking at churches and raising $3385 and buying the plane tickets and purchasing supplies for the trip, I still have moments of breathlessness. ‘Oh-me-of-little-faith’ can’t believe how faithful God has been, and I still tear up over how honored I feel to be God’s servant in a place like Romania. As Gladys Alward said,

I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China… I don’t know who it was… It must have been a man… a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing… and God looked down… and saw Gladys Aylward… And God said – “Well, she’s willing.”

I wasn’t God’s first choice for Romania. He had probably picked someone smarter and bolder who at least knew how to make a sentence in the language. God didn’t find me equipped, but He did find me willing. I still become short of breath at times because I can’t believe that I will actually get on a plane in 61 days and fly to the Roma people, who desperately need God. I’m afraid to breathe too hard for fear that things will fall apart because they feel to good to be true.

I told you earlier that I felt like I was on the cusp of two lives. I mean that I feel like the Caroline who comes back from Romania will not be the same one that left for Romania. As much as I have grown or hidden from growth for these past twenty years, I have the feeling that God will do a wonderful work in my prayerfully obedient heart in that Romanian month that will change me for a lifetime. Maybe he will unquestionably indicate a call on my life to the Roma people. Maybe he will change my Jeremiah’s heartburn into a third degree burn from the outside that destroys my insides so much that they have to grow back, like Isaiah’s refined gold. Whatever He does, I feel like I am reading the last sentences of the last chapter in a book. When I close the back cover I don’t know what will happen. Yes, I’ll go back to school, and then probably to seminary and eventually to a mission field somewhere, but those are only the outside motions—the first few seconds after jumping off the cliff. What I need to know is what’s at the bottom. That is what I mentioned before that was unimaginable. The blessing of it all is, though, that indeed I don’t know what’s at the bottom. One of my favorite verses is Ephesians 3:19-20. It says:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

God will do more than I can imagine in Romania, and I give Him all the glory for it.